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By Krishan Francis and Bharatha Mallawarachi | AP
In this photograph provided by the Sri Lankan President’s Office, interim President Ranil Wickremesinghe, right, greets Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya during the oath-taking ceremony in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, July 15, 2022. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s interim president Friday until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after mass protests over the country’s economic collapse forced him from office. (Sri Lankan President’s Office via AP) (Uncredited/SRI LANKAN PRESIDENT’S OFFICE) | 2022-07-16T05:23:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sri Lanka begins choosing leader to replace ex-president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sri-lanka-begins-choosing-leader-to-replace-ex-president/2022/07/16/bb16670e-04c5-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sri-lanka-begins-choosing-leader-to-replace-ex-president/2022/07/16/bb16670e-04c5-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Man slain in Prince George’s, police say
Victim was found in Bladensburg area, south of Annapolis Road.
A man was shot and killed Friday night in Prince George’s County, the police said.
The man was found on a sidewalk about 8:30 p.m. in the 3500 block of 55th Avenue, the police said.
He was taken to a hospital where he died.
The site is a residential street in the Bladensburg area, about two blocks south of Annapolis Road. | 2022-07-16T06:06:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man is shot and killed in Prince George's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/man-shot-killed-prince-george/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/man-shot-killed-prince-george/ |
Tories Must Decide Between Thatcher and Reagan Leadership
Analysis by Nicole Torres | Bloomberg
Rishi Sunak, former UK chancellor of the exchequer, departs from Four Millbank after giving a BBC Radio 4 interview in London, UK, on Thursday, July 14, 2022. Sunak, the frontrunner in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, warned there are challenging times ahead for the economy as he refused to put a timetable on when he could cut taxes. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Can “Thatcherite candidate” Rishi Sunak win the contest for Tory leadership? Or will his party plump for a rival who follows in the footsteps of the Iron Lady’s great ally, Ronald Reagan? This is not just a question of style or positioning: Herein lies the wider economic choice facing the UK in the years to come.
Yet Sunak, who was UK chancellor of the exchequer until his resignation precipitated Boris Johnson’s downfall last week, has led the field in the first three ballots of Conservative MPs and is now the “establishment candidate.” Nigel Lawson, for many years Thatcher’s ideological soul mate and chancellor, has given him his blessing.
But his chances are dwindling. While most of his rivals have promised tax cuts by the tens of billions, Sunak, a chip off the old Thatcher block, has spurned tax giveaways and warned of the dangers of an inflationary wage-price spiral. Today, many Tory MPs hope that immediate tax cuts will stave off recession and ease their path to victory in the next general election, even if the price is a yawning deficit.
In a leadership contest where six of 11 of the original contestants were not White, Sunak is also an advertisement for his party’s surprisingly diverse credentials. His Indian parents made their fortune as immigrants arriving from British colonial East Africa. And he won the affections of his all-White local party and the voters of Richmond, a traditionalist northern seat, by embodying Tory values.
After three years of bombast and chaos at No. 10, the country should welcome a modest, competent technocrat to steer the ship through rough economic seas. By Thursday, however, the bookmakers were writing down the early favorite’s chances of taking the crown. The party membership gets to deliver its verdict on the two candidates that MPs will whittle down from the field, and it doesn’t look good for Sunak.
A YouGov poll of Tory members suggested that Penny Mordaunt, a former minister with little name recognition among voters, would beat Sunak by 67% to 28%. In fact, the same poll said that almost every other candidate would beat him too.
Ironically, Sunak, the Thatcherite Brexiteer, is in danger of being branded “the left-wing” candidate by his party. The former chancellor’s ratings have yo-yoed among voters and Tory members alike this last year.
It seems like only yesterday when his comprehensive furlough package during the pandemic made him the most popular politician in the country and aroused the jealousy of Boris Johnson. But his ratings plunged when he tried to claw back the debt that paid for bailing out lockdown Britain — the official cost of government spending during the pandemic ranges from about £310 billion ($367 billion) to £410 billion, the equivalent of £4,600 to £6,100 per person in the UK.
The former chancellor also resisted his former boss’s unfunded spending commitments — and insisted on matching tax rises to pay for improvements to social services.
His party and the country resent the punch bowl being taken away. After more than a decade of austerity, low growth, lockdown, and, now, a cost-of-living crisis, the public’s tolerance for pain may have been tested to destruction. Party members loathe the fact that the tax burden is at its highest since 1949 when the UK was governed by a socialist Labour government.
A BBC interview on Thursday morning showed Sunak at his wooden worst. He was defensive about his rich wife’s former non-domiciled tax status and unable to project the confidence of a natural winner. The sharks smelled blood in the water. Now he has to show that he can fight to survive.
For there is a genuine economic debate over whether the Thatcher or the Reagan recipe is the right one for sustained recovery. Is inflation and unsustainable debt the real threat to the UK? Or is it recession followed by years of anemic growth? Are Sunak’s sharp hikes in taxes on employment and corporate profits overkill?
The candidate in third place, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, perhaps alone among his other rivals, has the clout to engage with Sunak — she read PPE at Oxford too and is a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Crucially, this is the debate the country is owed.
If the case for fiscal orthodoxy holds true, then Sunak now needs to make it with real fire. He must persuade voters that the UK can’t afford to take on the scale of debt shouldered by America. Sooner or later, he must take some risks too. That is the mark of a true conviction politician — like Margaret Thatcher, in fact.
Nicole Torres is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. She was previously a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and co-host of HBR’s Women at Work podcast. She was a 2019 Stigler Center Journalist in Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. | 2022-07-16T06:58:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tories Must Decide Between Thatcher and Reagan Leadership - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tories-must-decide-between-thatcher-and-reagan-leadership/2022/07/16/57761bd8-04cd-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tories-must-decide-between-thatcher-and-reagan-leadership/2022/07/16/57761bd8-04cd-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Russia-Ukraine war live updates Widespread air raid alerts as Russia intensifies strikes beyond Ukraine’s east
Updates from key battlegrounds: At least three dead in Dnipro, strike hits two Mykolaiv universities
Relatives of Vinnytsia missing submit DNA to help identify victims
A university building in Mykolaiv after it was destroyed by Russian strikes on July 15. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
A Russian strike on an industrial plant and a busy street in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed at least three people and injured 15 on Friday night, a regional leader said. Local officials reported burning cars, broken windows and a fire in the area. An air alert was imposed across most of Ukraine in the evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, adding that there were preliminary indications of additional strikes in the Kyiv region and the city of Kremenchuk.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said about 70 percent of Russian strikes have targeted nonmilitary infrastructure. The Pentagon estimated that in the past two weeks, between 100 and 150 civilians have died as a result of Russian air attacks, including Thursday’s strike on Vinnytsia, which killed 23. Ukraine’s defense minister told the BBC that military casualties peaked in May, when the country was losing up to 100 soldiers a day as Russia’s advantage was at its “greatest.”
Russian forces seem to be emerging from a brief “operational pause” in fighting in the east, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank said Moscow could ramp up offensives in the next 72 hours, citing recent small-scale — and mostly unsuccessful — attacks around several cities in the Donetsk region as a sign of its intent.
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine had received its first M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, which he called “good company” for comparable U.S. weapons credited for the destruction of more than 30 Russian military logistics centers.
Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in prison for leading a pro-democracy group. Moscow has intensified its crackdown on dissidents since the Feb. 24. invasion.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to visit Tehran next week, Iran said recent U.S. intelligence reports that it is sending Russia weapons-ready drones were “baseless,” state media reported.
Dnipro: At least three people were killed and 15 injured after a strike on an industrial area, Ukrainian officials said Friday. The attack left cars burning and broke the windows of nearby residential buildings, local officials said. Two of the injured have moderate wounds while 13 have light injuries.
Mykolaiv: A Russian attack destroyed parts of two universities in this southern city, local officials said. They didn’t immediately report figures on the dead and injured.
Bakhmut: Six civilians were injured after Russian troops fired surface-to-air missiles at a local market in this town near the front lines, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office. Around 10 buildings were completely destroyed or damaged, they said.
Luhansk: Ukrainian troops are holding onto a small part of the country’s easternmost region, Serhiy Haidai, its administrative head, said Friday. The Russian advance has slowed after Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian ammunition stores, he said.
Severodonetsk: Just a tenth of the city’s 100,000 residents before the war still remain, Haidai said. Those who have stayed are not cooperating with the Russian authorities occupying the city, which is in the Luhansk region, he said.
By Ellen Francis and Robyn Dixon2:20 a.m.
The ombudsman in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Daria Morozova, said Paul Urey died July 10 because of his “diagnoses and stress.” She accused him of being a “British mercenary” who took part in hostilities on the side of Ukrainian forces, according to Russian news agencies.
The British Foreign Office said in a statement that it had summoned Russian Ambassador Andrey Kelin to express concern at reports of the death and to tell the diplomat that the British government considers Russia responsible for the safety and welfare of citizens in areas it occupies either directly or through proxy.
By Victoria Bisset and Annabelle Chapman2:20 a.m.
Relatives of those missing after Russian missile strikes on the city of Vinnytsia have provided DNA samples to help identify the victims, Ukraine’s national police chief said Friday.
At least 23 people died in Thursday’s attack, and eight remain missing, Ihor Klymenko said in a post shared on Telegram by the Ukrainian government. Three children, including a 4-year-old girl and two boys ages 7 and 8 were among those killed, officials said.
Fourteen relatives so far have offered DNA samples, which have been used to identify 12 of the confirmed fatalities.
More than 180 people sought medical help following the attack, of whom 82 were hospitalized, Klymenko added.
Russia has claimed that the missiles, launched from a submarine in the Black Sea, targeted a meeting between Ukrainian officials and foreign arms dealers. Moscow has repeatedly insisted that it attacks only military targets, despite the obvious destruction of thousands of civilian homes and buildings and mounting evidence of civilian casualties. | 2022-07-16T06:58:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ |
Analysis by Robert D. Kaplan | Bloomberg
In 1984, during the darkest period of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Stalinist rule, I visited Targovishte, over an hour northwest of the capital, Bucharest, on the Wallachian plain. It was a hellish town of mud-strewn streets, a few battered cars, without any decent place to eat and garbage everywhere. People looked and smelled bad.
Two weeks ago, I revisited Targovishte for the first time in almost four decades. It is now a gleaming, vibrant town of new roads with speed bumps, clipped flowers and hedgerows, new supermarkets and restaurants, and late-model cars everywhere. People looked and dressed like anywhere in the West.
Targovishte is a miracle wrought by Romania’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union; the former having provided a seal of approval for initial investment in 2004, and the latter providing aid and standards for development for years now.
The countrysides of not only Romania but other Central and Eastern European states that joined NATO and the EU in the first decade of the 21st century look similar. A revolution of Westernization has occurred beyond the capital cities of formerly Communist Europe. The idea promoted by many in the Washington policy community that NATO and EU expansion was a mistake — and led inexorably to the war in Ukraine — is undermined by the reality on the ground, in which the political and economic stability of the West now extends all the way to the Russian border.
Had Targovishte and other towns northward across Poland not developed in the last three decades, the US and its democratic allies would face a stark economic and cultural division of Europe analogous to that of the Cold War, with colossal Russia, under any regime, sowing mischief.
Not every country has made equal gains over two decades. But the autocratic populism of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, and the political disarray in Bulgaria are but a small taste of what might have transpired across much of the European continent without NATO and EU enlargement.
Nevertheless, Romania, with the largest population and territory in southeastern Europe, is a worried nation. It has been trapped historically by its proximity to Russia, whose army has now invaded next door. Romania and Romanian-speaking Moldova have a longer border with Ukraine than does Poland.
So-called Greater Romania, including Moldova, has been partially occupied by Russia 10 times since 1711. At a seminar I helped conduct of Romanian intelligence and defense experts in Bucharest, several mentioned that I was visiting on the anniversary of the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia — the historical name for the Moldova region — on June 28, 1940.
Situated at the point where several empires — Russian, Ottoman, Habsburg, Nazi German and so on — have collided, Bessarabia’s subjugation by Stalin was not unusual given history. The prognosis for Ukraine among those at the Bucharest conference was, as you might imagine, bleak.
Romanian experts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to slog forward in eastern Ukraine, and eventually annex the Donbas region to Russia proper, declaring that any further Ukrainian military activity there will constitute an attack on Russia itself. They expect Putin to slowly build a land bridge to Crimea and beyond, eventually reaching Moldova and the self-governing region of Transdniestria.
Though Putin, his troops advancing slowly in the Donbas, momentarily lacks the capacity to invade Moldova, he doesn’t have to. Moldova, a former Soviet republic, is a weakly institutionalized state of only 2.6 million, with an inflation rate of 29% as of May, that is perennially ripe for destabilization.
As for European allies coming to the rescue, Romanians do not trust France and Germany at all. French President Emmanuel Macron, it is thought, will sacrifice any principle for the sake of making France a middleman between Russia and Ukraine.
As for the Germans, they have already built two Nord Stream pipelines for Russian gas. “And what gets built, eventually gets used,” a local analyst told me. It was a refrain I heard from others: When winter comes, and Germany and other parts of Europe suffer heating shortages, that’s when European resolve against Russia will erode.
Despite the economic development of the past three decades, the West still has to prove itself here. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Romanians waited in vain for a liberation effort by the Western democracies to topple the ruthless communist regime of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.
I remember what the late Silviu Brucan, the grand old man of Romanian communism, told me in 1998 when I asked him why he had become a Stalinist in his youth: “Why?” he asked rhetorically. “Because the West did not lose Eastern Europe at Yalta in 1945, it lost it in 1938 at Munich. You were nowhere. So after Munich, the only choice for Romanians was between Hitler and Stalin.”
The expansion of NATO and the EU in 2004 and 2007 occurred while Putin’s Russia was still comparatively weak. Thus, in Romanian eyes, only now comes the real test for the West. People are terrified that Europe’s fortitude will weaken. Only US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (about to depart office) are trusted in Bucharest.
I came to Targovishte to visit the place where Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were tried and executed on Christmas Day, 1989 — an event that has direct bearing on what is happening in Ukraine.
Because of a trick of the camera angle, the impression from the grainy video clips of the event is of a sizable hall. But the rushed show trial of the Ceausescus happened in a tiny room in the old Calvary school near the railway tracks.
Having drunk fully of the cup of power, having met presidents and prime ministers, having ridden in a coach with Queen Elizabeth and been the objects of adulation at heavily staged rallies, the two found themselves jammed into a corner of the cramped room before a plywood table and seated on two kindergarten-style chairs, with the panel of judges a few feet away. Only two days earlier, they had essentially owned a palace literally comparable in size to the Pentagon.
From the trial room they were marched down a short hallway into a courtyard, where they were summarily blindfolded and shot. Everything good that has happened in Romania originates in that moment. In all the visits I have made to Romania over the decades, I have never detected any remorse for how the couple came to their end.
Ceausescu’s foreign policy was superficially independent of the Soviet Union, but Romanians, unlike many in the West, were never fooled. People knew that had the Soviet Union not been so geographically proximate, Romania would have been spared its communist nightmare of almost a half century.
Through all the vicissitudes of weak and corrupt democratic governments since 1989, life here is better and more secure than at any time in their history. This is a lawful state dedicated to the rights of the individual, not to some mythical collective will and destiny like Ceausescu’s Romania and Putin’s Russia.
Putin’s authoritarian rule is not on the scale of Ceausescu’s, which featured authentic slave labor camps, food rationing and the destruction of a vast historic area of the capital — dynamited to oblivion to make way for a Stalinist City of the Dead housing bleak government offices.
But much like Ceausescu, Putin, by invading Ukraine, has embarked on an extreme and risky journey whose end cannot be fathomed. There is a lesson yet for Putin in Ceausescu’s fall.
Ceausescu never smiled. He always looked “worried, preoccupied,” a nephew of his told me some years ago. Romania, among so much else, teaches about the horror — and loneliness — of absolute power. From lording over a gargantuan palace, then within the space of 24 hours or so going to sleep on camp beds in a small room without a toilet or heating in the winter night, eating out of mess tins, awaiting trial and execution — such was the fate of the Ceausescus.
Romanians, as pessimistic as they are about Western resolve, are nevertheless wise to the fact that something similar might one day befall Putin.
• Putin Wannabes Are a Growing Threat to Europe: Pankaj Mishra
• How to Be a Modern Autocrat: Clara Ferreira Marqes
• For a Dictator, Putin Is Surprisingly Vulnerable: Tobin Harshaw
Robert D. Kaplan holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His most recent book is “Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age.” | 2022-07-16T08:29:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Romania Fears Putin, But Putin Should Fear Romania, Too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/romania-fears-putin-but-putin-should-fear-romania-too/2022/07/16/1a6e39da-04de-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/romania-fears-putin-but-putin-should-fear-romania-too/2022/07/16/1a6e39da-04de-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Ivana Trump during Fashion Week in New York in September 2007. (Jason DeCrow/AP)
Ivana Trump, the first wife of former president Donald Trump, died of “blunt impact injuries” to her torso, according to a report from the New York City chief medical examiner Friday. The manner of death was classified as an accident, the report added.
The Trump family announced that Ivana, 73, mother of Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., had died at home in Manhattan on Thursday.
“I am very saddened to inform all of those that loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City,” the former president said in a post on his social medial platform Truth Social.
Ivana Trump was found unconscious on a staircase in her East 64th Street home near Central Park after police received an emergency call at 12:40 p.m., and she was pronounced dead at the scene, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the event. New York police detectives began an investigation and found no sign of forced entry or obvious sign of trauma suggesting criminality.
More than one in four Americans over age 65 fall each year, and falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among that age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths from falling occur at a rate of around 64 deaths per 100,000 older adults, it said.
The former president and his children lamented her death in statements online.
Ivanka tweeted: “Heartbroken by the passing of my mother. Mom was brilliant, charming, passionate and wickedly funny. She lived life to the fullest … I will miss her forever.” Her siblings also shared family photos online.
Ivana, who was born in the Czech Republic, married Donald in 1977. They divorced in 1992.
In the 1980s, Donald and Ivana were one of the most famous power couples in New York, frequently featuring in the tabloids with a social profile that seemed to grow at the same rate as the Trump business empire. Throughout their marriage, Ivana, a former skier and model, played an active role in her husband’s businesses.
Following her death, depositions of the former president and two of his adult children — Donald Jr. and Ivanka — in the wide-ranging civil fraud probe of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) were postponed.
The depositions had originally been scheduled to take place during a six-day window that began Friday.
“In light of the passing of Ivana Trump yesterday, we received a request from counsel for Donald Trump and his children to adjourn all three depositions, which we have agreed to,” Delaney Kempner, a spokeswoman for the New York attorney general’s office, said.
John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report. | 2022-07-16T10:01:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ivana Trump death ruled an accident by medical examiner - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/ivana-trump-death-accident-torso/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/ivana-trump-death-accident-torso/ |
Democrats use Pentagon policy bill to close loopholes Trump exposed
Then-President Donald Trump participates in a Veterans Day wreath laying ceremony by the Tomb of the Unknowns Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in November 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
House Democrats are taking what may be their last shot to address the lack of government safeguards that enabled some of former president Donald Trump’s most audacious behavior, leveraging a mammoth Pentagon policy bill to target institutional shortcomings highlighted by his actions.
The $840 billion legislation, which passed the House on Thursday but is subject to change once the Senate weighs in later this summer, contains specific measures to fix problems laid bare by the U.S. Capitol riot carried out by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
Some direct closer scrutiny — by the military, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security — of domestic terror threats posed by antisemitism, neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist ideologies, as well as groups on the far right such as the Proud Boys, are now the subject of investigation by federal prosecutors and the House select committee examining the insurrection. Another would give the mayor of D.C. the authority to mobilize the National Guard during an emergency — or another major security crisis.
The apparent sense of urgency goes beyond the simple fact that passing stand-alone legislation is difficult in a polarized Congress, observers say.
“Particularly if Republicans take the House, as many expect that they will, it’ll just be that much harder to get any of these kinds of fixes into big bills — because Republicans will have control of what comes to the floor in the House,” said Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution.
Come 2023, should Democrats lose the handful of seats necessary to drive them into the minority, it would complicate “the idea of anything being portrayed as anti-Trump, especially if Trump comes out and says more formally that he’s running in 2024,” Reynolds said.
The annual defense authorization bill often serves as a forum for policy that radiates beyond the Pentagon, but it’s far from guaranteed that all or even any of these provisions will become law. Last year, for instance, the House agreed to upgrade to the D.C. mayor’s ability to mobilize the city’s National Guard units, but the idea was dropped during negotiations with the Senate and absent from the final bill that Congress sent to President Biden for approval.
Provision to give D.C. control of its National Guard scuttled in Congress's major defense bill
The political divisions shaping lawmakers’ calculations were thrown into sharp relief in recent days, when the House voted on an amendment to the defense bill offered by Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-Ill.) to compel the Defense Department, the FBI and DHS to establish “strategies to combat White supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and Federal law enforcement agencies,” as the measure read. This has been a focus of Schneider’s since 2017, but attracted much broader interest in the aftermath of Jan. 6.
Not a single House Republican voted in favor of the venture. It was adopted into the House’s defense bill solely with Democratic support.
Many supporters of the Trump-themed provisions, all of which were included in the House’s final defense bill through the amendment process, have been clear what — and who — inspired their legislative efforts.
“On January 6, 2021, as our democracy was under attack, D.C.'s mayor was unable to call out the D.C. National Guard, wasting hours and potentially costing lives,” Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.); Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.); and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), D.C.'s delegate to Congress, said in a joint statement this week. “The January 6th attack on the Capitol demonstrated why this authority belongs in the hands of D.C.’s mayor and not the president.”
Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president, officials say
At the same time, not every amendment that could have corrective effects on the government firmament that came to a breaking point under Trump is presented as a direct clap-back to his presidency.
For example, the House approved a GOP initiative to create a dedicated inspector general for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a White House organization at the heart of Trump’s first impeachment over his administration’s withholding of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine.
It was through the OMB that Trump ordered the successive holds on distributing military hardware to the government in Kyiv — millions of dollars in aid he sought to use as leverage with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who Trump wanted to announce an investigation with the potential to damage a political rival, then-former vice president Joe Biden.
A spokesman for the lead author, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), did not respond to an inquiry about the motivations for the amendment. OMB administers the entirety of the federal government’s budget, an oftentimes arcane undertaking that has prompted a wide spectrum of calls for transparency and scrutiny.
The defense bill also seeks to build on a 2021 provision to replace Confederate names on military installations — which Trump used as grounds to veto the legislation, prompting a historic congressional override — with an initiative from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) to recognize African Americans “who have served in the Armed Forces with honor, heroism, and distinction by increasing the number of military installations, infrastructure, vessels, and weapon systems named” for them.
Efforts to erase the military’s Confederate lineage gained bipartisan support in Congress after the murder of George Floyd spurred broad introspection over the country’s history of racism. Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer set off massive protests in the spring of 2020, including in D.C., where the Trump administration’s decision to summon large numbers of National Guard personnel and federal law enforcement to the nation’s capital was met with objections from the mayor. | 2022-07-16T10:22:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats use Pentagon policy bill to close loopholes Trump exposed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/16/ndaa-defense-bill-trump-loopholes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/16/ndaa-defense-bill-trump-loopholes/ |
Facing trial, Bannon vows to go ‘medieval,’ but judge says meh
After a judge sharply limits Bannon’s planned defenses for contempt, the refusenik Jan. 6 witness faces long odds at a short trial.
Steve Bannon talks to reporters after appearing in federal court in November. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Former Trump adviser and right wing podcaster Stephen K. Bannon promised the contempt of Congress charges against him would become a “misdemeanor from hell” for the Biden administration, but after judicial rulings against his proposed defense, legal experts said his trial set to start Monday could be more of a quick trip through court.
At a recent hearing that left Bannon’s legal strategy in tatters, his lawyer David Schoen asked U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, “what’s the point of going to trial if there are no defenses?” The judge replied simply: “Agreed.”
The exchange was a remarkable comedown for the combative, bombastic Bannon team that live-streamed his declaration, “we’re taking down the Biden regime” as he surrendered to the FBI in late 2021 on charges he had illegally flouted the House committee probing Jan. 6.
The judge’s response was a lawyerly way of urging Bannon to seek a plea deal with the government, rather than face long odds at a short trial, said Randall Eliason, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor.
“Obviously everyone’s entitled to a trial, but usually if you go to trial there’s some kind of legal or factual dispute that needs to be resolved,” Eliason said. “The judge’s point is, there aren’t really any here … In those instances, going to trial becomes what prosecutors sometimes call a long guilty plea.”
Bannon judge shreds his proposed defenses
Bannon’s case, while high profile and politically significant, is a legal rarity. Over the last four decades, even when Congress referred such an instance of alleged contempt of Congress to the Justice Department for prosecution, they were rarely charged, and those that did lead to convictions or pleas came undone. But this trial comes amid highly-watched televised hearings of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — the panel that Bannon refused to speak to, or provide documents to, leading to his criminal charges.
Unlike Bannon and Navarro, Meadows and Scavino engaged in months of talks with the committee over the terms and limits of potential testimony and executive privilege claims. Meadows also turned over thousands of text messages and communications with members of Congress and other White House aides before ending negotiations and withdrawing his appearance for a deposition. And unlike the other three men, Bannon left the Trump White House in 2017 and was a private citizen at the time of the 2020 election and subsequent presidential transition.
Bannon’s lawyers have argued that former president Donald Trump invoked executive privilege to shield the conversations from congressional inquiry — but the judge in his case noted that it’s not at all clear Trump did invoke the privilege. Even if he did, it’s not clear that a former, rather than current president can assert the privilege, or how such a claim could apply to Bannon, who had been out of government for years by the time period in question.
In past cases involving battles for information between executive branch officials and Congress, claims of executive privilege are as much a negotiating posture as a legal principle — a way of bargaining for limits on what is turned over to Congress. In Bannon’s case, however, there was little to no negotiation, and the judge has warned his lawyers that the only potential defense to the charge of contempt is whether he knowingly missed or just misunderstood the deadline set for responding to the panel’s demands.
The judge noted that before Bannon was charged, Trump’s attorney had instructed him to cite any immunity or privilege with the committee “where appropriate” — not that Bannon could simply refuse to answer every question or provide any document. Nichols also cited a letter from Trump attorney Justin Clark to Bannon’s lawyer stating that he “didn’t indicate that we believe there is immunity from testimony for your client. As I indicated to you the other day, we don’t believe there is.”
Jury selection in the case is due to begin Monday, and the trial is likely to be brief — prosecutors say their case will take a day, and given the judge’s limitations on which witnesses Bannon can call and what issues he can raise, it’s unclear how long Bannon’s own case may take, or if he will testify.
Official says Secret Service deleted Jan 6 texts; agency disputes account
In issuing a subpoena to Bannon, the committee said it wanted to question him about activities at the Willard Hotel the night before the riot, when Trump supporters sought to persuade Republican lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election results. The committee said Bannon spoke with Trump by telephone that morning and evening, the last time after Bannon predicted “hell is going to break loose” Jan. 6, and the committee’s report recommending that he be found in contempt said the comments indicated he “had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”
But charging Bannon and taking him to trial significantly decreases the odds he ever provides evidence to the committee.
“Other than having the satisfaction of getting a conviction, there’s not really an enforcement element to the case, and it seriously complicates any attempt to use him as a witness,” said Stanley Brand, a former House counsel who represented Scavino in his dealings with the committee. “Any legal lessons may come much later with any appeals.”
If convicted, Bannon’s potential punishment is unclear. The two misdemeanor contempt charges are each punishable by at least 30 days and up to one year in prison. Court records show that the three similar contempt of Congress cases that have been charged in D.C. federal court since 1990 all resulted in guilty pleas, but none of those individuals received jail time under plea deals with prosecutors. Two were pardoned by a president of their party and the third was allowed to withdraw his plea and admit to a lesser charge in a sentencing mix-up by prosecutors.
Bannon, however, is a different sort of defendant than those past government officials.
A former media executive who boasted of creating a “platform for the alt-right,” Bannon has championed a “populist-nationalist” movement since chairing Trump’s campaign for part of 2016. While he has denied responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, he considered himself an ideological architect of the efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 Trump rally.
Bannon’s podcast was kicked off YouTube after Jan. 6 but remains one of the country’s most popular on Apple’s platform, with more than 200 million total downloads. In September 2020, Bannon began outlining how Trump could claim election fraud and throw the outcome to the House of Representatives, and continued predicting that Trump should just declare victory regardless of results on Nov. 3 before promoting the baseless idea that the election was stolen in more than 120 podcasts episodes leading up to Jan. 6.
The apocalyptic denunciations continued as Bannon unsuccessfully sought for a delay in his trial and offered this month to speak to the committee at a time and place of his choice. Prosecutors called that effort a ploy to avoid accountability that showed further contempt for the court and government by wasting their time as well as Congress’s. The committee said it would not negotiate until Bannon produced subpoenaed documents first.
“Pray for our enemies, because we’re going medieval on these people. We’re gonna savage our enemies,” Bannon said in a podcast as the trial neared, adding, “Who needs prayers? Certainly not Stephen K. Bannon.”
Prosecutors had warned that Bannon’s desired legal defenses, such as calling prominent Democrats as witnesses, would have turned the trial into a “circus,” and the judge’s rulings seem to have cut off many of the avenues for doing so.
But Bannon has shown he is more than happy to try to make his case outside the courthouse as well as in it.
Eliason, the law professor, said one possible reason for Bannon to fight on through a long shot trial is to preserve his rights to appeal. But the pugilistic podcaster may have other motives.
“Maybe it’s just a show to him, one where he can play the MAGA martyr and use it to raise his profile,” said Eliason. “That’s not a legal reason to go to trial but it may be enough of a reason for him.” | 2022-07-16T10:22:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steve Bannon trial on contempt of Congress charges set to start Monday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/16/steve-bannon-trial-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/16/steve-bannon-trial-jan6/ |
On last day of trip, Biden presents vision for U.S. role in the Mideast
President Biden with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhemi and other officials during a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Jiddah on July 16. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — On the final day of a four-day swing through the Middle East, President Biden will try to get an array of Arab leaders to buy into his vision for this volatile region — and to change a narrative that has been dominated by his interactions with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The day features presidential meetings with leaders from Iraq, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the larger Gulf Cooperation Council. It will be capped by Biden laying out what he described as a framework for America’s role in the Middle East.
The conversations will cover a wide swath of topics: extending the Yemeni cease-fire, increasing regional food security, addressing the ripples of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, implementing stronger protections for human rights in the region and the threat of Iran.
“The bottom line is: This trip is about once again positioning America in this region for the future,” Biden said in a speech late Friday. “We are not going to leave a vacuum in the Middle East for Russia or China to fill.”
Add to that, Biden’s trip comes as he is limping at home. His approval ratings have plummeted, his domestic agenda remains hobbled and members of his own party have asked if he should even seek a second term. The struggles at home also raise questions about whether he will be able see any of his promises made in the region through.
Still the trip to Saudi Arabia so far has been marked by the figurative chess match and literal fist bump between the two leaders. U.S. intelligence officials say Mohammed orchestrated Khashoggi’s killing, and Biden has said Saudi Arabia’s government should be a pariah. But Mohammed leads a country the administration sees as vital to stabilizing the region, and so Biden reluctantly agreed to meet with him.
All told, he spent three hours with the crown prince, participating in a bilateral meeting, and shaking hands with an array of Saudi officials. At the end of the night, Biden stressed that he took a hard line on human rights despite the apparent show of comity.
It won’t be the only meeting shadowed by concerns about human rights.
Ahead of Biden’s meeting with the United Arab Emirates, the country was accused of detaining Asim Ghafoor, an American citizen who previously served as a lawyer for Khashoggi.
A State Department official said the United States was aware of Ghafoor’s arrest and consular officers have visited with him. A senior administration official said Biden was also aware of the arrest but declined to specify whether the president would raise the issue in his meeting Saturday. | 2022-07-16T10:22:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | President Biden meets Middle East leaders in Saudi Arabia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/biden-saudi-arab-summit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/biden-saudi-arab-summit/ |
Esteban Sinisterra Paz, 23, in his studio in Cali, Colombia. (Charlie Cordero/For The Washington Post)
By Diana Durán
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Esteban Sinisterra Paz was 5 years old when armed men told his family — and everyone else in their small, predominantly Afro-Colombian town of Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé — that they had to leave. Anyone who stayed behind, they warned, would be killed.
Sinisterra, his parents and three sisters jumped into a boat and traveled down the Iscuandé River. It carried them to a safe refuge: The home of his grandmother, a seamstress. The place where, for the first time, he saw the magic of fabric being turned into something more.
He grew up helping his aunt sew dresses, and his grandmother make blankets with the fragments his aunt no longer needed. When he was 14, he started dreaming of founding a fashion line.
Now 23, he’s the personal designer for the woman who will become Colombia’s first Black vice president. Francia Márquez, a housekeeper turned environmental activist and lawyer, will take office alongside President-elect Gustavo Petro in August.
Francia Márquez, the Black feminist activist who will be Colombia's next vice president
Throughout the campaign and since the election, Márquez has used her growing prominence to mainstream her Afro-Colombian heritage. In this, Sinisterra is her partner. The vice president-elect, working with Sinisterra and fashion consultant Diana Rojas, has drawn notice for the bright colors and intricate patterns that are unusual for the political arena here, where few Black politicians have reached national office and few female politicians wear clothing beyond traditional professional attire.
“Márquez’s wardrobe has been a vehicle for sharing her origin and culture,” said Mona Herbe, a visual artist in Bogotá. “In her speeches, she has mentioned with clarity problems her people have been subjected to, like racism, marginalization, injustice and precariousness. But, with her clothes, she sends messages of the beauty, complexity and richness of her ancestors.”
Márquez, who before the campaign was a jeans-and-shirt kind of person, described a 2019 trip she took to Senegal’s Gorée Island, a port from which enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas.
“You see people wearing colorful clothes all the time,” she told The Washington Post before the election. “The drawings on the fabrics have many meanings. So, for me, to represent this in a political campaign is to also talk of the language of memory, which has been deleted from us, denied to us. I dress the way I do on purpose.”
And there’s the potential benefit of helping her connect with Colombia’s substantial Afro-Caribbean community — officially 6.2 percent of the population, but believed to be larger.
Márquez was also courting controversy — again. She spent the campaign discussing her Blackness and calling out Colombia’s racism. That’s disruptive talk in a country that for generations identified its people as sharing a single mixed race, called Mestizo, even as Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities faced disproportionate rates of poverty, violence and displacement.
“The problem people have with Francia is that she is a Black woman who does not behave well, who knows she is Black, and knows what that means in historical terms,” anthropologist Eduardo Restrepo said.
Márquez and Sinisterra share much in common. Both are Afro-Colombians from the country’s Pacific coast; both are among the roughly 8 million people who were forcibly displaced during Colombia’s bloody, decades-long conflict. In her campaign speeches, Márquez often spoke directly to the “nobodies” — the poor, the excluded, the Indigenous, the Afro-Colombian.
“I’m a nobody, too,” Sinisterra said. “But we have risen up to resist and come to power.”
Márquez’s sartorial transformation took work.
“It was not easy to convince her to give up jeans,” Rojas said. When Márquez started the campaign as a presidential candidate, she didn’t want to wear two-piece suits. They agreed: They wanted color.
“I wanted designers from the southwestern part of the country to have a chance,” Rojas said. A large part of the population there is Black. Many recommended Sinisterra, whom Márquez already knew.
“Within our community, she has always been a leader, an inspiration,” Sinisterra said. “I had already manufactured garments for her.”
Sinisterra began working with African-inspired prints after his family’s displacement in 2004.
“People from small towns want to show our cultural expressions in bigger cities like Buenaventura and Cali,” he said, two cities where he has lived. “In my case, I wanted to show it once I realized, after being discriminated against, that I was a Black man. In my hometown, I wasn’t aware I was a Black man — I was just a regular guy.”
In Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé, a cluster of wooden shacks with zinc roofs, everyone was Black. And almost everyone was poor.
They didn’t know the armed men who forced them to flee, but they knew to heed their warning. By then, records show, illegal coca crops had begun to fill the fields of Nariño, their department on the border with Ecuador. Massacres, killings and displacements have become common as paramilitary and guerrilla groups fight for territory.
Colombia truth panel calls for move toward ‘legal regulation’ of drugs
Sinisterra launched his fashion line, Esteban African, to pay for food and other needs. His parents lacked professional training. They bought and sold items to support their four children, but money was scarce. Sinisterra and his cousins would gather bottles of the Colombian liquor aguardiente — “burning water” — to sell for change.
Sinisterra thought he could make a living from fashion. Initially, men’s fashion.
His father was not keen on the idea: Needlework is meant for women, he said. So, Sinisterra signed up for social work. He wanted peace with his father. He aimed to become the first in his family to attend university.
Sinisterra has juggled his undergrad studies and his fashion line. He has one semester left before he graduates as a social worker who happens to also be a designer, with a small workshop in his family’s home in a working-class neighborhood on Cali’s east side. That’s where he keeps his fabric, two knitting machines, an ironing table — and the bright, colorful handmade pieces ready to be delivered.
Fabrics with African prints are Sinisterra’s raw material. “I find that the most pretty and representative fabric is the Kente print, which pays homage to Ghana’s women picking up the fruits the land gives,” he said. “It is a bit similar to the baskets made by women in the Pacific to gather up whatever the ocean provides.”
He has mostly created suits of multiple pieces so that Márquez can mix and match them in different combinations, creating the illusion of a different outfit every day. “I’m a poor woman,” Márquez has said repeatedly.
Africa and the Colombian Pacific heritage are on every skirt, top or jacket.
Sinisterra says Márquez has received donations of fabric but has paid for every finished piece. He won’t reveal how much. “She is my sister. We decided to support her political aspiration,” Sinisterra said. “It’s something that goes beyond economic issues. We have to stick up for each other.”
The work has gained attention for Sinisterra’s business. He says he’s been contacted by other politicians, artists and scholars. He didn’t give details.
He has been invited to the inauguration Aug. 7.
“The day she will take office I’d like to see Francia making all the people that are behind her, and have invested time and effort in this collective, beautiful and meaningful project, feel proud,” he said. “I hope she makes all the children who sometimes believe Black people have no opportunity to hold such positions, proud.”
He also wants to see which outfit Márquez has selected of the three he has sent her.
He still doesn’t know what he’ll wear. | 2022-07-16T10:22:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Francia Márquez, Colombia's first Black vice president, dressed by Esteban Sinisterra - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/colombia-francia-esteban-sinesterra-afro-colombian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/colombia-francia-esteban-sinesterra-afro-colombian/ |
Taking the baton from Yo-Yo Ma, Rhiannon Giddens reboots Silkroad
The new artistic director relaunches the boundary-blurring Silkroad Ensemble with a massive, multiyear history project
Rhiannon Giddens, a Grammy-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist, is the new artistic director of Silkroad Ensemble. (Ebru Yildiz)
When folks ask Rhiannon Giddens how she plans to fill Yo-Yo Ma’s shoes as the new artistic director of Silkroad Ensemble, they get the answer that kind of question probably deserves.
“I don’t wear shoes,” she says. “So I’m not too worried.”
Since its founding by Ma in 1998, Silkroad (previously known as the Silk Road Project) has sustained twin identities as a musically polyglot touring ensemble of up to 18 international musicians, and as a powerful social impact organization with a keen focus on cross-cultural collaboration and bringing music to underserved communities.
Now, with Giddens at the helm, what could have been an identity crisis sounds like a golden opportunity. For us, too. Silkroad Ensemble comes to Wolf Trap’s Filene Center for a one-night appearance on July 24.
In 2017, Ma announced his departure from Silkroad, handing off interim director duties to a trio of its longtime players — double bassist Jeffrey Beecher, violinist Nicholas Cords and percussionist Shane Shanahan. The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 abruptly halted the ensemble’s reliably ambitious plans. But the forced break also offered an opportunity for Silkroad to reset, reconfigure and reimagine life after Ma.
“At least in the beginning, he’s going to be the elephant in the room — but he’s a beautiful elephant, the best elephant to have,” says Giddens, 45, in a phone call from her home just outside of Limerick, Ireland. “He’s not stepping away, like disappearing. He’s just stepping away far enough that we can get our own feet under us.”
This should be made a little easier by Silkroad’s acquisition last week of a $1.6 million grant award from the Alice L. Walton Foundation, “to support Silkroad’s ambitious initiatives over the next three years.” (You can get some nice proverbial shoes with that kind of money.)
Giddens, a Grammy-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist whose fiddle and banjo chops broke through as leader of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is also something of a scholar onstage. She was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2017 for her work “reclaiming African American contributions to folk and country music and bringing to light new connections between music from the past and the present.”
The Drops’ landmark third studio album “Genuine Negro Jig” made Giddens’s musical missions crisp and clear, winning the 2010 Grammy for best traditional folk album — in part by undoing expectations of what that category can (and ought to) sound like. Her most recent solo album “They’re Calling Me Home” — recorded with her partner, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi — won this year’s Grammy for best folk album. And in collaboration with composer Michael Abels, she’s recently written “Omar,” an opera that chronicles the story of an enslaved Muslim in 19th-century Charleston, S.C., and premiered there in May at Spoleto Festival.
One of Giddens’s major initiatives for Silkroad is the sprawling, multiyear “American Railroad” project, which employs the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century as a through line to explore the rich diversity at the root of American identity, and the harvest of that variety in American music.
The project, launched last year, aims to produce new commissions; a nationwide train tour beginning in 2023, with a companion documentary; a Broadway musical; and a series of books and albums for children.
“Even beyond music, who gets to say, I represent America?” Giddens asks. “Is it the fourth or fifth generation descendant of somebody who came over from Canton to work the railroads? Is it somebody who came over in the midst of World War II, fleeing the Nazis? Is it someone whose ancestor came over on the Mayflower? Is it somebody whose ancestor came on the Clotilda? Everybody has an equal shot, to me, of being the representative American story, because that’s the whole point of America.”
Under Ma’s nearly two decades of leadership, Silkroad released eight albums, including 2016′s Grammy-winning “Sing Me Home” — a project adapted into Morgan Neville’s Grammy-nominated documentary, “The Music of Strangers.”
Ma’s tenure lent Silkroad a high degree of name recognition, as well as associative proximity to the world of classical music. But the extraordinary variety of the music Silkroad brought to life onstage — its freely conversational crisscross of sonorities, tonalities and textures — couldn’t feel more removed from the cellist’s usual context in the concert hall: a collaboration with Mark Morris Dance Group based on a 7th-century Persian love tale; a mesmerizing song cycle by Osvaldo Golijov; a powerful multimedia show based on folkloric heroes steered by Iranian sociologist Ahmad Sadri.
“One of the things we would talk about all the time [in Silkroad] is that culture can turn the other into us,” says Ma in a phone interview. “Nations don’t do that, but culture can. Music can do that.”
Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos are out to give Beethoven the power-trio treatment
Ma saw the classical footing he brought to Silkroad as “a starting point,” and classical music itself as “a form of literacy.” In Giddens, who studied opera at Oberlin Conservatory, he sees a similar capability: the ability to employ difference as a binding agent.
“She’s an original thinker, and she’s also a fantastic communicator with oodles of talent,” Ma says. “I’m now a listener, an appreciator. I want to see what new people she brings on, I want to see how organizationally it will change. I’m really curious! I’m a fan.”
“Phoenix Rising,” which Giddens brings to Wolf Trap, is the first of many grand visions she has for the ensemble — and it’s not your standard firebird suite. Thirteen Silkroad artists will perform a full evening of new work, including three commissions by tabla master Sandeep Das, harpist Maeve Gilchrist and composer, flutist and taiko drummer Kaoru Watanabe. The program also features new arrangements by violinist Colin Jacobsen, bassist Edward Pérez, violinist/vocalist Mazz Swift and Giddens.
“We’ve all kind of seen what happens when you kind of slap one culture on top of another and make a thing because it sounds cool,” Giddens says. “But what’s happening in Silkroad is a real honest conversation between people who are bringing authentic connections to different cultures. And the conversation is what happens onstage. That’s the magic. And that’s what this ensemble does so well. ”
Giddens is equally invested in Silkroad’s offstage initiatives. This year’s projects include a Global Musician Workshop to be held in August at New England Conservatory; a five-month internship program for young arts professionals of color; an Arts and Passion-Driven Learning Institute for K-12 educators; Silkroad Connect, a collaborative partnership between the Kennedy Center’s Turnaround Arts program and middle schools across the country; an artist development and commissioning fund; and a range of artist-response projects launched during the pandemic.
The pandemic plays a big part in what makes Silkroad’s return to the stage more meaningful to Giddens than her own taking of the reins. As globally minded as her work may be, Giddens is just excited to share space with people, make music once again and “feel all the feels.” The other stuff will take the time that big changes normally take.
“There’s grief, there’s loss, there’s this sense that we’ve all gone through something — ” Giddens says, catching herself. “That we’re all going through something. The pandemic is still here. It’s important to point that out. There’s been a lot of loss, and the flip side of that is that we’re still here. We’re coming back together. We’re picking up the pieces. And we’re not just going back to business as usual.”
Rhiannon Giddens and Silkroad Ensemble perform “Phoenix Rising” at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center on July 24. wolftrap.org. | 2022-07-16T10:27:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taking the baton from Yo-Yo Ma, Rhiannon Giddens reboots Silkroad - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/16/silkroad-ensemble-rhiannon-giddens/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/16/silkroad-ensemble-rhiannon-giddens/ |
As new sanctions threaten to choke global oil supply, the White House scrambles to contain potential fallout
Consumers fill up at a Shell gas station on July 13 in Miami Beach. Consumer prices soared 9.1 percent, compared with a year earlier, the biggest yearly increase since 1981. (Marta Lavandier/AP)
Drivers relieved by the recent dip in gas prices may be in for a shock when the summer winds down, with energy analysts warning a fresh round of price surges could emerge as soon as October.
The price concerns are tied to the timeline for stricter sanctions on Russia that will further choke the global oil supply. J.P. Morgan has warned that in a worst-case scenario — in which Russia retaliates by shutting down its supply altogether — the price of oil could jump to $380 per barrel, more than triple what it is today.
Another key reason prices have fallen lately is that initial sanctions against Russia are far less effective than planned. The country’s oil is making its way into world markets despite the restrictions, flowing to places like China and India. It means the global supply is not as tight as forecast when the United States and Europe initially joined forces to punish Russia over its invasion.
The sanctions would be accompanied by a ban on insuring ships that carry Russian oil, preventing them from accessing international waterways. The insurance policies for most of the world’s oil cargo ships are written out of Europe.
An internal U.S. Treasury analysis projects that could send the price of oil soaring 50 percent above where it is today. Some market analysts are warning of potentially steeper climbs, which could push gas prices beyond $6 a gallon.
“People procuring oil make their bids early,” Book said. “It takes four to six weeks for it to be delivered. If they think a shortage is coming, they plan for it.”
“Energy sanctions were never the silver bullet people hoped,” said Edward Chow, an energy security scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who worked in the industry for decades. “Politicians are telling voters that we can do this and people don’t have to sacrifice. It only works if you are willing to make sacrifices and actually cut demand.”
American lawmakers have shown little appetite for the conservation measures that the International Energy Agency is urging be implemented as part of the effort to assist Ukraine. The 10-point plan the agency unveiled months ago — aimed at cutting oil demand by the equivalent of all the cars in China — calls on economically advanced nations to lower highway speed limits, make cities car-free one day a week and implement vehicle sharing.
The J.P. Morgan warning, that oil prices could more than triple in a worst-case scenario, is premised on its finding that Russia’s economy can sustain a cut in oil production of millions of barrels per day.
“The problem is Russia gets a vote, too,” Book said. “Just because something has never been done before doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be done. But sometimes there is a reason it has never been done.”
Chow called the effort “puzzling.” “I have not met a single person who has worked in the energy industry who believes this can work,” he said.
Other measures the Biden administration is pursuing would take aim at oil companies, heavily taxing the “windfall” profits they are earning from high prices. Leading Democrats argue that such actions are overdue.
“In my view, quite a lot of intervention is appropriate in this market,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “You are not as government interfering in the marketplace. You are counteracting the anti-competitive effects of a cartel. Even if you are a free marketeer, it is fair game to knock down anti-competitive, cartel-driven practices.” | 2022-07-16T10:40:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gas prices could jump as soon as October - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/16/gas-price-increase-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/16/gas-price-increase-midterms/ |
As billions flow into robotics, researchers who conducted the study are concerned about the effects this might have on society
Artificial vs. human intelligence concept. (iStock)
As part of a recent experiment, scientists asked specially programmed robots to scan blocks with peoples’ faces on them, then put the “criminal” in a box. The robots repeatedly chose a block with a Black man’s face.
Those virtual robots, which were programmed with a popular artificial intelligence algorithm, were sorting through billions of images and associated captions to respond to that question and others, and may represent the first empirical evidence that robots can be sexist and racist, according to researchers. Over and over, the robots responded to words like “homemaker” and “janitor” by choosing blocks with women and people of color.
“With coding, a lot of times you just build the new software on top of the old software,” said Zac Stewart Rogers, a supply chain management professor from Colorado State University. “So, when you get to the point where robots are doing more … and they’re built on top of flawed roots, you could certainly see us running into problems.”
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“When it comes to robotic systems, they have the potential to pass as objective or neutral objects compared to algorithmic systems,” she said. “That means the damage they’re doing can go unnoticed, for a long time to come.”
The researchers gave the virtual robots 62 commands. When researchers asked robots to identify blocks as “homemakers,” Black and Latina women were more commonly selected than White men, the study showed. When identifying “criminals,” Black men were chosen 9 percent more often than White men. In actuality, scientists said, the robots should not have responded, because they were not given information to make that judgment.
For janitors, blocks with Latino men were picked 6 percent more than White men. Women were less likely to be identified as a “doctor" than men, researchers found. (The scientists did not have blocks depicting nonbinary people due to the limitations of the facial image data set they used, which they acknowledged was a shortcoming in the study.)
Andrew Hundt, a postdoctoral fellow from the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead researcher on the study, said this type of bias could have real world implications. Imagine, he said, a scenario when robots are asked to pull products off the shelves. In many cases, books, children’s toys and food packaging have images of people on them. If robots trained on certain AI were used to pick things, they could skew toward products that feature men or White people more than others, he said.
In another scenario, Hundt’s research teammate, Vicky Zeng from Johns Hopkins University, said at-home robots could be asked by a kid to fetch a “beautiful” doll and return with a White one.
“That’s really problematic,” Hundt said.
Miles Brundage, head of policy research at OpenAI, said in a statement that the company has noted issues of bias have come up in research of CLIP, and that it knows "there’s a lot of work to be done.” Brundage added that a “more thorough analysis” of the model would be needed to deploy it in the market.
Birhane added that it’s nearly impossible to have artificial intelligence use data sets that aren’t biased, but that doesn’t mean companies should give up. Birhane said companies must audit the algorithms they use, and diagnose the ways they exhibit flawed behavior, creating ways to diagnose and improve those issues.
“This might seem radical,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.”
The Pentagon’s $82 Million Super Bowl of Robots
Rogers, of Colorado State University, said it’s not a big problem yet because of the way robots are currently used, but it could be within a decade. But if companies wait to make changes, he added, it could be too late.
“It’s a gold rush,” he added. “They’re not going to slow down right now.” | 2022-07-16T11:06:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robots trained on AI exhibited racist and sexist behavior - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/16/racist-robots-ai/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/16/racist-robots-ai/ |
Something rare in Montgomery County: A contested race for top prosecutor
Three Democratic challengers aim to unseat longtime State’s Attorney John McCarthy.
Tom DeGonia, top left, (Photo courtesty of DeGonia campaign), John McCarthy, top right (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post), Bernice Mireku-North, bottom left (Photo courtesty of Mireku-North campaign), Perry Paylor, (Photo courtesty of the Paylor Campaign), bottom right.
For the first time in 16 years, the incumbent top prosecutor in Maryland’s largest county faces primary appointments — three of them — who say the very nature John McCarthy’s established status as Montgomery County State’s Attorney underscores why new blood is needed.
“There’s a disconnect between what the community wants and the status quo,” says Bernice Mireku-North — a lawyer in private practice and a former line prosecutor in nearby Anne Arundel County — who is seeking to unseat McCarthy.
The other challengers — Tom DeGonia and Perry Paylor — have been making similar pitches in a region of 1.1 million residents just north of Washington. All three cite local incarceration rates that they say disproportionally tilt toward minorities and stressing to voters they’re far more willing to drive fundamental change.
“Longevity in itself isn’t bad,” says DeGonia, a private attorney and former prosecutor. “The problem is when you start to take the office for granted — as opposed to serving the public — and can’t acknowledge what you’re doing is not state of the art.”
Adds Paylor, a top ranking prosecutor in neighboring Prince George’s County and a former private attorney: “The pursuit of criminal justice is evolving across the country, but it’s not evolving at the appropriate pace here in Montgomery County.”
McCarthy calls the assertions nonsense, saying he has led Maryland’s prosecutors in reforms since taking office. And he says their views reflect a limited understanding of what voters want during times of rising gun violence.
“Without any question, people who are interested in public safety see me as their best advocate,” he says.
Residents have already started making their choice for the office as part of Maryland’s early voting process. Election Day looms on Tuesday. Their selection for Montgomery State’s Attorney will be the final word, as no Republicans are running, which is not unusual in the highly Democratic county.
The office prosecutes everything from misdemeanors to murders, employing about 82 attorneys along with other staff.
McCarthy, 70, taught high school briefly after college, took night classes at the University of Baltimore, and eventually joined the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office in 1982. He rose through the office, handled a number of high-profile murder cases, and in 2006 sought to lead the office — an elected post in Maryland.
He sailed to victory, and has been rarely challenged since — going unopposed in the 2010, 2014 and 2018 primaries, and facing a Republican challenger in only one of those races — eight years ago.
He has received endorsements from several Democratic leaders including, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, former Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and current Montgomery County State Sen. Will Smith. Leggett was the first Black county executive in Montgomery County, and Smith is the first Black chair of the state’s powerful Judicial Proceedings Committee.
“John’s record and my relationship with him — that’s why I endorsed him,” says Smith, who has pushed for criminal justice reforms.
Of the three challengers, DeGonia, 51, has proposed a detailed structural shift for the office. He would decentralize operations in favor of “community-based prosecution” by placing prosecutors in each of the county’s six police district stations. That approach, DeGonia says, would allow prosecutors to better inform police officers of reform measures, get prosecutors engaged earlier in their cases, and enable crime victims to know who was handling their cases.
“It’s much of more of a community-engagement model,” he says.
DeGonia, a native of Missouri, graduated from American University’s Washington School of Law, and worked as a prosecutor in Montgomery’s State’s Attorney’s Office for eight years, eventually running a felony team before going on to private practice in Rockville. DeGonia recently served as president of the Montgomery County Bar Association.
In his campaign, DeGonia said, he has knocked on the doors of more than 5,000 residents. He promises to attack the proliferation of firearms in Montgomery, particularly ghost guns — which are often assembled at home and are hard to trace — by setting up a detailed, multidisciplinary firearms task force. It would prosecute cases, looking to impose stiff sentences where possible, but also support youth conflict-resolution programs and work with state and federal agencies to try to halt the trafficking of illegal guns into the county.
DeGonia also emphasized racial justice and says he would “overhaul systems set up to dehumanize defendants.”
He says that under McCarthy, the State’s Attorney’s Office has no way to track if minority defendants are treated differently along the many steps of the criminal justice system: How they are charged; how often they’re given a chance at diversion and treatment programs designed to avoid jail; what kind of plea deals they’re offered; and if convicted, what kinds of sentences are imposed.
“You can’t know if your programs are working if you’re not tracking who is succeeding and who is not succeeding,” DeGonia says.
The assertion got a boost this week by the release of a report by the Montgomery County Council’s Legislative Oversight Office that was critical of data collection in McCarthy’s Office.
“The State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) has not prioritized top-line data reporting or performance measurement,” the report found. “The SAO is unable to report data that makes comparisons between racial and/or ethnic groups in a consistent and transparent way because their data is housed in an outdated case management system that contains erroneous and inconsistent data.”
McCarthy said he agreed with many of the report’s findings while noting the report detailed how complicated data collection can be in the criminal justice system. Demographic information about defendants comes in from different sources — police, jails, courts, his office — and cannot be synthesized on software systems designed years ago to manage cases and not parse out such data.
It is for that very reason, McCarthy said, that he is upgrading his data management systems and last year commissioned a study of his office by a group called Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, which has also studied prosecution offices in Chicago, Tampa and elsewhere.
Challenger Paylor, 53, who serves as a deputy state’s attorney in Prince George’s County, said about 61 percent of the inmates in Montgomery’s jail population are Black, Paylor says, while the percentage of Black residents in the county is about 20 percent.
For Montgomery’s juvenile defendants detained in youth facilities, the numbers are even more stark: 93 percent of youth held before their cases being resolved are “non-White,” according to a February 2021 report by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, and 100 percent who are charged as adults are non-White. (The report does not provide the underlying totals for those percentages, and notes that the majority of all youth ages 11-17 in Montgomery County — 64 percent — are non-White.)
“It’s time to bring a fresh approach and new eyes to that office,” says Paylor.
A longtime private attorney, Paylor joined the Prince George’s State’s Attorney’s office as a prosecutor in 2019 and in 2020 was promoted to a deputy leadership post there.
If elected in Montgomery, he plans to assign three prosecutors, an investigator and a paralegal to a “conviction and sentencing integrity unit,” which would review past cases prosecuted by the office that may have had questionable outcomes. And he says he’d bring behavioral health specialists into the office to help evaluate and recommend possible case dispositions.
“We want to put our resources into reducing recidivism,” he said.
Paylor said he also would go after the proliferation of ghost guns, saying he’d be “aggressive, fair and consistent” with how he’d prosecute gun cases.
“I am the candidate to bring Montgomery County into modern times,” he said during a candidates forum sponsored by the Montgomery Women’s Democratic Club.
Two years ago, Mireku-North, 40, was named co-chair of Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force.”
That position, according to Mireku-North, offered insight into the State’s Attorney’s Office that helped shape her decision to seek the office. She said she found transparency and data collection lacking, which she would make a top priority.
A former prosecutor and current private attorney, Mireku-North said fear of crime is very real in the county and must be addressed. Some residents worry about being mugged walking through Silver Spring at night, or being carjacked while driving. She promised to “seek zealous and fair prosecution when warranted.”
But Mireku-North’s larger message is to reform the office — she promises to make the most change of any candidate — and reduce “the over-criminalization of our youth.”
She promised to establish a “diversion coordination team” in the office that can spot community-based options for defendants to keep them out of jail early on in the process of cases.
During the candidate forum, Mireku-North delivered an impassioned promise to push prosecutors to look at juvenile offenders more broadly and as whole people.
“What’s going on with the family? What’s going on with school before we even consider putting that person through the system and further traumatizing them?” she said. “Because that’s what it’s really all about. When these kids are going through the system, they’re going through something that’s a result of trauma. And it’s about time we stop disregarding that. That’s inappropriate for this county and not the way to move forward for the future of Montgomery County.”
McCarthy acknowledged that the criminal justice system has historically been unfair to minorities, and too many Black defendants are behind bars. But he said the reasons are far more complicated than one prosecutor’s office, and said he has constantly worked to address the problem.
“When we charge someone, when we offer a plea deal, anything, we absolutely don’t care what their race is,” McCarthy said.
His said his office has constantly worked to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders in the county jail by diverting thousands of defendants into treatment and other programs. And he touts programs to keep people from ever being charged, including “Speak up, Save a Life,” which warns teenagers of the dangers of opioid use.
“My frustration about this race has been nearly everything that has been mentioned that needs to be we’ve already done,” McCarthy said.
Smith, the state senator who endorsed him, called his three challengers talented and likable. But he noted that McCarthy was someone he first met as a youth — he played in a basketball league against a team coached by McCarthy.
Their friendship grew into a professional one, to the point that Smith said McCarthy remains a key local prosecutor with whom he can discuss criminal justice reform issues.
“I think his own initiatives, his record on these issues is clear,” Smith said. “But the most important thing about his candidacy his he understands we’re nowhere near where we need to be.” | 2022-07-16T11:06:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County State's Attorney's race 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/montgomery-county-states-attorney-elect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/montgomery-county-states-attorney-elect/ |
Crime in Baltimore is rising. It could affect the governor’s race.
A recent poll found that crime was a “major concern” for voters
Belair-Edison is reflected in a window with a Safe Streets poster. The neighborhood has had one of the highest rates of crime in Baltimore. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Crime in Baltimore and beyond has become a top issue in the governor’s race in Maryland, a stark departure in a wealthy, highly-educated state where the economy and education usually draw the most voter attention.
Even before the mass shootings in Highland Park, Ill., Ulvade, Tex., and Buffalo, persistent gun violence in Baltimore and beyond were reshaping the debate in the gubernatorial primary as frustrated residents pressed candidates to push beyond thoughts, prayers and talking points and provide solutions.
“We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheatham Sr., 71, a community activist and president of the Matthew Henson Neighborhood Association in Baltimore, who sponsored a candidate’s forum last month.
Recent high-profile incidents thrust the wreckage and root causes of shootings into candidates’ laps as they struggle to break through in an election where many voters remain undecided headed into the final stretch, shifting the focus and tenor of the governor’s race: a gunman sprayed 60 rounds from an assault weapon in Northeast Baltimore, killing a man in his mid-20s; a bullet ricocheted into the home of an 83-year-old women as she laid in bed; a 15-year-old allegedly opened fire in downtown Baltimore, killing one teen, injuring two others, sending hundreds scrambling for cover.
The tension has echoes in races up and down the ballot nationally and comes against a backdrop of urgency and consequential bipartisan federal action on firearms last month. Tough-on-crime messaging, a hallmark of 1990s-era politics driven by fallout from the War on Drugs, is reverberating through midterm races across the country as cities face upticks in gun violence and homicide rates, squeezing Democrats caught between promises of advancing social justice and reducing violence.
Democratic candidates vying to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who sparred with city leaders on crime as he sought to elevate his national profile ahead of a potential presidential run, have been talking about crime with more urgency, and in some cases, more aggressively, than in past election cycles. One candidate suggested declaring a state of emergency in Baltimore. Another, who wants to hire more officers, launched a campaign ad that some voters described as fearmongering. The ad opens with a hooded carjacker wielding a crowbar, banging on a windshield and startling a woman at a red light.
“I have the experience and plan to tackle crime now,” former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, who has made crime fighting a central plank of his campaign, said in the ad. Gansler, who trails in polling, fought back against criticism over his ad, saying “with almost 3,000 people killed in Baltimore City alone during this administration, this is not a scare tactic. This is real.”
Gun violence — a category that includes homicides and nonfatal shootings — jumped 10 percent in Baltimore since last July 2, while overall violent crime ticked up six percent, Baltimore Police Department data show. Meanwhile, the Anne Arundel police chief called for an “all hands-on deck approach” this month after a recent string of shootings in the suburbs of Baltimore. Last month, a gunman killed three people at a factory in Smithsburg, near the Pennsylvania border. Statewide crime tallies for 2021 are not publicly available and data across jurisdictions show spikes in some categories and dips in others. For example, in Prince George’s County, homicides and nonfatal shootings dropped but carjackings soared year-over-year while neighboring Montgomery County saw relatively flat rates of gun-related homicide and nonfatal shootings rose 75 percent.
“We’re watching crime that feels like it’s more brazen, and we’re watching … answers that feel more elusive,” said best-selling author and former nonprofit chief Wes Moore, one of three front-runners in the Democratic primary. Moore said voters are increasingly becoming aware of the state’s role in addressing the problem and what he described as Hogan’s failure to partner with city leaders — a characterization the governor’s spokesman contested, citing funding for police, crime control, victim services and community-based programs.
Two years ago, following protests after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Democrats were discussing ways to rethink policing and to ensure that police are held accountable for misconduct. Now candidates to lead a state that passed sweeping police reforms want voters to know that their support for social justice does not mean they are soft on crime.
“We can’t have people dragged out of their cars and have their cars stolen at intersections,” said State Comptroller Peter Franchot, who is in a horse race with Moore and U.S. labor secretary Tom Perez for the Democratic nomination in the 10-person field. “You can’t have a buoyant economy in the state of Maryland if people don’t feel safe in their communities.”
Franchot, who said he would have “zero tolerance for any kind of violent crime” and “zero tolerance for wrongful misconduct by police,” plans to deploy state police to bolster police presence in select neighborhoods.
Moore recently called on Hogan to immediately fill the more than 100 open state Department of Parole and Probation jobs. City leaders said last year that one in three suspects of nonfatal shootings and homicides are either on parole or probation, under the state purview. He also wants to increase funding for community violence prevention groups.
“We have to actually build strong partnerships across state and local and federal law enforcement agencies to be able to track and trace and solve these gun crimes,” said Moore, who while campaigning mentioned attending the funeral of a friend’s brother who was shot recently in a case of mistaken identity. “And we’ve got to get these guns off the streets. That is how you’re going [to] actually stop [crime] from happening before it even happens.”
Perez said a “true partnership has been absent” between the state and local leaders. He said the state has a legal responsibility to address the failings of its department. As a former federal prosecutor, Perez said he would work with former colleagues at Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to deal with illegal guns and would create a statewide violence prevention coordinator.
John B. King Jr., who is endorsed by Our Revolution Maryland and other left-leaning organizations, agreed with a need for greater oversight from parole and probation and advocated for “policing plus” mental health services, addiction treatment and job training.
But he cautioned against a return to an old way of thinking on solutions, which fueled Maryland’s high incarceration rates and ultimately left the state leading the country in its percentage of people serving life sentences who are Black.
Gansler’s own ticket encapsulates the complexity of the issue.
He wants to hire 1,000 new officers statewide, install 10,000 new lights on Baltimore city streets and get illegal guns off the streets. His running mate, Candace Hollingsworth, founded a political party, Our Black Party, whose platform includes “defund the police.”
Gansler, who is endorsed by the Baltimore County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #4, said he and Hollingsworth share a vision to make the state “safer, stronger” and their platform “builds accountability, ensures that law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to address violent crime, establish stronger community connections and invests deeply in the additional resources that communities need that prevent crime from happening in the first place …
“Black communities deserve to be safe from violent crime and they also deserve to be safe from those responsible for protecting them,” he said in an emailed statement.
Baltimore’s Mosby accuses Hogan of racially charged ‘dog-whistling'
That sentiment echoes a message that Rushern L. Baker III hammered during his short-lived time on the trail. Baker called for a state of emergency and deploying the National Guard in Baltimore. His first campaign ad complained of inaction, asserting that Black men were being “slaughtered,” and “because they’re Black, nobody in power gives a damn.”
Hogan has repeatedly said Baltimore residents, including its Black residents, are fed up with feeling unsafe, citing his internal polls as evidence of support for his crime-fighting legislative package that included tougher sentencing for repeat violent offenders.
“It’s outrageous,” he said during a recent appearance on WBAL radio. In “Baltimore, they just continue to have no accountability whatsoever for their actions.”
Several Baltimore residents said they have objected to the city being used as a political tool by Hogan and in past years by former president Donald Trump.
“I don’t like how he talks about Baltimore,” Rita Crews, a community association president in Belair in Northeast Baltimore, said of Hogan, who is finishing up his second and final term in office. “Stop talking nationally about Baltimore City and talk to us first before deciding this is what Baltimore needs. He’s not in the trenches with us. He doesn’t walk in our shoes.”
Crews said she would like to see a strategy that includes ensuring that police officers “are trained in being compassionate and caring for the community, not just out to make an arrest. Some people have mental illnesses. They don’t need to be arrested.”
She said a “major start" would be to shut down the open drug markets. “They are scary and you can tell where they are,” she said.
Cheatham meanwhile liked Baker’s idea of deploying the National Guard. Others, like Elijah Miles, head of community organization the Tandea Family, said more resources should be given to grass roots organizations like his that work with teenagers, trying to head off violence. Miles knew 17-year-old Neal Mack, who was gunned down in the Inner Harbor in May. Mack had become involved with Tandea Family, which offers $50 to youths to help clean up the community.
He said Mack had also attended some of the group’s programs where they talk about what it means to be Black and becoming a change agent in your community.
Mack was on his way, Miles said: “I just wish we had more time.” | 2022-07-16T11:19:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crime is a top concern as voters head to polls in Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/crime-maryland-governor-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/crime-maryland-governor-race/ |
Edwards, Ivey face off Tuesday after tense home stretch in Md. primaries
Congressional candidate Glenn Ivey, as voters take a photo with him in District Heights, Md., on June 18. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
In the shadow of the Maryland gubernatorial race, voters heading to the polls Tuesday will pick candidates in Maryland’s eight congressional districts to solidify matchups in a tumultuous midterm election year.
The Democratic primary in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District is at the top of the bill, as the district’s former congresswoman Donna F. Edwards hopes to complete a comeback bid for her old seat in a competitive race against former Prince George’s County state’s attorney Glenn Ivey. The seat is open after Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D) decided to run for attorney general.
Donna Edwards wants her old seat back. Glenn Ivey stands in the way.
The race has attracted millions of dollars in outside spending, particularly from a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which endorsed Ivey and has been attacking Edwards. Meanwhile, Edwards, who served the duration of the Obama years, has drawn on allies with national star power, ranging from Hillary Clinton to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), flexing the kind of relationships with key Democratic figures that Edwards has argued makes her more equipped to return to Congress.
Because of how deep blue the Prince George’s-anchored district is — Joe Biden won it by 80 percentage points — whoever wins the primary will almost without doubt become the district’s next member of Congress, making it Maryland’s highest-stakes race Tuesday.
All of Maryland’s six other Democratic incumbents face noncompetitive primary challengers; Rep. Andy Harris, the delegation’s only Republican in the heavily GOP 1st District, is unopposed, but two Democrats, Dave Harden and Heather Mizeur, are vying for the chance to challenge him. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is also on the ballot but does not have a serious challenger.
Republicans’ most high-profile matchup is in Western Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, where several contenders are seeking to take on Rep. David Trone (D-Md.). Recent redistricting means they have a better chance than they’ve had in years to flip the seat red.
Outside influence in Maryland’s 4th
Ivey, a white-collar attorney running on his record of fighting violent crime and starting other community programs as the county’s top prosecutor from 2002 to 2011, outraised Edwards in the race, according to the latest federal campaign finance figures. He pulled in $1.2 million to Edwards’s $980,000.
But that is overwhelmingly due to hefty assistance Ivey has received from AIPAC, setting up somewhat of a proxy battle between two Israel policy advocacy groups: AIPAC and the more liberal J Street, which has endorsed Edwards and come to her aid.
AIPAC donors have given Ivey nearly $570,000 this cycle, making up roughly half of his total contributions, not including $150,000 Ivey loaned his campaign. And a super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent nearly $6 million on ads supporting Ivey and attacking Edwards — a major outside influence that undoubtedly impacts the race, said Justin Schall, a Maryland-based Democratic strategist who previously managed Brown’s campaign for governor.
AIPAC broke with Edwards during her first term in 2009 when she voted “present” on a resolution supporting Israel’s right to defend itself from attacks from Gaza. But, in a race where the economy and public safety and gun violence dominate among voters, the attack ads have nothing to do with Israel policy. Instead, the ads have resurfaced criticism Edwards faced in her unsuccessful runs for Senate and Prince George’s County executive about her constituent-services record in Congress.
Edwards has pledged to voters to do better if elected again. But she has also pushed back against the perception of her the ads have created, painting her as aloof and disconnected from her constituents. Edwards argues she helped plenty of them, particularly during the housing crash when many had foreclosure issues.
Schall suspected that the campaign has devolved into attacks because the two candidates overwhelmingly agree on liberal issues — and “if it was just the two of them agreeing on all the issues, Donna probably wins running away,” Schall said.
“They took a charge against Donna Edwards that is both hard to prove and hard to defend, and they just decided to put enough money behind it to create a perception,” Schall said of the attack on her constituent services record. “You could have a conversation all day long about whether that is fair or right or moral, but it’s effective.”
Edwards championed liberal causes ranging from Medicare-for-all to LGBTQ rights and gun violence prevention while in Congress, eventually landing a leadership role within the Democratic Caucus. When United Democracy Project’s first attack ad came out, Pelosi defended her in a videotaped message as “one of the most effective members” in Congress, while other allies like the League of Conservation Voters and J Street began placing their own ad buys to back Edwards.
J Street released an ad attacking Ivey for his support and donations from AIPAC, which it pointed out has also endorsed Republicans who objected to election results on Jan. 6, 2021. Ivey’s campaign decried the ad’s attempt to link him to those Republicans and called for the ad to be taken down last week.
And with just days to go to the election, he got help from liberal icon Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who put out a robocall to 4th District voters urging them to vote for Ivey.
Former delegate Angela Angel (D-Prince George’s) and a number of little-known contenders are also seeking the Democratic nomination, though they have not been competitive with Ivey and Edwards in fundraising and endorsements.
GOP sets eyes on Trone, Dems on Harris
The state’s new congressional map for the next decade didn’t do any favors for Trone, who is now the only vulnerable Democrat in Maryland in this year’s midterm.
After redistricting, the new 6th District swung 13 points in Republicans’ favor, though it is still a district Biden won by 10 points in 2020. But in a year when Democrats face a foreboding national environment and a poor approval rating for Biden, the wind is at Republicans’ back. FiveThirtyEight rates the race a “toss-up,” while the Cook Political Report pegs it as leaning Democratic.
Del. Neil Parrott (R-Washington), who leads the field of Republican candidates in fundraising, is seeking a rematch against Trone. Parrott, a social conservative known for leading petition drives to force referendums to repeal same-sex marriage or in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, among other things, lost to Trone by roughly 20 points in 2020. He was feeling more optimistic about his chances this year under the new map — which he himself helped usher in by suing the state over the initial map passed by Democrats. A state judge ruled in his favor and found that map illegally advantaged Democrats, ordering a new one be drawn.
But Parrott has a wider field of competition this year — namely in a 25-year-old conservative former journalist named Matthew Foldi, who scrutinized Democrats and the Biden administration for outlets like the Washington Free Beacon and has indicated he wants to do the same in Congress.
Despite lacking a voting record or name recognition compared to six-term delegate Parrott, Foldi has managed to secure support from major Republican figures. In the final weeks, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Donald Trump Jr. have endorsed him — the latter two are competing Republican archetypes who are far more often butting heads than finding anything in common. Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, called it a “weird national happenstance, because Hogan actually has been going out and trying to support Republicans who are getting primaried by folks from the Trump wing.”
Foldi had been a volunteer for Hogan’s gubernatorial campaign as a teenager in 2014, Hogan said on a podcast recently. Parrott, meanwhile, sued Hogan over his emergency health orders at the beginning of the pandemic.
Kromer said that although Parrott is a “known entity” in the district, Foldi’s more high-profile endorsements may make a sizable dent, particularly among undecided voters. “This kind of stuff does matter in the home stretch, when people are looking for anything to make a decision — even one piece of information might be enough,” she said.
Trone, the multimillionaire co-founder of Total Wine & More with the ability to self-fund his campaign, has so far funneled $12 million of his personal money into his coffers. Trone, who in Congress has focused primarily on mental health and addiction, faced criticism in his first campaign that he was “buying” the seat. This year, with the Democratic majority on the line, Kromer said she didn’t anticipate that criticism would at all deter Trone from spending as much as possible.
“David Trone has the individual funds to come as close to ensuring a victory as you can,” Kromer said, “and with the Congress this close in balance, no Democrat is going to leave anything up to chance at this point.”
Mariela Roca, an Air Force veteran from Puerto Rico, is also running for the Republican nomination, along with Jonathan Jenkins. Colt Morningstar Black and Robert Poissonnier are on the Republican ballot but have not filed any campaign finance reports.
In Maryland’s Eastern Shore-anchored 1st District, Democrats had high hopes last year that a redistricted congressional map would make it easier to unseat Harris. But after the protracted court battle, the final map largely stifled the party’s momentum: The district remains solidly red.
Mizeur, a former liberal delegate from Takoma Park who now lives on an organic-herb farm on the Shore, has raised nearly $2 million in the race — more than Harris. She is running in the primary against Dave Harden, a former member of the U.S. Foreign Service who has positioned himself as a moderate best able to take on Harris and compete in redder, rural areas.
Democrats have been especially determined to oust Harris after the Jan. 6 riot and with renewed urgency this week, after the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol revealed Harris attended a December 2020 White House meeting with President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers centered on actions that could be taken on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in power.
But the political reality is that Harris’s district “is just not drawn in a way that makes Democrats very competitive,” Kromer said. Trump won the district by 14 points in 2020. | 2022-07-16T11:19:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Edwards, Ivey face off Tuesday after tense home stretch in Md. primaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/maryland-congress-primary-democrats-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/maryland-congress-primary-democrats-republicans/ |
The Lyceum building at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. (iStock)
A year later, at the other end of the state, Parker’s name appeared in the University of Mississippi yearbook, listed as a senior majoring in education. Next to his name was a strange photo of what appears to be a stone or papier-mâché head.
“It’s this weird archive of racism, that people thought other people would see this and laugh about it,” said Davis Houck, a Florida State University professor and author of several books about the civil rights movement. He tweeted an image of the yearbook page when he discovered the “joke” in June, after being tipped off by a friend of a friend who used to thumb through the yearbooks as a child.
In the same yearbook, there was another photo of what appears to be a head carved from dark stone. Next to it was the name Ed White — a common name, for sure, but it also matches the name of the victim in an 1896 lynching just over the Mississippi border in Alabama.
Houck noted that “Ed White” and the “Wilburn Hooker” entry on another page (with a photo of what appears to be Jesus) could also refer to Hillery Edwin White and Edwin Wilburn Hooker Sr., prominent members of the White Citizen’s Council who led a years-long fight against Ole Miss professors, textbooks and library books they claimed were communist or insufficiently supportive of segregation. The university released a report that academic year responding to the allegations.
Houck said he initially thought the mask was made to resemble Till’s mutilated body, but he found the same photo in the previous year’s yearbook, which was published before Till’s murder. The name next that image was Thomas Dalton — also a common name, but it matches that of an 1878 lynching victim in Louisiana, once again just over the Mississippi border.
“I just can’t imagine this could be a coincidence,” Houck said in a text message after being informed that White and Dalton were also the names of lynching victims.
Along with Parker and White, there were many more “joke” photos in the 1960 yearbook, most of them more innocuous. Mixed in with student portraits were photos of sculptures and paintings named “Eleanor Roosevelt,” “Gertrude Stein,” “Marie Antoinette” and “Lady Jane Chatterley.” Two more carried the names of a football player and the coach of a rival football team. The papier-mâché face used for Parker was used again on a page for Lynda Lee Mead, an Ole Miss student who won the Miss America pageant that year.
Ole Miss did not respond to a request for comment on the yearbook photos and names, but the school may already be aware of some of these “jokes.” An online disclaimer that appears with the yearbooks reads:
Some of the images and language that appear in the University of Mississippi yearbooks depict prejudices that are not condoned by the University of Mississippi. The yearbooks are being presented as historical documents to aid in the understanding of both American history and the history of the University of Mississippi. The University Creed speaks to our current deeply held values, and the availability of past yearbooks should not be taken as an endorsement of previous attitudes or behavior.
Ole Miss’s first Black student, James Meredith, was nowhere to be found in the 1963 yearbook, where he should have appeared. When Meredith, a 29-year-old Air Force veteran, had attempted to register for classes, he had to be protected by federal troops, and a subsequent White riot left two people dead. A two-page spread in the yearbook showed a U.S. Marshal and what appear to be abandoned backpacks, with an oblique reference to “the aftermath of the terror,” but the man the marshal was defending — Meredith — went unmentioned.
“You act like you’re surprised,” said Meredith, now 89, when reached by phone at his home in Jackson, Miss. “This Black-White thing is the deepest thing in the world.”
This fall will mark the 60th anniversary of his admission, and Ole Miss is planning to honor Meredith with a series of events, including a gala in his honor and an appearance at a football game. The invitation to the planned events “surprised me a thousand times more than what you asked me about,” he said.
According to Charles W. Eagles, author of “The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss,” the nickname “Ole Miss” itself derived from the title of the 1897 yearbook, and may refer to both antebellum Mississippi and what enslaved people would have called the wife of their enslaver, short for “Old Mistress.”
Mississippi is “generally pretty good about commemorating its awful past,” Houck said, but he was unaware of any public markers dedicated to Parker. At the time, his lynching “did get some national oxygen, but it’s more of a footnote in civil rights history,” Houck said.
It didn’t seem like that immediately following Parker’s murder. Dozens of FBI agents descended on Poplarville in a then-unprecedented investigation, eventually obtaining confessions and the names of eight alleged participants in the murder, according to Howard Smead, author of a 1986 book about the case. The FBI turned over its report to local authorities, who convened a grand jury but refused to give the jurors the report. The judge warned the jurors about preserving “our way of life,” according to Jerry Mitchell, a civil rights cold-case investigator.
No one was ever charged. Smead called it “the last classic lynching in America.” | 2022-07-16T11:32:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mack Charles Parker was lynched—then appeared in the Ole Miss yearbook - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/16/lynching-victims-ole-miss-yearbook/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/16/lynching-victims-ole-miss-yearbook/ |
Bijan Ghaisar, pictured in April 2015, was fatally shot by U.S. Park Police officers in November 2017. (Sima Marvastian)
For two years, the FBI investigated the death of Bijan Ghaisar, the unarmed young accountant shot to death in 2017 by a pair of U.S. Park Police officers after an unwarranted, low-speed chase in Fairfax County, Va. A video of the incident provides powerful evidence that the officers opened fire not because Ghaisar was a menace to himself or the police or others — he was not — but because the officers were hotheaded and angry. Anger, justified or not, does not confer on law enforcement a license to kill.
Still, unacceptably, there has been no accountability in Ghaisar’s death. A bipartisan pair of senators, Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), is now rightly demanding answers.
The U.S. justice system has failed in this case. The FBI probe dragged on for too long, for reasons that remain unclear. The Justice Department under President Donald Trump was wrong not to prosecute the officers on criminal civil rights charges. A federal judge, who gave no indication of having studied the available video evidence, wrongly dismissed a criminal manslaughter case brought by Virginia prosecutors.
Most recently, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department last month declined to reopen the federal criminal civil rights case against the police, citing the high bar of proving the officers “willfully used unreasonable force.” In fact, that is precisely what they did, firing a volley of bullets into Ghaisar’s head — incredibly, after an incident that began with a garden-variety fender bender involving Ghaisar’s car on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Northern Virginia.
Mr. Warner and Mr. Grassley, who recognize injustice when they see it, have now asked for an investigation. In a letter to Inspector General Mark Greenblatt of the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Police, they offered a blunt assessment of the institutional failures that followed upon the killing of Ghaisar, who was 25 years old. “Investigations involving the use of deadly force should be handled in a manner that reinforces confidence in law enforcement,” they wrote. “The FBI and DOJ’s handling of this case has not met that bar.”
The letter goes on to request that Mr. Greenblatt look into whether the actions of officers Lucas Vinyard and Alejandro Amaya, who fired 10 shots into Ghaisar’s car after he had stopped, and as he slowly turned the wheel of his car and began creeping away from them, comported with Park Police policy, training and guidelines. It also asks for a review of the agency’s use-of-force policies, policing methods and de-escalation training for officers.
Ghaisar did not deserve to die. He had apparently used marijuana — an autopsy showed it in his system — and he exercised bad judgment by repeatedly driving away from the officers after they had pulled him over before the final, fatal encounter. But remember: the incident began with a minor traffic violation, when he drove off after his car was rear-ended by an Uber, without significant damage to either car. A chase and police escalation were utterly unjustified — let alone a hail of bullets.
Police should open fire as a last resort, under the most extreme and threatening circumstances. Ghaisar deserved a fine, not a death sentence. And the public deserves answers from an agency that has so far provided none.
The Editorial Board on Bijan Ghaisar
Impunity for unwarranted police killings is still a default
A last chance for real justice emerges in the Bijan Ghaisar case | 2022-07-16T11:32:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | These questions still need to be answered about Bijan Ghaisar’s death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/bijan-ghaisar-unanswered-questions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/bijan-ghaisar-unanswered-questions/ |
A man lets his dogs drink from a fountain during a heat wave in Houston on July 11. (Mark Felix/Bloomberg News)
In Yosemite National Park’s famed Mariposa Grove, giant sequoias have grown for millennia. As some of the largest and oldest living things in the world, their preservation — which was first given legal protection under Abraham Lincoln — predates the National Park Service. This month, they were threatened by a nearby wildfire that was exacerbated by dry, hot conditions.
That is just one of many dramatic weather events taking place around the country and world. In Texas, record-breaking temperatures forced the state’s power grid operator to warn residents to cut back on energy use or face the risk of blackouts. Around 35 million Americans were placed under heat advisories or excessive heat warnings.
Western Europe is also experiencing extreme heat waves — Spain is experiencing its second in less than a month, while the United Kingdom issued its first-ever “extreme heat” warning. Italy has faced prolonged heat and drought, and a glacier collapse officials attributed to climate change resulted in the deaths of 11 people earlier this month. In China, at least 86 cities released heat alerts; in the city of Nanjing, officials opened air-raid shelters for locals to escape the heat.
These cases should not be viewed in isolation. While links between individual weather events and global warming cannot be determined immediately, studies have found that concurrent heat waves affecting parts of North America, Europe and Asia have become more intense and frequent over the past few decades. An analysis by World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who analyze whether extreme events are connected to climate change, found that last year’s devastating heat wave in the Pacific Northwest was “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”
Such patterns have disastrous, far-reaching effects. Heat waves pose a particular threat to global food supplies, already under pressure from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They are linked with a range of health problems and correlate with higher rates of crime, anxiety and depression. A 2021 analysis from the Atlantic Council estimated that the drop in worker productivity due to extreme heat costs the U.S. economy $100 billion annually — a figure that could double by 2030.
As President Biden and congressional Democrats struggle to find enough support for their climate agenda, the ongoing heat waves offer a small window into what the future could look like if global warming continues unabated. Even if we keep the global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius — the threshold scientists believe should not be exceeded — the number of extreme weather events a person will experience would nearly quadruple, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A greater rise in temperature would be even more calamitous, with unthinkable consequences for global hunger, disease, migration, productivity and standards of living. | 2022-07-16T11:32:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Global heat waves should be a climate change warning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/global-heat-waves-climate-change-warning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/global-heat-waves-climate-change-warning/ |
This vast library of life puts nature online
A dragonfly lands on a flower at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md., on June 21. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Flowers. Climate change. Animals. Ecosystems. If you’re a nature lover, you probably have burning questions — and niche interests — about many aspects of life on our vast planet.
But you don’t have to go to the ends of the Earth to learn more. With the Biodiversity Heritage Library, you don’t even have to leave your computer.
How to protect pollinators and cope with pollen season
The massive, open-access digital library offers users hundreds of thousands of books, archival holdings, images and more — about 60 million pages in all.
Best of all, it’s free.
It’s the work of a large consortium of institutions from around the world, from the American Museum of Natural History to a native orchid society in Australia.
In 2003, a group of 10 American and British organizations launched the project to address a dearth of the kind of resources that make scientific research possible: statistics, species information, maps and other documentation of life on Earth.
To confront the swiftly moving crises of climate change and species extinction, library officials write, “researchers need something that no single library can provide — access to the world’s collective knowledge about biodiversity.”
Zoo and museum collaborations could alter how we think about animals
Instead of keeping precious resources locked in libraries few can access, the online library makes them easy to find and free to use. Since 2003, it has gained steam globally, and it is now the largest library of its kind.
Filled with treasures that span from the 15th century onward, the library’s holdings range from scans of Charles Darwin’s correspondence to the catalogues of nursery companies.
You can use its scientific-name tools to find mentions of scientific names across hundreds of thousands of materials. And its Flickr collection contains more than 300,000 free illustrations of all kinds of animals and plants.
The library offers a dizzying glance at the complex beauty of nature far and near.
Ready to explore? Check out Biodiversitylibrary.org to access the library, search its most recent additions or learn more on its blog and social media streams. | 2022-07-16T11:33:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This vast library of life puts nature online - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/16/biodiversity-library-online/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/16/biodiversity-library-online/ |
Manchin’s apparent reversal on tax and climate policies comes after Biden handed negotiations off to Democrats in Congress
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets President Biden with a fist bump after his arrival in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 15. Biden's plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on clean energy are in trouble after Sen. Joe Manchin III said he couldn't support climate provisions of an economic policy bill Congress is working to pass. (Bandar Aljaloud/AP)
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — President Biden was in the Middle East and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was here in Southeast Asia when talks over the administration’s long-delayed sweeping economic agenda stalled yet again.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, communicated to Democratic leadership on Thursday that he would not support tax hikes on the wealthy or any new spending on clean energy as part of an economic package in Congress this summer, delivering a major blow to two of the administration’s most important policy goals.
By Friday afternoon, Biden urged lawmakers to pass whatever they could to lower health-care costs, which Manchin has said he’ll support, and promised to take “strong executive action” to address climate change if the Senate wouldn’t act.
But a president who spent 36 years in the Senate and another eight working closely with it as vice president had already taken a back seat in the attempt to push his economic agenda priority through a Congress his party controls by the narrowest of margins. The White House had much earlier left Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to negotiate with Manchin over how to assemble a bill the West Virginia centrist could support. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has long been skeptical about the potential for a deal with Manchin, according to three people with direct knowledge of his private remarks.
Asked about whether Manchin had negotiated in good faith, Biden told reporters in Saudi Arabia: “I didn’t negotiate with Joe Manchin; I have no idea.”
“Those are very important initiatives to hold costs down and address a high cost of living for American families,” Yellen said. “We shouldn’t minimize the positive impact that those changes can have. They’re significant for American families.”
Talks between Biden and his party’s 50th vote in the Senate broke down last winter when Manchin publicly announced his opposition to an earlier, more ambitious version of the legislation, and the two men had a heated conversation afterward. Trust between their camps never really recovered.
On Friday, Manchin insisted he might still consider supporting some investments on fighting climate change and raising some taxes, but only after seeing inflation data for July, which is due to be released on Aug. 10. Even if that’s the case, delaying the legislation until then would make it nearly impossible to pass before a Sept. 30 deadline for using the process known as budget reconciliation to get it past a GOP filibuster in the Senate. Manchin’s opposition to tax reform marks a major reversal after months in which he called for Democrats to repeal key parts of former president Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law to fight inflation.
Manchin’s latest abandonment of Biden’s domestic agenda also marks another substantive defeat for White House aides who had just a year ago dreamed of transformational changes to America’s economy, safety net, education system and tax code.
Initially, the White House released roughly $4 trillion in new spending plans. While some of that was incorporated into the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law Congress approved last fall, the bulk of it now appears likely never to pass. Manchin told Democratic leaders he is open to a measure to lower prescription drug costs and extend subsidies for millions of Americans who buy health insurance through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, but this week’s inflation news has, he told reporters on Wednesday, made him “very, very cautious” about most new federal spending.
Manchin’s position also undermines the White House’s international policy ambitions, with the administration trying to rally the world to join in action to fight climate change and Yellen pushing a new global minimum tax on corporations that Manchin’s position now prevents the U.S. from implementing.
In the interview in Nusa Dua, Yellen said that the U.S. and its allies were committed to moving forward on the global tax deal despite Manchin’s opposition to the broader tax package. Yellen highlighted that the global tax agreement gives countries taxing rights on multinational firms’ profits booked in jurisdictions where taxes below the new minimum of 15 percent. Yellen argued that means the U.S. will have an incentive to increase its tax rate or lose out on government tax revenue, despite Manchin’s current opposition to that provision.
“There’s huge global momentum to move forward. Other countries are moving forward,” Yellen said. “It will create a momentum for us to join in, too.”
Still, despite Biden’s call for more aggressive executive action on the climate, Yellen appeared to reject calls to expand the work of the nation’s banking officials to make it more expensive to loan to fossil fuel producers. Some climate advocates and liberals have pushed this use of the Financial Stability Oversight Council — a body of independent financial regulators led by Treasury — to combat global warming, but Treasury has so far resisted that approach. “FSOC is mainly concerned with evaluating the risks of climate change for financial stability,” Yellen told The Washington Post. “It’s not really a direct tool to address climate change.”
Feeling burned by the failure of negotiations last fall, White House aides had stepped back and let Schumer take the lead more recently. Schumer regularly briefed White House officials on progress, but the administration’s role in negotiations was greatly diminished from the fall.
“This is how the White House has always feared this would end. It vindicates their skepticism toward Manchin over the past six months, but it also marks the death of their climate agenda and ambitions to transform the country,” said one outside White House adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect conversations with administration officials.
Biden landed in Saudi Arabia Friday after spending two days in Israel. He once promised to make the kingdom a “pariah” state for human rights violations, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting disruption to global oil markets has forced the White House to engage with Saudi officials. Gas prices have soared this year, though they’ve fallen over the past month. As a major oil producer, Saudi Arabia has the power to increase the world’s supply, but it’s not clear that they intend to do so or whether that itself would notably affect prices at the pump.
Yellen, meanwhile, is immersed in her efforts at a conference of financial officials from the Group of 20 industrialized nations to enact a price cap on purchases of Russian oil. The treasury secretary has had only minimal involvement in negotiating Democrats’ domestic economic agenda with Congress. Treasury staff were not major participants in discussions among congressional Democrats over one of the most significant proposed overhauls of the tax code in decades, even before Manchin ruled it out of negotiations, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal matters.
Asked about Manchin saying that he was concerned that the legislation could add to rising costs, Yellen said Thursday in Bali that lowering prescription drug costs and reducing the deficit “would be a very positive way of addressing inflation.”
John F. Kerry, the White House’s senior climate adviser, dined with Manchin in Paris this spring. Manchin talked frequently with Steve Ricchetti, one of the president’s top aides, and Klain personally apologized to Manchin for any misunderstandings after talks fell apart in December. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm traveled with Manchin to West Virginia in June to tout a plan to promote U.S. offshore wind projects. Granholm later said she was “bullish” about the prospect of a climate deal with Manchin’s approval.
None of those efforts kept Manchin onboard with Biden’s top priorities.
“I’m sure they are furious ... It has to be disappointing; they keep moving closer to Manchin’s position and he keeps changing the position,” said Dean Baker, a liberal economist in communication with senior administration officials. “They’ve been trying to negotiate with good faith, recognizing Manchin’s concerns. But he keeps moving the ball, and it just looks like he took the ball home.”
Tyler Pager and Tony Romm contributed to this report. | 2022-07-16T11:33:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House sidelined as Manchin again crushes Biden’s policy ambitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/16/white-house-manchin-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/16/white-house-manchin-biden/ |
Allyson Felix always wanted to leave track and field better than she found it. (Ashley Landis/AP Photo)
EUGENE, Ore. — Allyson Felix handed off the baton, trotted a few steps into the infield grass and bent at the waist, hands on her knees. The first thing Felix felt at the finish line Friday night was lactic acid. She always fought, and even in her final race she had run until the muscles in her legs twitched and burned. Underneath her elegance had always bubbled competitive ferocity.
And then she felt something she would not have expected years ago, before she became a mother and launched the fights she believes will define her career, even more so than medals and titles that make her the most decorated track and field athlete in American history. It was joy.
Felix always wanted to leave track and field better than she found it. She said goodbye Friday at Hayward Field, running the second leg of the mixed 4X400 relay at the first track and field world championships contested in the United States. The U.S. quartet finished third and took bronze, losing a large lead in the homestretch of the anchor leg. For most of her career, the result would have eaten at Felix. In her prime, she maintained a narrow focus on victory. She has learned it’s the fight that counts.
Felix had always wanted to compete in a major global meet in front of American fans, and she believes the memories from Friday night will stack up with any from her career. She won 13 world championships. At her record eighth world championships, competed over a record 17 years, Felix won her record 19th world championships medal. Those pair with her 11 Olympic medals, seven gold, three silver and the indelible, improbable bronze in Tokyo last summer as a 35-year-old mother less than three years removed from a birth that endangered her life.
“It’s a similar emotion,” Felix said. “The last couple years, I’ve stepped outside of the clock, the medals. I never would have imagined that that would have been a place I would come to. But I have. It’s being a representation for women, mothers, and I really felt that. It was an emotional day. I felt it all over from people telling me and messages. I feel really proud tonight. I feel fulfilled.”
When the race ended, Felix took no victory laps. She milled next to her teammates Elija Godwin, Vernon Norwood and Kennedy Simon. She joined them on the lowest step of the podium, smiling as she received her bronze medal and a handshake from Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff. She had first worn a Team USA uniform in 2003 as a 17-year-old prodigy. She remembers the heartbreak of not making the final of her event, the 200 meters. The sport would break her heart many times.
Friday night, she wore her Team USA uniform for the last time as a 36-year-old mother and the owner of a shoe company she helped found. Her daughter, Camryn, watched from the stands.
“It’s about being a fighter,” Felix said. “It doesn’t matter what you do. That’s the spirit I hope she carries over, the confidence I hope that she has. You always stand up for what you believe is right. I hope she doesn’t get into track and field. I encourage her to do many other things.”
When Felix reflects on the final chapter of her career, she cannot believe she made it through. She gave birth to Camryn in 2018, a complicated delivery that threatened the lives of both mother and child. Felix spent weeks in the NICU beside Camryn. It was the first time she taught her daughter how to fight.
Nike, the shoe company that had sponsored her all her career, wanted to cut her pay as she recovered. Felix had always strayed from social issues, but the Camryn’s birth changed her. She dropped Nike as a sponsor and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for equality and protection for athletes who become pregnant. She later testified before Congress about the systemic disparities Black mothers face. She has prompted track and field’s governing bodies to provide free child care at events. Companies, Nike included, have overhauled policies regarding pregnant athletes.
From the archives: As a runner, Allyson Felix didn’t want to speak out. As a mom, she felt she had to.
For the first 15 or so years of her professional career, Felix felt uncomfortable deploying her voice beyond her sport. She stayed in her lane. In the final three years, she became an example for others on how to stray from it.
“When she was going up against Nike, that’s one person against a corporation,” star American sprinter Noah Lyles said. “I don’t think some people understand how big Nike has an influence over the U.S. [track and field]. That is a firm grasp. And for one woman — one Black woman — to go up against that and speak their mind, and speak for what they believe is right, even to have the courage to try, is something I feel is something young people should be watching for years to come.”
Wadeline Jonathas, a 24-year-old member of the 4X400 mixed relay team who ran in the opening round, has competed with Felix for three years. Last week, out of curiosity, Jonathas looked up the origins of the name Allyson and discovered what she believed to be a perfect description. It meant noble.
“She’s really a great human being,” Jonathas said. “And I know sometimes when you’re really good, people don’t think you’re nice. But she’s nice. She’s not just good. She’s nice.”
“She’s does stuff the right way,” said shotput world record holder Ryan Crouser, a co-captain with Felix on this team. “Kind of the definition of integrity.”
As Felix discovered a new part of herself off the track the past three years, she searched for her old self on it. When she returned at the 2019 U.S. championships, Felix could not break 52 seconds. She was not lock to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, and then she finished second at U.S. trials. She was not expected to win a medal in Tokyo, and then she did, taking bronze in 49.46 seconds, her fastest time since she was 29.
From the archives: With a bronze in the women’s 400 meters, Allyson Felix runs into forever
Felix had one more race. She took the baton from Godwin as the second leg holding a lead. Baton in hand, an open track ahead, Felix went for the break one last time. Suddenly there she was, in that upright and languid stride, alone on the backstretch. The sun was setting over the foothills outside Hayward Field. The stadium roared. She could almost see the final finish line of her career. She heard thunderous cheers.
“You’re competing, but I felt the love,” Felix said. “I felt joy running tonight.”
Felix is not an emotional person, and her outpouring of emotions surprised her. She received so many messages and heard so many stories. She spotted signs in the crowd. She realized over the past week that in the middle of training and racing, she didn’t realize the impact she had on others in the sport. Felix left track and field behind Friday night, better than how she found it.
“I put posters of you on my wall and on my sister’s wall,” heptathlete Anna Hall told Felix on Thursday, sitting beside her at a news conference. “My family talked about you all time. … The way you’ve carried yourself your entire career has really set a great example for the rest of the girls in America to follow coming up in the sport. So thank you.” | 2022-07-16T12:11:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Allyson Felix runs last race at track and field world championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/16/allyson-felix-world-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/16/allyson-felix-world-championships/ |
On his first day in a Russian prison, the 16-year-old boy said he heard the agonized screams of other Ukrainians. Sitting in a 6-foot-by-6-foot cell with a broken toilet, Vlad Buryak wondered if he would be next.
Buryak, the son of a high-ranking Ukrainian government official, was kidnapped by Russian soldiers as he tried to escape his hometown of Melitopol in early April. His case became one of thousands: The growing but impossible to track toll of abducted or forcefully disappeared Ukrainian civilians.
His improbable release offers a beam of hope during a dark time. With the war in its 20th week, bitter fighting continues along the front lines in Ukraine’s east. Russian rocket attacks kill more civilians each day, Ukrainian officials say, and allegations of atrocities have piled up. Many of the disappeared thousands never reappear, representing a special challenge for war crimes investigators.
The Post was not able to independently verify Vlad’s account. But Ukrainian human rights groups tracking forced disappearances said Vlad’s testimony is in line with that of other victims who have been released, and they said torture is “common practice.” The United Nations has also reported numerous cases of Russian soldiers torturing civilian and military prisoners.
And U.S. officials this week accused Russian forces of forcibly detaining or disappearing thousands of Ukrainian civilians, and said many of them are tortured.
To pass time, he filled his days with menial tasks, preparing his own food, reading and sleeping. He said he was also forced to clean the room where other prisoners were tortured, where he would often find medical supplies that were soaked in blood, an endeavor he carried out with a pragmatic, almost militaristic mind-set.
There are no situations that cannot be solved.
I will get out.
On July 4, Buryak took a call from a Russian negotiator, who told him he was ready to set Vlad free. There are some details of the delicate exchange that Buryak said he could not disclose; some, he said he still does not understand. Vlad would be part of a three-person prisoner exchange, he said, and he’d be transferred back to Ukrainian territory in a civilian evacuation caravan.
The final few hours were agonizing for father and son.
Buryak greeted Vlad on the side of a road, near line zero, where Ukrainian and occupied territory converge. Clad in camouflage body armor and blue jeans, Buryak flagged down a van. Vlad stepped out of the side door, and the two embraced. Finally.
But the country is still at war. The trauma of Vlad’s confinement will linger long after his release. The sounds of torture, the fear of being taken again and the smell of the blood-soaked cleaning rag have kept him awake and on edge. He said he feels at least five years older.
In an interview less than a week after his return, Vlad adopted the same stoic, determined manner as his father. He said he now spends his days volunteering for the war effort, handing out humanitarian aid and sharing his story. His jaw set, he said he wants to continue reliving what he saw, even the worst parts. | 2022-07-16T12:11:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 90 days in Russian prison: A Ukrainian teen’s tale of terror and hope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/ukrainian-teen-russian-prison/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/16/ukrainian-teen-russian-prison/ |
By Becky Meloan
‘Joan,’ by Katherine J. Chen (Random House)
Joan of Arc has long enthralled novelists, who have portrayed her as a virginal warrior with holy visions. In her afterword, Chen describes trying to reconcile these conflicting representations of fighter and saint. It wasn’t until she imagined the brutality of Joan’s youth in a medieval war zone that she could realistically capture her protagonist’s humanity. Chen’s Joan has a scrappy, resilient childhood filled with both abuse and love. She grows up learning to fight, but always for justice on behalf of the people and country she loves.
‘Fellowship Point,’ by Alice Elliott Dark (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books)
Dark, best known for her award-winning short story “In the Gloaming,” made into a movie starring Glenn Close, has released her first novel in 20 years, an ambitious and satisfying tale of the lifelong friendship between two women in their 80s. When Maine coastal development encroaches on the land trust held by the few residents of their Quaker-inspired summer community, friends Agnes and Polly contend with shifting demands and loyalties while considering what they believe is right for their own legacies and for the nature they strive to preserve.
‘Corinne,’ by Rebecca Morrow (St. Martin’s Press)
As a teenager in a fundamentalist church, Corinne idolizes strait-laced Enoch Miller, the eldest son of the people who brought her family into the fold. More than a decade later, after Corinne has been cast out of the church and cut off from her family, she has never felt worthy of love. But after a chance encounter with churchgoing Enoch, a mutual attraction rekindles — and raises a question about love and faith: Can you have one when you don’t share the other?
‘Any Other Family,’ by Eleanor Brown (Putnam)
Two weeks in a vacation rental will test any family’s togetherness capabilities, especially one with newly built bonds. Brown thoughtfully explores the ways a chosen family’s dynamics work, or do not, through the voices of three adoptive mothers of four biological siblings. Committing to keep their children connected, their fragile unity is tested when the children’s birth mother announces she is pregnant again. Brown’s experience with adoption brings emotional depth to her chronicle of each woman’s anxieties.
‘Sister Mother Warrior,’ by Vanessa Riley (William Morrow)
Two real-life women — Marie-Claire, a free woman of color who became the first empress of Haiti, and Gran Toya, an enslaved warrior who became a freedom fighter — were Riley’s inspirations for this expansive saga. Despite different backgrounds, their connections with revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines brought them together to play crucial parts in Haiti’s fight for independence from French colonial rule. Riley expertly weaves together the women’s stories, vividly reframing a defining moment in Western history.
‘Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional,’ by Isaac Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury, July 19)
After his early years in Boston, Fitzgerald’s childhood was abruptly transformed at age 8 with a move to rural western Massachusetts into a dilapidated house next to his disapproving grandparents. Suffering through his parents’ rocky marriage and his mother’s mental instability, he made rage-induced choices, such as starting a teenage fight club and drinking himself into oblivion, but he never stopped searching for a community that would embrace him. That search took him from San Francisco to Burma (now Myanmar), and he candidly shares the formative experiences that helped him put aside anger to live with acceptance and understanding.
‘The Force of Such Beauty,’ by Barbara Bourland (Dutton, July 19)
This is not your grandma’s fairy tale. Former world-record-holding Olympic athlete Caroline marries Finn, the prince of an idyllic seaside kingdom. As she transforms into an international symbol of femininity, becoming the wife and mother her new homeland demands, the luxurious trappings quickly become a prison. Even her physical body, which once carried her powerfully through competitions, becomes something other people admire and control. Influenced by the struggles of real-life princesses, Bourland’s brilliant satire skewers the theatrics of power, excessive materialism and economic corruption.
‘The Devil Takes You Home,’ by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books, Aug. 2)
With a cancer-stricken 4-year-old daughter and no health insurance, Mario agrees to kill a man for money in a desperate attempt to pay bills. When the act of slaughter releases pent-up rage, he takes another more lucrative and dangerous job that sends him on a gory journey through Texas and Mexican border towns. Iglesias describes his fiction as “Barrio Noir,” a genre that combines crime and horror with multiculturalism and political issues. The incongruity of devotion to family with brutal vigilante justice creates dreadful tension as Mario tests his new moral compass.
‘Diary of a Void,’ by Emi Yagi, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North (Viking, Aug. 9)
Ms. Shibata doesn’t love that her unwritten job description includes cleaning up the half-empty cups stuffed with cigarette butts left behind in her office’s meeting room, so she announces a fake pregnancy as an experiment to see whether her co-workers will clean up after themselves. Attention and accommodations follow. She’s encouraged to leave on time instead of working late, and her free evenings allow her to take better care of herself by cooking healthful meals and exercising. As the months progress, she keeps up her charade, both at work and with her newfound friends from the mommy aerobics club. Yagi artfully blurs the boundary between truth and lies with this riotous solution to women’s workplace challenges.
‘Fruit Punch: A Memoir,’ by Kendra Allen (Ecco, Aug. 9)
Allen’s powerful debut memoir reckons with coming of age after a childhood assault. Chapters switch between present-day talks with her therapist and the memories stirred up by those conversations. Labeled “disobedient” and “fast” while growing up in Texas in the 1990s and early 2000s, Allen experienced the prevalent adultification of young Black girls. As she tries to understand herself, she cleverly forces consideration of her humanity — each sentence in a chapter about her adolescent fumblings starts with a reminder of her youth (“I’m thirteen and...”; “I’m twelve and…”). Her writing is filled with insight and humor, and provides a nuanced representation of often-marginalized voices.
‘All Signs Point to Paris: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Destiny,’ by Natasha Sizlo (Mariner, Aug. 16)
Sizlo’s marriage and real estate business had collapsed when she met Philippe. He was handsome, French and up for fun, and their relationship was perfect, until it wasn’t. After their breakup, she is given a session with an exclusive celebrity astrologer, who tells her that her soul mate was born in Paris on Nov. 2, 1968 — just like Philippe. But in a flash, she realizes that her ex isn’t the only man born on that date in that city. Her soul mate is still out there — all she needs to do is find him. Sizlo’s engaging account of her trip to Paris has all the pleasures of a spirited rom-com, enhanced by her real-life bravery in confronting the doubts and fears she had been hiding from herself.
‘Scenes From My Life: A Memoir,’ by Michael K. Williams and Jon Sternfeld (Crown, Aug. 23)
Williams, known for roles on “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire,” spent his formative years in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush’s projects, where he didn’t aspire to much beyond staying alive. Janet Jackson’s 1989 “Rhythm Nation” video was an earthquake that shook his world, showing him Black people who were optimistic, proud and courageous. He followed his artistic dreams, until his burgeoning modeling career was derailed when his face was cut in a bar fight; but the scar would become one of his trademarks as an actor. Williams suffered from a lifelong drug addiction, even when his stardom rose to stratospheric levels. “I still wrestle with demons that won’t leave me be,” he writes in his soul-baring memoir. “They never go away; they just get quiet enough so I can think straight.” Williams died in 2021 of a drug overdose; he was 54 years old. | 2022-07-16T13:03:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Summer books to add to your pile - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/16/new-books-summer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/16/new-books-summer/ |
Even many doctors don’t realize that this can be a problem for younger as well as older patients, experts say
Perspective by Netana Markovitz
(Illustration by Elizabeth von Oehsen/The Washington Post)
When Noa Fleischacker, 30, of Chicago, had sex for the first time in college with a young man she’d begun dating, she describes the experience as “impossible.”
“It felt like something’s wrong, there’s nowhere to go inside of me. It felt like ‘what in the world is going on?' ” said Fleischacker.
She continued to try for years with the same partner without successful penetration; the only other person who knew was him. “I really thought I was the only person in the whole world” with the problem, Fleischacker said. “I just felt really alone and I felt really embarrassed about it. I felt like I needed to do everything to keep it secret and not talk about it with people because it just felt like this very uncomfortable thing to explain.”
After learning that an acquaintance had dealt with similar issues throughout her marriage, she eventually worked up the courage to bring it up to her primary care physician. “Her initial reaction was: Does your boyfriend know how to have sex?” Fleischacker said.
Her boyfriend did know how, which she explained to her doctor. Penetrative sex was just too painful for her and they’d found other ways to be intimate.
Fleischacker is one of many women in their 20s and 30s who suffer from female sexual dysfunction, experts who care for women in this age group said. This is often shocking to many women — and their partners — who have grown up thinking sexual problems affect only older women.
“We make a lot of incorrect assumptions that younger adults have easy, totally satisfying sex all the time, when the reality is that many people in that age group do struggle,” said Mieke Beckman, a social worker and certified sex therapist at the University of Michigan, who works with many women in their 20s and 30s.
“Female sexual dysfunction is a big umbrella term for any sexual health concerns that a woman is bothered by,” said Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist with fellowship training in sexual medicine and an assistant clinical professor in urology at Georgetown University. It “encompasses sexual health concerns like problems with desire, problems with arousal, problems with orgasm and, of course, issues surrounding pain,” she said.
Even many doctors don’t recognize that young women can have sexual dysfunction, Rubin added, largely due to a lack of education in many medical schools and even in specialized residencies such as obstetrics and gynecology or urology.
“There is a very poor education when it comes to sexual pain conditions or sexual medicine in general,” especially when it comes to younger women, Rubin said. “Too often [they] are told it’s all in their head and that they should have a glass of wine and relax.”
Sara Ann McKinney, director of the Vulvar Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an instructor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School, agrees. “Many of the conditions associated with female sexual dysfunction … are too frequently attributed to the post-menopausal state, but many in fact can occur before menopause, and women can go decades before getting a diagnosis, resulting in years of pain [and] emotional suffering.”
A 2008 study found that 24.4 percent of women between ages 18 and 44 experienced what they described as distressing sexual problems, just slightly lower than the 25.5 percent of women ages 44 to 64. A 2016 study estimated that 41 percent of premenopausal women experience sexual dysfunction globally. A large proportion of these women have pain.
24 drugs exist to treat sexual dysfunction. Guess how many are for women?
“We have shown that by the age of 40 about 8 percent of women will experience vulvar pain that has lasted for 3 months or longer,” Bernard Harlow, professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health whose team looked at pain that limited or prevented intercourse, wrote in an email. “In an earlier publication that studied women 18-64 years of age, we showed that the large proportion of prevalence is concentrated in women in their 20’s and 30’s.”
There are several causes of female sexual dysfunction — even for a given woman, multiple factors may be contributing. For example, “typically there’s three reasons why people have pain with penetration — at least superficial pain with penetration — problems with hormones, problems with muscles and problems with nerves,” Rubin said.
Fortunately, good treatments are available. They include oral and topical medications, muscle injections and even surgical procedures, depending on the condition. These medical treatments are often given with physical therapy and sometimes sex therapy.
“Realistic expectations are [that] sex should not hurt, that treatment should be given in a biopsychosocial framework — this is not all in your head — but what it does to your head is very significant because it does lead to lots of trauma and distrust of the medical community,” Rubin said.
Pelvic floor physical therapy, which focuses on the pelvic floor muscles, is a mainstay of treatment across multiple conditions affecting sexual function, especially pain. The focus of therapy for younger women is often on helping to relax the pelvic floor muscles to allow for easier insertion, although this may vary depending on the specific diagnosis. The therapist will first assess the patient, and then provide home exercises in addition to the work done during the sessions.
Unfortunately, a major issue is a limited pool of pelvic floor physical therapists. Plus, the costs can add up for weekly therapeutic appointments.
“It’s a huge expense, and I’m on an amazing health-care plan already,” said Nicole, 26, who lives in New York and asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons. Nicole was diagnosed with pelvic floor dysfunction after seeking a second opinion for painful sex. Despite the high out-of-pocket cost — sessions are $200 each until she reaches her $2,500 deductible — she has kept going back because she has seen small, but noticeable, improvement.
Beyond the price, many women are unaware that these treatment options exist. If they do become aware, they are often faced with multimonth waiting lists because of a shortage of skilled providers.
“I have a lot of patients tell me, ‘I didn’t even know there were doctors who did this,’ ” McKinney said. “Maybe you don’t have access to internet at home and you might not be able to Google and get onto these blogs where they’re talking about ‘go to a vulvar specialist.’ ”
For young women who access treatment, most can expect significant or complete improvement, doctors and therapists said. “It just depends on what’s going on and for how long, but with the proper intersection of medical and physical therapy care, many of our patients are completely pain free,” said Stephanie Prendergast, a pelvic floor physical therapist and co-founder of the Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center. “They’re doing what they want to do. It is terrible that many women suffer as long as they do. … I cannot emphasize enough to not give up.”
One 26-year-old woman, who lives in D.C. and asked that her name not be used for privacy reasons, initially wrote off her excruciating pain as normal for a first sexual encounter at age 20. It would take four more years of enduring this suffering before she started to realize this wasn’t normal.
“I was just like too tight, too dry — just something was not working. So I kind of chalked it up to not being in the right setting, with the right person, in the mood,” she says. “But then as I continued trying to have penetrative sex with other people in future encounters, I was just basically having the same issue.”
When she initially broached the topic with a doctor, she told her to use more lubricant and moved on with the visit. Eventually, her pain became so debilitating and isolating that she avoided sex.
“I just had such a negative association with having sex, talking to a partner about the possibility of having sex — I just didn’t talk to partners about the possibility of having sex because it was like this secret that I knew it wouldn’t work but they didn’t know it yet,” she said. “It’s frustrating to feel like relationships didn’t progress or ended due to this thing that was truly out of my control at the time.”
Finally, at age 25 she went to a new gynecologist who diagnosed her with dysfunction of her pelvic floor muscles and referred her to pelvic floor physical therapy. After months of treatment and home exercises, she finally felt comfortable dating again. Now 26, she has been with her boyfriend for 11 months and has regular, pain-free sex.
The gynecologist “was super validating and to this day [she] is the best doctor I’ve ever seen, and I told her that. I was like, ‘You really changed my life,’ ” she said.
Netana Markovitz is a medical resident in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston. | 2022-07-16T13:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pain with sex can happen to young women, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/16/sexual-pain-young-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/16/sexual-pain-young-women/ |
Oceanfront and lakeside beaches for sun, sand and swimming near five big cities
A few hours away from Los Angeles, Oceanside in San Diego County offers the quintessential surf-town experience. (iStock)
While cities give us culture, nightlife, fine dining and architecture, they are hot and crowded during the warmer months. Our summer dreams are made of coastlines, not downtowns.
A hotel or public pool can be a good quick fix, but nothing beats ocean breezes or lakeside lounging. Better yet, if you’re willing to make the drive or take the train, day-tripping to the beach can be a cheap addition to your vacation itinerary. Pack a picnic and a towel, and let Mother Nature provide the rest.
In some major metropolitan areas, finding a place to swim, sun and relax is a no-brainer; you don’t need tips for a place to take a dip in Honolulu or Miami. It’s not as straightforward in other cities. Even in Los Angeles, where residents have their pick of beaches, you might want a more off-the-beaten path option than Santa Monica or Malibu.
We gathered options — on oceans, lakes and rivers — for your beach-day needs near America’s biggest cities.
About an hour and a half from Atlanta, Lake Oconee is known as one of the cleanest lakes in the state, said Terika Haynes, CEO and founder of Dynamite Travel. It is popular for fishing, boating and water skiing. For those with a bigger budget, there’s a Ritz-Carlton on the lake with a golf course and spa.
Families can check out Robin Lake Beach at Callaway Resort & Gardens, said Day Trip Queen travel blogger Rebecca Deitsch, who grew up in Duluth, Ga. Just over an hour’s drive south of Atlanta, Robin Lake has a mile-long white sand beach, places to grab food and drinks, plus rental equipment such as beach chairs and umbrellas, kayaks, paddleboards, and pedal boats.
To find one of the closest ocean beaches to Atlanta, head to Tybee Island near Savannah. While it’s four hours away by car, Larry Snider, vice president of operations of Casago Vacation Rentals, said the drive is worth it for Tybee’s scenic shoreline and active nightlife.
While Delaware’s Rehoboth and Dewey are some of the most popular beach destinations for D.C. locals, Sarah Kline, president of the agency Time for Travel, sends people to St. Michaels, Md., for a waterfront retreat. It’s about two hours from D.C., depending on traffic and the weekend. “One of my favorite things to do is take a sunset sail on the Miles River or an antique ferry ride over to Oxford,” Kline said.
The historic harbor town is popular for boating and fishing, and visitors can find a man-made beach to swim at Lowes Wharf Marina Inn. Kline also recommended stopping by the Chesapeake Maritime Museum and one of the area’s seafood restaurants for Maryland blue crabs. If you’re staying overnight, Kline is a fan of the luxurious Inn at Perry Cabin or the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay, which offers a beach and water sports on the nearby Choptank River. Farther south of St. Michaels is Tilghman Island, where you will find the Wylder Hotel, a boarding-house-turned-boutique hotel on the water.
For a less obvious pick than Coney Island, Ronald Piedmonte, a ToursByLocals private guide in New York, sends beach-seeking day-trippers to Cooper’s Beach in Southampton. The Long Island beach is 90 miles from the city, about 3 hours if you’re driving in traffic, or you could grab the Hampton Jitney bus or Long Island Railroad then take a cab. Once you’re there, expect white sand and full facilities, including chair and umbrella rentals. Expect a $40 parking fee, though.
Nicolas Daeppen, general manager of the Hotel Indigo Williamsburg in Brooklyn, sends guests to beaches easily accessible by public transportation, such as Manhattan Beach, Brighton Beach and Grand Ferry Park on the East River.
The latter is a tiny patch of beach that used to be a ferry landing. It doesn’t offer swimming, but “there are plenty of spots for picnicking and sunbathing,” Daeppen said. It’s also next to Domino Park, where you will find beach volleyball, interactive water fountains for kids and a taco stand.
A local's guide to Brooklyn
Right on Lake Michigan, Chicago has tons of accessible beaches. But Bob Glaze, who runs the Globalphile, a travel site, recommended Indiana Dunes National Park, located on the southeast tip of the lake about 35 miles from the city.
With 15 miles of lake shoreline, it’s "a gorgeous beach area an hour drive from Chicago or easy access by train,” Glaze said. Visitors can swim, hike, bird watch, and find plenty of places to eat and drink.
For families, there’s also Centennial Beach in Naperville, Ill, a Chicago suburb about 30 miles west of the city center. Amber Haggerty, who runs the travel blog AmberEverywhere.com, said the former limestone quarry is technically classified as a “beach” and offers a sandy beach, floating docks and diving areas.
“Most people will bring their own beach chairs, but some are available to the public,” Haggerty said. You can get to Centennial in about an hour by car from Chicago, or you can take the commuter train line (the BNSF) from Union Station then finish the last mile by foot or taxi.
It’s tough to find a beach that’s off the beaten path in Southern California, but there are spots that draw more of a local crowd than tourists. To the north of Los Angeles en route to Santa Barbara, there is Ventura, home to beloved surf spots, wineries and breweries, and sprawling beaches. If you don’t want to drive, the beach town is accessible by Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner train from Los Angeles.
To the south, there is San Clemente, another year-round surfing epicenter, whether you are looking to learn or rip alongside professionals. Break for lunch at Pedro’s Tacos, then explore San Clemente Beach Trails, then head back to Los Angeles by train on the Surfliner.
A local’s guide to Los Angeles
Even farther south, there is Oceanside. Henley Vazquez, travel adviser and co-founder of the travel agency Fora, called it “the last original, quintessential surf town in San Diego County.” Vazquez recommended going to the city’s biggest public beach, Harbor Beach, for beach volleyball, picnicking, water sports and “stunning panoramic views.”
Beyond the beach, Oceanside has a thriving art and food scene. Don’t miss the Michelin-rated Dija Mara or nearby Jeune et Jolie. You risk running into bad traffic on Interstate 5 (or just “the 5,” as Southern Californians like to say) going to and from Los Angeles if you drive, so you can skip it by taking that same Surfliner Amtrak. | 2022-07-16T13:04:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Best beach trips from D.C., Chicago and New York - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/beach-day-trips-dc-chicago-nyc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/beach-day-trips-dc-chicago-nyc/ |
In an uncertain pandemic economy, new D.C.-area businesses surged
By John D. Harden
Taqueria Xochi chef and co-owner Teresa Padilla at the takeout window of her D.C. restaurant in May. (Linda Wang for The Washington Post)
Call it the Great Hustle.
Despite record unemployment and concerns of widespread business closures early in the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people seeking to start and develop their own businesses in the D.C. region surged, a Washington Post analysis shows.
While more than 1,000 establishments in sectors including food services, construction, entertainment and wholesale disappeared during the first part of 2020 in the D.C. metro area, the number of new brick-and-mortar businesses continually increased in the next few quarters and surpassed the number that closed, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. That growth — much of which came in educational services, health care, construction and finance — does not include the online shops that economist say have grown as well.
Covid closed downtown D.C. businesses. Many reopened — in the suburbs.
Combined, the District, Maryland and Virginia saw applications for business licenses jump from about 176,000 in 2019 to 219,000 in 2020 and 262,000 in 2021.
The surge was a surprising byproduct of the pandemic, experts said, as new business owners emerge in an effort to supplement dwindling incomes, turn hobbies into professions or embark on new ventures.
The latter was the case for Teresa Padilla and Geraldine Mendoza, who were displaced from jobs as a pastry chef and a restaurant manager, respectively, after the pandemic hit in March 2020. Their jobs were among the more than 140,000 positions in the food and accommodation industry that disappeared in the months after the pandemic began across the D.C. metro area, according to BLS data.
But in the summer of 2020, Padilla and Mendoza began selling sandwiches from a Capitol Heights pop-up kitchen and a food truck, found success, and then secured their own building. In October 2020, they opened their brick-and-mortar eatery, Taqueria Xochi, a fast-casual Mexican restaurant in the District, named after the ruins of Xochitecatl in central Mexico.
Padilla now works as the head chef and Mendoza as the operations manager. The business grew quickly, Mendoza said.
“It happened unexpectedly and organically,” she said. “Thankfully, we had a lot of friends that told the city about our food through word of mouth for us. And that’s what gave us the confidence to push and to say, ‘OK, this is going to work.’ ”
The local boom in business creation, experts say, could yield a spike in innovation and a shift in workplace culture, forcing companies to re-examine their relationships with workers, who have quit in waves for new jobs or to strike out on their own.
“As time has gone on, we recognized that the pandemic is leading to a restructuring of the economy,” said John Haltiwanger, an economics professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. “I think we were surprised by the [application growth] because early on in the pandemic, our economy was contracting just an enormous rate — but then it started to turn around.”
In the pandemic’s first year, D.C. leaders expressed growing concerns surrounding the dwindling number of business license applications submitted — which would ultimately translate into less commercial tax revenue for the city.
“We know that a full recovery is going to require getting the District’s businesses and owners and entrepreneurs back to doing what they do best, which is sharing their ideas and employing and serving District residents,” D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said in a spring 2021 committee meeting.
Prince George’s County economy rebounds from pandemic job loss
New trends then began to develop. Among them: Many workers regained crucial hours in their days when they started working from home early in 2020.
“The pandemic definitely allowed us the luxury of having more time and energy,” said web developer Nameer Rizvi, who lives in Ashburn, Va., but worked in D.C. “My commute to the office was two hours there and then two hours back. So to have that four hours of the day back, that definitely helped.”
The newfound time allowed Rizvi and his partner, Naomi-Grace Panlaqui — also a web developer — to follow up on an idea they had seeded in early 2020: an app to aggregate concert listings from across D.C.
Rizvi and Panlaqui named it DC Music Live. For now, they said, they’re still freelancing and working regular jobs while tinkering with the app, which is still in its early stages and not yet profitable.
The pandemic-era commute might be changed forever
Experts said the pandemic accelerated the trend of people going into business for themselves, which had been jump-started by the emergence of Etsy, Uber and Lyft. A 2019 U.S. Census report published by a team of economists reported that self-employment held a relatively stable share of the workforce for about 50 years — until a rise within the past decade.
“I think that we’re seeing, in many ways, the long-anticipated rise of the gig economy,” Haltiwanger said. “I think it really took off in the pandemic, partly because we realized we could actually do it.”
Gig-economy jobs and how to manage the irregular income
D.C.’s Small Business Development Center, located at Howard University, helps would-be business owners with basic start-up classes in areas such as financial literacy, business promotion and international expansion. In 2019, Executive Director Carl Brown said, the center helped 800 people. A year later, that number more than doubled, to 1,640, and then hit 1,665 in 2021, he said.
“I’ve never seen it like this before,” Brown said. “There’s no sign of this slowing down.”
Some in the region, such as D.C. resident Will Deatherage, started their own businesses because the pandemic made it tougher to find a job. Deatherage built Catholics for Hire — a media consultant group — after his internships disappeared when pandemic lockdowns went into place.
“I had about 10 or 15 job applications that I was pursuing,” he said. “They were all going very well. I was getting a lot of callbacks, lots of interviews, and all of a sudden the pandemic hit and every single one of those job opportunities — gone. Hiring freezes, budget cuts. A total economic panic.”
He and his team now help clients with web design, video and podcast production, graphic design and music composition. Mentoring college students and providing them with career experience is a focus, too.
As the gig economy grows, parents find flexibility and fulfillment — and pitfalls
Other new entrepreneurs were part of another side of the pandemic’s reshaping of the workforce: an explosion in resignations. From April 2021 through May 2022, an average of more than 4 million people nationwide left their jobs each month, the highest level ever recorded since at least 2000, according to BLS data.
Elizabeth O’Donnell was a part of the pandemic resignation wave. O’Donnell, 31, had been a D.C. Public Schools teacher for seven years, but after her daughter Aaliyah was stillborn at seven months in 2020, O’Donnell said she was denied paid family leave. (DCPS did not respond to a request for comment.)
The experience pushed O’Donnell to leave DCPS and found Aaliyah in Action, an organization that provides families with care after the loss of their baby, for which she also serves as CEO.
If employers or industries don’t support workers, O’Donnell said, “people will leave the profession, or they’ll leave and go find somewhere else that they’re valued.”
How D.C.-area employers kept workers happy amid the Great Resignation
Local governments play a vital role, Montgomery County business liaison officer Daniel Koroma said, in creating an ecosystem that provides support to new businesses — with tools such as start-up grants, office spaces and programs that help owners manage their businesses properly. But some local jurisdictions and business development centers, Montgomery among them, are finding it difficult to keep pace with the recent surge in new businesses.
In Montgomery, which had previously struggled with business formation, officials say they are seeing an almost 30 percent increase in demand for business licenses and services since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We need to be more comprehensive, and when we do that, then we are able to help small businesses to become viable in the industry because it is important that we provide to them,” said Daniel Koroma, a business liaison officer for the county.
‘Zero regrets’: Six months after quitting, these workers are thriving
Still, Haltiwanger said, most licenses will probably not turn into businesses or, if they do, might not stick around. In Virginia, more than 30 percent of business licenses established in 2020 have already been canceled or terminated, according to State Corporation Commission data analyzed by The Washington Post.
That’s common, though, Haltiwanger said, and such failures often drive innovation. The eagerness of people willing to start new businesses is a good sign for the economy, because as businesses grow they can create new jobs, he said.
“You can’t have our economy without experimentation and entrepreneurship,” Haltiwanger said. | 2022-07-16T13:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Great Resignation, gig economy bring a surge in new DC businesses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/dc-business-gig-economy-great-resignation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/dc-business-gig-economy-great-resignation/ |
First responders work the scene on Interstate 90 near Hardin, Mont., after a fatal pileup on Friday involving at least 20 vehicles. (Amy Lynn Nelson/AP)
At least six people were killed Friday after a dust storm with winds around 60 mph hit a Montana highway, causing a massive pileup of vehicles, according to authorities.
The crash on Interstate 90 outside of Hardin, Mont., involved 21 vehicles, including six semi-trucks, Sgt. Jay Nelson, a spokesman for the Montana Highway Patrol, told the Associated Press. Ambulances were dispatched from far away as Billings, Mont., about 50 miles away.
Video posted to social media shows vehicles scattered across the interstate, including a 18-wheelers that appeared to have crashed into vehicles or veered into the median.
Authorities believe that a “quick-arising dust storm” ultimately caused the mass casualty incident: “It appears as though there was heavy winds, causing a dust storm with zero visibility,” Nelson said.
A summary of the storm from the National Weather Service showed there were wind gusts up to 64 mph in Hardin at around 4 p.m. local time Friday.
The names and ages of the deceased have not been released as of early Saturday. Authorities say there were injuries from the pileup, but exact figures have not been given out.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) wrote on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened by the news of a mass casualty crash near Hardin.”
“Please join me in prayer to lift up the victims and their loved ones,” he wrote. “We’re grateful to our first responders for their service.”
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R), who oversees the Montana Highway Patrol, said in a statement to Facebook that the agency and first responders are investigating the incident.
“We will release more information as it becomes available and is appropriate out of respect of the lives lost and their loved ones,” Knudsen said. “My prayers are with everyone affected by the tragic events during the dust storm in Big Horn County today.”
Thunderstorms on Friday afternoon led to warnings of strong winds in the Billings area, according to the National Weather Service. Severe thunderstorm watches and warnings were issued by the National Weather Service for south central and southeastern Montana on Friday.
The storms produced surging winds known as outflows that were sent toward Hardin. In addition to the wind gusts, meteorologists had forecast potential isolated hail the size of a quarter and frequent lightning.
“This outflow cannot be seen on radar, so take appropriate actions now to be weather-ready!” the National Weather Service tweeted.
Strong winds from an outflow could impact portions of SE MT and Sheridan County, WY, for the next couple hours. This outflow cannot be seen on radar, so take appropriate actions now to be weather-ready!#mtwx #wywx pic.twitter.com/KQMr1Q8VWX
— NWS Billings (@NWSBillings) July 15, 2022
The wreckage started at around 4:50 p.m. local time Friday, according to an incident map for the Montana Department of Transportation. Traffic was shut down for hours on I-90, and the westbound side of the interstate was reduced to one lane.
Nick Vertz, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Billings, told the AP that winds of that nature could easily pick up dust, and make visibility difficult in a short period of time. | 2022-07-16T14:04:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montana dust storm kills at least 6 people, causes massive highway pileup on Interstate 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/16/montana-dust-storm-highway-pileup-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/16/montana-dust-storm-highway-pileup-dead/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 01: Demonstrators gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on December 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. With the addition of conservative justices to the court by former President Donald Trump, experts believe this could be the most important abortion case in decades and could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
The US Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, ending the constitutional right to abortion, will set women back by decades. Economic gaps will widen: Those who can afford to travel will continue to find the terminations they need in order to live healthy lives, study and work — but the most vulnerable will not.
We know this, because multiple studies have told us so, over decades. And yet still the data and its implications are in dispute.
To find out more about the the link between reproductive rights and women’s advancement, the post-Roe debate and its consequences, I spoke to Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College and one of the economists behind an amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court in 2021 that makes the case and highlights decades of research.
Clara Ferreira Marques: Proponents of abortion restrictions — including the State of Mississippi — argue that women can thrive without abortion rights. Your work suggests the exact opposite.
Caitlin Myers: It’s been deeply disappointing to see the court assert that it’s hard to know what impact abortion has had on people’s lives. In fact, this is a question that has been extensively studied, and on which there is broad, rigorous and convergent literature.
We have answers to these questions thanks to situations in which there has been a sudden change in people’s access to abortion, which afford us an opportunity to compare what happens to a group that’s experiencing a change in access and another group that is not — natural experiments. The first really significant one came in the early 1970s, when five states and the District of Columbia legalized abortion several years in advance of the Roe decision. You can look in the data and see the immediate effect on people’s lives. Economists studying the era estimated it reduced the fraction of women who became teen moms by a third, and the fraction of women who married as teens by a fifth.
If they do use abortion to prevent an unwanted birth, what happens? Well, they’re way more likely to go to college, they’re way more likely to finish college, they’re way more likely to enter professional or managerial occupations. They earn more, they avoid poverty — and not only for themselves, but for the children they go on to have.
CFM: There’s the years-long Turnaway Study too, which tracked and compared the fates of a group of women who sought abortions, some of who received them and some of whom were turned down because of clinic policies on gestational age limits.
CM: I’ll confess that I was initially skeptical of this research design. What were the circumstances that caused somebody seeking an abortion to be a little bit too late? Maybe that person was already experiencing greater poverty, greater instability, so their outcomes would have looked worse anyway? But the researchers actually successfully addressed that concern, making this a really compelling study. The researchers adopted a clever strategy by taking these women and matching them to their Experian credit reports, a very objective measure of their financial circumstances. If my concern was founded, then what we would have seen was the two groups already looking different, but that was not the case at all. Their financial circumstances were similar right up to the pivotal moment when they experienced an unintended pregnancy and sought an abortion.
The large financial impact on women who were turned away is remarkably clear. They experienced about an 80% increase in adverse credit events like bankruptcy, compared to the women who weren’t. It’s a compelling result though not a particularly surprising one, because we’ve long known how closely tied childbearing is to women’s economic fortunes.
CFM: The economic impact of restrictions is even more pronounced, of course, for the most vulnerable.
CM: One of the most important things to understand is that reversing Roe isn’t eliminating abortion access. It’s creating tremendous inequalities in abortion access. What is going to happen is that there will be large numbers of women seeking abortions who are going to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach the providers that remain. You’ll see women flooding out of ban states in search of abortions they need. But not everyone can do that.
We’ve had several recent natural experiments that have led us to estimate how women respond to travel distance. The first one occurred in Texas when half of their providers closed overnight in 2013 in response to a state regulation, another in Wisconsin. I would project about three-quarters of people for whom bans increase travel distance are still going to find a way to get there. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s incredibly important to their lives. About a quarter won’t, and that quarter will be the most vulnerable, most marginalized, most disadvantaged. They will disproportionately be young, and disproportionately be women of color. They’re going to be trapped, and it’s that trapped group that really bears the burden of the Roe reversal.
CFM: Given the wealth of evidence, why has the social and economic impact so often been overlooked? Why is the State of Mississippi able to say that women can have it all, when they so obviously cannot?
CM: Perhaps part of what’s going on is the inability to imagine what it is to be a poor woman in America, and particularly a poor woman of color, in the Deep South, parenting children. Mississippi asserted that advances in public policy now afforded women the opportunity to almost effortlessly balance motherhood with their economic lives. Mississippi and their advocates told stories, for instance pointing to Justice Amy Coney Barrett [a mother of seven], to the attorney general of Mississippi [Lynn Fitch, a mother of three] as examples of women who were both mothers and managing highly successful and demanding careers. I thought that was just so jaw-droppingly blind to the realities of class.
I was raised by a single mother in the rural deep South who struggled to make ends meet. In my early 30s, I had two young children and my husband died in a car accident. I suddenly found myself a single mother, like my mom had been. Except it wasn’t the same — because I was a professional woman with the income to hire a nanny. I could afford high-quality, flexible childcare. And as awful as my husband’s death was, from an economic and life perspective, having those financial resources made all the difference. You have to recognize the incredible difference between a working mother with financial resources, and one without. People making [the Mississippi] arguments just don’t understand that a poor woman working shifts can’t afford a nanny, or $10,000 of daycare a year.
People can disagree about ethics, but reasonable people cannot disagree about how inextricably linked motherhood and women’s economic lives are. And because it was an inconvenient fact, the court just wanted to ignore it. When 150 economists, leading names in our field, came forward with ample scientific evidence, that was completely ignored in the majority opinion. It’s really distressing to me, because I believe in evidence-based policy.
CFM: Economics can also be part of the solution here, preventing the need for abortions in the first place and limiting the damaging consequences for women forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
CM: There are a lot of reasons women obtain abortions, and they’re not all economic. But many people are seeking abortions because they are economically fragile, concerned that they cannot support a child, often another child. These are people intimately familiar with how frayed America’s social safety net is. And the policies that we could enact to support them are also the policies that would help support the women who are going to have children as a result of these bans. They include, first of all, expanding access to leave, and particularly to paid leave. Expanding access to health care, expanding access to childcare. When I look to direct financial support, I would point to the enormous successes of the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) and child tax credits, so there’s a need to continue and to expand those programs.
But I would also emphasize that most of our investments in the social safety net in the last 30 years have really been focused on the working poor, and have not reinforced the poorest of the poor, who aren’t working. When a woman has a newborn, it’s a time when it’s really difficult to work. Welfare benefits to vary state by state, but in almost all they are laughably inadequate. If a woman lives in Mississippi and is thinking about going on welfare to support herself and a newborn for a while when she can’t work, her maximum monthly benefit, to support a family of three, is $260. If she’s having another child, Mississippi also has a family cap. The state should instead be looking at anti-poverty programs, paid leave, investments in early childhood education. All of these can support poor families.
CFM: Do you see a wider economic impact, if people and companies choose to position themselves because of states’ policies on abortion?
CM: I hear a lot of liberals in the northeast, where I live, predicting that people are going to start relocating in response to the bans. I think it remains to be seen. I’m certainly not so sure. As somebody who comes from rural Deep South, I feel like they’re not entirely cognizant of the fact that lots of people in places with bans support them. And for a company to think about relocating, that could be very politically divisive and difficult. My observation is a lot of companies just seem to want to stay as far away from this as possible. So far, the only companies that have really come out and supported travel to obtain abortions, they are talking about salaried workers with benefits — that’s not the group that can’t get out. They might appreciate the help, but the people who can’t get out are the poorest of the poor. Is Walmart going to offer travel benefits for its part-time, hourly workers? Is McDonald’s?It’s similar for women choosing where to live. Abortion, by its nature, isn’t something that women generally plan for. It’s an unintended pregnancy or tragic news of a fetal abnormality — you weren’t planning for it. Perhaps, however, if the end of Roe also severely limits effective care for miscarriages and pregnancy complications, then this might make a difference to women’s locational decision. There’s a lot of fear about how this might constrain medical care for pregnant women experiencing complications, and I think if people’s worst fears come true, it could become a lot riskier to be a pregnant woman in the Deep South.
CFM: We talk a lot about the economic impact on mothers, but what about the impact on their existing and future children?
CM: Well, the best way is to think about it is very carefully, because this is where the ethical considerations become complicated and contested. First, a little over half of women seeking abortions are already parenting children. Those children are directly impacted by their mother and their family’s economic fortunes. As are the children that these women may eventually go on to have when they’re more financially and economically stable. And we do know that access to abortion reduced child poverty in the 70s and 80s.
The reason I say this is tricky is because abortion access reduces child poverty by reducing the number of children born into poverty. I don’t want to argue against those children being born. Instead, I’d argue that all children deserve to be wanted.
• Focus the Abortion-Rights Fight on the Vulnerable: Rhonda Sharpe
• How Criminalizing Abortion Affects Black Women: Sarah Carmichael | 2022-07-16T14:35:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion Bans Come With a Heavy Economic Cost - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/abortion-bans-come-with-a-heavy-economic-cost/2022/07/16/01b8d358-0508-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/abortion-bans-come-with-a-heavy-economic-cost/2022/07/16/01b8d358-0508-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other common complications are now scrutinized, jeopardizing maternal health
Physician Franz Theard performs a sonogram on a patient seeking abortion services at the Women's Reproductive Clinic in Santa Teresa, N.M., on June 15. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
In the three weeks of turmoil since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, many physicians and patients have been navigating a new reality in which the standard of care for incomplete miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other common complications is being scrutinized, delayed — even denied — jeopardizing maternal health, according to the accounts of doctors in multiple states where new laws have gone into effect.
While state abortion bans typically carve out exceptions when a woman’s life is endangered, the laws can be murky, prompting some obstetricians to consult lawyers and hospital ethics committees on decisions around routine care.
“People are running scared,” said Mae Winchester, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine in Ohio who, days after the state’s new restrictions went into effect, sought legal advice before she performed an abortion on a pregnant woman with a uterine infection. “There’s a lot of unknowns still left out there.”
As many as 30 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, the spontaneous demise of a fetus, commonly because of chromosomal abnormalities. The methods of managing a miscarriage are the same as for abortion, using a combination of drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol — or a brief surgery known as dilation and curettage, or D&C, to dilate the cervix and scrape tissue from the uterus. Left untreated, some miscarriages resolve naturally; others lead to complications such as infection or profuse bleeding.
“It’s important for people to realize early pregnancy failure is common,” said Rashmi Kudesia, a fertility specialist in Houston.
“It is traumatizing to stand in a pharmacy and have to tell them publicly that you are having a miscarriage, that there is not a heartbeat,” Kudesia said.
Carley Zeal, an OB/GYN in southern Wisconsin and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said she recently treated a woman at risk of infection after a miscarriage. Zeal said providers at another hospital had wrestled with what services they could perform — with an 1849 law banning almost all abortions back in effect — and ultimately refused to remove the fetal tissue from the patient’s uterus.
“It really delayed her care,” Zeal said. “I saw her a week and a half later with an ongoing miscarriage and bleeding, increasing the risk of severe bleeding as well as infections.”
Some doctors are feeling pressure to seek second opinions in their treatment of ectopic pregnancies, which account for between 1 and 2 percent of pregnancies and are never viable.
Zeal said another physician in her practice contacted her the week after the Supreme Court decision as she treated a patient with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. “She knew exactly what she had to do because [the woman] was bleeding and was clearly going to die if nothing was done,” Zeal said. “But she wasn’t sure what she needed to document to be sure she wouldn’t be charged with a felony.”
Some lawyers have advised physicians in her practice to get two additional doctors to sign off that a patient’s life is indeed in danger; other lawyers say no additional signature is needed. To protect herself from criminal prosecution, Zeal’s colleague Elana Wistrom turned to an emergency room physician who treated the patient and a radiologist who reviewed the ultrasound showing the rupture — a process that took more than an hour.
“It turned my attention away from the bedside of the critical-care patient toward documentation,” Wistrom said.
Are you a provider or patient who has experienced disruptions to reproductive health care? Get in touch.
Ectopic pregnancies — when the fetus implants outside the uterus, usually in one of the fallopian tubes and sometimes on the ovaries or in the cervix — don’t always show up on scans. They can be terminated with an injection of the drug methotrexate, which stops the cells from growing, or through surgery. If the procedure is delayed, the tube may rupture, causing sudden and life-threatening blood loss.
Patricia Nahn, another OB/GYN in Zeal’s practice, said she recently had a patient displaying signs of an ectopic pregnancy, including abdominal pain. But because this was not a clear-cut case in which an ultrasound showed the fetus developing outside the uterus, Nahn faced the potential of terminating a fetus that was in the uterus and violating Wisconsin’s abortion ban.
Instead of prescribing medication to terminate the pregnancy in the safest manner, as she would have done before last month’s ruling, Nahn said, she was forced to perform a riskier invasive surgical procedure to confirm the location of the ectopic pregnancy before ending it.
“If you had just waited and done nothing because you were afraid, she could have died,” Nahn said.
The most common abortion procedures and when they occur
“Those procedures would remain legal and would not be considered abortion,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the nonprofit Pro-life Action League. “No physician can claim not to know that.”
“To use a word used often by the left, it’s disinformation,” McCravy said. “It’s never been a pro-life tenet to constrain the doctors when it comes to medical emergencies.”
New abortion bans oversimplify the reality of obstetric care, physicians say, placing a binary on what is a continuous spectrum of increasing risk. Pregnancy puts huge stress on a patient’s body, sometimes exacerbating existing health problems such as diabetes or hypertension until they become life threatening.
“With a patient with heart disease, at what point in her pregnancy is she going to die?” said David Hackney, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies in Ohio. “You don’t want to reach that point, where things are that clear.”
Lisa Harris, associate chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, said doctors are discussing creating a national registry of cases ranging from ectopic pregnancy to cancer and heart disease in which “people may not get what is currently standard of care in counseling or treatment.”
“Right now, there are risks of exaggeration and possibly even misinformation from many different quarters,” said Leslie Francis, a professor of law and an expert in medical ethics at the University of Utah, who is concerned about a lack of data on the impact of the new laws.
Delaying treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is so dangerous it would amount to malpractice, said Pamela Parker, an OB/GYN in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, who has decided to practice in Arizona because of Texas’s restrictions and the overturning of Roe.
“Had I waited another day or slept through the night, I could have bled out in my body and I wouldn’t have known it,” said Hicks, a fourth-year medical student who aspires to be a surgeon.
With Roe overturned, she wonders how that night would have gone differently under more restrictive laws. Indiana lawmakers are considering new restrictions on abortion in a special session in late July. At least one legislator has floated a total ban with no exceptions to save the patient’s life. Hicks worries that doctors may not have been so quick to terminate her doomed pregnancy if they had had to scrutinize whether such care would violate the law.
Then there are the complex but not uncommon cases when a patient’s water breaks early, putting the fetus — no longer sustained by ample amniotic fluid — at risk of severe developmental problems and the mother at heightened risk of sepsis. Some of those pregnancies result in live births; in others, the patient goes into preterm labor. In many cases, doctors terminate the pregnancy, particularly if the patient develops an infection.
A few days after Ohio’s abortion ban took effect last month, Winchester, the maternal-fetal medicine specialist, treated a patient whose water had broken at 19 weeks. The woman hoped to continue the pregnancy despite the increased risks to her fetus and herself. But a day later, she spiked a fever, and had an elevated heart rate and high white blood cell count — all signs of infection. Winchester checked with her lawyer, then performed an abortion.
“She was dying. It was very black and white,” Winchester said.
Although Ohio’s abortion ban makes an exception to save a patient’s life, Winchester considered a pregnant woman she treated last year who had a malignant tumor on her cervix that threatened her life, but not imminently. The woman had two children in high school who begged her to terminate the pregnancy and get treatment for the cancer.
“They wanted her to see them graduate,” said Winchester, who performed an abortion on the woman. “That’s something I don’t know if I would be allowed to do here in Ohio anymore.”
Ohio’s law makes exceptions for many conditions such as ruptured membranes and preeclampsia. But others such as cancer are less clear, according to Justin Lappen, head of maternal-fetal medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.
“Not all patients with the same conditions have the same risk,” Lappen said.
“It concerns me greatly,” Shumway said. “Regardless of how you feel, this also affects people like me who want to have children … but want also to be safe, to be protected, to be cared for medically.”
“I was told I absolutely can’t get pregnant again,” said Walters, who has residual damage from strokes caused by the preeclampsia.
“I don’t think I could survive it.”
The Post wants to hear from more practitioners and patients about how their experiences in reproductive health have been affected by the Dobbs decision. Here’s how you can share your story. | 2022-07-16T14:35:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion bans create confusion around miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/16/abortion-miscarriage-ectopic-pregnancy-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/16/abortion-miscarriage-ectopic-pregnancy-care/ |
Virginia teenager competes in national rodeo, looks ahead
By Ellowyn Steele, The News & Advance | AP
The competition was held in Perry, Georgia. Young cowboys and cowgirls from around the world came to compete in various rodeo events, such as barrel racing, ribbon roping and goat tying. The children that compete in these events are some of the best in the world. Competition was stiff, and this rodeo was the real deal.
Before going out to compete, there is a lot going on in the arena. There is music, fans and an announcer livening up the crowd. The horses are ready and raring to go. Wyatt admitted he does get nervous, but he knows how to deal with it.
“Catch” means to successfully throw the loop of the rope around a part of the calf. In team roping, one rider is going for the head and the other is aiming for the back heels. Wyatt’s job was to rope the heels. Sean Stone, his partner during the 2021-22 season, had to catch the head. Scores are based on times, so they are doing this as fast as possible.
Wyatt has big goals for the future. He already is looking at colleges. His top two choices are Oklahoma State and Tarleton State. Both have rodeo teams, and his parents are in full support.
Wyatt also has his sights set on ending up in Texas in the future. One of his biggest dreams is to go to the big leagues, the National Rodeo Finals, and he is on the fast track to make it there. | 2022-07-16T14:35:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia teenager competes in national rodeo, looks ahead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-teenager-competes-in-national-rodeo-looks-ahead/2022/07/16/801ea6e2-0507-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-teenager-competes-in-national-rodeo-looks-ahead/2022/07/16/801ea6e2-0507-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
President Biden listens as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) speaks during a meeting on wildfires in July 2021. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
Three months ago in our quarterly list of the top 10 most likely Democratic candidates for president in 2020, we changed things up. For a while, we had been ranking only the candidates not named Joe Biden. In the seemingly unlikely scenario he didn’t run again, the idea was, here’s who would be next in line.
But that scenario seemed to be growing more likely, so we decided to also include Biden on the list. The reason: There might come a time when the incumbent president isn’t the most likely nominee the next time around, for whatever reason. And his own 2024 maneuverings were suddenly very much worth evaluating in real time.
He’s still the most likely nominee, and he’s still sending the signals that he truly intends to run again. But it’s all looking significantly more tenuous even than it was three months ago.
A poll this week showed just 26 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to be their nominee in 2024, while 64 percent preferred “someone else.” As Biden’s approval rating has fallen, he’s also seen erosion on this question — to the point where about the only analog we can find in modern political history is Jimmy Carter.
People like the idea of a hypothetical alternative, often much more than the flawed, actual ones. It’s entirely possible the president’s numbers will recover if inflation wanes and his overall stature will recover. But many — indeed, most — Democrats, who still like Biden personally, would prefer someone else on the ballot in 2024, at least right now. And that’s highly unusual.
The main question from there would seem to be whether anyone will challenge Biden for the party’s nomination — a la Reagan vs. Ford in 1976 or Kennedy vs. Carter in 1980; thus far, most everyone insists they’ll defer, as CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere recently recapped.
But the more immediate question is whether current conditions tempt Biden to ultimately decide not to run at all — and, more immediately, tempts the party to push the 79-year-old in that direction. Modern elections are about base mobilization, after all, and about the only way Biden seems likely to get a strong base turnout is if Donald Trump or someone else the Democratic base hates is the Republican nominee. Even then, it seems a pretty big gamble to put up someone Democratic voters are so lukewarm on.
With that as the backdrop, here’s our latest list of the 10 most likely 2024 Democratic nominees. As usual, this list factors in both likelihood to run as well as likelihood to win if they did run.
Others worth mentioning: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Stacey Abrams, Mitch Landrieu, Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.)
10. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Remember how we mentioned pretty much everyone has indicated they’ll defer to Biden (whether or not they’d ultimately do so)? Well, the New York congresswoman is the big name who hasn’t really done so. She recently declined to say whether she’ll back Biden in 2024, citing the fact that he’s not running yet. But that fact hasn’t stopped others from saying they’d stand behind Biden. Ocasio-Cortez, of course, is very young. And we shouldn’t necessarily take this is posturing for a run; she also has an interest in assuring Biden caters to her wing of the party, after all. (Previous ranking: 10)
9. Roy Cooper: The North Carolina governor is the would-be hopeful pushed by a set of Democratic strategists who think the best course is to nominate a Southern governor with proven crossover appeal (which Cooper certainly has). Whether he actually has any designs on running is another matter. The longtime former state attorney general had to be talked into running for governor in 2016, after all. So does he really have the desire to take the next, much-bigger step? It’s a very valid question: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) was a leading hopeful in 2020 before he decided he didn’t have the fire in the belly. Cooper can make an argument that few on this list can make, having won repeatedly in a state carried by Republican presidential nominees, including in the same election. (Previous ranking: 6)
8. Gretchen Whitmer: The Michigan governor checks a lot of boxes as a well-regarded, proven commodity in a swing state. And if she can win her 2022 reelection race — no easy proposition in this environment, but one aided by the GOP’s ballot problems — she’ll likely vault up this list. Interestingly, Whitmer recently passed on an opportunity to say whether she’d urge Biden to run again: “You know, I’m not going to weigh in on whether he should run,” she said, adding, “If he does run, he’ll have my support.” (Previous ranking: N/A)
7. Gavin Newsom: Perhaps nobody is making early and interesting plays these days as much as the California governor. He recently launched ads in Florida aimed at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), the second-most-likely 2024 GOP nominee in our rankings. And he’s offered not-terribly subtle criticisms of how his party is prosecuting the national political debate. We still don’t know that a former San Francisco mayor is really what Democrats are looking for, but it’s as evident as ever that Newsom is building toward something, no matter how much he downplays it. (Previous ranking: 9)
6. Bernie Sanders: Shortly after our last rankings, something interesting happened: Sanders’s 2020 campaign put out a memo stating that Sanders might actually run again, if Biden doesn’t: “In the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Sanders has not ruled out another run for president, so we advise that you answer any questions about 2024 with that in mind,” the memo told supporters. The 80-year-old independent senator from Vermont had previously stated that he was “very, very unlikely” to ever run again, which at the time took him off this list. After the memo went public, Politico reported that Sanders himself had approved it. (Previous ranking: N/A)
5. Elizabeth Warren: The senator from Massachusetts has carved out some of her own space in the post-Roe v. Wade debate, proposing a crackdown on crisis pregnancy centers which she said are often “deceptive” efforts to “harass or otherwise frighten people who are pregnant to keep them from seeking an abortion.” She has frequently said she’s running for reelection and not president — but in that present-tense way that doesn’t specifically rule out that changing in the future. (Previous ranking: 4)
4. Amy Klobuchar: The best hope for the senator from Minnesota might be that Biden recovers but decides not to run anyway; her political profile is somewhat similar to Biden’s — a more traditional, pragmatic politician who isn’t necessarily going to wow anyone. It didn’t pan out for her in 2020, but without Biden in the race and potentially with Trump looming as the alternative, perhaps Democrats might be tempted for a similar recipe to what won in 2020. (Previous ranking: 5)
3. Kamala D. Harris: Historically, vice presidents have been able to craft images somewhat apart from the presidents they serve. But Harris has seen her image decline right alongside Biden’s. Just as Biden appears to be the most unpopular president at this point in his first term since Harry S. Truman, she is one of the most unpopular modern vice presidents at this point. She has a bigger pedestal than anybody on this list in the event of a post-Biden race. But the way things are going right now, she’d need to somehow differentiate herself. And that’s not an easy trick when you’ve still got your day job. (Previous ranking: 3)
2. Pete Buttigieg: The transportation secretary continues to carve out a potentially attractive space in Democratic politics, quite apart from his Cabinet duties: as the guy able to go on Fox News and combat the right’s talking points in a calm and steady manner. Most recently, he did so on a protest of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh at a steakhouse. Similar to Newsom, if Democrats are putting a premium on the ability to drive a message against Republicans — a not-insignificant consideration in modern politics — Buttigieg makes a lot of sense. (Previous ranking: 2)
1. President Biden: Biden has almost always couched his 2024 plans as saying he “intends” to run, which carries some wiggle room. But The Washington Post’s Tyler Pager and Michael Scherer reported recently that it’s not just idle talk: that Biden’s political operation is actually doing the things you’d expect to announce a reelection campaign next year. Biden this week also offered an animated response to the poll mentioned above, saying, “Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same. That poll showed that 92 percent of Democrats, if I ran, would vote for me.” That’s true, and he still narrowly led Trump 44-41 in a 2020 rematch, but all that’s in the general election. And polls show significantly fewer Democratic primary voters say they’d vote to advance him to that contest. (Previous ranking: 1) | 2022-07-16T14:56:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The top 10 Democratic candidates for president in 2024, ranked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/top-10-democratic-candidates-president-2024-ranked/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/top-10-democratic-candidates-president-2024-ranked/ |
Police make arrest in January killing in Northwest Washington
D.C. police have made an arrest in a killing that occurred in Northwest Washington in January, the department announced Friday.
Police arrested 34-year-old Jose Ramos, of Northwest, in the death of 58-year-old Eduardo Cruz, police said. According to officials, Ramos has been charged with second-degree murder while armed.
Police found Cruz around 12 a.m. Jan. 25 inside a vehicle in the 3700 block of Georgia Avenue NW. Police said Cruz was unconscious and unresponsive, suffering from injuries consistent with an assault.
According to officials, D.C. Fire and Emergency responded to the scene and transported the victim to a hospital for treatment. Cruz died from his injuries on Jan. 29, police said.
Police first notified the public on Jan. 26 that Cruz had been reported missing the previous day.
Police said an autopsy showed Cruz’s death was caused by complications of blunt force trauma, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. Police said an investigation suggests the incident occurred in a residence in the 3700 block of Georgia Avenue NW. | 2022-07-16T17:11:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jose Ramos accused in killing on Georgia Avenue NW in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/georgia-avenue-killing-arrest-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/georgia-avenue-killing-arrest-dc/ |
Doctor in 10-year-old’s abortion case faced kidnapping threat against daughter
Caitlin Bernard is listed as a ‘threat’ by an Indiana-based antiabortion group with ties to Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett
Caitlin Bernard, a reproductive health-care provider, speaks during an abortion rights rally on June 25, 2022, at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis. (Jenna Watson/The Indianapolis Star via AP)
And she is currently listed as a “threat” on an antiabortion website that was linked to Amy Coney Barrett before she was nominated to the Supreme Court and helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
Before the story went viral and an Ohio man was charged with rape in a case that has captured international attention, Caitlin Bernard, an OB/GYN, was forced to stop providing abortion services at a clinic in South Bend, Ind., in 2020 after Planned Parenthood alerted her about a kidnapping threat made against the doctor’s daughter that was passed along by the FBI.
“I felt it would be best for me to limit my travel and exposure during that time,” Bernard said in sworn testimony last year, according to the Guardian, the first to report the news. “I was concerned that there may be people who would be able to identify me during that travel, as well as it’s a very small clinic without any privacy for the people who are driving in and out, and so therefore, people could directly see me.”
Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a spokesperson for Bernard, confirmed to The Washington Post on Saturday that “reports regarding threats against Dr. Bernard’s family in 2020 are sadly true.”
“These personal and dangerous threats are obviously devastating to her, a board-certified doctor who has dedicated her life to the betterment of women and providing crucial reproductive care, including abortions,” Lamy said in a statement. “Sadly, Dr. Bernard is not alone, and this happens to doctors like her who provide abortions across our nation.”
Neither officials with Planned Parenthood nor the FBI immediately responded to requests for comment early Saturday. Rebecca Gibron, the acting CEO of several Planned Parenthood branches, including Indiana, said in a news release that the organization “has committed to providing Dr. Bernard with security services and assistance with legal fees.”
“We stand in solidarity with Dr. Bernard and all providers who continue to deliver compassionate, essential care to patients, even in the face of attacks from antiabortion extremists,” Gibron said.
While the details surrounding the reported kidnapping threat remain unclear, Bernard has been labeled a “local abortion threat” on a website for Right to Life Michiana, an antiabortion group based in South Bend. Bernard is among six doctors who have their workplace locations and educational backgrounds listed since at least last year on a section of the website called “Local Abortion Threat: The Abortionist.” Bernard and the other doctors were still listed on the website as of Saturday.
Jackie Appleman, executive director of Right to Life Michiana, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. Appleman told the Guardian earlier this year that listing Bernard and the other doctors on the group’s website was based on “publicly available information.”
“Right to Life Michiana does not condone or encourage harm, threats or harassment towards anyone, including abortion doctors, abortion business employees and escorts,” Appleman said in January. “We encourage pro-choice groups to also accept our nonviolent approach when it comes to the unborn.”
Right to Life Michiana takes a hard-line antiabortion stance, and Appleman has previously noted that the group supports the criminalization of doctors who perform abortions. The group promotes misinformation about pregnancy and abortion on its website, including the false claim that medical abortions can be “reversed.” Right to Life Michiana touts several sponsors on its website, including the University of Notre Dame, which is in South Bend, and the organization is promoting a fall event with conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro as the keynote speaker.
But the antiabortion group is perhaps best known for a 2006 newspaper advertisement opposing “abortion on demand” that was signed by Barrett when she was a law professor at Notre Dame — an endorsement that appeared to be her first direct public expression regarding her views on abortion.
“We, the following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death,” St. Joseph County Right to Life, which later renamed to Right to Life Michiana, said in the advertisement published in the South Bend Tribune. “It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.”
The group’s advocacy work came under broader scrutiny during Barrett’s confirmation process to the Supreme Court in 2020 when it was revealed that she failed to disclose her participation in the ad.
Barrett signed ad in 2006 decrying ‘barbaric legacy’ of Roe v. Wade, advocating overturning the law
A Supreme Court spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions with sent to Barrett about whether she was still affiliated with the group and if she supported its tactic of identifying local abortion providers as “threats” and publishing biographical information.
Although the story quickly gained international attention and was decried by President Biden, it was followed by a wave of skepticism from conservative politicians, pundits and media outlets that expressed doubts. (The Post also published a fact-check that initially concluded the girl’s abortion was a “very difficult story to check.”)
Then, the Columbus Dispatch broke the news that Gershon Fuentes, 27, was charged Wednesday after he allegedly confessed to authorities that he had raped the 10-year-old on at least two occasions. 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 — two days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The girl had an abortion at an Indianapolis clinic on June 30, Huhn said.
Almost immediately after Fuentes was charged, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) questioned Bernard about whether she had reported the procedure to state officials. Rokita again raised doubts in a letter to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) this week, saying that his office had requested, but not received, documentation from state agencies that the girl’s abortion had been properly reported by Bernard.
But records obtained by The Post on Thursday show that Bernard indeed reported the minor’s abortion to the relevant state agencies before the legally mandated deadline to do so. The doctor’s attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, sent a cease-and-desist order to Rokita on Friday, and said in a statement to news outlets that Bernard is “considering legal action against those who have smeared [her].”
News of the previous threat against Bernard’s daughter has cast a spotlight on potential violence and criminal incidents against providers and patients. Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, nearly 500 assaults, 42 bombings, 196 arsons, and thousands of criminal incidents directed at patients, providers, and volunteers, according to the National Abortion Federation, which advocates for abortion access. According to its most recent threat assessment report released in May, last year saw a 600 percent increase in incidents of stalking abortion providers and a 163 percent increase in the delivery of hoax or suspicious packages compared to 2020.
Lamy told The Post on Saturday that Bernard is asking “for respect for her family’s privacy.” Bernard took to Twitter on Friday evening to express her gratitude for the support during what she called “a difficult week,” and vowed to “continue to provide health care ethically, lovingly, and bravely each and every day.”
“I hope to be able to share my story soon,” Bernard said.
María Luisa Paúl contributed to this report. | 2022-07-16T18:12:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Caitlin Bernard, Indiana doctor in 10-year-old's abortion, faced kidnapping threat against daughter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/abortion-girl-rape-doctor-bernard-kidnapping-barrett/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/16/abortion-girl-rape-doctor-bernard-kidnapping-barrett/ |
Two dead after shooting in Alexandria, police say
The shooting occurred in the 100 block of Century Drive
A shooting Saturday morning in Alexandria left two people dead, according to police.
Police said the shooting took place in the 100 block of Century Drive near Duke Street. Alexandria Police Chief Don Hayes said at a news briefing that the first victim was pronounced dead at the scene and the second person died of their injuries at a hospital.
The identities of the deceased have not been released, pending notification of next of kin.
According to police, the incident began as a burglary just before 7:30 a.m. Saturday. Officials said calls for possible burglaries and shots fired came from multiple apartments in different buildings. Hayes said the shots fired were in only one location.
Hayes said police are canvassing the area to see if there are other victims. He said that no officer fired a weapon at the scene and that there is no threat to the community. | 2022-07-16T19:00:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two killed in shooting on Century Drive in Alexandria, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/alexandria-shooting-century-drive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/alexandria-shooting-century-drive/ |
There is no authorization for cap-and-trade programs
The Supreme Court on June 30, when the court issued its final opinions for the term, West Virginia v. EPA and Biden v. Texas. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Adrian Vermeule’s broadside against West Virginia v. EPA, “There is no conservative legal movement” [Outlook, July 10], was oddly silent on the ultimate question: whether the Clean Air Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to create a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions from existing sources. The answer is no.
Curiously, Mr. Vermeule ignored the statute’s 1990 amendments that included a new title creating a cap-and-trade program to stop acid rain. I spent many late nights in the office of then-Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) working on that program. None of us there would have bothered with such an effort if, as Mr. Vermeule contended, the EPA already had such authority.
As the court explained, when an agency makes such an “extravagant” claim, “both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent make us ‘reluctant to read into ambiguous statutory text’ the delegation claimed to be lurking there.” As for Mr. Vermeule’s retort that there was “no constitutional question to avoid,” this has been refuted time and again. And his complaint that courts shouldn’t “construe statutes narrowly to avoid a potential question of constitutionally invalid delegation” puts him at odds with both his old boss, the late justice Antonin Scalia, and with his frequent co-author Cass R. Sunstein, who describes this interpretive approach as “a salutary kind of democracy-forcing minimalism.”
C. Boyden Gray, Washington
The writer represented the America First Policy Institute as amicus curiae in West Virginia v. EPA and was White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. | 2022-07-16T19:09:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | There is no authorization for cap-and-trade programs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/there-is-no-authorization-cap-and-trade-programs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/there-is-no-authorization-cap-and-trade-programs/ |
FILE - Yaroslava Mahuchikh, of Ukraine, competes in the women’s high jump during the Diamond League athletics meeting at Charlety stadium in Paris, June 18, 2022. Earlier this year, Mahuchikh escaped from Ukraine to Serbia, and is competing in the world track and field championships taking place in Eugene, Ore. (AP Photo/Michel Euler. File) | 2022-07-16T19:10:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine on her mind as high jumper goes for gold at worlds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ukraine-on-her-mind-as-high-jumper-goes-for-gold-at-worlds/2022/07/16/5ec4dd42-052d-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ukraine-on-her-mind-as-high-jumper-goes-for-gold-at-worlds/2022/07/16/5ec4dd42-052d-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
NASCAR driver Bobby East in 2006. East, 37, was killed in a stabbing at a California gas station, authorities said. (Getty Images)
NASCAR driver Bobby East was fatally stabbed earlier this week at a California gas station, the United States Auto Club announced Friday. He was 37.
East was filling up his vehicle at a 76 gas station in Westminster, Calif., at around 6 p.m. Wednesday when he was confronted by a man and stabbed in the chest, according to authorities. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
“The victim was found on the ground suffering from a serious stab wound to the chest area,” the Westminster Police Department wrote in a news release. “Officers attempted life saving measures until OCFA paramedics arrived and transported the victim to a local trauma center, where the victim succumbed to his injury.”
East was not identified by authorities, but the United States Auto Club confirmed in a news release that the driver was killed. Deadline also reported that East was the one fatally stabbed.
Police announced that Trent William Millsap, 27, was a suspect in the stabbing. Millsap, who has an outstanding parole warrant, fled the scene as authorities arrived on the scene, according to police.
“He should be considered armed and dangerous,” police said, describing Millsap as a transient who is “known to frequent Westminster, Garden Grove, and Anaheim motels.”
On Friday, police said in news release that an officer-involved shooting took place at an Anaheim apartment where the West County SWAT team responded to serve a warrant for Millsap. It’s unclear whether Millsap was arrested or killed. No officers were injured, but a police K-9 sustained a single gunshot wound that was not life-threatening, according to authorities.
Born Dec. 17, 1984, in Torrance, Calif., East was the son of USAC Hall of Fame car builder Bob East. He later moved to Brownsburg, Ind., to pursue his career in racing, according to USAC.
The auto club hailed East, a three-time USAC national champion driver, as “one of the most prolific drivers of his era.” East captured 56 career USAC-sanctioned feature victories during the course of his career. He competed in dozens of races for NASCAR as part of its Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck Series between 2005 and 2008, according to racing news site Frontstretch.
The auto racing world took to social media to mourn the loss of East.
“He was one heck of a wheelman,” tweeted Todd Bodine, a two-time NASCAR champion and analyst for Fox Sports.
Charles Krall, who worked with East during his career, recounted how much he loved seeing the driver race.
“In an open wheel car, there was no one better,” Krall wrote.
I have the best memories of working with Bobby East. In an open wheel car, there was no one better. So sorry to hear the news today. My love and thoughts are with his parents Bob and Janice, and the entire East family. Race in peace Bobby 🏁 pic.twitter.com/jNh8RFuwPL
— Charles Krall (@ChasKrall) July 15, 2022 | 2022-07-16T20:27:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASCAR driver Bobby East killed in stabbing at California gas station - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/16/bobby-east-nascar-stabbing-killed-california/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/16/bobby-east-nascar-stabbing-killed-california/ |
When is an editor’s note like a comb-over? When it’s trying to hide what the editor would rather not own up to.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial declaring “fanciful” and “unlikely” the story of a 10-year-old rape victim who’d had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion. Yet the Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday reported that a man had been charged with the rape, adding further ballast to a story that first surfaced in the Indianapolis Star on July 1.
The Journal apparently decided that it might be appropriate to address the snafu with some form of the verb “to correct” and published a new editorial on Wednesday evening with the headline, “Correcting the Record on a Rape Case.” Here’s the opening paragraph:
Boldface added to highlight the Journal mischaracterizing its own work. The first two sentences of the original editorial, after all, read like this: “All kinds of fanciful tales travel far on social media these days, but you don’t expect them to get a hearing at the White House. That’s nonetheless what seems to have happened Friday as President Biden signed an executive order on abortion.”
You call that “wondering”?
It’s easy, of course, to snark about how poorly and incompletely news organizations correct their errors — and it’s especially easy in this case, where the Journal editorial board decided to dangle its own credibility off the rockiest cliff in American political discourse.
But why did it do so? What led it to take such a dumb risk?
The answer lies in its editorial archive.
As the Journal itself clarified in its corrective editorial, its board has supported abortion rights “before viability,” though it has advocated for the overturning of Roe v. Wade — which it characterized as a precedent as misguided as Plessy v. Ferguson, of “separate but equal” infamy. “Abortion is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and its regulation is a classic example of police powers reserved for the states,” wrote the Journal’s editorial board in November 2021.
In April 2022, the editorial board wrote a piece speculating that the coalition to undo Roe v. Wade may well be fragile, and that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. could be angling to assemble a coalition to preserve the precedent as the court deliberated on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “He may be trying to turn another Justice now,” notes the editorial.
As for what a post-Roe future may hold, the Journal went with this explanation, which merits quoting in full:
Far better for the Court to leave the thicket of abortion regulation and return the issue to the states. A political uproar would ensue, but then voters would decide on abortion policy through elections—starting in November.
The ability to obtain an abortion would not disappear across the U.S. It might in some states, but in some of those states there are already relatively few clinics that perform abortions. The likeliest result is a multiplicity of laws depending on how the debate and elections go. California might allow abortion until the moment of birth. Mississippi might ban it except in cases of rape or incest.
The Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights, estimates that 26 states “are certain or likely to ban abortion without Roe.” But that means 24 states would allow it, including some of the most populous. Based on a Guttmacher analysis from 2017 on abortions performed in various states, the majority of those abortions would remain legal.
Meanwhile, a movement is already underway to pay for women in restrictive states to travel and obtain abortions elsewhere. Planned Parenthood would have the biggest fund-raising years in its history. Abortion opponents might even be disappointed by the result of the political debate. They would have to make, and win, the moral case against abortion among their fellow citizens.
This expression of sunny federalism and bootstrapping activism, in other words, served as the Journal’s official vision for the days following June 24, when the court, in its Dobbs ruling, did just as the newspaper had advised. “The Court majority in Dobbs has invigorated democracy and federalism,” wrote the editorial board in a July 1 piece breaking down the high court’s term.
“Democracy and federalism,” for the family of the 10-year-old rape victim, meant a trip from Ohio — which enacted a six-week abortion ban — to Indiana so that she could obtain a medical abortion. Ohio’s law doesn’t include exceptions for rape or incest. The Journal hasn’t responded to questions about the process.
The contrast between the Journal’s view of a post-Roe world and the actual post-Roe world as chronicled by a pair of Midwestern newspapers helps to explain why the Journal went overboard in sniping at the story and why it stumbled through an embarrassing two-step process in correcting the piece.
“Fanciful” narratives, after all, are tough things to let go of. | 2022-07-16T20:36:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Wall Street Journal corrected its editorial about a 10-year-old rape victim. Sort of. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/rape-abortion-shameful-wall-street-journal-editorial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/rape-abortion-shameful-wall-street-journal-editorial/ |
President Biden greets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump on July 15 in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP)
President Biden just fist-bumped a man who has my friend and colleague’s blood on his hands.
It’s not a stretch to say that when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began his ascent to power in 2015, he made his mark through fear and repression. He launched a bloody war in Yemen, kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister, blockaded Qatar, imprisoned critics and, most notoriously, orchestrated the operation that murdered Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment.
On the campaign trail, Biden promised us all that he would hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its crimes and make the country a “pariah.”
Instead of transforming the crown prince into an outcast, Biden has made him a pal. On Friday in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, the president greeted MBS, as the de facto Saudi ruler is known, with that stunning fist bump. According to news coverage of the day, the crown prince was unrepentant, only smirking when asked by reporters if he would apologize to Jamal’s family.
In a news conference later in Jiddah, Biden said he made his views on Jamal’s murder “crystal clear.”
Biden’s casual treatment of the crown prince is an embarrassment. His friendly gesture — indeed, this entire, disgraceful visit — is a crass betrayal of a campaign promise he made to the American people.
In 2020, Biden vowed that he would outdo then-President Donald Trump by taking the moral high ground on Saudi Arabia, specifically declaring that he would hold MBS accountable for Jamal’s murder. Now, however, the images of a grinning Biden sitting with Mohammed bin Salman make our president look like a desperate supplicant forced to kiss the ring of a mafia boss.
Those who have followed Mohammed bin Salman’s rise know that he is a man obsessed with social media and his public image. When he came to the United States on his tour in 2016, he made a point of posing with the biggest names in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. After the murder, MBS had his picture taken with Jamal’s oldest son, Salah. The image, which shows MBS shaking hands with the visibly discomfited Salah, is chilling.
Visuals like these help MBS consolidate power, and now Biden has given him a supercharged one. Make no mistake about the meaning of the signal the president of the United States has just broadcast across the world. Since Jamal’s murder, companies, academic institutions, think tanks and other institutions have distanced themselves from Saudi Arabia, pulling out of conferences, halting contracts and generally avoiding the problems of associating with a country whose leader had one of his critics chopped to pieces. Now the image of Biden treating Mohammed bin Salman like a casual friend gives the ultimate green light to resume business as normal with the kingdom. Now that Biden is cozying up to the Saudi regime, the coast is clear for others to do so as well.
Americans wanted this to turn out differently. Polling shows that the overwhelming majority of people in this country really don’t like Saudi Arabia’s regime. In the wake of Jamal’s murder, more Americans became aware of Washington’s huge shipments of arms to Riyadh for its bloody war in Yemen. That has led to repeated calls for Washington to stop arming the Saudis. But now, according to Reuters, the Biden administration is reportedly weighing lifting a ban on sending Saudi Arabia offensive weapons.
If Jamal were alive today, he would have urged Biden to demand that Mohammed bin Salman release those who were jailed during the prince’s rise. Jamal often wrote about people like influential cleric Salman al-Ouda and Saudi economist Essam al-Zamil, who continue to languish in jail. He called for the release of women’s activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was eventually freed from prison but remains under a travel ban. Did Biden speak up for them too? The transcript of his remarks suggests that he didn’t.
There are plenty of voices in Washington arguing that realpolitik, energy policy and America’s geopolitical interests should win out over the murder of one man.
But for Jamal’s family and friends, pushing for accountability for his killing was never just about one man. Jamal’s murder became a symbol for so many other tragedies in this world, including attacks against journalists and the hypocrisy of the United States cozying up to oil-rich dictators. Demanding justice for Jamal also served the larger goal of deterring atrocities by despotic regimes subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
Many of us had hoped that pushing Saudi Arabia to take responsibility the murder of Jamal Khashoggi would lead to more humanity in the American-led world order and our policies toward the Middle East. We had hoped that Biden would be a stronger ally in that fight.
Sadly, we were wrong. | 2022-07-16T20:40:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden’s fist bump with MBS was a crass betrayal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/biden-fist-bump-mohammed-bin-salman-saudi-khashoggi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/16/biden-fist-bump-mohammed-bin-salman-saudi-khashoggi/ |
Washington Nationals right fielder Juan Soto can reach free agency after the 2024 season. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Washington Nationals will consider trading Juan Soto this month after he turned down a 15-year, $440 million offer made recently, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Soto, a 23-year-old superstar, can reach free agency after the 2024 season, meaning the Nationals can keep him through the final two and a half months of this year and the following two seasons. But doubt about retaining him long term has pushed the club to field trade offers ahead of the Aug. 2 trade deadline.
“It feels really bad to see stuff going out like that because I’m a guy who keeps everything on my side,” Soto told reporters at his locker. “I keep everything quiet and try to keep it just [to] me, but they just [made] the decision and do whatever they need to do.”
On Monday, Soto will participate in the Home Run Derby at Dodger Stadium. On Tuesday, he’ll be the only player representing the last-place Nationals in the All Star Game. He is, by many measures, one of baseball’s most exciting players, one of its best hitters, and one of the top candidates to build a franchise around. But since Soto proved to be a generational talent, the specter of the open market — and the record of his agent, Scott Boras, taking most clients there — loomed over any discussions about his future in Washington.
Fifteen years and $440 million averages to just under $30 million in annual value. That would rank as the 20th-highest salary in history. Soto’s side has not presented a counter offer to the Nationals, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But after the 15-year offer, Soto and General Manger Mike Rizzo did meet at Nationals Park, according to three people who declined to share details of the conversation.
This was right before Rizzo and Manager Dave Martinez had their options exercised for next year, alleviating some instability around the team. Otherwise, negotiations with Soto have occurred with a potential ownership change and an abysmal first half on the field, which is expected to yield another sell-off at the deadline.
The Nationals entered Saturday with a 30-62 record, 27 games behind the first-place New York Mets in the National League East (and 14½ back of the fourth-place Miami Marlins). On July 1, Soto was open to further contract discussions, telling The Washington Post he would forego the chance to become a free agent if the numbers were right. Then on Saturday, at the most somber he’s been in front of reporters, he reiterated those sentiments.
“For me, this is the team I’ve been [with] since, what, 2015?” Soto said. “I’ve been with this team and I feel good with it. When I get to know the city more, it feels great. Why should I need to change?” | 2022-07-16T20:40:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juan Soto rejects $440 million offer; Nationals will explore trade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/16/juan-soto-contract-offer-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/16/juan-soto-contract-offer-nationals/ |
After Russian soprano Anna Netrebko shared photos of herself in dark makeup, Angel Blue said she could not in “good conscience" associate herself with Arena di Verona.
American soprano Angel Blue says she won't perform in Italy this month because blackface was used in the staging of another work this summer. (AP photo/Jason DeCrow)
The American soprano Angel Blue announced on Thursday that she had canceled her planned debut in Verdi’s “La Traviata” at the Arena di Verona in Italy after learning that an earlier production of “Aida” at the summer festival had featured performers in blackface. The Grammy-award winning singer’s decision came after Russian soprano Anna Netrebko shared photos of herself on Instagram wearing dark makeup to play the title role of an Ethiopian princess.
In recent years, several prominent politicians and entertainers, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Jimmy Fallon and Jason Aldean have come under fire for wearing blackface in the past. The practice has a long, complicated history in theater, stretching from the medieval period to Shakespeare to American minstrel shows. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2015 “Otello” was the company’s first production of the show that did not use skin-darkening makeup. In some parts of Europe and Russia, however, blackface has endured. A 2019 Post opinion piece called it a “global problem.”
Earlier this week, a spokesperson from Arena di Verona told OperaWire that the performance of “Aida” are meant as a restaging of the venue’s 2002 production directed by Franco Zeffirelli, which was “made when these sensitive topics were not such an issue.” The spokesperson added that “it is very hard to change” historical productions. Other singers in the cast also performed in dark makeup. | 2022-07-16T22:07:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Angle Blue withdraws from performance because company used blackface - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/16/angel-blue-withdraw-aida-blackface/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/16/angel-blue-withdraw-aida-blackface/ |
Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez, right, with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Lima, Peru, on Feb. 18, 1976. (AP)
Mr. Morales Bermudez’s son, Remigio Morales, confirmed the death, but did not provide a specific cause.
Mr. Morales Bermudez was among the last surviving leaders from the military-led juntas that held sway over much of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, often with support from Washington as anti-communist allies despite widespread repression and rights abuses.
At first, Mr. Morales Bermudez stood somewhat apart from the region’s right-wing rulers. Days after taking power in August 1975, he vowed to keep alive some of the socialist-style policies of ousted Gen. Juan Velasco, including nationalization of key industries and a “militant, active anti-imperialism” stance.
U.S. government files, including some uncovered in 2020 by researchers at the National Security Archive in Washington, showed American officials were aware of Operation Condor, led by Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, but apparently did little to rein it in. The South American governments at the time used a communications network built on encryption machines from a Swiss company called Crypto AG, which was secretly owned by the CIA as part of a decades-long operation with West German intelligence.
How the CIA had a secret window into South American political brutality
In Peru, meanwhile, Mr. Morales Bermudez received signals of support from the White House.
He was hosted in Washington for Latin American summits and, in June 1977, first lady Rosalynn Carter joined Mr. Morales Bermudez and his family at a Peruvian resort. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Lima in early 1976 and endorsed Mr. Morales Bermudez’s “fresh vision” based on “international realities” — a clear nod toward the general’s move away from the Soviet Union and its allies.
“We sense some disquiet in the Cuban Embassy here,” said a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Lima in July 1976, part of a trove of State Department documents made public by the secret-spilling group WikiLeaks.
Conviction in Italy
In 2017, an Italian court convicted Mr. Morales Bermudez in absentia for the Operation Condor disappearance of more than 40 people, including more than 20 with dual Italian citizenship. A life sentence was given to Mr. Morales Bermudez and other former political and military leaders in Latin America including former Bolivian president Luis García Meza Tejada.
In February, Italy’s highest court rejected an appeal by Mr. Morales Bermudez’s defense team.
Authorities in Buenos Aires also opened a probe into Mr. Morales Bermudez over the capture of opponents of Argentina’s military regime at the time, including three people suspected of links to Argentina’s dissident Montonero guerrilla movement kidnapped by Argentine soldiers in Lima in 1980.
Mr. Morales Bermudez denied being a formal part of Operation Condor, but acknowledged his government cleared the extradition of some people wanted by Argentina’s military regime. He often said that he needed to avoid conflicts in the region to keep focused on his goal of restoring civilian rule.
He allowed elections in 1980 amid an economic crisis that left his regime struggling. Voters returned to the presidency Fernando Belaunde, who was ousted in a 1968 coup that began 12 years of military rule in Peru.
In return to democracy, Peru holds first elections in 17 years
“Ambiguity is a good term to describe [Mr. Morales Bermudez],” said Dinges. “He did bring the country back to an elected government. He also was not of the brutality level of Pinochet and others. But that doesn’t clear him, either.”
Francisco Remigio Morales Bermudez Cerruti was born Oct. 4, 1921, in Lima with a political pedigree. His grandfather, Remigio Morales Bermudez, led Peru as president from 1890 to 1894.
His father, Lt. Col. Segundo Remigio Morales Bermudez, was killed in a possibly politically motived attack in 1939. Mr. Morales Bermudez took increasingly prominent roles in the military-led regime after the 1968 coup. (He also served briefly as economy minister in Belaunde’s first civilian government.)
Mr. Morales Bermudez twice served as Velasco’s economy minister and was Peru’s prime minister, a mostly ceremonial post, when he seized power in 1975. He quickly tried to bring a political truce, allowing a return to Peru for all political figures, journalists and others exiled under Velasco.
Mr. Morales Bermudez ran for president in 1985, but received little voter support. He is survived by his son. Details on other survivors were not immediately clear.
In June 2021, Mr. Morales Bermudez made one of his last public appearances at a voting station in San Isidro outside Lima. He arrived in a wheelchair with a long scarf wrapped around his neck. He made no mention of the prosecution over Operation Condor.
“My reflection is that we are going through difficult times,” he told a journalist, “and the vote, although mine is humble, is necessary.” | 2022-07-16T22:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Francisco Morales Bermudez, ex-Peruvian military leader, dies at 100 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/16/morales-burmudez-peru-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/16/morales-burmudez-peru-dies/ |
18-year-old killed in fatal crash in Leesburg
A young man was killed in a fatal crash early Saturday morning in Leesburg, police said.
Just before 3 a.m., police received reports of a two-vehicle crash in the area of Edwards Ferry Road NE on the southbound Leesburg bypass. According to police, officers arrived on the scene and found both vehicles on the shoulder of the roadway near the Tractor Supply Co. store.
Police identified George Mwesigwa, 18, as the driver of an SUV involved in the crash. Mwesigwa, of Leesburg, was taken to a hospital, where he died of his injuries.
The other driver, operating a tractor trailer, has been identified as adult male, but police did not share his name. He was transported to a hospital for minor injuries.
George’s mother, Lucy Mirembe Mwesigwa, posted about her son’s death on Facebook, which read “WITH DEEP SORROW I JUST LOST THE LOVE OF MY LIFE IN A CAR ACCIDENT THIS MORNING SON I WILL ALAWYS LOVE YOU.”
Lucy Mirembe Mwesigwa did not immediately respond to a message on Saturday. | 2022-07-16T22:50:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One dead in crash on Edwards Ferry Road in Leesburg - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/leesburg-crash-edwards-ferry-road/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/leesburg-crash-edwards-ferry-road/ |
Britons brace for 100-plus-degree heat
The British government held an emergency response meeting Saturday to plan for record high temperatures in coming days after weather authorities issued their first-ever “red” warning for extreme heat.
The alert covers large parts of England on Monday and Tuesday, when temperatures may reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for the first time, posing a risk of serious illness and even death among healthy people, the U.K. Met Office, the country’s weather service, said Friday. The British heat record is 38.7C (101.7F), set in 2019.
Rail passengers and users of the London Underground subway system were being advised not to travel on Monday and Tuesday unless absolutely necessary. With children and older people considered particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, schools and nursing homes have been urged to take steps to protect students and older residents.
The alert comes as scientists say climate change is increasing the likelihood of exceptional heat waves in Britain, a country unaccustomed to such temperatures. Few homes, apartments, schools or small businesses in the country have air conditioning. Britain usually has moderate summer temperatures. Across the U.K., average July temperatures range from a daily high of 21C (70F) to a low of 12C (53F).
Sudan declares curfew amid tribal clashes: Sudanese authorities have declared an overnight curfew in two towns in southeastern Blue Nile state, close to the border with Ethiopia, after several days of tribal clashes in which they said 31 people were killed. The regional government said 39 people had been wounded, 16 shops destroyed, and a night curfew declared in the towns of Damazin and Roseires. But three local residents told Reuters that clashes were continuing on Saturday in several locations and that state security forces were not deployed there.
U.N. expresses concern over deadly violence in Haiti: The U.N. human rights office expressed concern about rising violence around Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, saying 99 people have been reported killed in recent fighting between rival gangs in the Cite Soleil district alone. "We have so far documented, from January to the end of June, 934 killings, 684 injuries and 680 kidnappings across the capital," said Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He added: "Over a five-day period, from 8-12 July, at least 234 more people were killed or injured in gang-related violence in the Cite Soleil area of the city." He said most of the victims "were not directly involved in gangs" but were targeted by them.
Rebels suspend talks with Chad government: Rebels in Chad said they will suspend their participation in talks with the government, raising doubt about their involvement in a national dialogue in August meant to be a precursor to long-awaited elections. The peace-building talks in Qatar were meant to ease tensions after interim president Mahamat Idriss Déby seized power following his father's death last year. | 2022-07-16T23:43:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 16, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-16-2022/2022/07/16/b2d0f920-051e-11ed-9282-2a7e062f9565_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-16-2022/2022/07/16/b2d0f920-051e-11ed-9282-2a7e062f9565_story.html |
A mourner pays tribute to late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Zojoji temple in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. A private funeral was held Tuesday for Abe, whose assassination last week shocked a nation and brought renewed attention to his key policies such as bolstering the nation’s defenses. (Bloomberg)
But understanding this background may turn out to be as useful as knowing about actress Jodie Foster in order to make sense of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley Jr., famously sought to kill the president in order to impress Foster, whom he was obsessed with. A few months earlier, John Lennon had been gunned down in an equally senseless attack by Mark David Chapman, who was said to have been inspired by the J.D. Salinger novel “The Catcher in the Rye.”
This isn’t to say we should ignore the Unification Church. One overdue thing to come out of this sordid affair might be to shine a spotlight on the Moonies and other fringe religious groups, an area of Japanese society that often flies below the radar.
Religion in Japan is not the ideological battleground it can be in other countries, leading many to think of the country as non-religious. Religion often has a more decorative place in society, most prominently in ceremonies through the various stages of life — a country where people are often said to be born Shinto, married Christian and die Buddhist. But it’s there nonetheless, and not just in quasi-Christian groups such as the Moonies. Many will know of an elderly relative fleeced by some Buddhist sect or other for items said to have healing powers. The Happy Science group attracted international headlines in 2020 with its claim that it could cure Covid-19, but otherwise is little talked about even in Japan, despite having extravagant facilities in many city centers.
Since Abe’s killing, some media (mostly tabloids) have declared open season on an area of a society that the mainstream news organizations often seems reluctant to touch. Other outlets, however, have been reluctant even to name the organization to which Yamagami’s mother belonged, though the Unification Church held a press conference acknowledging the connection.
The links from the Moonies to Abe, however, are much less clear. The former prime minister was not a member of the church, though he had spoken at online events linked to it alongside other prominent figures such as Donald Trump. Perhaps the ties were historic: Abe’s grandfather, the postwar prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, is said to have helped the group and its Korean founder Reverend Sun-Myung Moon, seen as an ally in fighting Communism, get a foothold in Japan.
The killing has also put the spotlight on a fringe political grouping, the NHK Party — so named because it opposes the national broadcaster. In a bizarre scene before last Sunday’s upper house elections, the party’s secretary-general, Akihiko Kurokawa, said that Abe was to blame for funding religious groups and broke into a singsong rendition — live on NHK, no less — of a refrain, “It’s all Abe’s fault.” Kurokawa has also referenced Soka Gakkai, the Buddhist organization that backs Komeito, the junior coalition partner to Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party.
All this makes for compelling viewing. But what it tells us about Abe’s death — or the potential to stop such attacks in future — seems limited. We don’t know if Yamagami believes what he’s telling police, or even if he is of sound mind.
In looking to prevent a future attack, perhaps the focus should equally be on the socio-economic conditions that helped create Yamagami. His profile fits a pattern. In contrast to the typical image of such crimes being the work of angry young men, several shocking killings in Japan over the last few years have been committed by older men with broken homes, few economic prospects, and little to live for.
The man who is suspected to have killed 36 people in the 2019 arson attack on Kyoto Animation was 41 at the time, the same age as Yamagami now; like Yamagami, his father died at a relatively young age. The 61-year-old arsonist who claimed 26 lives in an attack in Osaka last December was divorced and estranged from his family, and had nothing in his bank account at the time.
In each of these cases the target seems almost arbitrary — whether it’s the Osaka mental health clinic in which one killer received treatment, the animation studio that another seems to have believed stole his ideas, or the country’s longest-serving prime minister. What the alleged perpetrators do have in common is a history of mental health issues, spotty employment, and a separation from society. How the Moonies might be involved with Yamagami’s particular economic situation should certainly be examined closely. Tomihiro Tanaka, the head of the church in Japan, acknowledged it receives donations from members but declined to discuss specifics of Yamagami’s mother, citing the ongoing investigation.
There’s a natural urge to want to make sense of these events — to explain the “why.” The unforgivable security lapses in guarding Abe, which Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday were “problematic,” are certainly another place to look, with police responsible for the scene reportedly distracted by bicycles and missing the suspect. An age seemed to pass between Yamagami’s first and second shots, a moment during which Abe could have been protected. Soul-searching around security arrangements is certain to continue.
But sometimes, there simply is no why. The most horrifying conclusion from his murder might be this: In a free society, even one with so few guns as Japan, a determined and deranged assailant with luck on his side can’t always be stopped.
• What the World Got Wrong About Shinzo Abe: Gearoid Reidy
• After Killing, Japan’s Kishida Must Forge His Own Way: Editorial | 2022-07-17T01:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Even Senseless Assassins Can Get Lucky Once - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/even-senseless-assassins-canget-lucky-once/2022/07/16/98364cd4-056c-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/even-senseless-assassins-canget-lucky-once/2022/07/16/98364cd4-056c-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Police-involved shooting reported at Wharf
One person critically wounded, official says
One person was seriously wounded Saturday night in a police-involved shooting along the Southwest Waterfront, authorities said.
The person shot was taken to a hospital in critical conditions, a spokesman for the D.C. fire department said.
The shooting was reported at about 9:15 p.m. in the 800 block of Wharf Street SW, said the spokesman, Vito Maggiolo.
It was not immediately clear in what way the police were involved in the shooting. However, there was no indication late Saturday that an officer had been struck by gunfire.
Wharf Street is in the midst of a relatively new restaurant, residential and nightlife area along the Washington Channel in the city’s Southwest quadrant.
It is full of electrified signage, and has rapidly become a major center for after-dark entertainment. Almost immediately after the gunfire, posts appeared on Twitter, reporting that large numbers of firefighters and police officers were rapidly arriving at the scene. | 2022-07-17T02:37:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police-involved-shooting-at the Wharf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/police-shoot-wharf-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/16/police-shoot-wharf-washington/ |
Dear Carolyn: From the time she gets home from work until late into the night, my spouse is online — streaming movies, playing games, listening to podcasts, etc., and barely acknowledging whatever else is going on around the house, including me and our kids. We have talked about it a few times and things change for a day or two, then it’s more of the same. Every night I go to bed with her back to me, a silhouette set against the glowing screen on her nightstand. I’ve given up on trying to compete with it. But that just leaves me lonely. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. So now what?
— Married but Alone
Married but Alone: I’m sorry. That must really hurt.
It’s time to stop addressing this as something along the margins. You’re not a week away from fixing it with tweaks to her behavior.
What you describe is someone who has left the marriage emotionally.
Why, only she knows, but I can think of some general possibilities: Her feelings for you have changed; she is depressed and self-medicating with electronic dopamine hits; she is too ensnared by her technology to pull away without help.
This is just one layman to another; marriage counseling is a good next step. (Make an appointment for yourself if she refuses. Resources here.)
So is spelling out the stakes for your wife clearly: “I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. When you jump online as soon as you get home, barely acknowledging us, I feel incredibly lonely. For the kids it could mean lasting damage.”
This would also be appropriate, given the mental health possibilities: “I am worried about you, too.”
People are more likely to make changes they think of instead of the ones they’re asked to make, so you can lob the ball to her this way: “I would like to know what you would do if you were in my position.”
Presenting any of this with anger risks putting her on the defensive. Presented calmly, though, it serves as an invitation for her to admit difficult things. She might not accept it, but you can encourage her to: “Please don’t be afraid to say something that will hurt me. I’d rather just know the truth. Especially if I can help.”
That is what you want at this point. You want to know what injury or absence she is trying to entertain away, so she can — ideally with your participation, support, encouragement — address it through human connection instead.
Dear Carolyn: My husband and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary in March. This is a second marriage for both of us. We’ve endured a lot — the pandemic, health and fertility challenges, and multiple family deaths — and we’ve come out stronger, so I wanted to have professional portraits done.
We could not get my husband’s ex-wife to cooperate on choosing a date when my 10-year-old stepdaughter would be available. Initially she raised concerns about covid safety, which is reasonable. So we pushed the date back twice, but finally started to run out of options and now we have to do it next weekend or I will lose my rather hefty deposit. Plus, I want the pictures.
We have twins who are 2 and will definitely be in the portraits, wearing outfits that coordinate with ours. Initially my husband was not comfortable excluding his oldest child, but now he’s fed up with his ex and wants to do the portraits either way. I also want to proceed, I just wish there were a way to force his ex to cooperate. What do we do?
— How Many Attempts?
How Many Attempts?: As many attempts as it takes.
Because this is not about a deposit, no matter its heft. At least explain your predicament to the photographer, who may have both a heart and some leeway.
And oh my goodness, please tell me you’re not both ready to exclude your stepdaughter because you’re snippy at his ex-wife? No, oh no. Please.
Imagine a vindictive ex using it as leverage: “See? They don’t care about you.” [Shudder.]
I know as I write this that whatever was going to happen here has already happened, thanks to my production schedule. So I’m going to suggest something incredibly financially presumptuous: If you sat for the photographer without your stepdaughter, then discard the photos and shoot the thing again.
A child’s sense of belonging is the foundation of her strength until she grows into an independent sense of self. Even the most sensitively introduced new babies can bump older ones aside, more so those from a new marriage to those from prior ones.
You’ve made it clear this portrait is a statement. To create your yay-us family statement without 20 percent of your family — the without-a-doubt, no-contest, most vulnerable 20 percent? Just no.
Throw it all out to make it suitable for framing that you aren’t a family without her.
And if you did wait? Then I am relieved and grateful you came to it before I could. Congrats on the five years. | 2022-07-17T04:17:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Checked-out spouse is constantly online - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/17/carolyn-hax-spouse-checked-out-online/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/17/carolyn-hax-spouse-checked-out-online/ |
Fred Kerley finishes just ahead of Marvin Bracy in the men’s 100-meter final at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
EUGENE, Ore. — The tattoo on the inside of Fred Kerley’s left arm reads Meme. It is the name he uses for his aunt, the woman who raised him in Taylor, Tex. Kerley moved in with her when he was 2 years old, after his father went to jail and his mother lost her way. He lived with his siblings and his aunt’s children, 13 kids under one roof in a three-bedroom house.
“Things were never given to him,” said his agent, Ricky Simms. “He had to go take things because that’s the way it was when there were so many mouths to feed. He’s wanted this for a long time. He really wants it quite badly, to be the best and to be one of the greatest ever.”
Kerley cemented all-time status Saturday night at Hayward Field. In a 100-meter final drenched in red, white and blue at the world track and field championships, Kerley seized the title of fastest man in the world by inches over countrymen Marvin Bracy-Williams and Trayvon Brommel. Kerley finished in 9.86 seconds, 0.02 seconds ahead of both bronze medalist Bromell and second-place Bracy-Williams, who led until the last five meters. Kerley’s lean gave him the crowning achievement of an ascendant career and the Americans a podium sweep.
“We said we was going to do it, and we did it,” Kerley said told the crowd. “USA, baby.”
The second night of the first world championships contested on U.S. soil belonged to the host country. Minutes before the 100-meter final, American Chase Ealey earned the first U.S. women’s shot put world championship gold medal with a heave of 20.49 meters (67 feet 2¾ inches) on her first throw, 10 centimeters better than reigning Olympic gold medalist Liljiao Gong of China. Ealey, a 27-year-old from Los Alamos, N.M., covered her face with both hands after her final throw, already assured of victory. “I couldn’t contain it,” Ealey said.
Ealey’s triumph was just the appetizer. Four Americans qualified for the eight-man final, with reigning world champion Christian Coleman finishing sixth. Kerley, who declared his intentions by running 9.79 seconds in Friday’s opening round, bolted from the blocks in Lane 4 but couldn’t separate. On the outside in Lane 8, Brommel inched ahead of the pack. Bracy-Williams, running to Kerley’s left in Lane 3, seized a small lead. At the line, Kerley lunged and stretched his neck.
Kerley, 27, jogged to the top of the track and stared at the board and waited for the official result. When his name popped up first, he raised both arms in the air, and an official placed a gold medal around his neck. Brommel, favored to win Olympic gold last summer before he failed to qualify for the semifinals, broke down in tears.
“I believe in myself, first and foremost,” Kerley said. “I put the work in to be great. I don’t come to run to be second best.”
At the outset of 2021, Kerley expected to contend for an Olympic gold medal in the 400 meters, the event in which he once reached No. 1 in the world and remains the eighth-fastest man ever. He switched early last year, to much derision within the sport, to the 100. He won the Olympic silver medal, and this year he separated himself from the rest of the world.
Kerley built his career with single-minded drive. His aunt, Virginia, took him in after his father went to jail and his mother “took wrong turns in life,” Kerley once wrote in Spikes magazine. He credits his focus on his desire to transcend those circumstances.
There have been faster sprinters than Kerley. There have never been any quite like him. Other runners have swapped distances in search of success or any easier path to a medal. None, perhaps, have risen to the top of the world in one, then done the same in another that asks such a different question. “What he’s trying to do is unprecedented, at least in recent history,” said Olympic medalist Ato Boldon, now an NBC analyst.
Kerley is one of three men, along with South African Wayde van Niekirk and American Michael Norman, who have run 400 meters in less than 44 seconds, 200 meters in less than 20 seconds and 100 meters in less than 10 seconds. Add up their best performances in each race using World Athletics’ scoring system, and Kerley’s is highest.
It took time for Simms, a prominent agent who represented Usain Bolt, to understand how Kerley operated. Most sprinters radically shift their training when they move from the 100, 200 and 400. Kerley believes he could run his best 400 tomorrow.
“They’ve convinced me now, if you gave him a chance to run the 4x400 in this meet, I think he’d run a 43 split,” Simms said. How big of a statement is that? When the U.S. 4x400 relay team won gold in Tokyo and posted the fastest time in 13 years, only one runner, Rai Benjamin, broke 44 seconds.
“He’s definitely the best there ever has been with the range,” Simms said. “Michael Johnson could run 100, 200 and 400 but almost at different times. He would prepare for the shorter one and do it. Fred’s ability to do all three simultaneously, that’s something that is quite unique.”
Kerley probably would have played football in college had he not broken his collarbone in the final game of his high school career, an injury that made him a sprinter for good. He dominated in short sprints in high school and junior college, but coaches at Texas A&M saw him break 45 seconds as part of a 4x400 relay and moved to 400 meters. He won an NCAA championship and, in 2019, a U.S. title. He entered last year with realistic visions of winning Olympic gold in the one-lap race.
Kerley has always insisted he simply followed the instructions of his coach, Alleyne Francique, when he dropped down to 100 meters early in 2021. That’s not what really happened, though. An injury decided for him.
Kerley ran two 400-meter races at the start of 2021, and afterward his ankle was “swollen like a balloon,” Simms said. Kerley could run straight without pain, but turns demolished his ankle. Simms entered Kerley in the 100, 200 and 400 at the U.S. Olympic trials.
On the day athletes needed to declare their events, Kerley texted Simms a picture of bloated ankle and told him he couldn’t make it through three 400-meter rounds. They decided Kerley would focus on the 100 and 200, a decision that prompted disdain among track cognoscenti. Why sacrifice a potential gold medal in the 400, their thinking went, to chase glory in a race in which he had little experience?
“He knew he could be good,” Simms said. “He always fancied the short sprints because that’s where he came from. But this almost forced him to go down this path because of that injury.”
Kerley made the team, showed up even faster at the Olympics and won a silver medal, losing to surprise gold medalist Marcell Jacobs of Italy by 0.04 seconds. He had become the second fastest at 100 meters despite only a few months of training tailored to the event.
With his focus solely on the 100 for another year, Kerley transformed himself, especially his start. He needed to come from behind in Tokyo. In Eugene this year, he buried opponents from the gun. “I don’t know if I can give enough credit for how much better his start looks,” Boldon said.
Kerley runs with immense power and ruthless intensity. The fastest sprinters typically treat preliminary rounds as calisthenics, content to build a lead and cruise to the finish in about 10 seconds. Kerley barrels through the tape as if trying to stomp on his opponents’ soul. In his heat of 9.79 seconds, he posted a time no man has beaten this year and only 10, himself included, have ever surpassed.
“The guy is running out of his mind right now,” Bracy-Williams said. “We always expect fireworks from him, especially early on. He’s a guy that likes to come out, make a statement early.”
Canadian sprinter Andre deGrasse said Kerley’s strength from running 400 meters enables him to maintain top-end speed longer than his rivals. Boldon said Kerley’s experience in the 400 explains how he can obliterate preliminary rounds and have enough energy left to win finals. “He’s a quarter-miler,” Boldon said. “Do you know what kind of pain they go through?”
Standing 6-foot-3 with bulging muscles, Kerley towers over his competitors. In some races, he looks like a kid sprinting in the wrong age group. His strides appear as if they could crack the track into pieces.
“Kerley looks like he could be an NFL player that stepped into the 100,” Boldon said. “He does look different than everybody else, but that difference is his advantage. When you get a big wheel turning, as we saw with Bolt, it can be devastating.”
“One thing I know about the guy, he’s a competitor,” Bracy-Williams said. “He fears none. He focuses in on himself, and that’s what this sport is about.”
Bracy-Williams found out before the world championships even started. He and Kerley played cornhole Thursday night, the eve of the event. “He’s serious about everything we compete in, even if it’s drinking water,” Bracy-Williams said. “You got to come with it.” Bracy-Williams insists he beat Kerley, two out of three.
The title of fastest man in the world confers celebrity on the man who holds it. Kerley appears to be wholly uninterested in anything the sport offers outside a narrow strip of vulcanized rubber. He answers questions with few sentences composed of few words. After his blazing first-round sprint, Kerley strode past reporters with his head held high and silently flashed a thumbs up at reporters who approached him. Simms believes Kerley will grow into his more prominent status. On Saturday night, he told an on-track interviewer after one question, “I’m going to take a walk.” He then approached the stands and high-fived hands.
“He’s the coolest customer you’re ever likely to meet,” Simms said. “He’s still building his confidence in the media. When he’s around people he knows, he’s a joker. He’s got a lot of talk. If we’re at a Diamond League meet and we’re all sitting around the table, there’s a lot of laughs coming from something Fred has said.”
The world will get to know Kerley. On Saturday night, under a piercing blue sky and a setting sun, Kerley jogged around the Hayward Field track with an American flag stretched across his back, so far from where he had started and not finished yet.
“I think it’s a mistake to underestimate what he’s capable of doing,” Boldon said. “Fred has continued to improve. He has one heck of a work ethic when you talk to his coach and everyone around him. All things are possible for Mr. Kerley.” | 2022-07-17T04:43:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fred Kerley is world's fastest man in 100 meters for U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/17/fred-kerley-worlds-fastest-man/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/17/fred-kerley-worlds-fastest-man/ |
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, of Jamaica, starts a heat in the women’s 100-meter run at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday, July 16, 2022, in Eugene, Ore. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
EUGENE, Ore. — Shot putter Chase Ealey’s smeared red, white and blue makeup along with her matching nails paired well with this: Team USA’s first gold medal at the world championships. | 2022-07-17T05:48:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shot putter Chase Ealey earns 1st US gold at worlds champs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/shot-putter-chase-ealey-earns-1st-us-gold-at-worlds-champs/2022/07/17/6a8d7028-058f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/shot-putter-chase-ealey-earns-1st-us-gold-at-worlds-champs/2022/07/17/6a8d7028-058f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Mario Draghi, Italy’s prime minister, left, and Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s foreign affairs minister, talk during a debate at the Senate in Rome, Italy, on Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Italys biggest party is set to splinter over the countrys support for Ukraine, just as Draghi defended in parliament his governments stance on the conflict. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Draghi was brought in to head up a cross party government with a narrow remit in February 2021. He had to get Italy vaccinated and then secure 260 billion euros ($262 billion) of post-pandemic funds from the European Union. It was a vast task for a technocrat who’d never been elected to anything — even if he was famously credited for saving the euro by promising to do “whatever it takes” in 2012.
But those targets are now hit — and way behind him. His government of unity, spanning the hard right League through the populist Internet phenomenon Five Star Movement to the traditional center left, was not created to confront today’s challenges: roaring inflation, an energy crisis, war in Europe and a looming winter of discontent with a high potential for social unrest. Not surprisingly, with this backdrop, Draghi’s reform plans have been stuttering for months, forced through time after time by confidence votes. Obscure allegiances among political parties over ties to Russia are adding to instability. Draghi’s failure to gain parliamentary backing for the presidency in January laid bare rough terrain he’s navigating. His government can’t govern if it’s consumed by internal trench warfare.
In offering his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella last week, Draghi set off a new political crisis in Rome. Mattarella rejected the resignation, but Draghi’s frustration is understandable. There are limits to the so-called “servant of the state” model — part of Italian political lore that he embodies. There’s no point in Draghi torching his gravitas, both valuable to himself, to Italy and to Europe, for a government that’s not working.
It’s a view shared by people in the business community I’ve spoken to over the past weeks who are dealing with the fallout from the rising cost of refinancing of Italy’s alarming sovereign debt of about 150% of gross domestic product. Renato Mason, a business leader in the Veneto, the powerhouse region of Italian manufacturing, told me last week, before news of the latest crisis in Rome, that the political views within the coalition were too divergent to be able to provide effective leadership to confront the risks of today.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but the Draghi exit risk was always on the horizon from the minute the former ECB boss stepped in to head up a government of unity a year into the pandemic.
In the early days of his government, I spoke with a public-affairs expert who had privately advised Draghi on occasion during his ECB tenure (hence the anonymity here), who talked to me about how important it was that Italy’s application for post pandemic funds started well. Once that was in place it was far less important that Draghi stick around.
While I was skeptical about that view at the time, now it seems clear. Italy’s recovery funds and policies are now baked in until 2026. The strictures to the disbursement of funds mean Brussels (and Berlin) will maintain a tight hold on Italy: Whichever politicians head into Palazzo Chigi next will want to keep the money flowing. Crucial too, Draghi has in place functionaries through the civil service to see that they run smoothly.
And democracy in Italy is demanding to be defended. It’s high time Italians went to vote again. At the latest, it will have to be by spring next year. The Five Star Movement, the main party in the coalition, no longer exists today. Its members have immolated the movement they created by splitting into separate groups in their struggle to redefine themselves at time when the main totems of its existence — ecological transition, anti-corruption, human rights — have become mainstream.
The risk is that national elections will shepherd in a government led by far-right leader Giorgia Meloni of the opposition Brothers of Italy. Polls indicate Brothers of Italy, and the center-left will each win around 21% or 22% of the votes if national elections were called today. A right-wing government becomes most likely if Meloni teams up with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, which are today predicted to win 15% and 9% of the vote respectively.
But that coalition’s not a given. For one, Meloni and Salvini are openly antagonistic. Intriguingly, Meloni has also already starting softening her positions with a clear eye to power. She is more pro-Europe than the League. A June meeting held by Brothers of Italy in Milan signaled her desire to become closer to the establishment, and the money of Italy’s wealthy north, and a deliberate encroachment on League territory.
Local elections in the Veneto earlier this month showed the center-left Democratic Party led by the Francophile Enrico Letta making unheard of upsets in Salvini’s stronghold. If that translates into national polls then it cannot be ruled out that no single political group emerge victor, demanding Mattarella bless the creation of another cross-party coalition.
In that scenario, Draghi can come back to head up a new government with a stronger mandate. A political crisis in Rome may well spur the ECB into decisive action too, which would contain market fears that Italy’s gargantuan debt will destabilize the eurozone.
In whatever case, it’s unlikely Draghi will disappear from view when the current government goes the way of all Italian governments. Apart from a second mandate in Rome, potential jobs at the International Monetary Fund, NATO or the European Commission may beckon — all with oversight of Italy in their remit.
But before then, it’s high time for Italian people to have their say. | 2022-07-17T07:19:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Draghi Has Entrenched His Influence Even If Coalition Falls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/draghi-has-entrenched-his-influence-even-if-coalition-falls/2022/07/17/324b066c-059e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/draghi-has-entrenched-his-influence-even-if-coalition-falls/2022/07/17/324b066c-059e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Mainstream economists, as well as central bankers, had come to believe that inflation was driven not by the growth of the money supply and the velocity of circulation but by the expectations of consumers — which in turn could be “anchored” by a credible inflation target. If the Federal Reserve said that inflation would be 2%, then it pretty much would be. In any case, the problem for most of the last 20 years was its tendency to be below, not above, that goal — hence the innovation of an “average inflation target,” which would implicitly allow inflation to be a little above 2% for a time, to compensate for having been a little below it for a time.
“Frankly we welcome slightly higher … inflation,” declared Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in January 2021. “The kind of troubling inflation people like me grew up with seems unlikely in the domestic and global context we’ve been in for some time.” This was what his staff economists were telling him. This was what their models told them.
But the models used by economists turned out to be as good at forecasting inflation in 2022 as they were at forecasting growth in 2009, which even after the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. they predicted would not turn negative. “I don’t think we’ve seen a significant change in the basic outlook,” reported Fed chief economist David J. Stockton to the Federal Open Markets Committee on Sept. 16 (the day after Lehman declared bankruptcy), “and certainly the story behind our forecast is … that we’re still expecting a very gradual pickup in GDP growth over the next year.” In fact, the economy shrank by 2.6%. A major recession was already well underway.
To understand why the models fail, we need to accept that they are designed to simulate processes that are mind-blowingly complex. To do so, they must engage in deliberate simplification. But consider for a moment what we are implicitly asking when we pose the question: Has inflation peaked? We are not only asking about the supply of and demand for 94,000 different commodities, manufactures and services. We are also asking about the future path of interest rates set by the Fed, which — despite the much-vaunted policy of “forward guidance” — is far from certain. We are asking about how long the strength of the dollar will be sustained, as it is currently holding down the price of US imports.
But there’s more. We are at the same time implicitly asking how long the war in Ukraine will last, as the disruption caused since February by the Russian invasion has significantly exacerbated energy and food price inflation. We are asking whether oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia will respond to pleas from Western governments to pump more crude. We are asking how much damage President Xi Jinping’s policy of “Zero Covid” will do to the Chinese economy, and hence to East Asian demand for oil and other commodities.
Subconsciously, if not consciously, we would all like these three phenomena to be “transitory.” Our cognitive bias in favor of things going back to normal has been exacerbated by the near-universal attention deficit disorder of the TikTok era. Not only are inflation, war in Ukraine and Covid nasty; we are also bored of them — so bored, in the case of Covid, that we no longer pay much attention to the latest wave currently sweeping the US (until we ourselves test positive).
Where will be the next Sri Lanka, where economic crisis has led to political chaos? Albania? Argentina? Kenya? Panama? Which political leader will be next to follow British Prime Minister Boris Johnson through the exit door? (It was nearly Italy’s Mario Draghi.) Who will be next to fall to an assassin’s bullet, as the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did on July 8? Feel free to send me your guesses. Just don’t dignify them by calling them forecasts or predictions.
The central problem is that the world we have built has, over time, become an increasingly complex system prone to all kinds of stochastic behavior, non-linear relationships and “fat- tailed” distributions. When I am asked about the future path of inflation, or war, or plague, my answer does not begin, “It’s complicated.” My answer begins, “It’s complex.”
Complexity is a term now widely used by natural scientists as well as computer scientists to make sense of a wide range of different systems, such as the spontaneously organized behavior of half a million ants or termites, which allows them to construct complex hills and nests; the production of human intelligence from the interaction of a hundred billion neurons in the “enchanted loom” of the central nervous system; the action of the antibodies in the human immune system to combat alien bacteria and viruses; the “fractal geometry” whereby simple water molecules form themselves into intricate snowflakes, with myriad variants of sixfold symmetry; and the elaborate biological order that knits together multiple species of flora and fauna within a rain forest.
There is every reason to think that man-made economies, societies and polities share many of the features of such complex adaptive systems. Economists such as W. Brian Arthur have been arguing along these lines for more than 20 years, going beyond Adam Smith’s 18th-century idea that an “invisible hand” caused markets to work through the interaction of profit-maximizing individuals, or Friedrich von Hayek’s later critique of economic planning and demand management.
A complex system operates somewhere between order and disorder — “on the edge of chaos,” in the phrase of the computer scientist Christopher Langton. The system can operate for an extended period very nicely, apparently in equilibrium, in fact adapting all the time. However, there can come a moment when the system reaches a critical state. A very small catalyst can trigger a “phase transition” from one state to another.
The best-known illustration of complexity in action is the weather. Edward Lorenz, the pioneer of chaos theory, famously suggested that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. Even a tiny disturbance, he argued, could have huge effects in a complex system governed by nonlinear relationships.
Almost no one read Lorenz’s pathbreaking paper on the subject when it was published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences as “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.” It was not until a decade later that he translated his insight into layman’s language in a lecture with the title, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”
“Two particular weather situations,” he argued, “differing by as little as the immediate influence of a single butterfly, will generally after sufficient time evolve into two situations differing by as much as the presence of a tornado.”
Lorenz, however, added an important caveat: “If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.” In Lorenz’s view, this was what made long-range weather prediction so very difficult.
The same applies to economic forecasting. In 1966, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson joked that declines in US stock prices had correctly predicted “nine out of the last five recessions.” Economic forecasters are far worse at their jobs than weather forecasters. Of 469 downturns in national economies between 1988 and 2019, the International Monetary Fund predicted only four by the spring of the year before they began. As for the global financial crisis of 2008-9, only a handful of economists foresaw it with any real precision. Most, as Her Majesty the Queen pointed out, did not “see it coming.”
But now consider the realm of international politics. Two mega-states — China and India — account for 36% of the world’s population. Then come 11 big states, from the US down to the Philippines, each with more than 100 million people, accounting for just over a quarter of the world’s population. Seventy-five medium-size states have between 10 million and 100 million inhabitants: another third of the world’s population. But then there are 71 with between one million and 10 million (5% of humanity), 41 states with between 100,000 and a million (0.2%), and a further 33 with fewer than 100,000 residents. Each of these states has a seat in the United Nations General Assembly. In the real world, however, what happens in the mega-states affects vastly more people than what happens in the small fry.
Yet the lifespan of empires (the biggest human polities) range from a millennium (the Roman Empire) to just over a decade (Hitler’s Third Reich). As for cycles of history, these are artificial constructs, superimposed on the complexity and chaos of the past by authors desperate for more order and predictability than exist.
History, broadly conceived, is the interaction of natural and man-made complexity. It would be very remarkable if this process resulted in predictable cycles. Even a relatively simple man-made edifice such as a bridge can fail (to quote the recently deceased engineering professor Yacov Haimes), “from deterioration of the bridge deck, corrosion or fatigue of structural elements, or an external loading such as floodwater. None of these failure modes is independent of the others in probability or consequence.”
All complexity carries with it the potential for collapse — hence the Yale sociologist Charles Perrow’s idea of the “normal accident,” i.e., the normalization of accidents as a result of ubiquitous complexity.
Historians are partly to blame for our inability to understand complexity. The major upheavals — wars, revolutions, plagues — that we love to study are low-frequency, high-impact events located in the tails of distributions that are anything but normal. Often, like Lorenz’s tornado, they can have quite small, proximate triggers.
Not long after some big phase transition, however, the historians arrive on the scene. Misunderstanding complexity, they proceed to explain the huge calamity in terms of long-run causes, often dating back decades. A world war breaks out in the summer of 1914, to the avowed amazement of most contemporaries. Before long, the historians have devised a storyline commensurate with the disaster, involving power-hungry Germans and the navy they began building in 1898, the waning of Ottoman power in the Balkans dating back to the 1870s, and a treaty governing the neutrality of Belgium that was signed in 1839. This is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has rightly condemned as the “narrative fallacy” — the construction of psychologically satisfying stories on the principle of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
A key facet of complexity is the role played by networks, arguably the most important feature of both natural and man-made complexity. The natural world is to a bewildering extent made up of “optimized, space-filling, branching networks,” in the words of the physicist Geoffrey West — another Santa Fe Institute sage.
In prehistory, Homo sapiens evolved as a cooperative ape, with a unique ability to network — to communicate and to act collectively — that sets us apart from all other animals. In the words of the evolutionary anthropologist Joseph Henrich, we are not simply bigger-brained, less hairy chimpanzees; the secret of our success as a species “resides … in the collective brains of our communities.”
The key point is that social networks today are much larger and faster than at any time in history. That is why the complex system we know as humanity is more vulnerable than ever to various forms of contagion. In the words of the sociologist Duncan Watts, the key to assessing the likelihood of a contagion is “to focus not on the stimulus itself but on the structure of the network the stimulus hits.”
As I argued in “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe” (out now in paperback with a new afterword), a disaster such as a pandemic is not a single, discrete event. It invariably leads to other forms of disaster — economic, social, political — as well as to other forms of contagion (such as viral conspiracy theories). There can be, and often are, cascades or chain reactions of disaster. The more networked the world becomes, the more we see this.
I ended the book by predicting both economic and geopolitical crises in the wake of the worst phase of the pandemic. Here, too, I drew inspiration from Santa Fe, because Edward D. Lee’s concept of a “conflict avalanche” — which he and his co-authors derived from their research on modern conflicts in Africa — seemed to me to have a global applicability.
Larry Summers has recently restated his belief in “secular stagnation,” suggesting that the period of rising interest rates may prove short-lived as demographic and technological forces reassert themselves.
Yet research by both the Institute for Economics and Peace and the International Monetary Fund points to rising levels of social unrest and violent demonstrations around the globe. The scenario of a global conflict avalanche can certainly not be discounted, especially when political assassination returns to Japan, for decades one of the world’s most politically stable countries. And nothing is more certain to keep inflation going around the world than an avalanche of war and political violence, disrupting the supply of money, goods and labor.
Brexit Has the UK Traveling the Wrong Way in Time: Niall Ferguson
The World’s Cascade of Disasters Is Not a Coincidence: Niall Ferguson | 2022-07-17T07:19:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nobody Knows How Long Inflation Will Last. That’s Life. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/nobody-knows-how-long-inflation-will-last-thats-life/2022/07/17/31ebc242-059e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/nobody-knows-how-long-inflation-will-last-thats-life/2022/07/17/31ebc242-059e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
A decade ago, an injury forced Keira D’Amato from running. Motherhood helped her rediscover just how far — and how fast — she could go.
RICHMOND, UNITED STATES - JUNE 30: Keira DÕAmato trains at a school near her home in Richmond, Va. on June 30, 2022. DÕAmato is the American women's record holder in the marathon with a time of 2:19:12. (Jonathan Mehring for The Washington Post)
RICHMOND — With the last pale-yellow traces of sunrise hanging over the track at St. Christopher’s School, Keira D’Amato prepares to run.
It’s 6:37 a.m. on a Thursday in June. The surrounding streets have yet to wake, save for a local running group logging laps around the track and a few people walking their dogs. A caramel-colored cat, dubbed “Track Cat” by local runners, slinks by as D’Amato presses her feet one after the other into a black chain-link fence, waking her calves.
It’s an unlikely training ground for the American record holder in the women’s marathon, but everything about D’Amato’s story is unlikely. She claimed that record in January, as a 37-year-old mother of two in the thick of her second chapter as a professional runner. Fourteen years after being forced from the sport by injury, five years after using running to lift herself out of one of the lowest points of her life, D’Amato finished the Houston Marathon in a time of 2 hours 19 minutes 12 seconds, toppling a U.S. record that had stood since 2006.
She had stumbled back into the sport almost by accident; now she had reached its summit by knocking down one carefully calculated goal after another. After she crossed the finish line in Houston and reveled in the feeling of breaking the record, she looked around and thought: I can go faster.
There are more goals to topple: Compete with the world’s best at marquee marathons. Represent the United States on a global stage. Qualify for the Olympics. They are tinged with urgency; if the laws of physiology are to be believed, D’Amato’s window of opportunity is on the verge of narrowing. When the 2024 Olympics in Paris begin, she will be three months away from 40.
She’ll still be just 37 when the gun sounds at this month’s world track and field championships marathon in Eugene, Ore. On this steamy June morning, D’Amato is slotted as an alternate for Team USA. If any of the three American runners drops out, D’Amato is in, that lifelong goal to represent the United States achieved sooner than expected.
But as much as D’Amato wants to reach these goals, there are compromises she isn’t willing to make. That’s why she’s here, in Richmond, and not training at altitude. It’s why she still works as a Realtor instead of making the sport her full-time job. It’s why she signed a long-desired contract with Nike only after ensuring she wouldn’t be required to adjust the routine that brings her here, to the track at St. Christopher’s, among the dog-walkers and Track Cat.
As she stretches, members of the nearby running group send reverent glances her way, and one woman asks whether they can take a picture together. This has become a frequent occurrence here since D’Amato broke the record, and though she still isn’t quite accustomed to the attention, she obliges it. She steps back from the fence, smiles and poses.
D’Amato’s house is nestled at the base of a sloped driveway in a tree-filled part of Richmond, its white walls adorned with children’s drawings and school projects. On this summer morning, her whole family is in the basement.
Her husband, Tony, a delivery manager at Microsoft, is taking a call in the home office. Their two children are playing computer games nearby. There’s 7-year-old Thomas, who recently requested that everyone, including his mom, start calling him by his legal name instead of Tommy. Then there’s 5-year-old Quin, whose name is spelled with one “n” instead of two because, Tony and Keira reasoned, it would allow her to be 20 percent more efficient.
D’Amato stands in the middle of her home gym, where foam padding protects the wood floor from the room’s contents: elliptical, rowing machine, squat rack, medicine balls, dumbbells. On the wall behind D’Amato hangs a metal plate with the words “The D’Amato Pain Cave” carved into it, a gift from a lender she works with.
Dumbbells in hand, she squats slowly in front of the rack. Above her head hangs the finish line from the Houston Marathon, the record-setting time and D’Amato’s autograph scrawled in Sharpie, a heart dotting the “i” in Keira. Framed on another wall are two high school running tanks: one hers, one her husband’s.
When they attended the same running camp in high school, Tony got Keira’s AOL screen name and messaged her, sparking a correspondence that clogged the phone lines in their homes.
After high school in Northern Virginia, D’Amato became a four-time all-American at American University before trying her hand at running full time. She joined DC Elite, a professional running team led by Scott Raczko, who coached Alan Webb when he set the men’s U.S. record in the mile in 2007.
But two bones in her left foot were connected where they shouldn’t have been, requiring a surgery her insurance didn’t cover and nudging her reluctantly into early retirement. She went to work for the mortgage company Freddie Mac and eventually became a Realtor. And for the next eight years, she built a life outside of competitive running. Even after she finally had foot surgery in 2009, she had no desire to mount a comeback.
But she didn’t abandon the sport altogether. She tried her first marathon in 2013, with hopes to qualify for Boston. After the “perfect storm of everything that could go wrong in a marathon,” D’Amato thought the 26.2-mile race simply wasn’t for her.
She became a mom the next year and a mom of two in 2016. “That’s what’s really important to me,” D’Amato says in the middle of her glute set, nodding toward her children. “When I come home from a race, whether I win or lose, they’re like: ‘Hey, Mom. What’s for dinner?’ They don’t care, you know?”
They’re here now, tucked into the basement, everyone occupied but connected. There is a comfortable silence here, occasionally interrupted by ambient noises from the people she loves. But five years ago, this was a harmony that didn’t exist.
Tony was gone, whisked around the country for Air National Guard training. Quin had just been born; Thomas, still Tommy then, was not yet 2. Yes, she had help; yes, at least Tony wasn’t deployed overseas. But she was overwhelmed and isolated. The thought of loading the kids into the car to do something was daunting. What if she had to go to the bathroom? It was easier to stay home, even if staying home made her feel trapped.
Sometimes, though, her mother-in-law would watch the kids. D’Amato would use the time to run.
“In a way, it just feels like this is my fun thing,” she says. “It’s my hobby. Some people are in book clubs. Some people collect stamps or coins. This is what I do.”
Tony was still running, too, so in 2016, as a Christmas gift of sorts, D’Amato signed up her husband for the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. Then, feeling bad about her prank, she decided to run it, too. This time she trained, and despite a barrage of sleet and frozen rain, she crossed the finish line in 3:14:54.
She kept running, and her times kept falling. In 2017, at the Richmond Marathon, she clocked a time of 2:47:00, two minutes shy of the 2020 Olympic trials qualifying mark. This is the marathon D’Amato thinks ignited the fire, when she started to wonder how high her ceiling might be. She called on Raczko, her old coach, to help her find out.
She chopped time in gaping increments and finished 15th with a time of 2:34:24 at the Olympic trials race in February 2020. Later that year, she helped organize a race in D.C. called the Up Dawg Ten Miler, which she ran in a time of 51:23 to claim the U.S. women-only 10-mile record by nearly a minute.
That made Raczko wonder what D’Amato’s limits were, what other records might be within her grasp. They eventually labeled the marathon record a goal.
Tears form in D’Amato’s eyes as she thinks back to crossing the finish line in Houston. Early in her first act as a competitive runner, goals were achieved if she worked hard enough, and she had always worked hard enough. But those goals eventually evaded her, leaving her dejected and confused, wondering how she had so badly miscalculated her capabilities. That’s why this second chance has been so gratifying: It has quelled every “what if” that circled the back of D’Amato’s mind for years.
That this second chance might never have happened if not for one of the loneliest periods of D’Amato’s life makes it even harder to process. It also shapes an approach that demands running fit into her family life, not the other way around.
It’s midmorning now. The kids’ summer camp has already started, and Tony is getting them out the door. D’Amato pauses her workout, says goodbye and tells them she’ll be there to pick them up.
D’Amato stands on the side of the pool deck in white Birkenstocks, a Nike tank top and black athletic shorts, with a neon-pink swimsuit underneath in case her kids successfully persuade her to swim. Around her neck hangs a thin gold chain strung with two circular charms, each etched with one of her children’s initials.
She watches Quin play in the water near the steps of the pool, fetching her daughter’s goggles and granting her permission to go down the waterslide. Thomas floats nearby, occasionally shooting a glance toward his mom, who flashes two thumbs up.
D’Amato is midway through a buffalo chicken sandwich from the pool’s concession stand when the topic of competitive swimming comes up. After Tony says he enjoys watching butterfly more than he likes swimming it, Keira leans forward in her plastic chair.
“Question for you,” she says. “How fast could you do a 25-meter butterfly, after eating the sub?”
He looks at the pool and ponders the question before coming up with his answer: He thinks he can swim it in 25 seconds.
Keira nods. “You break 25, you get a Drumstick,” she says.
She starts recording on her iPhone and places her finger on her Garmin watch. “Timer’s ready,” she says, and Tony dives in with a splash.
“I really didn’t think he was going to be this good,” she says as she watches.
Seventeen seconds later, Tony has won the bet but turns down the ice cream cone. Keira unwraps it and eats it herself. It’s at least her second dose of chocolate today, after the Dove candies she plucked from a makeshift dining-room candy bowl, which doubles as the silver cup she was awarded for winning the Boston Athletic Association 10K.
The buffalo chicken, the chocolate, the pool — it all feels so normal for an almost-40 runner with Olympic aspirations. That’s the point, D’Amato insists. Her goals are weighty, but she would rather fail than overhaul her life to achieve them.
As clouds roll in and the night cools, D’Amato collects the kids’ water bottles and goggles, pulls towels from their backpacks and lines up their shoes on the pool deck. Thomas, for reasons unclear, is telling someone to guess a number between one and 10.
Quin stands at the pool’s edge. She doesn’t want to leave, but it’s time to go, Tony says, and if she doesn’t listen, they might not come back tomorrow. D’Amato watches her daughter process the threat, good-natured and empty as it is, and then watches as she jumps.
At the track, D’Amato changes into her second pair of shoes, swapping the bulky bright green trainers she wore to warm up for a pair of white track shoes with yellow trim.
Raczko is waiting nearby, stopwatch in hand. It’s a “regeneration” week on the training calendar, so today’s workout is shorter and lighter than usual, containing 2,000- and 1,000-meter repeats at paces of 5:10 and 5:00 per mile.
Despite his years of coaching experience, Raczko finds himself in new territory as D’Amato gets older and her times get faster. He isn’t sure whether he should be surprised that he hasn’t needed to adjust her workouts as D’Amato has progressed through her 30s.
“I don’t even know if she would have had the capability to do this when she was younger,” he says, then pauses. “Well, she didn’t.”
Raczko has watched D’Amato grow from a solid runner in her 20s to an elite marathoner in her 30s, has seen her Olympic dreams transform from far-fetched to entirely achievable. He helped guide her to the American record that wasn’t even on her radar in her first time through the sport and is continuing to guide her as she aims even higher. Raczko is also working with D’Amato on her newest endeavor: opening a branch of Potomac River Running in Richmond, called PR Run & Walk by Keira D’Amato.
They don’t know it this morning at St. Christopher’s, but the next day, D’Amato’s phone will ring with an invitation to the world championships.
Normally, D’Amato would choose her marathons months in advance, building an entire year’s worth of workouts around two painstakingly calculated dates on the calendar. Normally, it would be unheard-of to add a marathon to the schedule at the 11th hour. This is an anomaly, but hasn’t this all been an anomaly?
So she will leap at this chance to don a Team USA kit and compete on a world stage. She will book not one but four flights to Oregon, and she will spend the next 2½ weeks preparing to see how well she can fare against the world’s best.
Raczko readies his stopwatch, and D’Amato places her fingers on the sides of her Garmin watch, blue-painted fingernails shining.
Through the first portion of the workout, she has clocked faster paces than Raczko called for, and she jokes that he’s “taking it easy” on her with the set. When Raczko shouts out her time after a 400, D’Amato thinks it should be a second lower, needling her coach for being slow on the stopwatch.
He waves her off, tells her to take her 45 seconds rest. She waits 43 and starts to run. | 2022-07-17T09:30:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Keira D’Amato is 37. A mom of two. And America’s fastest female marathoner. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/keira-damato-marathon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/keira-damato-marathon/ |
Last fall, the city canceled a major contract with the nonprofit and its executive director Ruby Corado stepped down soon after. But questions remain about where its funding and donations went.
Fabiola Caal Choc, 35, right, of Guatemala is greeted by Ruby Corado, founder of Casa Ruby, in Washington on Feb. 19, 2019. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Casa Ruby, a nonprofit that provided shelter and transitional housing to LGBTQ youth in the District, has closed all of its programs, multiple employees told The Washington Post.
Three employees said they had not been paid in six weeks, and residents who were living in the nonprofit’s transitional homes were forced to move. The organization’s last board member resigned in April.
The closures mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year for the nonprofit. Last fall, the D.C. Department of Human Services said it would not renew an $839,460 grant to Casa Ruby to run a low-barrier shelter. The shelter, which housed at least 10 young people at the time, shut down last September, and Ruby Corado, the nonprofit’s founder, announced her resignation soon after.
Losing the grant was a blow, but employees say the nonprofit has continued to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and donations, and they continued to offer an array of programming, including transitional housing at multiple sites around the city. As of Friday, employees said, they no longer had office supplies, internet or air conditioning. The transitional houses have been vacated, and programs designed to help immigrants and victims of crimes have been suspended. The Post emailed and called Corado, but she could not be reached for comment. Casa Ruby’s interim executive director also could not be reached.
“It’s deserted,” said Kisha Allure, an employee who spent 10 years at the nonprofit, most recently as the director of its victim services program. “We took in vulnerable individuals 24 hours a day when nobody wanted them. We had programs for people to literally build their lives back up. We had trans women who were D.C. natives, trans women of color, and we kept them in a safe space as the mission told us to do. The full respite care center for trans people of color — built by us, ran by us — is now gone in smoke.”
Corado opened Casa Ruby in 2012 as a small drop-in center with a handful of unpaid volunteers. In less than a decade, she grew the nonprofit into an organization with more than 100 employees, thousands of clients and multiple sites across the city. In recent years, Corado has announced the creation of a pharmacy and a housing program specifically for LGBTQ immigrants seeking asylum in the United States.
By 2020, Casa Ruby was bringing in nearly $4.2 million a year in revenue, federal tax filings show. Corado’s salary grew as the nonprofit did. In 2013, she earned just $31,895, according to federal tax filings; by 2020, Corado was earning $260,000.
Much of that revenue came from the District. The city’s Department of Human Services (DHS) has awarded Casa Ruby nearly two dozen grants since 2015, and the mayor’s office funded the organization, too.
In 2021, for instance, DHS gave Casa Ruby three grants for a total of nearly $1.7 million. That money was supposed to pay for a low-barrier shelter and transitional housing.
But over the years, landlords and other vendors have repeatedly claimed that Casa Ruby did not pay its bills on time, according to court records and more than 8,000 emails to and from DHS officials that The Post obtained through a public records request.
Brian Lassiter, whose company Main-One Solutions provided security at Casa Ruby, told DHS officials in a March 2021 email that Corado had not paid him for two months’ work. Lassiter told The Post in February that his business is a “small, minority-run company,” and Corado owes him $38,000.
“We are in dire need of those funds,” he said.
When DHS employees emailed Corado in February 2021 to ask about payment for the security firm, Corado told them she had paid every invoice she had received, the emails show.
Angelique Best, a landlord who leased a spot on Columbia Road NW to Casa Ruby for transitional housing, sued Corado twice in landlord-tenant court. Francis Whelan, a landlord who owned a townhouse on Kennedy Street NW, told DHS officials in March 2021 that Casa Ruby and Corado were “chronically late” paying the rent and often did not pay the full amount.
“We are in a very precarious financial position at this time and have to sell the house, pay off the mortgage and use the rest to keep our store afloat,” Whelan wrote in an email to DHS program manager Tamara Mooney on March 24, 2021.
The agency’s deputy administrator Tania Mortensen said in emails that her team reviewed invoices submitted by Casa Ruby between October 2020 and January 2021 and found that the nonprofit had billed DHS for rent on Whelan’s property each month. Whelan said that he had not received payment for those months.
“Ruby Corado is out of the country and we have not had contact with her,” Mortensen wrote to her colleagues at DHS on March 23, 2021.
The Menkiti Group, which owns a Georgia Avenue space that Casa Ruby used as a low-barrier shelter, alleged in landlord-tenant court earlier this year that the nonprofit owes them more than a million dollars in unpaid rent, utilities and late fees. A trial has been scheduled for August.
DHS had awarded Casa Ruby $839,460 to provide 50 shelter beds on Georgia Avenue. Inspections revealed, though, that the shelter was only zoned for office space, and the nonprofit did not have a certificate of occupancy, agency emails show. Furthermore, the program, which moved to Dupont Circle in November 2020, was not serving 50 people, DHS officials found. Fewer than a dozen people occupied the Dupont Circle space, which Casa Ruby had rented for what it promised would be a “PReP Art Boutique and pharmacy,” April 2021 emails obtained from DHS show, and former employees confirmed.
An April 2021 email obtained by The Post shows that an investigator from the District’s Office of Program Review, Monitoring and Investigation reviewed the Dupont Circle lease and found it expressly forbade any residential use.
A DHS spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In the months leading up to the closure of the shelter, the emails also show that DHS workers tried unsuccessfully to work out a deal with Corado to keep it open.
In the days after DHS announced it would not renew the grant, Casa Ruby raised $130,000 on GoFundMe and promised the nonprofit would continue to provide shelter beds to clients who experience homelessness.
Corado had also raised $108,585 in March 2021 through GoFundMe for the same program. Still, on Sept. 30, Corado closed the shelter and laid off the employees there.
Denzel Mackall, who worked in the shelter at the time, said he was laid off with no notice. In the months after, he saw multiple clients “fall off the wagon” and return to the streets.
“It was traumatizing,” he said.
Tania Cordova, an employee who managed the nonprofit’s program for LGBTQ asylum seekers, said she has also witnessed both clients and employees relapse after the shelter and other programs closed.
Corado, who is transgender, often said she was proud of the fact that she employed so many trans people. Nearly all of her employees were transgender, and many had overcome great hardship, Cordova said.
“And mostly, we have all been addicted to alcohol or drugs, and we had overcome all these problems,” Cordova said. “But now, all this depression and everything that we are facing at Casa Ruby has triggered our anxiety. The impact is not just financial. It’s emotional, mental and physical.”
In May, the chair of the board of trustees for Union Temple Baptist Church, which leased four properties on W Street SE to Casa Ruby, said that the nonprofit owed the church $67,866.77 in unpaid rent, a letter sent to Casa Ruby employees from the board and shared with The Post shows. In the letter, board chair Kathy McDaniel said she had tried multiple times to reach Corado or a current chief executive for Casa Ruby without success.
“Therefore Tenant shall vacate the premises and remove all personal belongings on or before” May 15, the letter stated.
Someone answering the phone at Union Temple said no one was available to comment.
Casa Ruby had been renting the homes as part of a pilot program to offer transitional housing to LGBTQ people seeking asylum in the United States. Since the program opened in the fall of 2020, it has housed asylum seekers from Russia, El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries, Cordova said.
Cordova, an employee whom Corado had recruited from Chicago to manage the program, said she was living in one of the W Street homes rent-free as part of her employment. This spring, she and the asylum seekers had to scramble to find a new place to live. The sudden eviction left many distraught, Cordova said.
“They created a family in this immigrant house,” Cordova said. “That was their community. They are already fleeing from their countries because they have faced violence because they are part of the LGBTQ community.”
Ruby Corado, founder of Casa Ruby, resigns as executive director
In a Facebook Live video last October, when Corado announced that she was stepping down, she said she was appointing Alexis Blackmon to replace her as executive director. Blackmon left the position in February. She told The Post she never had access to the nonprofit’s bank accounts, and three current employees confirmed that. Blackmon declined to comment further. In May, the Casa Ruby Twitter account announced that Jacqueline Franco had taken over as interim executive director. The Post tried to contact Franco via email and Facebook, but did not reach her. No one answered the phone number listed on Casa Ruby’s website, and the voice mailbox is full.
In a February interview, Corado said all her actions were approved by Casa Ruby’s board of directors.
“With my advocacy, we changed legislation, we changed a lot of things,” Corado told The Post. “The politicians used me and, I’m not going to lie to you, I ended up having a better life. I’m not going to deny that part. But it was never meant for me to be on top while the rest of the people struggle. ... The people who truly need me, guess what, they’re okay with me.”
The Post contacted every board member last fall, but only one — Meredith Zoltick — replied. Zoltick had been on the board since the nonprofit opened and told The Post last fall that she remained enthusiastic about Casa Ruby’s mission. Zoltick, who is no longer on the board, declined to comment on Friday.
Another former board member, Hassan Naveed, confirmed Friday that he is no longer on the board. Two other former board members — Jack Harrison-Quintana and Miguel Rivera — did not respond to The Post this week.
Multiple employees told The Post that they have not heard from Corado since May. Public records show Corado sold her home in Prince George’s County in January for $775,000. Last year, Corado announced that she planned to open a branch of Casa Ruby in her home country, El Salvador, which she left as a teenager. A Facebook page for that outpost shows Corado attended events in San Salvador in March.
Several former employees told The Post that their paychecks often arrived late or not at all. At least one also filed a complaint with DHS in February 2021, agency emails show. But this spring has marked a new low, current employees said. Three employees told The Post they have gone three pay periods without a check, and they’re not sure how to appeal for the income they’ve earned.
In February, Corado told The Post that she has done nothing wrong, and as proof she sent a document showing the City’s Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants had awarded her $104,959 in January.
The mayor’s office did not return a request for comment Friday.
A July 13 email obtained by The Post shows that Cristina Sacco, associate general counsel in the executive office of the mayor, told three Casa Ruby employees that the District would not release any more grant money to the nonprofit until the District receives proof of payroll and other required documents.
“It was communicated to us that Ruby Corado is the only person with access and control over Casa Ruby’s bank accounts and the only authority that could remit payments to employees,” Sacco wrote. “It was indicated that Casa Ruby at some point was not able to pay rent and its employees. Consequently, Casa Ruby had to relocate all of its clients. All of this was concerning to us and given we need to be good stewards of the city’s funds and we want to make sure disbursed funds are used to pay employees for their work, in accordance with payroll schedules reported under the grant.”
Allure, Casa Ruby’s director of victims services, told The Post that she earned $46,000 a year running a program that helped victims of sexual assault and hate crimes. Before Friday, that program had 300 clients. Allure said she offered support groups, a gardening therapy group and classes to help victims of crimes build resiliency and get back on their feet.
“My whole program is destroyed now,” Allure said.
She told The Post that neither she nor her assistant has been paid since June 3. She has depleted her savings and is unsure how she will cover her rent.
In a Facebook live Allure posted Friday, she addressed Corado directly.
“You owe us money,” Allure said. “Wherever you are, you need to come to your entity ... and you need to come and speak to your staff. … We advocated for you. In 2022, where are you?”
Annys Shin contributed to this report. | 2022-07-17T10:18:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Casa Ruby shelter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/casa-ruby-programs-close/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/casa-ruby-programs-close/ |
But the lofty greenback is making life harder for some U.S. trading partners.
An ice cream van sells bottled water to tourists during a heat wave in the Castelo district of Lisbon on July 12. Temperatures are soaring across Europe, drying up waterways and boosting demand for electricity to cool homes as the region faces a crunch for energy supplies. (Goncalo Fonseca/Bloomberg News)
The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have driven the U.S. dollar to its highest level in decades, treating American tourists to bargains in Europe and Asia, putting imported goods on sale here at home and squeezing the economies of several U.S. trading partners.
The dollar reached multi-decade highs this week against major currencies including the euro and Japanese yen and is almost certain to head higher still. With consumer prices rising by 9.1 percent over the past year — the fastest pace since 1981 — the Fed has signaled additional rate increases are coming, starting July 27.
The robust greenback is evidence that the Fed’s anti-inflation campaign is starting to gain traction, even as prices overall continue ticking up. But it’s a different story overseas, where currency weakness in Europe and the United Kingdom — the flip side of the dollar’s strength — is making the fight against inflation even tougher.
As years of low inflation and low interest rates have given way to a more volatile era, currencies are trading in a wider arc. In particular, the war in Ukraine, which upended global food and fuel markets, has dealt more punishing blows to Europe and many developing countries than it has the United States, which helps explain the dollar’s current shine.
“The dollar, euro, yen and yuan moved in relatively small ranges for a very long time. This is the first time in decades where everybody’s down against the dollar,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The more muscular dollar is straining budgets for countries that are heavily dependent upon oil imports, which are priced in dollars, such as India, South Korea and Thailand. Several developing countries that need financial infusions to cover their debt payments, like Ecuador and Tunisia, also are hurting as the U.S. currency climbs.
The dollar’s outperformance — up 13 percent this year in the DXY Index — reflects the strength of the U.S. recovery from the pandemic, which was faster than in Europe or Japan. And it shows that Federal Reserve officials, after misreading price signals for most of last year, have belatedly adjusted more quickly than their counterparts in Frankfurt and Tokyo.
This year, the Fed has raised rates twice by a total of 75 basis points and is expected to enact at least an additional three-quarters-of-a-point at its next meeting later this month. The European Central Bank is expected to raise rates for the first time in 11 years at its July 21 meeting and then only by a quarter-percentage point. The key European rate is expected to remain in negative territory until September even though inflation hit 8.6 percent in June.
In Japan, where inflation has long been subdued, the Bank of Japan last month opted to keep its main rate at a negative 0.1 percent.
“Central banks were caught unawares by the inflation surge and are now reacting at different speeds,” said Marc Chandler, managing director of Bannockburn Global Forex. “The U.S. is carrying out its most aggressive tightening since 1980, while the Europeans and the Japanese haven’t moved.”
Still, the stronger dollar isn’t all good news for the United States.
American products are becoming more expensive for customers overseas, whose currencies are losing value against the dollar. That hurts major exporters like Boeing, the world’s largest commercial aircraft maker. And giant U.S. corporations are seeing their overseas earnings shrink when they are converted into dollars, further eroding support for sinking stock values.
Microsoft last month lowered its forecast for the current quarter, saying the strong dollar would reduce its expected earnings by around $250 million.
In April, the software giant was among the first major corporations to warn of the dollar’s strength. Executives told investors the dollar’s climb during the first three months of the year had cost it about $225 million in profit.
In general, U.S. companies derive about 30 percent of their total earnings from overseas operations, according to Morgan Stanley. The earnings hit to U.S.-based multinationals from the rising dollar could cause them to reduce spending in other areas, thus contributing to the economic slowdown that the Fed is trying to arrange.
Some central banks are trying to keep pace with the Fed. On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada surprised markets by raising its key lending rate by a full percentage point to 2.5 percent, and signaled plans for further increases. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand also set its policy rate at the same level, the highest in more than six years. Those moves came one day after South Korea’s central bank lifted rates by half-a-percentage-point, its largest move since 1999.
The financial fallout is especially challenging for European policymakers. The weaker euro is making inflation worse by raising the cost of goods imported from elsewhere.
Any benefit that German exports get from the weaker currency is being overwhelmed by rising energy costs due to the loss of inexpensive Russian supplies.
Germany this month reported its first trade deficit in 30 years as Russia’s limits on natural gas shipments to Europe, sparked by the diplomatic showdown over Ukraine, made German goods more expensive, and China’s economic slowdown cut into demand.
Elsewhere, the stress may be even more severe.
On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund said it had reached a staff-level agreement with Pakistan on a $1.2 billion bailout designed to help the government cope with a dire economic situation but which will, in return, require officials to cut energy subsidies — even though inflation is running at 20 percent.
The global lending agency is also negotiating with other debt-ridden countries like Tunisia, where economic troubles could bleed into social unrest.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the 38-nation developed-country group in Paris, the dollar is now overvalued by the most in 30 years.
The currency’s performance is defying worries voiced earlier this year that the Biden administration’s aggressive use of financial sanctions to punish Russia for invading Ukraine would encourage other countries to reduce their reliance upon the dollar.
Instead the dollar remains by far the most widely held global currency, accounting for almost 59 percent of total central bank reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The soaring dollar in recent months also has contributed to falling prices for imported goods.
On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the price of imports, excluding fuel, dropped in June by 0.5 percent, the second consecutive monthly decline. Over the past year, prices of non-fuel imports rose by 4.6 percent, roughly half of the overall increase in consumer prices.
“The strong dollar is helping curb inflationary pressures,” said Rhea Thomas, senior economist with Wilmington Trust.
Warehouses in U.S. and China show global economy struggling to adjust
Past episodes of major currency misalignments have triggered outbreaks of protectionism in the United States, as blue-collar workers rebelled against the loss of jobs to overseas competition, or central bank intervention to reset the value of the dollar, euro or yen.
In a 1985 meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York, the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom agreed to coordinate moves to weaken the dollar to make American products more competitive in global markets.
When the euro was struggling to establish itself in 2000, central banks in the United States, Europe and Japan agreed to intervene to boost the value of the new currency after it had lost almost one-third of its original value.
This time, no such intervention is likely. On Tuesday, after meeting with top Japanese officials, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen swatted away talk of joint action.
“Our view is that countries like Japan, the United States, the [Group of 7 nations], should have market-determined exchange rates, and only in rare and exceptional circumstances is intervention warranted,” Yellen said, adding that she had not discussed any such plans with Japan’s government.
Central banks are more focused on ensuring those who need dollars can obtain them rather than worrying about their cost, said Chandler of Bannockburn Global Forex.
The Fed has standing arrangements to swap dollars for foreign currencies with its counterparts in Canada, the U.K., Europe, Japan and Switzerland. At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the Fed extended those arrangements to nine other central banks, including those in Brazil, Mexico and South Korea to ensure that markets could operate normally despite the sudden stop in economic activity.
“The politics of the dollar have really changed since the 1980s and 1990s when there was active intervention,” said economist Steven Kamin, former director of the Fed’s division of international finance. “Central banks recognize what’s really moving currencies are these substantial economic forces.”
Jeff Stein in Bali, Indonesia, contributed to this report | 2022-07-17T10:22:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Soaring dollar starting to help Fed in fight against inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/17/dollar-inflation-global-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/17/dollar-inflation-global-economy/ |
Prices are rising faster than wages, and more Americans than ever are working two full-time jobs simultaneously
People wait in line to receive packages of food during an Alameda County Community Food Bank food giveaway in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday. Record high inflation is forcing many to depend on food banks for basic needs, as grocery prices continue to skyrocket. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
A tight labor market has pushed wages up across the board — but not enough to keep pace with inflation, which hit a 40-year high in June. That’s forcing workers like Elliott to seek second jobs and increase their hours to pay for their normal expenses. The percentage of employed people working multiple jobs in the United States has steadily increased since March 2020 from 4 percent in April 2020 to 4.8 percent in June 2022, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, although it has not returned to its pre-pandemic levels. In February 2020, 5.1 percent of workers in the United States held two or more jobs. While people taking on multiple jobs is typically a sign of a healthy job market where workers have more job opportunities available, it is also a sign of increasing financial strain on Americans’ pocketbooks.
Wages grew faster last year than they had in decades with the biggest gains for low-wage workers in leisure and hospitality who had newfound leverage to negotiate higher pay, quit their jobs and unionize. Hourly average earnings were up 5.1 percent over the past year, according to government data from June. But for most workers, even in the lowest paid sectors where wages are rising fastest, inflation is now wiping out pay increases. Soaring prices meant overall wages fell by 3.6 percent when adjusted for inflation over the past year, the BLS data showed. The June jobs report showed cooling wage growth after months of strong gains, which is sometimes an indicator of an economy headed toward recession.
“There are still people who are getting raises faster than inflation, but they’re not nearly as many as a few months ago,” Bunker said. “People who said ‘my raises are outpacing inflation’ are now saying ‘I’m no longer getting those raises [because of inflation].'”
Anneisha Williams, a 37-year-old single mother in Los Angeles who makes $16.25 an hour as a home care provider, picked up a second job as a drive-through cashier at a Jack in the Box last year to pay her bills. Last month, her landlord raised her rent by $130, to $1,730 a month for a two-bedroom. Now she signs up for extra hours at Jack in the Box any opportunity that she gets.
“I’m going through it right now. I’m on the verge of becoming homeless,” she said. “Sometimes I have to put my phone bill on extension. I put the gas and electric bill on extension. When prices at the 99-cent store are going up, you know something is going on.”
Higher-earning white-collar workers can cut back on fuel costs by finding remote jobs that allow them to avoid commuting or move to cheaper cities. A June Quinnipiac poll found that 52 percent of Americans cut back significantly on how much they drove because of the rise in gas prices. But most workers don’t have that option. And low-wage workers, especially in the hospitality and service industries, are more likely to be required to show up in person to do their jobs and spend heavily on gas. Even in 2021, when the pandemic was forcing more closures than it is now, only 13 percent of private-sector workers in the United States did their jobs from home all of the time, and 78 percent of percent rarely or never worked from home, a BLS survey found. | 2022-07-17T10:22:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Workers are picking up extra jobs just to pay for gas and food - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/17/inflation-wages-extra-jobs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/17/inflation-wages-extra-jobs/ |
Corpse selling and stealing were once integral to medical training
A recent Colorado case highlights both great strides since the 19th century and unresolved issues
Perspective by Christopher D. E. Willoughby
Christopher D.E. Willoughby is visiting assistant professor of history at Pitzer College. He is author of the forthcoming book "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools" and editor of "Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery."
A collection of human skulls and skeletons on display at a 2001 Harvard University exhibition in Cambridge, Mass. (William B. Plowman/AP)
On July 7, a jury found a Colorado funeral home operator guilty of selling the remains of unconsenting clients’ deceased loved ones to medical purchasers. The convicted trafficker, Megan Hess, promised services to grieving families, including cremations, that never happened. Instead, her funeral home opened a side operation called Donor Services, which sold bodies to hospitals and medical schools that were unaware the remains were stolen.
While shocking and seemingly uncommon, this story exemplifies a once-normal practice in U.S. medicine. From the founding of the first U.S. medical school in 1765 into the 20th century, medical faculty and their agents routinely trafficked in stolen human remains to stock their dissecting rooms with cadavers and museums with objects made of human remains.
Before laws regulating the donation of bodies to science, physicians obtained these remains from the socially vulnerable, most often targeting impoverished Black and Native American people. Moreover, some of these remains were even used to “validate” white supremacy by creating hierarchical, race-based skull collections. This practice and its legacies still reverberate today as museums grapple with what to do with such collections and medicine remains buffeted by ingrained racist stereotypes that affect patient care.
Rare contemporary cases such as this serve as a profound reminder that nothing less than dignity in death is at stake in having a highly regulated market for human remains. Likewise, they draw a spotlight to early American medical schools’ legacies of embracing classism, colonialism and enslavement.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, physicians considered dissecting a cadaver an important rite of passage. They argued that having access to cadavers was essential to having medical schools that could compete with European ones. For example, public hospitals in Paris had easy access to cadavers, making them the envy of the transatlantic medical world. Faculty at elite U.S. schools had trained there, too.
They also saw human remains and skeletal casts as essential to effectively teaching and documenting racial science, which argued that there were five separate racial groups — which were perhaps even separate species — distinguished by faulty measurement of crania. White people stood atop the hierarchy.
They stored remains in racial science and general anatomical collections maintained at university museums, collecting thousands of such pieces. These collections existed at schools ranging from Harvard University to the Medical College of South Carolina.
The problem was that the practice of acquiring cadavers aroused considerable public enmity in the United States. In the spring of 1788, violent protests broke out in New York City when it was discovered that students at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons (the precursor to Columbia University’s medical school) had stolen the bodies of working-class Whites for dissection. An editorial writer in New York’s Daily Advertiser tried to assuage the outraged, mostly White crowd by using racist reasoning, claiming that only executed criminals and “productions of Africa” were being dissected. If this were the case, the editorialist asserted, “surely no person can object.” The editorial reflected the tactic that medical schools and their allies adopted to defend such practices: dividing and conquering along racial lines — even though, in reality, they acquired disproportionate amounts of the bodies of the impoverished of all races, not just Black people or the executed.
Privately, anatomists grumbled about how superstition and religion stood in the way of passing laws that created legal routes for schools to obtain cadavers. But the state of public opinion meant the best medical schools could get were secret arrangements with city governments to obtain bodies from the potter’s field, or public cemetery, which housed the bodies of the indigent of all races.
In New York, anatomists and the city had a clandestine arrangement. The city maintained two graveyards, with the remains of the poor without loved ones going in a plot secretly designated for theft. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the mayor arranged, without the public’s knowledge, to give the bodies of the deceased poor to local anatomists. The city even hired security for the potter’s field to ensure that only authorized thieves exhumed the dead.
Sometimes, private cemeteries, seeking financial gain, also routed bodies to medical schools. In 1860, for example, for a price of $7, Harvard’s medical faculty purchased a recently deceased Native American man’s remains from the director of Mount Hope Cemetery. Harvard anatomists saw the Native man’s remains as evidence of innate racial differences and wanted a cast of his skull for their anatomical museum.
Over the 19th century, medical faculty and their political allies slowly convinced the mostly White male voting public of the need for dissection in medical education. In 1831, Massachusetts became the first state to pass an anatomy act that created some legal channels for schools to obtain bodies — even as Harvard continued to also use extralegal routes. In 1883, Pennsylvania passed a similar law.
This regulation of the use and trafficking of human remains has dramatically reduced the nonconsensual use of bodies for scientific purposes. Cases like the funeral home in Colorado are much rarer in the 21st century than they were in the 19th. For their normal operations, medical schools no longer rely on stealing human remains.
That being said, this history still reverberates in 2022, both through the persistence of racial medical stereotypes — some of which are legacies of the racial theories tied to the collection of bodies in the 19th century — and in the extant collections of unreturned and often unethically sourced human remains. Recently, Harvard announced that its various museums contained the remains of more than 20,000 humans, many of which were collected during this period with few regulations. Similarly, the University of Pennsylvania recently made two startling admissions. First, it announced the planned repatriation of the Morton skull collection — more than 1,000 skulls collected in the Antebellum era meant to prove that humanity was divided by race into five species. Second, shock ensued when the remains of children killed in the 1985 MOVE bombing were found in a drawer at the Penn museum.
In short, although medical professionals have made great strides in regulating their use of human remains, the legacies of systematic corpse theft remain unresolved. Likewise, many of the problematic racial ideas these collections reinforced still haunt aspects of medical practice today. | 2022-07-17T10:22:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Corpse selling and stealing were once integral to medical training - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/17/corpse-selling-stealing-were-once-integral-medical-training/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/17/corpse-selling-stealing-were-once-integral-medical-training/ |
The incredible shrinking wall between church and state
As America is becoming more religiously diverse, unaffiliated and secular, the Supreme Court has handed victory after victory to religious petitioners seeking more voice, money and access in the public square
(Lucy Naland/Washington Post illustration; iStock) (Lucy Naland/Washington Post illustration; iStock)
For decades, First Amendment expert Charles Haynes has advised public schools and other groups on how to manage the balance between Americans’ right to religious expression and their right to freedom from government-imposed religion. He literally wrote the book on the topic for the U.S. Department of Education along with partners as diverse as the National Association of Evangelicals and the American Civil Liberties Union.
But in recent weeks, after the Supreme Court ruled for Maine parents looking to use taxpayer dollars for religious school tuition and for a Washington football coach who led students in public prayer, Haynes says he is at a loss for what to tell those he consults.
“What am I supposed to say now? What do I say? ... We’re now at the point where you wonder if there is any Establishment Clause left,” he said of the portion of the First Amendment that bars laws “establishing” religion.
The high court this term sped up a process it has been working at for at least a decade: shrinking the wall of separation between church and state.
At a time when America is becoming more religiously diverse, unaffiliated and secular, major rulings have rewritten decades of precedent and given victory after victory to religious petitioners seeking more voice, money and access in the public square. Many have been conservative Christians who argued they had been unconstitutionally shut out.
With the door opened much wider, the question many experts are asking now is: Has the court ushered in a period of more pluralism for people of all religious faiths and none, or instead codified government power and privilege for those in the majority?
“Is this good for pluralism? On paper, the answer is yes. Practically, no,” said David Callaway, who has trained thousands of teachers and coaches, including across the Bible Belt, through his work for the Religious Freedom Center. “Technically the [Maine school funding] ruling allows more money to go to a Muslim school, too, but if there were enough Muslim families to support a school, that would have been explored. The benefits will mostly go to the majority. It’s a disadvantage for minority faith.”
Justices across the political spectrum from the mid-1900s until the past couple of decades mostly agreed that keeping government officials, institutions and money disentangled from religion protects the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom — including for religious minorities — and helps avoid strife. Critics of that view, mostly religious conservatives, began in the 1980s to push back and slowly to start winning. Those critics — now represented by the court’s majority — say that the earlier understanding discriminated against religious people and organizations. And that recent history is a distortion and that the Constitution’s concern about the “establishment” of religion was about keeping the government from interfering with religious matters, not about limiting religion in public life.
High-profile attacks on the modern order are becoming more common. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch during oral arguments earlier this year in a case about a Christian flag flying over Boston City Hall, wondered about the “so-called separation of church and state.” A little over two weeks ago, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) told a crowd she is “tired of this separation of church and state junk.”
Experts say it’s unclear what will happen next. Among the most-watched questions is whether a flood of religious schools — including those that violate anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people — will seek and secure public funding. The conservative news site Free Beacon wrote that the ruling “may precipitate a historic expansion of public aid to families who favor religious education.”
Other questions include: Will majority justices who in recent decisions said the primary guide in such cases must be “history” continue to open the door to religion in public spaces, including teacher-led Protestant prayer that was common for much of the country’s history (nearly half the country identifies as Protestant). Or will repeated rulings for conservative Christians help them feel less threatened by growing diversity and cool down tensions?
“The big question is what unfolds over the next 10 years,” said Eboo Patel, leader of the Chicago-based Interfaith America, a nonprofit that promotes interfaith cooperation, especially on college campuses.
What could be good about the Washington state ruling and Maine ruling is they speak to a more pluralistic public square when it comes to religious expression. Is it possible that a Christian football coach holding public prayer feels coercive? Yes, and that’s not good. It is also possible that it leads to more diverse expression, too,” Patel said.
Debates about the government-religion relationship, and even what constitutes “religion,” go back to the earliest U.S. colonies.
“Those have been moving targets for a very long time. The law of church and state has not been stable. We have been changing all along,” said Sarah Barringer Gordon, a University of Pennsylvania historian of church-state law.
But contemporary debates picked up around 80 years or so, as the Supreme Court began ruling that constitutional amendments that initially applied only to the federal government also applied to states. The core religion issues center on two clauses in the First Amendment; the Establishment Clause, which bans the government from “establishing” a religion; and the Free Exercise Clause, which protects citizens’ right to practice their religion.
What exactly they mean, how they interact and what limits there should be on either are the variables that have increasingly been reset by the Supreme Court in the past decade or so. The court has been expanding free exercise and reversing cases where lower courts had limited religion, citing establishment violations.
How Supreme Court ruling lays groundwork for religious charter schools
An analysis of religion cases before the court was published a year ago by the journal the Supreme Court Review and found the change has been most dramatic under the leadership era of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which began in 2005.
The analysis by law professors Lee Epstein and Eric A. Posner found that the Roberts Court has ruled in favor of religious organizations more than 81 percent of the time, compared with “about 50 percent for all previous eras since 1953,” the article said.
The article touches on the major concern of the new majority’s critics: religion clauses long meant to protect minorities and ensure religious liberty in America being flipped on their head in recent decades by a segment of the Christian majority who feel threatened.
“In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations. A statistical analysis suggests that this transformation is largely the result of changes in the Court’s personnel,” the analysis reads.
Kim Colby, director of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom at the Christian Legal Society, said a “corrective” has been needed since the 1980s when it comes to Christians.
“Maybe it’s Christians who are bringing the cases, but it can’t be that school districts, as the government, give free passes to some faiths in what they wear and do as far as religion in public schools and then say to Christians: ‘You can’t do that,’ ” she said. Asked if she felt minorities do get to do things the majority doesn’t, she said sometimes school administrators are more loose — possibly wandering into Establishment Clause violations — with minorities while being stricter with Christians: “I think there’s a blind spot from school administrators: They’re less likely to see an Establishment Clause issue with faiths that they consider kind of new.”
The court’s recent rulings and dissents embody disagreement over the meaning of the “separation of church and state” and who is really representing the “history and tradition” of the nation.
The “separation” term is understood to describe the religion clauses, and comes from a letter written by then-President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson also wrote the state statute for religious freedom in Virginia that laid the groundwork for the First Amendment. He and James Madison, who introduced the Bill of Rights, both said state support for any particular religion — or religion in general — violated citizens’ natural rights.
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever ... nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief,” the Virginia statute reads.
“Nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed,” Madison wrote.
Gorsuch and Sotomayor’s extraordinary factual dispute
While the majority points to “history,” experts disagree over which founders to emphasize and how to understand their words.
“Jefferson was an outlier among the founding generation, in terms of his views of traditional religious belief and his understanding of what church-state separation should mean,” Richard Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor who focuses on freedoms of religion and speech, told The Post in an email. “And Madison’s writings about state support for religion accompanied his firm commitment to the free exercise of religion.”
Garnett believes the judicial overhaul in recent years is “part of a correction.”
“The Court in the 1970s and 1980s created an overbroad version of the Establishment Clause’s prohibition. To correct that overbroad version is not to denigrate the Establishment Clause. In my view, that Clause is crucial and vital, and prevents governments from interfering with religious matters,” he wrote. People who criticize the court as weakening the Establishment Clause “are mistakenly assuming, as the baseline, an inflated version of the Establishment Clause.”
To Garnett, a friend and former colleague of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the new spate of rulings doesn’t challenge “the fundamental idea that our Constitution protects religious freedom by keeping governments secular” or “represent a retreat from, the principle that, under our Constitution, ‘church’ and ‘state’ are separate.”
“The Kennedy case rejects the idea that the ‘strict separation’ version of secularism that the Court during the late-middle 20th century ... should trump longstanding practices,” he wrote.
Other experts worry that the rulings are unleashing chaos.
Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said her group gets a lot more questions these days about what is legal, and that the nature of the two recent rulings will lead to what she sees as additional confusion.
In the case of the coach, she said the law for decades has been “settled” and clear that teachers and students aren’t equal in terms of how their personal religious freedom plays out in a school context: Students, who are required to be there, can be coerced and pressured; and teachers represent governmental authority.
“Here, the court seems singularly focused on the coach’s claim,” she said, disregarding impacts on students.
The clear majority of Americans support the separation of church and state, public opinion surveys show. What they mean by that varies, and strongly correlates to political party and stated religiosity.
In polling this fall, the Pew Research Center found that 19 percent of Americans said the federal government should stop enforcing that separation, compared with about 30 percent of “highly religious Christians” Twenty-seven percent of those who identify or lean Republican said the government should stop enforcing church-state separation, twice the percent of Democrat and Democrat-leaners who did.
Dozens of minority and Christian faith groups signed a brief to the court protesting the coach’s prayer in Washington, saying that “allowing the football coach to lead the team in prayers at football games undermines the freedom of conscience of student athletes — who may wish to refrain from joining the prayer but who may feel overwhelming pressure to please their coach,” and highlighted the particular experience of religious minority youth.
Critics of the court’s recent shift say it’s not the ideal of pluralistic expression that concerns them but, rather, the reality of a majority with new legal dominance.
The Supreme Court majority characterized the coach’s prayers much differently than those who dissented. The majority focused only on a few of Joseph Kennedy’s prayers in October 2015, that didn’t include his players, just before he was suspended. They said all that mattered were the incidents specifically cited by the school district, and didn’t find relevant the previous seven years of prayers, which included the majority of his own players as well as sometimes players from other teams, adults and media.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor included photos of those midfield in her dissent.
The Supreme Court didn’t find that school officials are allowed to lead student in prayer. Instead, it found that Kennedy was technically off the clock — despite still being in uniform, on the 50-yard lane, with his players in uniform — so he wasn’t “acting within the scope of his duties as coach.” It called his prayers “private,” “personal” and “quiet.”
Just because prayers were public and players from varying teams joined in, Garnett said, doesn’t mean Kennedy was representing the government or anything official.
It’s this narrowing of relevant facts that some find very worrisome — and intentional.
“I think you first have to recognize there is no legal reason for the court to have taken this case. That decision is part of this newly constituted court’s endeavor to rewrite major areas of constitutional law — and especially defanging the Establishment Clause, making it mean less,” Hollman said.
Monica Miller, legal director at the American Humanist Association, said her group has seen an increase in complaints but a decrease in an ability to act on them because of an influx of judges who are less likely to see church-state violations.
“All secular organizations are being very cautious with which cases we bring. I wouldn’t bring the same cases I brought 10 years ago,” she said.
Andrew Seidel, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the kinds of religion cases that courts are taking have flipped, from those in earlier decades, which mostly concerned religious minorities, to cases today centered around “mainstream Christians.”
“America invented the separation of church and state. No other nation has sought to protect citizens’ ability to think freely, and we should be proud of that fact,” he said, noting the Constitution mentions no deity and bans any religious test for office. “We need a national recommitment to the separation of church and state.”
Amber Kost, a teacher and atheist from Bremerton, Wash., has a son who began high school the year Kennedy left. A nonbeliever, he didn’t feel comfortable discussing his beliefs with people outside the house, she said.
To her, the Supreme Court majority saying they would look to “history,” is “like opening up their ability to decide how they want the case to go and just ignore facts that are in their way, and that’s kind of terrifying. This opens the door for the majority faith to recruit in schools. ... I’m just beat up right now, people are genuinely so deflated. It feels like we’ve been swimming backwards.” | 2022-07-17T10:22:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court cases of Maine school and Washington coach shrink church-state separation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/17/supreme-court-church-state-religion-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/17/supreme-court-church-state-religion-coach/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Russia set to renew ground assaults, analy...
Flames at the site of a plane crash a few miles from Kavala, Greece, on Saturday. (Ilias Kotsireas/AP)
A Ukrainian owned and operated cargo plane said to be carrying defense equipment — including mines — from Serbia crashed near Kavala, Greece, sparking a large-scale operation to secure the site and a swirl of speculation online about where the plane was ultimately headed.
Serbian authorities said the plane, an Antonov An-12BK aircraft owned by the private Ukrainian cargo carrier Meridian, was headed to Bangladesh. It was on its way from Serbia to Jordan, flight records show, when it crashed in northern Greece.
All eight crew members onboard flight MEM3032 were killed in the crash, Meridian CEO Denys Bogdanovych told German news outlet Deutsche Welle. Ukrainian officials confirmed the crew members were all Ukrainian nationals.
The pilot had reported an issue with one of the aircraft’s engines and requested an emergency landing, the Associated Press reported, citing Greece’s civil aviation authority.
Early Sunday, Greek emergency responders planned to secure and clear the site of the crash and investigate the smoke emanating from the burning aircraft to determine its toxicity.
Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said that the plane’s cargo included illuminating mortar mines and training mines, according to Serbia’s public broadcaster RTS.
Videos and photos from residents shared on social media appeared to show the aircraft on fire in the sky before it crashed in a spectacular ball of fire.
Stefanovic on Sunday dismissed the idea that the plane was bringing weapons to Ukraine. He said the plane was transporting 11.5 tons of equipment purchased by Bangladesh from the Serbian defense and armament company Valir.
The aircraft was planning a series of “technical landings” in Amman, Jordan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Ahmedabad, India, before reaching its final destination in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, he added.
Valir could not immediately be reached for a request for comment early Sunday.
Emergency responders were flying drones over the crash site Sunday to determine whether it was safe for dozens of firefighters and experts to go in to extinguish the fires, investigate the contents of the plane and begin clearing debris, which in drone footage appeared to be spread out over a wide area.
Greek public broadcaster ERT reported that a technical team made up of 14 of the Greek military’s nuclear, biological and chemicals experts was being dispatched to Kavala from Megara, in southern Greece, via a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Military mine clearance battalions were also moving to the area Sunday, ERT said.
Emergency responders found localized fires near the crash site, smoke and intense heat, “as well as a white substance of unknown origin,” ERT said, citing the head of the fire brigade, Marios Apostolidis. “However, the measuring instruments did not show anything alarming,” Apostolidis reportedly said.
Authorities previously asked residents to stay inside, keep their doors and windows closed and turn off their air conditioners until those on the ground could confirm what was burning. Apostolidis told ERT that he and his team “felt a burn on the lips and tongue” while near the crash site.
Flight MEM3032 departed Nis, in southern Serbia, at 8:36 p.m. local time Saturday, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking website. Its registered destination was Amman, Jordan. It “was crossing the Aegean Sea when it turned back toward Greece” a little less than an hour later, Flightradar24 said. It crashed west of Kavala at 10:47 p.m. local time.
Aviation authorities in Greece said the pilot alerted them about a problem with one of the plane’s engines. He was told he could land at the airport in Thessaloniki or in Kavala, and he chose Kavala for an emergency landing because it was closer, the Associated Press reported, citing Greek authorities. At 10:47 p.m. local time, the plane sent out its last satellite signal, according to the flight tracking site. | 2022-07-17T10:23:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Official: Ukrainian cargo plane carrying mines crashes near Kavala, Greece - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/17/ukraine-cargo-plane-crash-greece/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/17/ukraine-cargo-plane-crash-greece/ |
Wild boars that roam Rome must be killed, officials say
A family of wild boars flee a fire in Rome's Valle Aurelia park on July 4. (Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images)
ROME — Wild boars have emerged as a force of chaos in Italy’s capital over the past decade, feasting on refuse, disrupting traffic and encroaching on the Vatican.
But their days could be numbered. In recent months, authorities have begun a cull over concern that the boars could spread African swine fever, harmless to humans and pets, but deadly to pigs raised commercially, a sector that supports some 100,000 jobs. Fear of the virus has already prompted several countries, including China, to impose costly import bans on Italian pork.
A government task force created in March set in motion plans to reduce the country’s boar population — estimated in the several millions — by 50 percent, after carcasses infected with African swine fever were found in northwestern Italy earlier this year, followed by more recent cases, including in Rome. Efforts to wipe out the virus could be an uphill battle.
“I don’t see the eradication of the disease as a possibility, unless you bring about a strong reduction of the [boar] population,” says Angelo Ferrari, an expert assigned by the government to address the boar crisis. “The thing is, there’s just too many of them.”
The wild boar population in Europe has spiked sharply in recent decades due to “a combination of factors” including high reproduction rates and lack of large predators, according to studies, and they have increasingly shown up near parks and forested areas in urban centers such as Rome, Berlin and Barcelona. The problem drew worldwide, albeit brief, attention when the singer Shakira said she and her son were accosted by a pair of wild boars in a Barcelona Park in 2021. The creatures grabbed her bag containing her mobile phone and took off into the woods, she said.
The numbers have grown beyond what predators such as wolves could control, Boitani said.
The plan in Rome, according to Ferrari, involves letting the virus make its way through the wild boar population inside a designated “red zone” near the city center, sealed off by special nets and gates. Some trash cans are being modified to keep boars out. More than a dozen traps have already been installed outside of Rome’s Great Ring Junction, the orbital motorway encircling the city, with more to follow.
The task “wouldn’t necessarily require ‘cowboys’ to go prowling trigger-happy around Rome, but surely we’ll need the help of hunters” with licenses,Ferrari said.
In Piedmont, where the virus was detected in early January, authorized “selective hunters” have already put down around 3,500 boars. In Rome, the cull that began in late June is soon set to shift into high gear.
Neither treatment nor vaccine has been found as of yet for the African swine fever, which kills 98 percent of swine infected. Because the virus can survive on surfaces, even in soil, signs have been appearing around Rome’s designated zone, west of the river Tiber, asking park visitors to sanitize their shoes once they leave.
The threat to the Italian pork industry is so dramatic that at the end of May, farmers across the country held protests to call for a government response. If the disease makes its way into hog farms, pigs raised for meat will have to be culled as well. Farmers demonstrating in Rome, wearing boar masks, crouched in imitation of boars, chanting: “The boar needs be stopped!”
In early June, David Granieri, head of the local chapter of the Coldiretti farmers’ association, told The Washington Post that two infected pigs had been found in a small farm within Rome’s city limits. Some 1,200 pigs had to be culled.
Around Rome, Granieri said, there are tens of thousands of pigs at risk. But the more serious threat is that infections could break out on massive pig farms to the north. “Just think of the San Daniele prosciutto and of the prosciutto of Parma,” Granieri said, referring to well-known cured meats. “It would get very serious, very quickly.” So far, more than 14,000 farm pigs have had to be eliminated across Piedmont and Liguria as a precautionary measure.
The spread of African swine fever would jeopardize a sector that brings in more than $20 billion in annual revenue, according to official estimates. “It’s an industry of fundamental import,” says deputy health minister Andrea Costa. For that reason, the government has allotted an initial figure of some 15 million dollars to secure pig farms. “We’re quite worried,” Alessandro Utini, head of the Parma Ham Consortium, which protects the Prosciutto di Parma designation, told The Post.
Import pauses on Italian pork on the part of China, Japan and others have already wrought $20 million worth of damage, the consortium estimates.
Farmers and Italian authorities are concerned that a U.S. pause could come next.
Well before the Italian outbreak, the virus had already begun to spread among pig populations in China and several Northern European countries.
“Killing them should only be a last resort,” says Roberto Vecchio, head of a local anti-hunting league, who argues that the boars should instead be sterilized — which he calls an unnatural but bloodless solution — and carted off to be set free.
Meanwhile, the boars of Rome continue to make the city their own, cooling off in fountains and lounging on sidewalks. A few have attacked people, but in some neighborhoods they are still adopted by local communities and given nicknames. | 2022-07-17T10:23:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | African swine fever: boars that roam Rome must be killed, officials say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/17/wild-boars-rome-italy-african-swine-fever-cull/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/17/wild-boars-rome-italy-african-swine-fever-cull/ |
A vehicle is seen near a part of a bridge that was washed away by flood waters along a river in Qingyang in northwest China’s Gansu province Saturday, July 16, 2022. Flash floods in southwest and northwest China have left at least a dozen dead and put thousands of others in harm’s way, state media reported Sunday. (Chinatopix Via AP) (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | 2022-07-17T10:23:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China floods leave at least 12 dead, thousands evacuated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-floods-leave-at-least-12-dead-thousands-evacuated/2022/07/17/a640e3c8-05af-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-floods-leave-at-least-12-dead-thousands-evacuated/2022/07/17/a640e3c8-05af-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Adrian Perez watches his 6-month-old son get a coronavirus vaccine at Nona Pediatric Center in Orlando on June 24. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP) (Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP)
“We heard that [the vaccine] was coming, and we were super excited. We saw a chance for some normalcy,” said Tampa mom Ashley Comegys, whose 1-year-old and 4-year-old sons are on a waitlist for the vaccines at their pediatrician’s office, which is likely to take about three weeks.
But even that timing is uncertain. After nearly a month, more retail outlets around the state began to offer the vaccines this week, but many parents who want their child’s doctor to give the shot have long waits ahead.
“They told us that because the state didn’t preorder, that put Florida at the end of the line, so we don’t know when it will come in,” Comegys said. “The hypocrisy is infuriating. With DeSantis, it’s all ‘your choice to wear a mask, your choice to get a vaccine.’ But now he’s making that choice for me and my children by making the vaccine so hard to get.”
An estimated 33,000 children in the state get their health care from state-run county health departments, Ladapo said in a statement to the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis. State and county health personnel can’t administer the pediatric vaccine under the state policy, but they can tell parents where they might find them, said Florida Department of Health spokesman Jeremy T. Redfern.
“There is not a high demand, and I want to make sure you are not depicting a narrative where parents are lining up to get kids vaccinated,” Redfern said in an email. “That is factually untrue.”
DeSantis was not always so disapproving of coronavirus vaccines. When the first adult shots first became available in late 2020, he spearheaded a successful effort to get them to the state’s elderly population. But last September, he appointed a new surgeon general, Ladapo, who has played down the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines generally and recommended against vaccinating healthy children younger than 18.
Then in November, as some businesses and governments, including the Biden administration, sought to mandate vaccines, DeSantis signed a law that forbade both vaccine or mask mandates by any public or private entity in the state.
DeSantis, who is seen as a likely 2024 presidential candidate, has garnered nationwide support among Republicans for his “freedom first agenda” in dealing with the pandemic, as well as for his barbed criticisms of President Biden and his chief medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci.
Recently, DeSantis has picked up a talking point popularized by anti-vaccine groups, arguing that close ties between the government and pharmaceutical companies explain the push to vaccinate people against the coronavirus.
“The criticism of the FDA is that they’re basically a subsidiary of Big Pharma,” DeSantis said on July 8. “So they’re acting in ways with the baby vax, the baby jabs, that is something that obviously would cause more of those to be sold.”
Jay Wolfson, an associate dean at the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida who has advised several governors, said DeSantis’s coronavirus vaccine policy “has not been as clear and as useful as it might have been” but noted that many consider the coronavirus to be endemic now.
“That makes it an awful lot more like the flu,” Wolfson said. “For the most part, the state’s policy was not only economically favorable, but health-favorable, as well.”
But a pediatrician who has advised the Florida health department said the state’s messaging on coronavirus vaccines goes against public health standards.
“What we should be doing is trying to get everybody vaccinated,” said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by state officials. “It feels like the Department of Health is being run by a 26-year-old who watches Fox News all day long and then puts out health rules on Twitter.”
Organizations that help serve disadvantaged children say the conflicting messages from state and national leaders have confused parents and led to low demand for the pediatric shots. Many of their parents rely on county health departments for outreach, but because of the prohibition on administering the vaccines, they’re not hearing about it, said Louisa McQueeney, program director for Florida Voices for Health.
That confusion is widespread.
“With all of this misinformation, and the state’s decision not to distribute it through local health departments, there are some families that think it’s actually against the law to get the vaccine for their children,” said Gwynn, the state president of the pediatric society who also runs a mobile health clinic in Miami-Dade County. “I had to have a meeting with my nurses to allay their fears that they would be doing something illegal if they gave the vaccines to young children.”
Even parents who follow the issue closely say the state’s reluctance to facilitate the distribution of the vaccines has caused problems for them.
Dan Keating contributed to this report. | 2022-07-17T11:53:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kids’ coronavirus vaccines are hard to find in Fla. Many blame DeSantis. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/17/pediatric-vaccines-florida-desantis-ladapo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/17/pediatric-vaccines-florida-desantis-ladapo/ |
Getting them returned from an obscure museum outside Boston hasn’t been easy for the descendants of those slain during the 1890 massacre
Peace offerings of tobacco ties adorn the fence at the Wounded Knee Memorial on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Oct. 20, 2014. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
She and a handful of other American Indians looked at pairs of beaded moccasins, a dozen ceremonial pipes, and a few cradleboards, used by women to carry infants on their backs. The items are among as many as 200 artifacts that were stolen from the bodies of the 250 Lakota men, women and children slaughtered by the U.S. Army in 1890 during the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota. They’d ended up in an obscure museum attached to a public library in a rural town 70 miles from Boston.
This was the worst slaughter of Native Americans in U.S. history. Few remember it.
Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, an Army commander during the Indian wars, wrote in an 1891 letter, “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee.”
More on Native American history
Harris is the first female, Black and Asian vice president. But not the first VP of color. | 2022-07-17T11:54:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Native Americans fight for stolen Wounded Knee items from Mass. museum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/17/stolen-wounded-knee-artifacts-native-americans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/17/stolen-wounded-knee-artifacts-native-americans/ |
President Biden walks to board a plane after an Arab summit in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
It was the fist bump that sent shock waves around the world.
On Friday, Biden was photographed — by the Saudis, naturally — engaging in that greeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, popularly known as MBS. This was more than a little awkward, given that U.S. intelligence has concluded that MBS ordered the operation that led to the killing and dismemberment of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden once vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” for carrying out this murder, so the fact that he is now fist-bumping with MBS understandably provokes outrage.
I, too, recoiled at first from that distasteful image. But then I recalled that MBS is hardly the first, or even the worst, despot that U.S. presidents have greeted in similar ways. Harry Truman shook hands with Joseph Stalin, Richard Nixon with Mao Zedong — and both of those dictators had far more blood on their hands than MBS. Columnists can hurl thunderbolts of outrage from on high, but moral purity is a luxury that no leader of a great nation can afford. Every president has to pursue both America’s ideals and its interests — and often they are at odds.
In the case of the Saudis, we simply don’t have the luxury of completely isolating one of the world’s largest oil producers. If the United States won’t support the Saudis, Russia and China will — and they will care far less about human rights than we do. There is a great deal that the Saudis can do to further U.S. interests, from raising oil production (which would help bring down inflation and weaken Russia) to recognizing Israel (which would lessen regional tensions and buttress the alliance against Iran). It is unclear how much Biden got out of his trip, but the effort is worth making — and there are a few welcome signs of progress, such as the Saudis allowing flights from Israel.
In truth, MBS is a more ambivalent figure than the cartoon villain that he is so often made out to be in media coverage. It’s true that he is cruel and repressive. He has created a climate of fear in Saudi Arabia, imprisoned dissidents and accumulated absolute power. But, while illiberal politically, he is liberalizing Saudi society. (I recommend Graeme Wood’s article in the Atlantic on the changes taking place.)
The once-feared religious police have been largely sidelined. Women are allowed to drive, to travel without a male guardian and to live by themselves. Men and women can dine together in restaurants. Tourists are welcome for the first time. Theaters and concerts have been opened.
For those of us who have visited Saudi Arabia in the past and found it to be one of the weirdest and most repressive places on the planet, these reforms are nothing short of revolutionary. For goodness’ sake, a government-sponsored music festival in December had tens of thousands of young Saudis dancing and partying for four days. That would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
What makes MBS such a confounding figure is that, at the same time he is liberalizing Saudi society, he is repressing liberal reformers. The murder of Khashoggi is but the most gruesome manifestation of this vile policy. There is also the notorious case of Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who campaigned for women’s right to drive and go out in public without a male relative. As noted by the Atlantic, the Saudis threw her in jail — where she was allegedly tortured and threatened with execution — after MBS announced the imminent end of both policies in 2018.
MBS is reminiscent of other autocratic reformers, such as Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the shah of Iran, who used their iron grip to modernize traditional Muslim societies. The crown prince’s calculation seems to be that allowing any challenges to his rule could lead to the collapse of a reform movement that is unpopular with many in a conservative society — and he could be right.
There is no easy way to deal with such a complicated figure whose legacy is so mixed. Biden cannot afford to go to the extreme of cynically, uncritically embracing MBS, as then-President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner did. (By an odd coincidence, six months after leaving office, Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a public wealth fund led by none other than MBS.) But nor can Biden simply cut off the Saudis, as human rights campaigners demand.
He is muddling through by meeting with MBS while raising the issue of Khashoggi’s murder. (Whether he actually called out the prince to his face for being responsible, as he claimed, remains unclear.) More broadly, he is making clear that the United States values its alliance with Saudi Arabia but would like it to curb human rights abuses.
That is not very satisfying or sexy, but I don’t have a better alternative. I’m not sure anyone does. Sometimes there simply isn’t a perfect policy, and the best a president can do is try to pursue the least-bad approach. That’s what Biden is doing, and, while it might be morally satisfying to castigate him, I’m inclined to cut him some slack. | 2022-07-17T11:54:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cut Biden some slack. U.S. presidents have to deal with dictators. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/biden-mohammed-bin-salman-president-dictator-saudi-arabia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/biden-mohammed-bin-salman-president-dictator-saudi-arabia/ |
Distinguished pol of the week: He focused on preventing the next potential coup
Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) speaks during a hearing on July 12 for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The House Jan. 6 select committee, thanks to its diligent staff and self-restrained members, has produced a magnificent presentation of the machinations leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. In addition to skillfully edited videos, chilling testimony from Republican witnesses and carefully allocated bombshells, the committee has laid out multiple avenues that could result in prosecution of defeated former president Donald Trump for trying to overthrow the election.
As impressive as the committee’s excavation of the past has been, its work will be for naught unless it persuades Americans to fortify the guardrails of democracy against the next coup plot. On that, committee member Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) has provided a great service by reminding the public that Republicans are still propagating the “big lie” and nominated a raft of election deniers for the midterm elections.
Raskin provided a stirring summation at the end of last Tuesday’s hearing. He noted that Trump, when he invited supporters in a tweet to come to D.C. on Jan. 6 “became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power. He set off an explosive chain reaction among his followers, but no one mobilized more quickly” than the far-right extremist groups that organized to storm the Capitol.
He reminded viewers that the Founders fully anticipated characters such as Trump. “In the very first Federalist Paper,” Raskin recalled, “Alexander Hamilton observed that history teaches that opportunistic politicians who desire to rule at all costs will begin first as demagogues, pandering to the angry and malignant passions of the crowd, but then end up as tyrants, trampling the freedoms and the rights of the people.”
Trump’s conduct, Raskin said, made the Watergate break-in look like a “Cub Scout meeting.” Trump “interrupted the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order, and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people.”
Raskin then provided this essential warning to Americans:
The crucial thing is the next step. What this committee — what all of us — will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. ...
[Trump] threatens to take one of America’s two major political parties with him down the road to authoritarianism. And it is Abraham Lincoln’s party, no less. The political scientists tell us that authoritarian parties have two essential features in common, in history and around the world. They do not accept the results of democratic elections when they lose, and they embrace political violence as legitimate.
He ended with a warning that this is not solely the problem of the Republican Party; rather, “it is the problem of the whole country now.” He concluded: “We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have, and declare that this American carnage ends here and now. In a world of resurgent authoritarianism and racism and antisemitism, let’s all hang tough for American democracy.”
Raskin’s remarks summarize the ultimate purpose of these hearings. It is not simply to prove in the court of public opinion that Trump betrayed the country and tried to steal an election, although that is important. It is not even to allocate responsibility among Trump’s enablers and demonstrate the GOP’s abject irresponsibility, although that is important, too.
No, the single most important task is to make certain Jan. 6 never happens again. That requires structural changes at the federal level, including amendments to the Electoral Count Act. It requires state lawmakers and courts to insulate their own election administration from chicanery. And it requires the defeat of election deniers.
Just as President Biden used intelligence to preempt Russian disinformation about its brutal invasion of Ukraine, the committee must uncover and explain the authoritarian playbook that nearly cost us our democracy.
Voters must prepare for the next authoritarian effort to delegitimize fair and reliable voting procedures. They need to be on the lookout for the next Trump-like figure who seeks to flood the zone with disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories, fanned by social media and right-wing media stooges. They need to guard against politicians who refuse to recognize courts’ final determination and rely on bizarre legal theories to overturn election. And critically, they must never tolerate reckless calls to resort to force.
This coming week, the committee will present information about the 187 minutes that passed on Jan. 6 before Trump answered pleas for help to restore order and what that evidence shows. After that, I hope Raskin will remind Americans that the American experiment will be destroyed if they ever entrust the republic to a dangerous demagogue bent on furthering his own selfish interests at the expense of our democracy.
For his eloquent words, moral leadership and call to “hang tough for American democracy,” we can say well done, Rep. Raskin. | 2022-07-17T11:54:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Thank you, Jamie Raskin, for warning the country about the next potential coup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/jamie-raskin-january-committee-hearing-warning-about-next-potential-coup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/jamie-raskin-january-committee-hearing-warning-about-next-potential-coup/ |
Jim Thorpe, an Olympic track star who went on to play professional football and major-league baseball, in an undated photo. (AP)
David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Post and the author of “Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe,” forthcoming Aug. 9.
More than a century late but better late than never, the Olympic powers-that-be at long last have restored Jim Thorpe to his deserved place in sports history. The records he set and gold medals he won in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics are official now, his alone, 69 years after he died of a heart attack in a trailer home in Southern California, broke and lonely, if not forgotten.
As a member of the Sac and Fox Nation who grew up in the Indian Territory of what would become Oklahoma, and who burst into athletic stardom at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Thorpe endured more than his share of indignities during his life, before and after he earned the title of “greatest athlete in the world” at the Summer Games in Sweden. But the loss of his records and medals was the one that hurt him most, setting Thorpe and his family and supporters on a long and at times seemingly futile quest for simple justice.
There are those who would argue, as his nemesis Avery Brundage and other Olympic officials did for decades, that rules are rules and Thorpe broke amateur regulations by competing for about 30 bucks a month in the summers of 1909 and 1910 as a baseball player for Rocky Mount and Fayetteville in the Eastern Carolina League.
That argument was specious from the beginning on technical grounds, defied common sense and public sentiment, and was surrounded by a series of deceitful and hypocritical actions by powerful men who lied to protect their own reputations.
The rules of the Stockholm Games required that challenges to an athlete’s amateur standing had to be filed with Swedish authorities within 60 days of the end of the Games. The decision by the Amateur Athletic Union and American Olympic Committee to return Thorpe’s medals and trophies and seek rescission of his records came six months later, well beyond the deadline. That alone should have absolved him. But there was so much more to the situation than that.
The decision to erase Thorpe’s brilliance at Stockholm came after the Worcester Telegram “broke” the story on Jan. 21, 1913, by interviewing Charles Clancy, one of his former managers in baseball’s bush leagues who happened to be spending the winter at a relative’s house in Massachusetts.
“Broke” belongs in quotation marks because Thorpe’s seasons in the Eastern Carolina League were never a secret. He played under his own name during an era when hundreds of college athletes were playing pro ball during the summers under aliases. Two years of box scores and game accounts documented Thorpe’s baseball days long before he left for Stockholm.
How could key officials not know this? The evidence indicates that they did know but claimed ignorance and innocence while presenting themselves as Thorpe’s moral superiors. This group included Pop Warner, the football and track and field coach at Carlisle; Moses Friedman, the boarding school’s superintendent; and James E. Sullivan, who led the American delegation to Stockholm and was the key player in the decision to rescind Thorpe’s medals.
Warner’s athletes had been playing summer ball for years before Thorpe and two of his Carlisle teammates headed south. They were lured to Rocky Mount by a scout from Pennsylvania who was a close associate of Warner’s. During the two years that Thorpe was away from school, he met with Warner at least twice, and it requires a willing suspension of disbelief to think they did not discuss what Thorpe was doing, especially since Warner was losing more football games without him in his backfield. (Thorpe was a future first-team All-American, and went on to play professional football and major-league baseball.)
Yet Warner claimed that he knew nothing until the story reached him from Worcester. The letter Thorpe sent to Olympic officials confessing to his sin was in fact ghost-written by Warner as a means of clearing his, not Thorpe’s, involvement.
Documents reveal that Friedman knew what Thorpe was doing from the beginning and tried to talk him out of playing summer baseball, an activity that is recorded on his Carlisle records. Yet Friedman, too, denied foreknowledge.
Sullivan, in charge of determining eligibility for the U.S. Olympic squad, claimed that newspaper reports of Thorpe’s baseball seasons never reached him in New York. He blamed the baseball people in North Carolina who unpatriotically did not “for the honor of their country come forward” beforehand. Perhaps, but Sullivan was also on the Carlisle Athletic Association’s board of advisers and, like Warner, would have had every reason to take an interest in the whereabouts of the school’s star athlete.
In his official letter returning Thorpe’s medals and trophies to the Olympic organizers, Sullivan attributed Thorpe’s actions to the notion that he was “an Indian of limited experience and education in the way of other than his own people.”
It was a disparaging description that misrepresented Thorpe’s life and training but was in keeping with a common misperception of Native Americans that persisted through the centuries. Thorpe himself looked at it differently. “I adopted a fatalistic viewpoint,” he later wrote, “and considered the episode just another event in the red man’s life of ups and downs.”
Down for decades too long. Now, at last, up again. | 2022-07-17T11:54:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | At long last, the Olympic injustice done to Jim Thorpe is corrected - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/olympics-finally-fix-jim-thorpe-wrong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/olympics-finally-fix-jim-thorpe-wrong/ |
A pack of birth control pills. (Hannah Beier/Reuters)
The French company that has asked for permission to sell birth control pills over the counter in the United States says that the timing of its request to the Food and Drug Administration, coming soon after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, is coincidental. That might be, but the court’s decision eliminating the constitutional right to abortion makes more urgent than ever the imperative of easily accessible birth control. As with any drug, the FDA must follow the science. But if over-the-counter birth control makes sense — and for years it has worked safely in other countries — the agency should approve it as soon as possible. | 2022-07-17T11:54:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | FDA should prioritize review of over-the-counter birth control pill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/over-the-counter-birth-control-pill-priority/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/over-the-counter-birth-control-pill-priority/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) speaks during news conference announcing in Richmond on May 19. (Steve Helber/AP)
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) does not support same-sex marriage, but he has blurred the question by saying he accepts it. The Republican blurred it further last week by misstating Virginia law. Mr. Youngkin, though cautious by nature, owes the LGBTQ community greater clarity on his position. He could do even more by lending the weight of his political influence to ensuring that Virginians will continue to be allowed to marry whomever they like, even if the Supreme Court reverses course and rescinds blanket legalization of same-sex marriage.
Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive before running for governor last year, erred last week on CBS’s “Face the Nation” by asserting that Virginia law would still protect same-sex marriage even if the Supreme Court tears up its decision legalizing that right.
In fact, that is not the law in Virginia. To the contrary: a state constitutional amendment, adopted in 2006, enshrines marriage as between a man and a woman. That amendment was rendered defunct by the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015. But it would automatically regain the full force of law if the Supreme Court were to execute an about-face on Obergefell v. Hodges, its decision enshrining same-sex marriage, as it did in overturning Roe v. Wade last month.
That is not likely in the foreseeable future, although some conservatives would like to see it. Still, Mr. Youngkin should have corrected himself; unfortunately, he doubled down on his error.
The governor now has an opportunity to do the right thing, which might also serve his own political interests. He can, and should, endorse aligning Virginia with Supreme Court precedent by repealing the state constitutional amendment that forbids same-sex marriage. He could further press for a new amendment to protect it.
The governor’s staff insists that any talk of the Supreme Court overturning same-sex marriage rights is hypothetical. But LGBTQ activists rightly insist there is reason for concern, citing Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision scrapping abortion rights, which argued that the same rationale should be used to undo Obergefell.
Mr. Youngkin, although he has never supported same-sex marriage, has not contested its validity. To his credit, he made multiple gestures to the LGBTQ community during Pride Month, in June, hosting a private lunch in Richmond with Log Cabin Republicans; meeting with them during a trip to Virginia Beach; and calling on Virginia’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board after bigots disrupted a previous meeting.
When pressed on his position during the campaign last fall, Mr. Youngkin said he does not support same-sex marriage. Still, his purposeful outreach, and explicit acceptance of the right as granted by the Supreme Court, suggests flexibility. Given that a majority of Americans, including Republicans, support same-sex marriage rights, and Mr. Youngkin’s own signals that he is considering running for president, flexibility could serve his interests — and those of many Virginians. By pushing to rescind the state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, he would at once help align Virginia law with Supreme Court precedent, and position himself as favoring what he evidently believed Virginia law already guaranteed: marriage equality. | 2022-07-17T11:54:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin's same-sex marriage misstep could be an opportunity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/youngkin-virginia-same-sex-marriage-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/youngkin-virginia-same-sex-marriage-ban/ |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates has sentenced an American citizen and the former lawyer of Jamal Khashoggi — the dissident Saudi journalist who was killed at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018 — to three years in prison on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. | 2022-07-17T11:55:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UAE sentences former Khashoggi lawyer to 3 years in prison - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/uae-sentences-former-khashoggi-lawyer-to-3-years-in-prison/2022/07/17/99e47f42-05bc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/uae-sentences-former-khashoggi-lawyer-to-3-years-in-prison/2022/07/17/99e47f42-05bc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
British Open live updates Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland share lead entering final round
It’ll be tough to top this as the best shot of the Open
Welcome to the final round of the year’s final major
Rory McIlroy, left, and Viktor Hovland shared a four-shot lead after the third round of the British Open. (Robert Perry/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Rory McIlroy is looking to win his fourth major — but first since 2014 — while Viktor Hovland seeks his first as the 150th British Open concludes with Sunday’s final round on the Old Course at St. Andrews.
McIlroy and Hovland were tied atop the leader board at 16 under par after Saturday. Cameron Smith, who led heading into Saturday’s third round, and Cameron Young were four shots back at 12 under, with Masters champion Scottie Scheffler and Si Woo Kim at 11 under.
Dustin Johnson, who along with Phil Mickelson was the highest-profile player to turn in his PGA Tour membership in favor of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour, struggled at times on Saturday before a birdie at the last ensured him sole possession of seventh place at 10 under.
Follow along for updates and highlights from Sunday’s final round.
McIlroy and Hovland are set to tee off at 9:50 a.m. Eastern time, 10 minutes after Smith and Young. Scheffler and Kim will start their round at 9:30 a.m. NBC will carry coverage of the final pairings, with the fourth round also streaming on Peacock and FuboTV.
McIlroy’s six-under 66 on Saturday was highlighted by an eagle on No. 10, where the 2014 champion sank a chip out of a bunker. “It just came out perfectly,” McIlroy said. “I think it was the first bunker I put in this week. And it was a nice result.”
Overcast skies and light rain were in the forecast for Sunday at St. Andrew’s, with temperatures reaching the upper 70s and winds gusting to 15-20 mph in the afternoon.
Rory McIlroy electrified the St. Andrews crowd — already solidly in his corner — in the third round Saturday by sending a shot out of the bunker straight to the pin for an eagle.
The shot on the par-four 10th hole put him at 15-under and he went on to share the lead with Viktor Hovland at 16-under going into day’s final round.
“[T]hat hole was sort of perched up on a little crown there,” he said, “and I was just trying to get it somewhat close. Anything inside 10 feet I felt was going to be a really good shot. It just came out perfectly. I think it was the first bunker I put in this week. And it was a nice result.”
McIlroy admitted that it took “skill to get it somewhere close, but it was luck that it went in the hole.”
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, the undisputed crowd favorite at St. Andrews, is paired in the final round of the British Open with Norway’s Viktor Hovland (by way of Oklahoma State) with both golfers tied for the lead at 16-under par.
The sun had yet to make an appearance when the first groups teed off, with a gray sky and light rain greeting them.
McIlroy is trying to win his second claret jug and his first major tournament in eight years. Hovland, a friend of McIlroy’s from their Ryder Cup experience. is attempting to win his first major and the first for a Norwegian golfer. Four players, including Masters winner Scottie Scheffler, started the day within five shots of the lead. Scheffler is trying to match Nick Faldo as the only golfer to win at Augusta National and St. Andrews in the same year.
McIlroy and Hovland tee off at 9:50 a.m. Eastern time (2:50 p.m. in Scotland). The Camerons — Smith and Young — are four shots back and tee off at 9:40 a.m. Scheffler and Si Woo Kim, both five shots back, take off at 9:30 a.m. Dustin Johnson, one of the golfers who bolted for the LIV, is at 10-under and tees off at 9:20 a.m. He is partnered with Tommy Fleetwood, who is at 9-under.
The final round is being broadcast on NBC and it marks the last men’s major championship round for the next 263 days. | 2022-07-17T13:16:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Open Championship final round: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/british-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/british-open/ |
Analysis by Noah Feldman | Bloomberg
Something surprising is missing from the conservative opinions the Supreme Court issued at the end of its recent term on abortion, religion and gun rights: originalism.
The court’s new majority did not decide these era-defining cases using the idea, associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia and invoked by many of the current justices in confirmation hearings, articles and other forums, that it should apply the Constitution by asking what its words meant to the people who ratified it. Instead, the conservative majority applied what it described in several key opinions as a series of “historical” tests concerning the way the American and English legal traditions approached the issues under review.
In explaining why it overturned its 1973 abortion-rights precedent in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court asked whether the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade was “rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.”
In abandoning a three-pronged balancing test that the court has used since 1971 in religious freedom cases, the court ruled in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a high school football coach could pray on the field without violating the constitutional prohibition against government establishment of religion. It said the correct way to determine whether government action violates the establishment clause is “reference to historical practices and understandings.”
In the gun-rights case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court said that just as “we use history to determine which modern ‘arms’ are protected by the Second Amendment, so too does history guide our consideration of modern regulations that were unimaginable at the founding.”
None of these historical tests asks what the people who ratified the Constitution thought it meant, the question at the heart of originalism. At the moment of its greatest triumph, the would-be originalist majority betrayed originalism, turning instead to an analytic method with roots in Germany that is far from the mainstream of American jurisprudence.
Historicism Triumphant
The difference between originalism and the court’s new historicism may seem subtle, but it is all-important both in theory and practice.
Originalism arose to limit and constrain judges interpreting the Constitution by making sure they would apply only the law as it was originally intended. Using originalism is meant to curb judicial overreach by making judges into neutral, objective decision-makers who only have to answer the question of what the words of the Constitution originally meant.
Historicism, in contrast, makes judges into historians. The historicist tests devised and applied by the conservative majority require, first, sifting through conflicting and complex historical material dating back centuries before constitutional ratification and, sometimes, centuries after. Then, from these materials, the judges are supposed to derive conclusions about abstractions like “tradition,” “practices and understandings,” and the application of analogy to “unimaginable” present realities.
The upshot is an activity familiar to historians: the interpretation of the historical record. But historians don’t consider themselves neutral. Historical interpretation is opinionated and subjective. The facts of history may be true or false; the interpretation of those facts is neither.
In theory, judicial historicism does not achieve the goal of originalism. In practice, it requires judges to pick and choose the facts they like to support the interpretation they prefer. Seen both ways, the court’s historicism betrays originalism.
Dobbs provides the simplest example.
The question before the court was whether the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protects abortion rights, as Roe v. Wade held. That clause says that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
Yet the Dobbs opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, did not ask whether the people who ratified the 14th Amendment intended its words to include or exclude abortion rights — which is what the originalist question would have been. Had it done so, it would have had to question the doctrine under which the due process clause has been held to incorporate rights not found expressly in the Bill of Rights — a doctrine that underpins rights like educating children as parents see fit and access to contraception, as well as many more.
Instead, Alito accepted the judge-made doctrine, not grounded in the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, according to which the due process clause contains rights “rooted” in American “history and tradition.” Then it went on to peer far into the mists of time to ascertain whether abortion rights were so rooted.
By way of comparison, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate, concurring opinion explaining his view that the due process clause does not incorporate any of the Bill of Rights. That is why he went on to say that the court should revisit other due process rights like contraception and the right to gay sex. His concurrence, joined by no other justice, took a genuinely originalist position.
The search for historical tradition did not lead the Dobbs majority to look directly at what people meant by liberty or due process of law when they ratified the 14th Amendment, as originalism would have dictated. It led the court back to the history of the English common law — all the way back to the 1200s. The sources and authorities that the court followed forward from there were discussing whether abortion was a crime under the common law. As it turns out, it was — provided it occurred after “quickening,” which the court defined as “the first felt movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy.”
Now the fact that abortion was once a common-law crime after quickening also demonstrates that abortion was not a common-law crime before quickening. So if the goal is to ascertain the existence of a tradition, the common-law materials could be interpreted to mean that there was a long-standing tradition that abortion was permitted by the common law until the 16th or 18th weeks of pregnancy. The conservative justices did not want to interpret the tradition that way, so they said that the common-law materials did not prove that the common law thought of pre-quickening abortion as a “right.”
Both are defensible ways to interpret the materials, and that’s precisely the point. There is no objective, neutral method of deriving a “tradition” from the common-law history of abortion regulation. There are just different interpretations of how the historical materials should be understood to contribute to the presence or absence of a tradition.
The Supreme Court in Dobbs was not even pretending to follow originalism. It was using a different interpretive approach, historicism, first described systematically by the German legal theorist Friedrich Carl von Savigny in 1814. The point of historicism is to draw on historical legal materials to evolve the law in the “spirit of the nation,” or Volksgeist. This historicism does not constrain judges nor make them neutral or objective. It empowers them to interpret history to make law in line with their own ideas about tradition.
Now consider the two big religion cases the court just decided. In Bremerton, the case about the coach who prayed at the 50 yard line after games, the court rejected its long-standing “Lemon test” used to set the limits of permissible government interference with religious freedom by asking if government restrictions on public religious expression have a secular purpose and secular effects. It also rejected another test that asked if the government was endorsing religion. In their place, the court proffered a test of “historical practices and understandings.”
Yet in doing so, the court notably did not hold that the test of an establishment clause violation was whether those who ratified the First Amendment thought that the conduct would constitute an establishment of religion. The court acknowledged that, according to its case law, the government may not coerce anybody to participate in a religious exercise like prayer. But instead of saying that coercion is prohibited by the original meaning of the First Amendment, the court elliptically said that the ban on religious coercion was “consistent with a historically sensitive understanding of the Establishment Clause.”
The reason the court avoided originalism in interpreting the establishment clause can easily be guessed from the other blockbuster religion case the court decided last term, a case about whether Maine violated the free exercise clause by paying for private-school tuition for kids in far-flung areas, but not for private religious schooling. In that case, Carson v. Makin, the state refused to pay for religious schooling because it wanted to respect the values of the establishment clause.
A faithful originalist interpretation of the establishment clause would show that the people who ratified it understood its language to prohibit both direct religious coercion and the expenditure of tax dollars on religious purposes like teaching the Gospel. (I laid out the evidence for this in a book and articles some years ago. My summary was: no coercion and no money.)
But the conservative majority does not want to bar states from paying for teaching religion in school. To the contrary, in the Carson case the court held that the free exercise clause actually required Maine to pay for religious schooling provided it also paid for nonreligious private school. That clashes with the intent of the framers. So the court instead offered the historical practices and understandings test, which allows it to pick and choose among the historical materials and not be bound by what the people who ratified the First Amendment thought it meant. Once again, originalism was betrayed in favor of a malleable historicism.
Then there is the gun case, New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. The court’s opinion, by Thomas, is the most originalist decision of the recent major cases. The court referred, in passing, to the “public understanding” of the Second Amendment at the time of its adoption. And it mentioned, though it did not resolve, a long-standing problem that faces originalists, namely whether the original meaning that matters for understanding the 14th amendment is the one held by the public in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, or in 1868, when 14th amendment was ratified, thus applying the Bill of Rights to states as well as the federal government.
Yet the Bruen opinion went back to, you guessed it, the 13th century and early English law to review the history of regulations on the carrying of dangerous weapons. It did not ask or answer what those who ratified the Second or 14th amendment thought about carrying concealed handguns — because that question would have been too hard to answer. As the court gamely acknowledged, “Applying constitutional principles to novel modern conditions can be difficult and leave close questions at the margins.”
English Ancestors
The court engaged in its historicist analysis because, it pointed out, the Supreme Court had previously said that the Second Amendment right “was inherited from our English ancestors.” The majority had to go to great lengths to argue that old laws and customs did not mean that New York was allowed to require good cause for people seeking concealed carry of a handgun.
Ultimately, the court said, its analysis was based on analogy to older norms and practices, not on plain, original historical meaning. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that judges are not trained as historians and that there is no reason to expect them to be good at interpreting history. The court replied, “We see no reason why judges frequently tasked with answering these kinds of historical, analogical questions cannot do the same for Second Amendment claims.”
The Bruen case, then, was an exercise in historicist analogy, not genuine originalism. Drawing analogies between historical materials produced over hundreds of years and a contemporary case does not limit or constrain judges. It empowers them to use their interpretive faculties. It demands of them that they deploy the subjective judgment required to interpret history and to make analogical comparisons.
There is nothing wrong with analogy from past practice: that’s what ordinary legal analysis based on precedent is. Judges who practice it acknowledge this and bow to established interpretive disciplines. New rights can be found and interpretations changed, but only by reasoning from past cases and decisions.
For justices like Scalia, who thought the conventional constraints of analogy too loose, originalism was supposed to impose stricter limits on the power of judges to interpret and reinterpret the Constitution.
Now that the conservative majority has won its greatest victories in many years, it emerges that the banner of originalism that the conservative legal movement has long carried was a false flag. The court’s latest decisions have failed to achieve the purposes that originalism was designed to fulfill.
• Scalia’s Ghost Is Haunting Conservative Justices: Noah Feldman
• Originalist Judges Have a Problem With Equality: Cass R. Sunstein
• A Conservative Legal Doctrine for the Age of Trump: Ramesh Ponnuru | 2022-07-17T13:25:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court ‘Originalists’ Are Flying a False Flag - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-court-originalists-are-flying-a-false-flag/2022/07/17/2c02fdcc-05d1-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-court-originalists-are-flying-a-false-flag/2022/07/17/2c02fdcc-05d1-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
This photo released by Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service shows the International Space Station on March 30, 2022, photographed by the crew of a Russian Soyuz MS-19 spaceship after undocking from the station. Scientists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are trying to find new ways to produce huge batches of a type of stem cell that can generate nearly any other type of cell in the body _ and potentially be used to make treatments for many diseases. The cells arrived at the space station on a supply ship, on Saturday, July 16, 2022. (Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service via AP) (Uncredited/Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service) | 2022-07-17T14:56:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High-flying experiment: Do stem cells grow better in space? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/high-flying-experiment-do-stem-cells-grow-better-in-space/2022/07/17/20f562e8-05dc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/high-flying-experiment-do-stem-cells-grow-better-in-space/2022/07/17/20f562e8-05dc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
By Mich Cervantes
The first year of the coronavirus pandemic in the Philippines was characterized by poor government response (ranked worst in the world) that led to months of extended lockdowns that seemed to have no end in sight. Distraught and with plenty of time on my hands, I began to zone in on many of my physical insecurities — most notably the new lines and wrinkles that began to form on my face during my time indoors. I’d aged visibly since I was last seen by most of my peers — a harsh reminder that though much of life stood still, time did not.
In this comic, I process these changes in my appearance, questioning the many phases that accompanied them: body dysmorphia, an obsession with anti-aging skin care, my relationship with beauty as seen on social media and more. | 2022-07-17T14:56:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I tried to fight the reality of aging. Here’s how I made peace instead. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/17/i-tried-fight-reality-aging-heres-how-i-made-peace-instead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/17/i-tried-fight-reality-aging-heres-how-i-made-peace-instead/ |
Republicans’ hasty attacks on women show they were never pro-life
Abortion rights activists rally at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 25. (AJ Mast/AP)
Just when it seemed that forced-birth advocates could not be any more cruel or disdainful of women’s lives, Texas’s Ken Paxton stepped up to confirm this crowd is anything but pro-life. The Post reports that the Republican state attorney general “sued the Biden administration over federal rules that require abortions be provided in medical emergencies to save the life of the mother, even in states with near-total bans.”
Texas Republicans are apparently outraged by the administration’s recent reminder that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, emergency rooms must screen, stabilize and treat patients at risk of death before transferring them to another facility. In the case of pregnancy complications (e.g., preeclampsia, premature rupture of the membranes), an emergency abortion may be recommended to prevent serious permanent injury or death. How could any public official who claims to be “pro-life” seek to impede such a lifesaving intervention?
As White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday, “This is yet another example of an extreme and radical Republican elected official. It is unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving life-saving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under U.S. law.”
Perhaps “unthinkable” is the wrong word. Defenders of women’s fundamental right to access abortion have long argued that the forced-birth crowd is not “pro-life.” History and the experiences of other countries show that when abortion is restricted, maternal mortality increases. A truly “pro-life” politician would support birth control, prenatal care, Medicaid extension, child-care subsidies and other government initiatives. By and large, the right-wing abortion cops aren’t in favor of any of that.
Instead, forced birth has always been about controlling women and compelling them to prioritize motherhood above all other roles, regardless of any serious health conditions. No other patient in distress — and certainly no man — would ever expect lifesaving measures to hinge on doctors and hospital lawyers’ agreement on interpretation of a state law seeking to outlaw a necessary medical procedure.
Rochelle Garza, Paxton’s Democratic opponent in Texas’s attorney general race, spoke for many outraged women when she tweeted, “What he’s advocating for is femicide — the intentional killing of women by withholding life-saving care. This lawsuit does not reflect Texans’ values and we will not sit idly by while Paxton turns our state into a morgue.”
Meanwhile, the ongoing ordeal of the 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio forced to travel to Indiana to get an abortion became even more excruciating, thanks to Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. The Republican went on Fox News on Wednesday to say his office is investigating Caitlin Bernard, the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist who provided the abortion. “We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure,” Rokita said. He also repeated baseless claims that Bernard had “a history of failing to report” child abuse cases.
As it turns out, Bernard filed the appropriate report in a timely manner. Her attorney said in a statement, “She has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws, and she has not been disciplined by her employer. We are considering legal action against those who have smeared my client, including Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and know that the facts will all come out in due time.” It sounds like she has a powerful case.
Rokita’s incendiary remarks, not unlike defeated former president Donald Trump’s smear of Georgia election workers, could reasonably have been expected to unleash the right-wing mob on the doctor, either virtually or in person. The reckless attack surely added to the victim’s stress. Public targeting of a rape victim and her doctor likely will deter other victims from coming forward.
The episode is yet another example reflecting the forced-birth movement’s utter disregard for the well-being of women and girls. Rokita, like Paxton, treats them as pawns in a power grab to keep his supporters infuriated and himself in office.
It cannot be said strongly enough: In denying women have any interest in protecting their bodily integrity and intimate decision-making, the right-wing Supreme Court set up millions of women, their families, and their doctors for abuse, disrespect and physical and mental harm.
Indiana’s legislature has been called back into special session on July 25 to consider further restrictions on abortion care. Have Republicans not inflicted enough humiliation, and not endangered enough women, girls and doctors? Oh no, I fear they are only getting started. | 2022-07-17T14:57:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans’ hasty attacks on women show they were never pro-life - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/abortion-texas-paxton-indiana-rape-10-year-old-rokita-republicans-racing-to-prove-not-pro-life/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/abortion-texas-paxton-indiana-rape-10-year-old-rokita-republicans-racing-to-prove-not-pro-life/ |
Northeast enjoying blissfully mild summer as Plains and South bake
The Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast have, thus far, avoided prolonged hot spells
The sky is mostly blue along the Anacostia River in Washington's Navy Yard neighborhood on Monday morning. (Jeannie In D.C.)
As relentless heat roasts the western, central and southern United States, the Northeast has largely escaped the sweltering soup this summer. It joins the Pacific Northwest among the lucky regions with a limited need to run the air-conditioner in recent weeks.
From Virginia to Maine, temperatures have been remarkably normal — or close to average. That’s a major victory for a region that has seen rapid warming from human-caused climate change and endured a siege of scorching summers in recent years.
The relief has been palpable from Richmond to Boston.
Richmond, a city known for its swamplike mugginess, saw its least humid June in a decade, according to Sean Sublette, chief meteorologist for the Richmond-Times Dispatch. As dry air sheds heat more quickly than moist air at night, the city also registered its coolest low temperatures in June since 2012.
Washington has likewise missed out on its typical share of scorching days and saunalike nights. On Independence Day, the dew point — a measure of humidity — dropped to 49 degrees, a shockingly low value. Average dew points in July are in the upper 60s.
Any dew points under 60 are refreshing in the Mid-Atlantic at this time of year. In late June, they even dipped into the 30s in Washington, which is practically unheard of.
The nation’s capital has yet to see a heat wave this summer, defined as three days in a row with 90-degree weather. It has recorded just 12 90-degree days so far, six fewer than normal. The last summer with this few to date was 2009, and it had only two heat waves, the first not occurring until August.
Readers of the Capital Weather Gang have taken notice of the muted heat and are not complaining:
“This has been the mildest summer I can recall in a long time,” tweeted @NattyBDC.
“I’ve been loving this weather! Last summer seemed relentlessly hot and very little rain in July,” tweeted @uwchelsita.
The number of 90-degree days is also down in New York and Boston.
New York has had seven 90-degrees — a near-normal number, but Boston has seen only two, which is three fewer than typical.
“[S]ince mid May it’s been nothing but great almost every day,” tweeted Eric Fisher, chief meteorologist for Boston television affiliate WBZ.
Someday it won't be gorgeous out again...but not today pic.twitter.com/U29VEaT9O2
— Eric Fisher (@ericfisher) July 13, 2022
While the jet stream has bulged northward over the western and central United States, it has taken a dip in the eastern United States, frequently running through the Mid-Atlantic. That has allowed a somewhat regular stream of dry, cool Canadian air to funnel into the Northeast.
The jet stream has also curled around the Pacific Northwest, which has also seen a relatively mild summer — a welcome break after last year’s historic heat wave.
But for areas south of the jet stream — in the central and southern United States — the heat has been punishing and persistent. Texas has been hit particularly hard.
The nice weather in the Northeast has come at a cost, though. As it has remained north of the storm track, very little precipitation has fallen. Moderate to severe drought has developed from eastern Connecticut through southern Maine.
The Mid-Atlantic, meanwhile, has been in a prime position for heavy rainstorms — situated right along the jet stream’s path. Both Washington and Richmond have been slammed by intense storms in the past several weeks. The Washington region has also seen multiple instances of flooding, as have many locations to its southwest.
While much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have avoided long spells of excessive heat and temperatures have hovered near the recent 30-year average, its temperatures have still been elevated looking over a longer horizon.
In records going back about 125 to 150 years, the average summer temperatures so far in Richmond, Washington, New York and Boston all rank among the top 45 warmest. In other words, this summer’s weather would have been abnormally warm a century ago, even if it’s considered normal now — a testament to the influence of human-caused climate change.
Honeymoon may be ending
Although the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast have managed to avoid an onslaught of heat, computer models are signaling a warming trend in the upcoming week.
Richmond and Washington are forecast to see highs in the 90s, while New York and Boston are near 90.
Rather than taking a dip over the Northeast, the jet stream is predicted to flatten out and jog slightly northward — shifting enough to allow some heat to swell over the region.
As we head into August, it’s not clear whether the jet will shift farther north, causing the Northeast to bake, or whether it will revert to taking a dip.
Even if it heats up some, average temperatures begin to very slowly dip in late July in much of the Northeast. Temperature averages start to decline on July 21 in Washington and on July 26 in Boston. | 2022-07-17T15:44:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Northeast enjoying blissfully mild summer as Plains and South bake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/17/northeast-mild-summer-nice-weather/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/17/northeast-mild-summer-nice-weather/ |
Dennis and Nancy Richards — Den and Nan to friends and family — were married in 1981. In 1991 — around when this photo was taken — Dennis wrote “DEN + NAN 4EVER” on an overpass over I-66 near Manassas. More than 30 years later, the graffiti is still there. (Family photo)
For years, Brian Noyes has been intrigued by the graffiti that stares down at him every time he drives on I-66 between Arlington, where he lives, and Marshall, Va., where he works. BEN + NAN 4EVER, it reads, a promise to the universe, spoken in spray paint.
Or at least that’s what Brian thought it said. After I wrote about this cryptic bit of vandalism last week, I heard from the perpetrator. Dennis Richards pointed out that it’s actually DEN + NAN 4EVER, painted in 1991 to mark the 10th anniversary of his and wife Nancy’s wedding.
So, not the product of a pimply teenager. Den — as he’s known — was 33 when he leaned over the parapet of Route 622/Groveton Road. Or as Den put it: “an old man who knew better.”
Den turns 64 on Monday, the same age as Nan: Nancy Richards, the woman he’s still married to.
“Life throws challenges at you,” Den said on the phone from near Tampa Bay, where the family moved in 2002. I’d asked him the secret to a long marriage. “I was lucky to have someone who shared the challenges with me and was willing to support me and I supported her. … It hasn’t always been easy. You just work through it. If you love each other enough, you’re going to figure it out.”
I asked Nan the same question. How does a marriage last 4EVER?
“I don’t know, honestly,” she said. “It’s just deciding that we want to be together. All you can do is just work hard at it. We’ve really worked hard for a long time.”
The idea to paint the message was born at Napoleon’s, a bar in Warrenton that Den was at with his friend Jeff.
“That’s where the idea was hatched over a pint of Bass ale,” Den said. (He admits it may have been more than a pint.) A few days later, they waited till dark and Den made his move, Jeff keeping watch. (“There was a Prince William County police rifle training range nearby,” Den said.)
He’d chosen that particular spot because Nan drove under the overpass every day to get to her job at Shoppers Food Warehouse in Manassas. When she got home, Den eagerly awaited her response. But Nan hadn’t seen it. And she didn’t for a few days.
Den finally told Nan that a huge flock of birds loitered on the overpass and she should check them out next time she went that way.
“She looked up, then she saw it,” said Den.
“I was so surprised,” said Nan. And, to be honest, she found it sweet.
They’d met in the 1970s, when Nan worked at an auto-parts store and Den worked at an adjacent paint shop. They went on a date but didn’t really connect until a year later, when Den was working at a printer’s in Shirlington with Nan’s cousin. They got married in 1981 and raised two now-grown daughters, Stacy Hamel and Erin Pantaleon. They have five grandchildren.
At first, Den told his children he wasn’t responsible for the graffiti. “He didn’t want to get in trouble,” Erin said. And he didn’t want them to start tagging the town. But when Nan announced, “Yeah, that’s us,” the secret was out.
Once Erin learned the story, she delighted in sharing it with friends. “Whenever we’d see it, it’d be a big deal,” she said.
DEN + NAN 4EVER became so well known among friends and family that it was inevitable that when my column ran — and Brian Noyes posted a link to it on the Facebook page of his Red Truck Bakery — someone would come forward.
“Gosh, I can’t believe it’s still there,” Nan said of the graffiti.
Well, she’s responsible for that. Around 2001, Nan noticed the paint was fading. She dragged Erin over there one night and freshened it up.
I asked Den why he’d wanted to date Nan in the first place.
“At the time, she was very friendly,” he said. “She was really beautiful, she was really nice. She still is, actually.”
Nan?
“I think the initial thing was he was funny,” she said. “He was a good friend. I used to talk to him about fixing him up with other girls. And then he finally asked me out. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll try it.’ Then it worked out.”
And what about people who think spray-painting DEN + NAN 4EVER on an overpass is destruction of public property?
“I would say that I agree with them,” Den said. “But it happened and let’s move on.”
Brian was delighted to learn that Den and Nan are still together.
“I really spent years and years wondering about this,” he said. “Every time I drive under it I think about that. I figured it was young love, long gone.”
No. It’s a 4EVER kind of love.
Friend of Dorothy
And now if the first person to paint “Surrender Dorothy” near the Mormon temple would just come forward. (A reminder: I’m off until Aug. 1.) | 2022-07-17T16:23:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The couple behind graffiti that’s been on I-66 ‘4EVER’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/den-nan-i66-graffiti/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/den-nan-i66-graffiti/ |
‘I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that,’ Sen. Bernie Sanders said
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets President Biden upon his arrival at Al-Salam palace in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia on July 15. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AP)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday criticized President Biden for traveling to Saudi Arabia last week to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the administration continues to face questions about what the trip accomplished.
“I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week,” citing the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi regime who had been a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Five Saudi nationals were given death sentences, later commuted to 20 years, in his murder. A U.S. intelligence report released last year concluded that the crown prince had “approved” the operation.
Biden says he confronted Saudi leader on Khashoggi
Biden had previously vowed to isolate the country as a “pariah,” but in recent months as the price of gas has skyrocketed, he has been under pressure to reengage with Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer. The meeting between the two leaders in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia — which began with a fist bump — was widely criticized as a reversal of Biden’s pledge to make Saudi Arabia accountable for its abuses.
Sanders noted that the administration could have taken other steps to continue to ease oil prices without doing business with Saudi Arabia. He suggested what he called a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies that he said are “ripping off the American people.”
“Look, you got a family that is worth a hundred billion dollars, which questions democracy, which treats women as third-class citizens, which murders and imprisons its opponents,” Sanders said. “I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that.”
Human Rights Watch said it appeared to signal that the crown prince was now “accepted” by the United States. And Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), speaking on CNN on Sunday, took Biden to task for “flying to the Middle East and fist-bumping with murderers and despots.”
Biden said during the trip that he directly confronted the crown prince about the murder and “indicated that I thought he was” personally responsible for it.
In a brief exchange with reporters late Saturday night upon his return, Biden deflected when asked whether he regretted the fist bump, which has drawn political blowback for the image. “Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters?” he said. “I’m happy to answer a question that matters.”
Jared Bernstein, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, speaking Sunday on CNN and Fox News, acknowledged the problematic optics.
“Look, this wasn’t a great thing,” he said on Fox News. “No, I don’t think anyone wanted to see the president of the United States going off and giving a bear hug to an autocrat who is responsible for the murder of a journalist who lived in the United States.”
But he added that Saudi Arabia is important for the country’s strategic positioning in the Middle East as well as a counterweight to Russia’s aggressions and the rise of China.
“I’d rather see a fist bump from the president of United States than a bear hug from Vladimir Putin or from Xi in China, because that’s the alternative,” Bernstein said, calling the meeting between Biden and the crown prince “a necessity.”
Asked if Biden’s visit achieved anything, Bernstein said on CNN: “We saw Saudi Arabia say that it would increase its capacity for oil production, and I refer you to them for more information there.” | 2022-07-17T17:28:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden still plagued by criticism over outcomes of Saudi Arabia visit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/17/biden-saudi-mbs-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/17/biden-saudi-mbs-reaction/ |
Companies are seeking to open old mines and explore in new sensitive regions, amid resistance from Californians who want the Gold Rush to remain part of history
GRASS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 26, 2022: The Idaho-Maryland gold mineÕs Brunswick Industrial Site in Grass Valley, California on April 26, 2022. The proposed reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine has spurred protests by residents.(Max Whittaker for The Washington Post)
GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — Where the Sacramento Valley steepens into the Sierra Nevada, Susan Love found a home with big windows and pine-forest views. It was the house she shared happily with her husband before his death.
There is still a lot of gold in these hills and a lot of money at stake. But across California, a strong environmental ethos and, in many historic places, an economic shift toward tourism are now sharply at odds with the resumption of gold mining, despite its promise of new jobs more than a century and a half after tens of thousands of migrants arrived to strike it rich in this state on the country’s edge.
“It all comes down to our local politicians and I think a lot of it will come down to money,” said Love, a retired preschool teacher. “There are no miners here so where would they all come from, where would they live?”
The timeless treasure making a comeback in the era of cryptocurrency here in the Sierra foothills, the cradle of California’s 19th-century gold rush, reshaped the state’s population and economy, often at the expense of native residents and a fragile environment.
But interest has spread beyond here, as the price of gold skyrockets. Shuttered hard-rock mines and, further south, remote fault lines rich with gold dust have become coveted targets for companies willing to take on community opposition and California’s environmental regulations.
The economics are obvious. When the Rise Gold Corp. bought the Idaho-Maryland Mine in 2017, the average price of gold was $1,260 per ounce. So far this year’s projections suggest the average price will increase to $1,830 an ounce, a 45 percent increase and a record high if those estimates hold.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that $10 billion of gold was mined in the nation last year, much of it from Western states. California estimates that mining — excluding fossil fuels — generates more than a half-billion dollars annually in economic activity, and after bottoming out in the early 2000s, the amount of gold mined here each year has been climbing.
“Gold is used as a hedge against economic insecurity, and we’ve certainly seen a lot of that in recent years,” said Elizabeth Holley, an associate professor in the Colorado School of Mines’ department of mining engineering. “And if you consider the time when Idaho-Maryland operated, the methods have matured greatly and today you can mine much more efficiently and at lower grades of ore.”
“The environmental and social impacts are always concerning for a community,” Holley said. “But modern mining is highly regulated and I do think people conflate historic practices with what mining is now.”
“There is no industrial need for gold — it is just a luxury,” said Ralph Silberstein, a 24-year resident here who heads the Community Environmental Advocates Foundation and MineWatch, a group that opposes the Grass Valley project. “Sure there are a lot of old mines around here, but all have a toxic history behind them.”
The mesa is in the middle of nowhere but silent desert, land stretching between the state’s highest peaks and the depths of Death Valley.
“Protect Conglomerate Mesa,” reads a billboard along U.S. Route 395, as it cuts through the closest town of Lone Pine. “Don’t Mine Death Valley’s Doorstep.”
“It all comes down to water, as does everything in the American West,” said Wendy Schneider, executive director of the Friends of the Inyo, a nonprofit seeking to protect Conglomerate Mesa. “And there is none.”
A Canadian company called K2 Gold has proposed a major project to mine Conglomerate Mesa through an open-pit system, which uses a chemical process that in this case involves cyanide leaching through earth to drag out gold. Bald spots along the mesa’s rolling plateau are evidence of the company’s drill tests.
In a statement, the bureau said that “drilling at Conglomerate Mesa raised natural and cultural resource concerns from the public, Tribes, and other agencies. Based on these and other factors, the BLM determined a broader environmental analysis would be required.”
Friends of the Inyo and the local tribes are seeking federal protection for the land. Not only is the area a new haven for the vulnerable Joshua tree, it is also valued as a “dark sky” preserve in a state where light pollution often masks star-filled nights.
“None of this, none of the protections, will make it impossible to mine here,” she said. “That’s why we must focus on the values that Conglomerate Mesa represents.”
There are craft drinks served at the Golden Gate Saloon and, across the street from the allegedly haunted Holbrooke Hotel, a restaurant is set to open called The Little Nugget. From the center of town rises the spire of a 1940s-era movie theater called the Del Oro — “of gold.” The landmark opened in the same decade that the Idaho-Maryland Mine near Susan Love’s home first shut down.
“I’ve never met a single person who wants it,” Kendell Christianson, 69, who in his retirement fixes electronics, said of the mine. “What is the purpose of this? Greed.”
In a sign of how deeply it defines the region’s character, an old mine cart marks the entrance to the county administrative building, where the decision about whether to open the mine will eventually be made. The county could collect as much as $10 million a year in additional property taxes if the mine is developed.
“Mining is part of Nevada County’s legacy and there may still be gold in the ground,” said Brian Foss, the county’s director of planning. “But the community has grown up around these places, and it will be up to the board of supervisors to decide whether this is an appropriate use of this location.”
If it were to reopen now, the mine would be felt as well as seen. While covering far less ground on the surface, the mine could expand to 2,585 acres underground, the limit of the company’s mineral rights, although the prime gold deposits are concentrated in smaller areas. The underground blasting would be conducted in those seams, but would still likely be felt in some nearby homes and buildings above ground.
“If you could put this mine back in production as it was when it closed, it would be one of the top gold mines in the world,” said Ben Mossman, the company’s chief executive, who displays a series of core samples in his office here bearing thick seams of gold. “This is a major mine.”
The company’s goal would be to extract about 1,000 tons of gold-bearing rock a day. Mossman said he expects that annual revenue would exceed $190 million, or about 4 percent of the county’s economy.
“We really don’t know how much gold there is and what the grade will be,” he said. “More work needs to be done. But we have a historic rate of production to go by.”
Mossman said the project would bring more than 300 new jobs into the community, but the company will not be building housing in a market that is very tight. It is one major concern — the stress on an already-tight housing market — held by those who live here. The county’s unemployment rate is 6 percent, higher than the state average of 4.3 percent. “Help Wanted” signs are common sights.
“There used to be a big difference in regulations between California and other states,” Mossman said. “But that has narrowed, as the regulatory burden has increased in other jurisdictions, and made California much more attractive for projects like this.”
Risk and memory
This part of the Sierra foothills is fire country, and the valley that falls away toward the South Yuba River is bone dry. The Idaho-Maryland Mine has raised concerns about water — an unknown number of private-home wells are predicted to run dry because of mining use near the site itself, in addition to the potential chemical spillover from its ponds that could make its way into a highly popular river system.
“We have to ask ourselves if this is the way we want to be using our most precious resource,” said Melinda Booth, executive director of the South Yuba River Citizens League, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of and helps maintain a river that draws nearly a million visitors a year. “I think the community says no.”
In Nevada City, the county seat as close to the mine site as Grass Valley, there is an equally picturesque downtown with saloons and lattes and boutiques. There is also a storefront museum. Its exhibit is called, simply, “Erased.”
The 1848 discovery of gold here overwhelmed the native people — the Nisenan — and a population of roughly 9,000 at the time is now a loose diaspora numbering just under 150 people.
Shelly Covert, who runs the museum, has been seeking restoration of the tribe’s federal status and the land since she was old enough to hear stories about its loss. Her family has helped lead the tribe for generations.
“We don’t really have a voice,” Covert said. “The exhibit is called ‘Erased’ for a reason.”
“It was laying around everywhere,” she said. “It was just kind of useless.”
“The land is just coming back after decades of this, with a lot of hand-holding,” Covert said. “And it always feels un-American to oppose jobs, jobs, jobs. But at what cost?”
Story editing by Cathleen Decker. Photo editing by Karly Domb Sadof and Tristen Rouse. Copy editing by name. Design by Beth Broadwater. | 2022-07-17T17:50:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Environmentalists and residents fight a new California gold rush - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/california-gold-rush-environment-jobs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/california-gold-rush-environment-jobs/ |
President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt and President Biden meet in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16. (Egyptian Presidency Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
President Biden has returned from his four-day trip to the Middle East, during which he stopped in Israel and, much more controversially, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The trip was an effort to shore up U.S. relations with traditional allies in the region, in hopes of heading off growing Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence. But Mr. Biden’s mission inevitably clashed with his past promises to put the Riyadh regime at arm’s length, because of its fomenting of war in Yemen and ugly human rights record. That record includes the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributor, for which U.S. intelligence directly blames Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.
Mr. Biden’s face-to-face meeting with MBS — preceded by a cordial, and ill-advised, televised fist bump — conferred a much-coveted legitimacy on the crown prince. On a visit calculated to secure increases in the Saudi oil supply, this moment crystallized the damaging appearance of trading U.S. human rights principles — indeed the Saudi people’s legitimate aspirations for greater freedom — for help curing the president’s domestic political problems caused by expensive gasoline.
We have long argued that it is counterproductive to do business with Arab dictators, though Mr. Biden is hardly the first president to try. The test of such diplomacy must be what the United States wins in return and how much human rights truth it speaks in the process. In that sense, Mr. Biden deserves some credit for holding a news conference in Saudi Arabia at which he called Khashoggi’s murder “outrageous” and noted that he had told MBS he held him “probably” responsible. (MBS, for his part, made no admission of wrongdoing, according to Mr. Biden. Saudi officials later publicly disputed Mr. Biden’s version of the conversation.)
For the most part, though, Mr. Biden gave more than he got. He made no wider critique of Saudi Arabia’s repressive policies in public; there were no releases of political prisoners or clemency for other regime opponents — including dual U.S. citizens — who have been denied freedom to travel. Instead, Mr. Biden touted an already existing truce in Yemen and modest steps toward better relations with Israel. He seemed to invite deeper U.S.-Saudi ties by announcing a new project to test U.S. 5G technology in the kingdom.
And when it was all over, MBS had made no public commitment to pump more oil. The Saudis are being counted on to influence an OPEC cartel meeting next month to get a few hundred thousand more barrels onto the market, likely with only modest impact on U.S. gas prices.
Mr. Biden additionally met with President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt, a dictator who has jailed thousands of political opponents. After that photo op, the White House issued a statement backing Egypt’s financing requests at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — and promising only “a constructive dialogue on human rights.”
A presidency that began with bold talk of a new, human-rights-centered approach to the Arab world has reverted to a policy not much less indulgent of dictators than those of previous administrations, including that of President Donald Trump. This was a low moment for Mr. Biden, and one that he won’t soon live down. | 2022-07-17T17:59:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In the Middle East, Biden’s policy bumps into U.S. principles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/middle-east-bidens-policy-bumps-into-us-principles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/middle-east-bidens-policy-bumps-into-us-principles/ |
The move comes amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation and a renewed political battle over transgender rights
A protester waves a transgender flag during a demonstration against a private talk by the Women's Liberation Front at the central branch of the Seattle Public Library in Seattle on Feb. 1, 2020. Critics say the group is anti-transgender people. (Lindsey Wasson for The Washington Post)
The move comes amid a wave of measures by conservatives to curtail LGBTQ rights that have alarmed progressive activists as the battle over transgender rights moves to the political forefront.
The states in question have argued that the directives would have put them at risk of losing significant federal funding because of their existing laws.
“Defendants’ guidance directly interferes with and threatens Plaintiff States’ ability to continue enforcing their state laws,” U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee wrote in his ruling.
“Their sovereign power to enforce their own legal code is hampered by the issuance of Defendants’ guidance and they face substantial pressure to change their state laws as a result,” he added.
The states represented by the attorneys general are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia. All of those states have legislatures controlled by Republicans, except Alaska, where an interparty coalition runs the House of Representatives.
The administration guidance, issued by the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), followed a Supreme Court ruling in 2020 that said a civil rights provision called Title VII, which prohibits job discrimination because of sex, among other categories, includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Education Department’s guidance from June 2021 said such discrimination would be treated as a violation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law barring sex discrimination in education, and could result in sanctions for schools, colleges and universities. That month, the EEOC explained in its own guidance what would constitute LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace and how members of the public can file a complaint.
Last month, on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the administration proposed sweeping changes to the law that would bar educational institutions from discriminating against transgender students and amend guidance on how the institutions handle claims of sexual assault and harassment. The Education Department must finalize this rule before it can enforce these protections, and the comment period for the rule runs through September.
Atchley wrote that the injunction will remain in place “pending the final resolution of this matter,” or until further orders are given from the district court or higher courts.
Sweeping Title IX changes would shield trans students, abuse survivors
The Biden administration, in extending federal protections for LGBTQ students, exercised an authority that “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people,” according to the attorneys general who filed the lawsuit.
“Defendants would be allowed to use the ‘fear of future sanctions’ to force ‘immediate compliance’ with the challenged guidance,” Atchley wrote, which he said would cause the states in question “significant hardship.”
He agreed with the state attorneys general that the Education Department, in a West Virginia lawsuit, has attempted to enforce its guidance by filing a statement of interest claiming Title IX prohibits the state from preventing transgender girls from participating in girls’ athletics.
According to a CNN analysis of ACLU data, 2022 marks a record-breaking year for laws targeting LGBTQ Americans. Through July of this year, at least 162 bills have been introduced across 35 states targeting LGTBQ people — more than double the number considered in 2020 and higher than the 151 bills considered in 2021, CNN said. A majority of those bills target transgender and nonbinary people, including around the issues of bathroom use, athletics participation, school curriculums and identification documents.
Earlier this month, more laws went into effect in Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah restricting the athletic endeavors in which transgender students can participate. In July, an Alabama law limiting discussions of LGBTQ-related issues in schools and preventing transgender students from using bathrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity also took effect.
The lawmakers who introduced these measures argued that they are meant to protect children, promote fairness in sports and other areas, and, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said, push back on “woke gender ideology.”
Progressive activists have decried the laws, which they say are a means to erasing LGBTQ people and communities from America’s cultural narrative. During a nationwide mental health crisis in schools, the problem is particularly salient, they say, increasing the risk of social isolation, depression and suicides among LGBTQ students.
Some clinicians stress mental health care for kids questioning their gender | 2022-07-17T18:16:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge temporarily blocks Biden administration’s LGBTQ protections at work, schools - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/17/biden-transgender-lgbtq-schools-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/17/biden-transgender-lgbtq-schools-work/ |
Flowers and other items outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on June 21. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
Nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers were at the scene that day, including 91 state troopers — none of whom took the initiative to lead the response, the Texas House investigative report said. The school district police chief, Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, wrote its active shooter response plan and assigned himself as incident commander, but did not follow the protocol he had set up, the report said.
“Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies — many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police — quickly arrived on the scene,” the report says. “Those other responders, who also had training on active shooter response and the interrelation of law enforcement agencies, could have helped to address the unfolding chaos. Yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative.”
Led by state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R), the House committee interviewed three dozen people and reviewed hours of audiovisual evidence, deposing everyone from Mayor Don McLaughlin to the 911 dispatcher, the school custodian and Arredondo. Some initially resisted interview requests, including Uvalde police officers and Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco, but after some negotiation, they all relented.
The committee, which also included former Texas Supreme Court justice Eva Guzman (R) and El Paso state Rep. Joe Moody (D), worked through several media leaks and damning disclosures by the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety director, Steven C. McCraw. All of the interviews were held behind closed doors as the committee stepped gingerly around an ongoing criminal investigations by the Texas Rangers, the FBI and Uvalde District Attorney Christina Busbee.
A grisly checklist and a sickening rampage: Inside the Uvalde massacre
But none of the details released before Sunday did much to assuage the devastation of the survivors, some of whom had sought to rescue their children on May 24 — only to be impeded by law enforcement. | 2022-07-17T19:30:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde school shooting report blames all agencies for failures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/uvalde-school-shooting-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/uvalde-school-shooting-report/ |
FILE - Cast member Jennifer Lopez, right, and Ben Affleck attend a photo call for a special screening of “Marry Me” at DGA Theater on Feb. 8, 2022, in Los Angeles. The couple have obtained a marriage license in Nevada, according to court records posted Sunday, July 17, 2022. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-07-17T19:30:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck obtain wedding license in Nevada - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-obtain-wedding-license-in-nevada/2022/07/17/af29171c-0604-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-obtain-wedding-license-in-nevada/2022/07/17/af29171c-0604-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Why we’re not reading the news
Kudos for publishing “I’m a journalist who stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or our product?,” Amanda Ripley’s July 12 Tuesday Opinion essay on what ought to be incorporated in the reporting of the news by the Fourth Estate.
There must be an aspect of hope — a sense of possibility incorporated in the news. There must be a sense of agency — that something, even something small, can be done about a problem. There must be a recognition of human dignity — without that recognition, it is hard to understand why people do what they do.
Ms. Ripley suggested that in the coming election cycle, the Fourth Estate should “send a search party for the 42 percent of Americans who are avoiding the news” because it lacks these qualities. I suggest that her excellent idea should be extended to the nature of political speech that is missing from 100 percent of our current crop of politicians.
Alex Netchvolodoff, Washington | 2022-07-17T19:31:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why we’re not reading the news - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/why-were-not-reading-news/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/why-were-not-reading-news/ |
Committee has ‘filled in the blanks’ on Trump’s Jan. 6 activities, Kinzinger says
From left, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, (D-Calif.); Rep. Zoe Lofgren, (D-Calif.); Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, (D-Miss.); Vice Chair Liz Cheney, (R-Wyo.); Rep. Adam Kinzinger, (R-Ill.); Rep. Jamie Raskin, (D-Md.); and Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-Va.), during the June 13 hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“An agency that was such a key part of a critical event in our history, one would assume they had done everything possible to preserve those records,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “As far as digital records and text messages, not being an I.T. expert, but I do understand there’s a lot of things that can be done, a lot of forensic analysis and recouping of data.”
Secret Service subpoenaed over deleted texts
Previous hearings have focused on Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department, state officials and his own vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 election; Trump’s own rampage as he was prevented from traveling to the Capitol with his supporters that day; and the ties between the Trump White House and violent extremist groups that were part of the attack. But so far, the committee has publicized little about what Trump was doing during the Capitol riot, after he had returned to the White House.
“If we get information that the American people need to know, we may end up bringing more hearings at that time, too,” Kinzinger said.
Committee members said Sunday that Trump didn’t intervene in the 187 minutes between when he left his “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse that day to when he at last tweeted out a video at 4:17 p.m. telling his supporters to leave the Capitol.
“It’s pretty simple: He was doing nothing to actually stop the riot,” Luria said.
“We will go through pretty much minute by minute during that time frame, from the time he left the stage at the Ellipse, came back to the White House, and really sat in the White House, in the dining room, with his advisers urging him continuously to take action, to take more action,” Luria added.
Luria also referenced the now-infamous tweet sent at 2:24 p.m. that day accusing Vice President Mike Pence of not having “the courage to do what should have been done,” further inflaming the situation.
Asked if Trump’s inaction would constitute a crime, Luria said that Trump should have understood what action looked like in a time of crisis as the nation’s commander in chief.
“He is the only person in the Constitution whose duty is explicitly laid out to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed,” said Luria, a military veteran. “I look at it as a dereliction of duty.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that the committee plans to publish a final report later this year.
“This investigation is very much ongoing. The fact that series of hearings is going to be concluded this Thursday doesn’t mean that our investigation is over,” Lofgren said.
“Frankly, if the president’s supporters had not engaged in frivolous litigation for months on end, we would be farther along than we are,” Lofgren said.
Kinzinger also once again defended Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, who testified last month that she was told Trump lunged at his Secret Service detail in anger while inside the presidential limousine because they wouldn’t drive him to the Capitol.
“We have every reason to believe that what Cassidy Hutchinson said, at least from what she said she heard, because she wasn’t in the limo — never said she was,” Kinzinger said. “She was told this. We fully believe that she is a credible witness and her allegations are quite explosive.” | 2022-07-17T20:14:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 committee has 'filled in the blanks' on Donald Trump's activities during Capitol attack, Rep. Adam Kinzinger says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/17/jan6-trump-kinzinger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/17/jan6-trump-kinzinger/ |
Raskin endorses Elrich in Montgomery County Executive race
Incumbent Marc Elrich speaks during a public forum for Montgomery County Executive candidates in Silver Spring, Md., on June 29. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)
Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) endorsed Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich in his bid for reelection Saturday with days left in the highly competitive primary contest to lead Maryland’s most populous county.
Raskin, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, stopped by an Elrich campaign event on Saturday afternoon to share his support.
“I’ve known Marc for most of my life. He’s always the same Marc,” Raskin said. “You know what you’re going to get with Marc Elrich. We can count on him.”
The Democratic primary winner traditionally clinches general election victory in the deep-blue county. Fresh polls from Data for Progress, a liberal policy and polling organization, show Elrich neck-and-neck with businessman David Blair, who came within 77 votes of defeating Elrich in 2018. Term-limited County Council member Hans Riemer and Peter James, the chief executive of a robotics company, also are vying to unseat Elrich.
Elrich has taken hits from his competitors on issues ranging from zoning to affordable housing across dozens of community forums this year. And at least two Super PACs have popped up to influence the race — one to specifically drive votes away from Elrich, and another, financially backed by real estate and development groups, to support Blair.
The tenor of the race and surging spending drew criticism last week from a coalition including the Black Ministers Conference of Montgomery County and Progressive Maryland, which held a news conference in Silver Spring on Thursday morning.
“Do not believe everything you receive in the mailbox, on the TV screen,” said Larry Stafford, executive director of Progressive Maryland. “Do your research.”
Council member Will Jawando added: “Montgomery County is not for sale.”
Despite the heightened interest from politicos and power brokers, early voting turnout was light, with just over 24,700 people — about 3.7 percent of eligible Montgomery County voters — casting ballots in person, officials said.
An additional 19,424 people returned mail-in ballots, according to the state board of elections. In 2018, more than 36,000 voters turned out in-person during the primary’s early voting period, but only 10,610 voted absentee during the entire race.
Raskin, who lives in Takoma Park along with Elrich, commended the county executive’s leadership especially during the pandemic, saying “we owe you a debt of gratitude, Marc, getting us through that in such a powerful way.” | 2022-07-17T20:57:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Raskin endorses Elrich with days remaining until the Democratic primary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/raskin-endorses-elrich-montgomery-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/raskin-endorses-elrich-montgomery-county/ |
Affleck and Lopez got a Las Vegas marriage license, court records show
Reports emerged Sunday that a marriage license was issued Saturday to the couple, with an added twist on her name: Jennifer Affleck
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez attend a screening of “Marry Me” in February. The couple have obtained a marriage license in Nevada, according to court records posted on July 17. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From Bennifer to Benniforever?
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck appear to have gotten married Saturday in Las Vegas, according to several news outlets and a marriage license that appears in a Clark County, Nev., public records search bearing the names Benjamin Geza Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.
That information was good enough for TMZ, People magazine and other entertainment news outlets to giddily break the news Sunday afternoon of marriage for the famous duo, who announced their engagement in April. TMZ and People claim to have copies of the marriage license, and a person close to the couple confirmed the marriage to TMZ. People also reported confirmation of the marriage from an “insider,” who said of the ceremony: “It was super, super small. [Jennifer’s] mom and kids were there. They just wanted to be married so they got married.”
More details were not immediately available. When asked about the reports, a publicist for Affleck told The Washington Post on Sunday, “I have just been reading the reports like everyone else.”
But the legal union has been a long time coming. The pair originally met in the early 2000s on the set of “Gigli,” which, for film critics, was essentially a movie version of clay pigeons. They soon became engaged. While the movie became a box-office punchline, “Bennifer” became a cultural phenomenon. People were obsessed — and heartbroken when they canceled their 2003 wedding.
The couple rekindled their romance in 2021 as divorced parents, to the world’s continued fascination. Lopez, 52, has been married three times — to Ojani Noa, Cris Judd and Marc Anthony, and has 14-year-old twins; Affleck, 49, was married to actress Jennifer Garner, whom he divorced in 2018. They have three children.
When the couple got back together, The Post’s Emily Yahr wrote of the feelings it stirred up in longtime fans: “Looking back, the cultural phenomenon that was ‘Bennifer’ really did feel like an all-consuming, inescapable storm. The couple could barely go anywhere without being photographed. The lead-up to their ultimately canceled 2003 wedding was described by one news outlet as ‘a week of media frenzy worthy of D-Day.’ As actress Mindy Kaling — who parodied Affleck in her breakout stage production — reminisced in her first book, ‘Bennifer was so big it was as though two people had never been in love before, and they had discovered it.’ ”
So imagine everyone’s delight when Bennifer reemerged from the gloaming after Lopez split with fiance Alex Rodriguez. Lopez announced the (re)engagement in her newsletter and described Affleck’s proposal.
“Did you ever imagine your biggest dream could come true?” she wrote, according to People. “Saturday night while at my favorite place on earth (in the bubble bath), my beautiful love got on one knee and proposed. I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that after 20 years this was happening all over again, I was quite literally speechless and he said, ‘is that a yes?’ I said YES of course that’s a YES.”
This go-round, it seems as if the couple went through with it. Second time’s the charm, as Affleck suggested in a Wall Street Journal magazine profile in December. | 2022-07-17T21:32:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Affleck and Lopez got a Las Vegas marriage license, court records show - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/17/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-marriage-license/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/17/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-marriage-license/ |
Two dead in separate D.C. shootings
D.C. police are investigating two homicides that took place in the District on Saturday night.
About 9 p.m., officers responded to a report of a shooting in the 200 block of Adams Street NE, according to police. They found three conscious men suffering from gunshot wounds, police said. They were all transported to a hospital, where one of the men was later pronounced dead. Police identified the deceased victim as as 27-year-old Jaquan Bragg.
A fourth man was located at a local hospital. He and the other two men are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
Officers responding to reports of an unconscious person at the intersection of South Capitol Street SE and Anacostia Drive SE found one man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds, police said. He was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police have not yet released the victim’s identity.
Also Saturday night at the Wharf in Southwest Washington, an off-duty D.C. police officer fatally shot a person who was pointing a gun in the waterfront nightlife area.
D.C. police had reported 113 homicides for this year as of Friday, up 14 percent from this time last year. | 2022-07-17T21:49:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two people killed in D.C. shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/fatal-shootings-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/fatal-shootings-dc/ |
Visual Forensics
Uvalde video shows officers entered classroom 77 minutes after shooting
By Joyce Sohyun Lee
Texas lawmakers released on July 17 hallway video from the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24 in Uvalde, Tex. (Texas House Committee)
Texas lawmakers on Sunday released video showing law enforcement’s delayed response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., that led to the deaths of 19 students and two teachers.
The 76-minute-long video was taken from a fish-eye camera facing a hallway in the west side of the school.
The Washington Post reviewed two versions of the video to produce a timeline of events. The Texas House Committee investigating the shooting removed the audio from the hallway video before releasing it. The committee’s version begins after Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old shooter, enters the building. Last week, the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE, a local television station, obtained the video and released a longer version with sound, showing the shooter’s arrival. The outlets made edits to the video, blurring the face of a child in the hallway and removing the sound of children screaming. Along with the hallway video, the outlets also released footage from the security camera of a funeral home near the school, cellphone video, and audio and video from body cameras. Some families and officials expressed disappointment in that video’s unplanned and early release.
This report focuses on the version with audio.
The footage shows Ramos crashing his truck and captures a woman’s frantic 911 call from inside the school even before Ramos enters the building. Twenty-one seconds after he walks through the doors, Ramos begins shooting in two connected classrooms, continuing even as law enforcement arrives within minutes. He fires rounds on and off over the next 48 minutes. Armed officers from different agencies gather in the hallway with firearms and ballistic shields. but they mill about without breaching the classroom doors.
About an hour after Ramos began the attack, an officer stops to use the hand sanitizer dispenser, rubbing his hands together thoroughly as he walks back to his original position.
About an hour into the attack, an officer stops to use the hand sanitizer dispenser. (Video: Texas House Committee)
Ramos is inside the classrooms for a total of 77 minutes.
Ramos enters classrooms
Surveillance video from the Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home across the street from the school shows Ramos crashing his car in a ditch at 11:28 a.m., then shooting at people who walk up to the crash site. Ramos subsequently walks across the parking lot while firing more than a dozen gunshots, according to The Post’s count.
Around the same time, audio of a 911 call from inside the school captures a woman calling for help as Ramos approaches. “He’s shooting,” she says. “The kids are running.” She then screams at students to “get in your rooms!”
Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old shooter, enters Robb Elementary School at 11:33 a.m. on May 24. (Video: UVALDE CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT VIA AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Video from the fish-eye camera inside the school shows Ramos entering the building at 11:33 a.m. through an unlocked west-side entrance armed with a semiautomatic rifle. He walks unhurriedly down the empty hallway and makes a right. A child rounding the corner spots Ramos and then bolts when Ramos opens fire as he walks into one of the two connected classrooms, 21 seconds after entering the school. In the next two minutes and 30 seconds, Ramos fires at least 80 rounds, according to The Post’s count, in either Room 111 or Room 112 — two adjoining classrooms. While shooting, Ramos steps outside the classrooms briefly and reenters.
A Hellfire trigger system was recovered in the classrooms afterward, according to the Texas lawmakers’ investigative report, but the committee was unable to determine whether it was used. Such a device quickens the pace at which the weapon’s trigger resets, creating a faster rate of fire, said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, a specialist arms investigations firm.
3 minutes: Officers arrive
First responders arrive at the school just minutes after Ramos begins shooting. (Video: UVALDE CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT VIA AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Video from the hallway at 11:36 a.m. shows a group of at least seven law enforcement officers entering the school through the same west-side entrance as Ramos. According to a timeline from Steven C. McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, 11 officers from the Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District were the first to respond, coming through the south and west doors. The group included Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, then chief of the school district police. McCraw said Arredondo was the incident commander, a claim that Arredondo has disputed.
Texas House Rep. Joe Moody (D) identified one of the officers on the west side as Ruben Ruiz, a school district officer whose wife, teacher Eva Mireles, was killed that day.
The hallway video shows Ramos continuing to shoot in the classrooms as two officers run to the classrooms and crouch outside. Ramos fires at them, and they sprint back down the hallway. Both touch their heads and appear to check their hands for blood. One officer says he was hit in the back of his head. According to McCraw, the two suffered grazing wounds from the gunshots.
Over the course of four minutes, McGraw said, the gunman fired more than 100 rounds. During this time, more than 100 rounds are audible in the video.
20 minutes: More gunshots
Over the next 20 minutes, at least seven additional rounds are heard as more officers arrive through the west entrance. At 11:52 a.m., a U.S. Border Patrol agent arrives with a ballistic shield. Others from the county sheriff’s office and state police come as well, identifiable by the insignia on their uniforms. No one approaches the classroom doors.
At 11:53 a.m., emergency medical services are called to a cross street near the school, according to audio reviewed by The Post.
At 11:58 a.m., family members stand in a crowd in front of the school, demanding entry and arguing with police. A uniformed officer shoves a man and yells at people to move back.
Family members argue with officers outside about gaining entrance to the school. (Video: Texas House Committee and Isaias Melendez via Storyful)
Inside, officers stay stationed at the end of the empty hallway, guns pointed toward the classrooms.
30 minutes: ‘They’ve got victims in there’
From 12:03 p.m., students inside the two classrooms with Ramos begin calling 911 repeatedly, according to McCraw. When the first call is made, there are six armed officers visible in the hallway video.
At 12:12 p.m., a girl calls to report multiple people dead inside, McCraw said. While the 911 audio has not been released, an officer is heard in the video referencing the call. “A child just called,” he said. “They’ve got victims in there.”
An officer brings cartons of canisters into the hallway and begins to unload them. (Video: Texas House Committee)
An officer carries into the school two cartons filled with canisters. He begins to unload them. It is unclear what the canisters contain.
McCraw said that around this time, Arredondo was looking for a master key to the classroom doors. “Tell them to f------ wait. No one comes in,” Arredondo is heard saying.
48 minutes: Four more shots
After Ramos fired several shots at 12:21 p.m., officers move down the hallway toward the classrooms. (Video: Texas House Committee)
At 12:21 p.m., 48 minutes after Ramos entered the school, he fires off four more shots. Those are the last shots Ramos is believed to have fired, according to authorities. More than a dozen officers, mostly from the Border Patrol, run down the hallway. Several are wearing gas masks. “They’re making entry,” a voice says. It’s unclear who “they” are and which entry is being referred to.
Fourteen minutes later, at 12:35 p.m., the officers have not entered the classrooms. A voice over the radio instructs them to wait. “Stand by, stand by, we’ve got SWAT on the way.”
A minute later, a student in Room 112 called 911 again, according to McCraw. She was “told to stay on the line and told to stay quiet.”
77 minutes: Officers approach
At 12:50 p.m., more than an hour after Ramos began shooting, officers breach the classrooms. (Video: UVALDE CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT VIA AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN and Hugo Cervantes via Storyful)
The officers breach the classrooms 77 minutes after Ramos began shooting. Twenty-nine minutes have passed since his final shots.
In the minutes before the officers entered, Arredondo said officers were having issues getting into the classrooms, according to McCraw’s timeline. “He’s got an AR-15 and he’s shooting everywhere like crazy,” Arredondo said. Finally, at 12:46 p.m. per the timeline, Arredondo said: “If y’all are ready to do it, you do it. But you should distract him out that window.”
At 12:47 p.m., a sledgehammer is brought into the hallway. A minute later, a voice says “everybody heads up.” Two minutes later, officers move in. The door is not locked, according to McCraw. Continuous gunshots are heard for five seconds. Ramos is fatally shot, according to official accounts. Several officers take a few steps back. One with a ballistic shield appears to tumble backward.
Officers at the end of the hallway begin to rush toward the door, but a man wearing surgical gloves orders them to stand back and make room. The video cuts out just seconds later, but McCraw said that officers began to move children out of the room immediately.
Just two minutes after officers breached the classrooms, anguished family members are seen trying to push past law enforcement officers in order to reach students who are being evacuated in a school bus. Five officers wrestle a man to the ground.
At 1:06 p.m., nearly 100 minutes after Ramos crashed his car into the ditch, Uvalde police announced the shooter was in custody.
Arelis R. Hernández and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report. | 2022-07-17T21:58:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde video shows officers in hallway as gunman fires - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/17/new-uvalde-hallway-video/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/17/new-uvalde-hallway-video/ |
Minnesota Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve voiced her displeasure with the WNBA on Sunday after a number of travel issues disrupted her team's trip to Washington. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Minnesota Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve was less than thrilled with the WNBA after her team faced a wide array of travel issues to get to Washington for Sunday’s 3 p.m. tip-off. Mystics Coach Mike Thibault wasn’t sympathetic.
The Lynx were leaving Indiana after playing the second game of a back-to-back when their flight was canceled. They had already done same-day travel Friday to reach Indianapolis for a 7 p.m. game after playing in Minneapolis on Thursday. Their new flight had mechanical issues that forced them back off the tarmac. The traveling party had to be split, and staff eventually arrived in Washington around 8 p.m. Saturday, with players arriving around midnight.
for starters, we just played a back-to-back…
👉🏽7p game Thurs night in MN
👉🏽left our apts at 5:15A Friday morning for a commercial flight to IN
👉🏽played a 7p game THAT NIGHT
— Natalie Achonwa (@NatAchon) July 16, 2022
Reeve said she called the WNBA to alert it to potential issues early in the day Saturday and never received a response. The eventual response, Reeve explained Sunday, was to help with arranging flights instead of possibly pushing the game time back.
“The greater disappointment was a lack of support that we felt in terms of unresponsive messages to the league,” Reeve said. “From our standpoint, there was no communication with the leadership of the Minnesota Lynx. And so, to me, that’s an epic fail. So was there consideration given? I have no idea. It was leaked to me later on that there was communication to Washington. There wasn’t communication with Minnesota, and I’m not sure how that would happen.”
Thibault said the league contacted the Mystics about moving the time of the game, but because of a near sellout as the team staged Japanese Heritage Day, they decided against a change. Thibault, Washington’s coach and general manager, said every team in the league has to deal with travel issues. WNBA teams do not charter flights and must fly commercial, which is a sore spot for players.
“I’m tired of hearing about it,” Thibault said. “Tired of reading about it on Twitter. It happens to every team, and I get it. Every team would like to come in fully refreshed, but they got here last night. They didn’t play yesterday. And I know it’s a long day, but everybody goes through them. That’s just life. I’d like to feel sorry for them, but I’m sorry — I don’t.”
The WNBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Lynx were particularly frustrated with a brutal stretch of schedule: Sunday was their fourth game in six days.
“I thought we deserve more respect, and I thought I deserve more respect than that,” Reeve said. “We’re not happy. We’re not happy that there was no consideration given to us.”
The Mystics have had plenty of travel problems this season, including having to take a train and a bus to Connecticut after flight issues.
“It’s not like they were arriving this morning,” Thibault said. “I know it was a long day traveling, but we’ve all had them. We really weren’t in a position to really accommodate them unless there was a much more mitigating circumstance than there is right now.” | 2022-07-17T22:24:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Minnesota Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve voices displeasure with WNBA after travel issues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/cheryl-reeve-lynx-travel-issues-mike-thibault-mystics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/cheryl-reeve-lynx-travel-issues-mike-thibault-mystics/ |
The Nationals closed the first half by snapping a nine-game losing streak. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
In a season filled with more negatives than positives, in a month when they had won just once and in a series in which they had lost the first three games, the Washington Nationals’ 7-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves gave them a little something to appreciate at last.
Sunday’s win at Nationals Park was their first since July 6, snapping a nine-game skid. Home runs by Victor Robles and Juan Soto helped give Washington the tiniest boost of momentum. At 31-63 — the worst record in the majors — the Nationals enter the all-star break 27½ games behind the first-place New York Mets and 13½ games back of the fourth-place Miami Marlins in the National League East.
“Hopefully they take something out of his game today going forward,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “And after the break, we come back and continue the momentum. ... There’s still a lot of things we need to clean up to really get better and compete every day and play consistent. We’re going to work on those things a lot, as we’ve been doing.”
Last season, the Nationals were in fourth place, 6½ games behind the first-place Mets, heading into the all-star break. After an active trade deadline included the departure of a pair of franchise icons and returned a dozen prospects, this season brought markedly different expectations. Success would be measured by progress from the young players, no matter how small the improvements or how slowly they come.
Still, before the season, even the most pessimistic fan probably didn’t expect an 8-36 record against NL East foes — or for their team to be 2-14 in July.
“When I look back, a lot of growing pains,” Martinez said.
The Nationals have dealt with several injuries to their rotation, leaving six relievers to cover Sunday’s nine innings. Stephen Strasburg (stress reaction in ribs) and Joe Ross (Tommy John surgery) have combined for one start; Aníbal Sánchez (cervical nerve impingement) finally made his first Thursday. In their place, the Nationals gave a few young pitchers a look, but two of them (Jackson Tetreault and Evan Lee) are injured, and another (Joan Adon) struggled mightily.
At the plate, the Nationals haven’t been consistent: Soto has been hot of late but struggled early, and Josh Bell is the only Nationals player hitting .300. (He’s at .311 after going 1 for 3 on Sunday.) Runs have been hard to come by, especially lately — until the series finale, Washington hadn’t scored more than four runs in a game this month.
So Sunday’s seven runs constituted an outburst. In the second inning, Ehire Adrianza singled in a pair of runners, then Robles hit his second home run of the season, a two-run shot that made it 4-0. After the Braves scored three runs in the fourth, Adrianza provided some cushion with a fielder’s choice to push the lead to 5-3 in the bottom half. Maikel Franco added another run on an RBI single in the sixth before Soto hit a solo homer in the eighth. He finished the first half with 20 home runs and a 26-game on-base streak, his on-base-plus-slugging percentage rising to .902.
“It just shows everybody how good it feels when you win,” Soto said. “I hope they think about it when they’re home and come back with more energy to keep winning games.”
Who pitched for Washington? Erasmo Ramírez started and pitched three scoreless innings, allowing only a weakly hit first-inning single to Dansby Swanson. He gave way to Jordan Weems, who surrendered three runs while recording just one out in the fourth.
Steve Cishek, Carl Edwards Jr., Andres Machado and Kyle Finnegan covered the final 5⅔ innings without allowing a run. Martinez didn’t use right-handed reliever Cory Abbott, who was recalled from Class AAA Rochester to take the place of Hunter Harvey, then optioned back after the game.
Harvey joined Mason Thompson as the second hard-throwing reliever sent to Rochester this week. Martinez said the decision to option both was an opportunity to get them stretched out and throw multiple innings after returning from injuries.
Did Nelson Cruz play? No, he’s still dealing with a tight quad. Martinez called Cruz day-to-day, but he was available to pinch-hit. Martinez said the Nationals didn’t want to rush him back; they’re hopeful he’ll be back to being the everyday designated hitter after the all-star break. Washington opens with three games at Arizona starting Friday.
It has been an up-and-down year for the 42-year-old, whose 48 RBI rank second on the team to Bell’s 50. He’s hitting .242 with eight home runs. Given his experience, he is likely to have suitors before the trade deadline arrives Aug. 2.
Dee Strange-Gordon is back in the organization? He re-signed Sunday on a minor league deal. The 34-year-old utility man made the Opening Day roster and hit .305 in 59 plate appearances before he was designated for assignment June 14. | 2022-07-17T22:24:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals beat Braves to end nine-game losing streak - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/nationals-braves-losing-skid-all-star-break/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/nationals-braves-losing-skid-all-star-break/ |
Woman fatally stabbed in Fairfax County, police say
A woman was fatally stabbed Sunday in a home on the 5200 block of Rolling Road in Springfield, Va., according to Fairfax County police.
The 49-year-old suspect, Jose Hernandez Mejia, was married to the victim, police said. Mejia allegedly contacted a family member Sunday, explaining to them he had just stabbed his wife and asked them to come to the scene, said Lieutenant Dan Spital in a press briefing.
When family members arrived on the scene, Mejia explained what happened inside, handed over some personal belongings to the family members and left in a 2016 black Honda HRV with Virginia plates, Spital said.
Officers were dispatched to the home at 12:13 p.m. Sunday, police said, adding that investigators are standing by for a search warrant to be executed.
Police are actively looking for Mejia, who is considered armed and dangerous. A magistrate has issued a warrant for his arrest on the charge of second-degree murder.
Police are in telephone communication with the suspect and are in negotiations with him to turn himself in, Spital said. Police have not reported any prior domestic-related calls at their home. The suspect and victim had four children, Spital said. | 2022-07-17T22:28:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman fatally stabbed in Fairfax County, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/woman-fatal-stabbing-springfield/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/woman-fatal-stabbing-springfield/ |
After a third-place finish in this year's British Open, Rory McIlroy is still stuck searching for that elusive fifth major championship. (Robert Perry/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
When Rory McIlroy departed the 18th green at St. Andrews, an entire town surrounding him, how could he have possibly prepared his head to hit the pillow? He played the final round of the 150th British Open without a bogey. He played the final round without missing a green in regulation. And he lost to a player who began the day four shots behind him.
That’s nearly irreconcilable. It now appears to be the kind of bafflement that has defined McIlroy’s career. Here’s the reality, so troubling, so static: In the summer of 2014, McIlroy was a carefree 25-year-old raking in both the British Open and the PGA Championship to run his total to four majors — and counting. In the summer of 2022, he is the 33-year-old voice of his sport, a star on both sides of the Atlantic. Total majors: Four.
“I’m knocking on the door,” a shellshocked McIlroy told NBC immediately afterward. He seemed trying to convince himself of just that, and understandably.
Do any of his losses sting more than this one? Sure, he blew a four-shot lead in the final round of the 2011 Masters, memorably shooting 80 on a day characterized by a trip to the cabins to the left of the 10th fairway. But he was all but a different person back then, and his next major was the ultimate bounceback — a romp in the U.S. Open at Congressional, the week that has provided all the promise every time he tees it up.
No, Sunday is the most scarring, and not because he did anything egregiously wrong — though we’ll get to the putter in a minute. Rather, he simply didn’t do enough right. Or maybe that’s not even accurate. Majors should be won because the champion is some combination of robotic and magical. On Sunday at St. Andrews, McIlroy had the C-3PO part down. What he lacked was Houdini.
So, his emotions. They were so raw.
“Ummmmm, phew,” McIlroy said, with a pause that was 36 weeks pregnant, when asked about his emotions coming off 18. “Yeah, just disappointment, I guess.”
For many reasons, not least of which because he was in control of both his game and his emotions. For a player who is often defined either by a strut that would make a peacock seem bashful, or a slump that would make Eeyore seem buoyant, for so much of the weekend, McIlroy was just … playing. And magnificently so.
That was true when he hit the shot that made you think, “Maybe this is finally his week,” a hole-out from a bunker on No. 10 for a third-round eagle Saturday. Yes, he pumped his fist. But when he strode to fetch his ball from the bottom of the cup, he was comparatively subdued. These things are hard to win, and Lord, does he know it. There was more work ahead.
The work on Sunday, which he started tied with playing partner Viktor Hovland — but four clear of everyone else — was so admirable. The missed putts on the outward nine weren’t glaringly bad. He made no mistakes. When Cameron Smith — who, by the way, won this thing by firing an immaculate and immortal final-round 64 — made a birdie at the 11th to climb within one, McIlroy responded with a casual two-putt birdie at the par-4 10th.
There were eight holes to play. His lead was two. He didn’t make a bogey. And he lost by … two?
Digest that, because Rory will surely have a tough time letting the juices turn it to fuel, and take an aside.
Because writing about McIlroy so often involves writing about the state of his sport, a note to those players who have departed for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series: How will you stay sharp between now and the next major, which is the Masters eight months hence? We’ll see you next at Trump National in Bedminster, N.J., at the end of this month, and then twice in September and three times in October. That’s it through the end of the year.
So many of those who departed from the PGA Tour to take the grubby Saudi money offered the feeble and false reasoning that LIV Golf would allow for more freedom in their scheduling. Try again. They can only show up for these 54-hole events that should be under a circus tent when Greg Norman and his cronies offer them, which is infrequently.
For McIlroy and Smith and all the rest of the stars who have pledged to stay with the PGA Tour, there is rhythm and reason to preparing for majors — and it includes the upcoming FedEx Cup playoffs, not to mention the swings through California and Florida to start the calendar year. For the LIV guys — whose highest finishers at the Open were Dustin Johnson, who tied for sixth and was never a threat Sunday, and Bryson DeChambeau, whose final round 66 lifted him to a tie for eighth — there’s … what, exactly?
Svrluga: Rory McIlroy, once a carefree phenom, has grown into the conscience of golf
All of that is clearly of little solace to McIlroy. It said Sunday night, and it will say for eternity, that Smith won the 150th Open because his putter was otherworldly and McIlroy’s was ordinary. But the takeaway isn’t the why. The takeaway is what it means for his legacy. With each of these passing opportunities, his legacy stays stagnant, even as his opinions matter more than they ever did.
“I just need to stay patient and keep knocking on the door,” McIlroy said, “and eventually it’ll open again.”
Maybe. Maybe. Phil Mickelson went eight years between majors five and six — but he was 50 for that last one. Tiger Woods went 11 years between majors 14 and 15 — but he was 43 for the most recent. Jack Nicklaus went six years between majors 17 and 18 — but he was 46 when he extended his own record.
Rory McIlroy has now gone eight years — eight years in his absolute prime, when he has won everything else in his sport — without increasing his major championships total from four to five. Sunday at St. Andrews was crippling to contemplate. The Masters is a long way off. By that point, sleep will have to be restful again, right? | 2022-07-17T23:12:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rory McIlroy comes up short in chase for major at British Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/british-open-rory-mcilroy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/british-open-rory-mcilroy/ |
The Mystics’ Elena Delle Donne led the way with 21 points Sunday. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
The Minnesota Lynx came to Washington as one of the hottest teams in the WNBA. They had won four of five, notching victories against the league’s top two teams.
In that stretch, they were the second-highest-scoring team in the league. On Sunday, they ran into the WNBA’s No. 1 defense.
The Washington Mystics locked up the Lynx en route to a 70-57 victory to improve to 5-2 in their past seven games.
“There’s no reason that we aren’t bringing this type of defensive intensity every single night, especially when on offense we’re still figuring it out,” point guard Natasha Cloud said.
The 57 points were a season low for the Lynx (10-17), who shot 33.3 percent and had 16 turnovers. The Mystics (16-11) scored 17 points off those giveaways.
The Mystics shot just 37.7 percent, but they can survive those kind of outings because of their defense. Elena Delle Donne scored a game-high 21 points to go with 10 rebounds and three assists. Ariel Atkins chipped in 15 points, five rebounds, three steals and two assists. Cloud added seven points, eight assists and six rebounds, and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough had 11 points off the bench.
“It’s been our identity from Day One,” Delle Donne said of the defense. “We’ve added pieces of the puzzle that ... are just so good defensively. Coming off [Thursday’s loss at Phoenix], we were frustrated that our defense struggled. It’s all right if our offense struggles, but our defense should always be consistent and it should always be what makes us go. So to bounce back, to play like this was huge for us.”
Kayla McBride led the Lynx with 16 points; former Mystics player Aerial Powers was held to 11 on 5-for-16 shooting.
“We made them have to take tough shots,” Mystics Coach Mike Thibault said. “We were determined to make every shot contested for them.”
Atkins said a game such as Sunday’s is as important for the team mentally as it is in the standings.
“As much as it’s us telling other people that we can do it, I think it’s more so for ourselves, telling us that we do know how to regroup,” Atkins said. “We do know how to come back, lock in on certain things and get the job done. So I think it’s kind of a morale and confidence builder for us.”
The Mystics were coming off a frustrating, 80-75 loss to the Mercury in which they were affected by physical play and allowed Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith to combine for 53 points.
“Bouncing back from a loss in Phoenix, where we didn’t play the best defense,” Cloud said. “Being able to come home, regroup and we’re tired — we were on the road for almost a week ... having to come back, adjust and then still come out and have that attention to detail. [On Saturday], I promise you, when we all came in, we were like, ‘What’s the fine for missing practice?’ Because we’re tired. But to come out to have that type of defensive presence, we’re going to be really good down the stretch if we can keep this consistent.”
The Mystics honored Minnesota’s Sylvia Fowles, who is retiring after the season. The team played a video on the big screen that featured several players and Thibault speaking about their experiences with the 36-year-old star. Afterward, the organization donated a bike to a child in Fowles’s name and gave her a going-away gift. She had nine points and 12 rebounds in 20 minutes.
“We’ve just had a good relationship for years,” said Thibault, who got to know Fowles well through USA Basketball. “Just one of my favorite people in the league — not favorite to play against, but favorite people. I won’t miss coaching games against her, but I’ll miss that competitiveness and I’ll miss just seeing her on a regular basis. She lights up a room when she’s around, and I think that’s a great trait.” | 2022-07-17T23:12:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics shut down Lynx for bounce-back victory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/mystics-lynx-defense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/mystics-lynx-defense/ |
Officials said Cmdr. Jason Bagshaw saw a man pointing a gun outside a restaurant.
D.C. police officials said an off-duty commander fatally shot the man shown in this image pointing a gun in the 800 block of Wharf Street SW. (D.C. police)
The D.C. police officer who authorities said fatally shot a man Saturday night along the city’s bustling waterfront promenade is a newly promoted commander who was off-duty and leaving dinner at a restaurant when he saw a man pointing a gun, according to four officials familiar with the investigation.
Those officials said Cmdr. Jason Bagshaw, a 20-year veteran who became a recognizable and sometimes controversial presence at demonstrations throughout the city over the past three years, ordered the man to drop the weapon and fired at least twice when the man did not comply.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said police are investigating the possibility that Bagshaw interrupted an armed robbery. Bagshaw was not in uniform at the time, according to police and a video showing the aftermath of the shooting.
The shooting, which occurred shortly after 9 p.m. in the 800 block of Wharf Street SW, sent people running for cover along a string of restaurants and clubs in one of the District’s newly minted and upscale nightlife areas known as the Wharf. Coming amid a rise in homicides and just a month after a 15-year-old was fatally shot during an event on U Street, the incident renewed fears about safety for some in the city, particularly at popular social hubs.
Police did not officially identify Bagshaw on Sunday; D.C. law allows them five business days to identify officers involved in serious use-of-force cases and make videos from their body-worn cameras public.
Police identified the man who was killed as Lazarus David Wilson, 23, from Dumfries, Va. Police said he had come to the Wharf with another Virginia man and got into a confrontation with a group of young men from the District. A relative of Wilson’s said she would pass along a reporter’s contact information to the man’s mother; efforts to reach others were not successful. Police said a man with the group from D.C. was grazed by a bullet.
Three officials familiar with the investigation said one person involved told police that the dispute was over the sale of watches, but those officials cautioned that account could not be confirmed. Two of the officials said police found a bag containing $30,000 with the man who died.
Police said they are trying to sort out what happened. The officials said it appears Wilson and the other man met up with the men from the District, and some sort of dispute or altercation occurred as they walked along the waterfront street.
D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said a video from a security camera shows “an armed individual pointing a gun.” In a statement issued Sunday, police said Bagshaw and the other officer — who officials later identified as Bagshaw’s wife — “voiced a command for the suspect to drop the firearm and the suspect did not comply.” It was not immediately clear if Wilson pointed the gun at officers. It also could not be determined if Bagshaw identified himself as an officer.
No criminal charges have been filed in the case.
As with all D.C. police officers involved in a shooting, Bagshaw has been put on administrative leave, authorities said. He was promoted in April to run the Special Operations Division, overseeing tactical officers, civil-disturbance units, domestic security, traffic safety and special events, which includes planning and handling large-scale demonstrations.
He has received numerous awards from the department. But he also has been singled out by activist groups who questioned his conduct handling demonstrations, particularly those involving racial justice after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Bagshaw is seen in many videos engaging and confronting demonstrators.
Efforts to reach Bagshaw by telephone Sunday were not successful, and he did not respond to an email sent to his department account. A police spokesman confirmed that Bagshaw received the messages and said that he did not wish to speak publicly.
D.C. police Sunday issued a statement that included a photo of a semiautomatic handgun they said Wilson had been holding, along with an image they said shows Wilson holding the weapon in his outstretched hand.
Bagshaw was not wearing a body camera. Police said they are reviewing video from responding officers and security cameras.
Videos posted on social media showed a frantic massing of police, while bystanders scattered to get out of the way. Some expressed concern about safety on social media.
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), whose area his represents includes the waterfront, noted shootings in other prominent areas outside Washington, including gunfire last month inside a Tysons Corner mall and a recent fatal shooting near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and baseball stadium.
Allen, who chairs a council committee that performs oversight on D.C. police, said gun violence is a problem in cities and suburbia, driven by the “easy access to guns and conflicts that turn deadly at the drop of a hat.”
Allen said that “there was a life lost last night” at the Wharf, and “that is a tragedy.” But. he said, “I would take my family to the Wharf tomorrow to enjoy the water and the restaurants. I feel confident doing that.”
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a racial justice group led by Black women, posted a video on Instagram showing the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The video shows a man in dark pants and a white shirt on his knees, putting his hands up as a uniformed officer closes in.
A man on the video can be heard saying, “I just witnessed somebody die.”
Nee Nee Taylor, the co-conductor of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, said the man who took the video and reportedly saw the shooting did not want to be identified. Police officials confirmed the video shows Bagshaw after he shot Wilson.
A woman also is seen on video on top of another man; police officials said that is Bagshaw’s wife, who they said tackled one of the people involved in the incident.
The Harriet’s Wildest Dreams group demanded on Instagram that any video of the shooting be immediately made public. “Accountability is vital concerning this Police killing,” the Instagram post says.
D.C. police have shot four people this year, killing two of them. In addition, a U.S. Secret Service agent fatally shot another man, and a Metro Transit officer shot and wounded a man. | 2022-07-17T23:21:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. police commander Jason Bagshaw fatally shot armed man at Wharf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/dc-police-commander-wharf-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/dc-police-commander-wharf-shooting/ |
D.C. pop-up festival celebrates Black-owned businesses
Cadence Hollingsworth, 10, creates decorations to hang. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
About 80 Black-owned vendors and creators gathered in D.C. on Sunday for the first Black on the Block immersive pop-up festival, a Los Angeles-inspired event to showcase Black-owned businesses that often find limited access to exhibit their work.
“It can be really hard for Black-owned businesses, specifically small Black-owned businesses, to get their foot on the ground,” said Black on the Block CEO Lanie Edwards. “To be able to provide a platform for them to do that consistently, every single month is our goal.”
Edwards, who has a small fashion line in Los Angeles, said she was the only Black-owned business in several pop-ups to which she was invited, so she set out to create a space for and by Black people, not only to showcase their work but also to create a network where customers interested in the work Black creators produce can always find them.
At D.C.'s recently renovated Franklin Park at K and 14th streets NW, visitors were offered options to purchase merchandise including clothing, art and jewelry exhibited across dozens of stands from D.C. owners and owners from other areas on the East Coast. The festival included live music, food trucks, enclosed areas for VIPs and opportunities for small-business owners to network.
In partnership with National Football League star Stefon Diggs and the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, Black on the Block held its first free event and is expected to continue every year, Edwards said.
Behind tables of unique clothing designs, personalized ointments and art, entrepreneurs not only talked about business, but about a history of resilience through which they are creating opportunities as Black entrepreneurs.
Co-founder Tyler Lee said he and his business partner created Black Is Love, a clothing brand with a focus on T-shirts, to increase love in Black culture. They are based in Northern Virginia but sell their clothing online across the country.
Holding a “Black Women are Superheroes” T-shirt, Lee said he remembered watching cartoons and movies growing up where the word ‘Black’ and even Black characters were always associated with negative connotations.
“People look at the word ‘Black’ in a derogatory way, so we named it Black is Love to kind of change that narrative,” he said.
FTK’s — For The Kids — founders Gerald Jackson and Andre Revell said their apparel brand takes pride in fashion while honoring educators.
Jackson and Revell said they were raised by educators, so they wanted to combine their passion for art and community service while helping teachers working in under-resourced schools pay for their school supplies.
“We believe no educator should pay out of pocket for school supplies, so a portion of our proceeds goes to under under-resourced educators,” Revell said.
Alexandra Arnold, 32, who co-founded SOLV, a shop that offers self-care products such as candles and crystals, said in partnership with other female entrepreneurs she re-created her personal healing journey into a small business selling products with elements of Black spirituality.
“I wanted to create something that allow our voices and our unique cultural experiences through the lens by which our spirituality is seen,” Arnold said. “Even though we don’t exclude anyone, it’s through the lens of Black women and Black creators and our spiritual experience that we are creating these products.” | 2022-07-18T00:00:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. pop-up festival celebrates Black-owned businesses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/dc-festival-black-businesses/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/dc-festival-black-businesses/ |
LGBTQ protections temporarily blocked
The move comes amid a wave of measures by conservatives to curtail LGBTQ rights that have alarmed liberal activists as the battle over transgender rights moves to the political forefront.
The states involved have argued that the directives would have put them at risk of losing significant federal funding because of their existing laws.
U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee issued a nationwide injunction that he wrote in his ruling will remain in place “pending the final resolution of this matter,” or until further orders are given from the district court or higher courts.
— Meena Venkataramanan
UNC settles tenure dispute with journalist
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it has reached a settlement with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who ultimately shunned the school in an extended dispute over tenure.
David Boliek, chairman of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, said Friday that the settlement with Hannah-Jones was for less than $75,000, news outlets reported.
Attorneys representing Hannah-Jones last year threatened to take legal action, including filing a federal discrimination lawsuit, against UNC-Chapel Hill and its board over the failure to give her tenure, news outlets reported at the time. Boliek said that the settlement reached by the university was to resolve the “potential legal action,” and that a formal lawsuit was never filed.
Hannah-Jones couldn’t be reached for comment.
Hannah-Jones — who received the Pulitzer Prize for her work on the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project focusing on America’s history of slavery — was hired as UNC’s Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
She has noted that she hadn’t sought out the job and was recruited by UNC’s journalism dean before her tenure application stalled over objections by a powerful donor and concerns by conservatives about her work.
Hannah-Jones’ tenure application was submitted to UNC’s trustees in 2020, but it was halted after a board member who vets the appointments raised questions about her nonacademic background. Instead, she was initially given a five-year contract, despite her predecessors being granted tenure when appointed.
After weeks of mounting pressure, the trustees voted 9-4 to offer her tenure. Hannah-Jones has said that the unfairness of how she was treated as a Black woman steered her toward turning the offer down. She accepted a chaired professorship at Howard University, a historically Black school in D.C.
Helicopter crash kills 4 who helped with fire
Four people were killed in a crash of a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office helicopter that was headed back to Albuquerque after assisting firefighters in another New Mexico city, authorities said Sunday.
Sheriff’s officials said three people from the sheriff’s office and a county firefighter were aboard the Bell UH-1H helicopter when it went down near Las Vegas, N.M., about 125 miles northeast of Albuquerque, on Saturday night.
New Mexico State Police said the helicopter and its crew had been assisting with a wildfire in the Las Vegas area Saturday, providing bucket drops and other air logistics needs to fire crews on the ground. | 2022-07-18T00:04:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LGBTQ protections temporarily blocked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lgbtq-protections-temporarily-blocked/2022/07/17/9f5fd350-04ad-11ed-9282-2a7e062f9565_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lgbtq-protections-temporarily-blocked/2022/07/17/9f5fd350-04ad-11ed-9282-2a7e062f9565_story.html |
Ex-Khashoggi attorney gets 3 years in prison
The United Arab Emirates has sentenced a U.S. citizen and former attorney for Jamal Khashoggi — the dissident Saudi journalist who was killed at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018 — to three years in prison on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
Asim Ghafoor was also ordered to pay a fine of $816,748, the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency reported over the weekend, adding that he would be deported after he completed his sentence.
The UAE framed Ghafoor’s arrest as a coordinated move with the United States to “combat transnational crimes.” UAE state-run media said U.S. authorities had requested the UAE’s help with an investigation into Ghafoor’s alleged tax evasion and suspicious money transfers in the Emirates.
Ghafoor’s U.S.-based attorney, Faisal Gill, cast doubt on that claim, saying, “If the U.S. had anything against him, why wouldn’t they just deal with it in the U. S.?”
The autocratic Gulf Arab sheikhdom announced the prison sentence a day after Washington-based human rights watchdog Democracy for the Arab World Now raised alarm about its board member’s arrest at Dubai International Airport.
DAWN said Ghafoor was in transit to Istanbul on Thursday when plainclothes security agents scooped him up and sent him to an Abu Dhabi detention facility before he could change planes.
Minister sparks furor over LGBTQ remarks
Pressure is mounting on a French government minister to quit over comments about homosexuality and LGBTQ people, in the latest challenge to President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership.
Caroline Cayeux’s remarks have hurt and angered many, including her colleagues, and prompted broader discussion around persistent discriminatory attitudes of people in power.
More than 100 prominent figures published an appeal Sunday in the newspaper Journal du Dimanche questioning why she was still in government.
Cayeux was asked in an interview last week about her opposition to a 2013 law authorizing same-sex marriage and adoption and comments at the time saying they were “against nature.” Speaking Tuesday to broadcaster Public Senat, she said she was being wrongly painted as prejudiced.
“I maintain my remarks. I always said that if the law were voted, I would apply it,” she said. “I have a lot of friends among all those people, and I’m being targeted by an unfair trial.”
The remarks set off shock waves among LGBTQ people and others, and led to calls for her resignation. A legal complaint was filed against her for public insult.
Cayeux then tweeted her regrets, saying her words were “inappropriate,” and sent a letter to anti-discrimination groups to apologize.
Marburg outbreak declared in Ghana: The World Health Organization has declared Ghana's first outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus disease after labs confirmed the infections in two cases announced this month. The disease, an infectious hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, is spread to people by fruit bats and transmitted among people through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces, the WHO said. More than 90 contacts, including health workers, have been identified and are being monitored, the WHO said.
12 killed in Darfur floods: Flash floods triggered by seasonal torrential rains in Sudan's western Darfur region killed at least 12 people, the United Nations and an aid group said. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 9,336 people have been affected by heavy rains and flooding in the provinces of South Kordofan, South Darfur, White Nile and Kassala since the beginning of the rainy season in June.
12 dead, thousands evacuated in China floods: Flash floods in southwest and northwest China have left at least a dozen dead and put thousands in harm's way, state media reported. The rains come amid a heat wave in parts of the country, including eastern Zhejiang province and the city of Shanghai, with temperatures soaring as high as 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) last week. Experts say such extreme weather events are becoming more likely because of climate change. | 2022-07-18T00:04:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 17, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-17-2022/2022/07/17/6455e180-05d1-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-17-2022/2022/07/17/6455e180-05d1-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
The Portland Trail Blazers celebrate their Las Vegas Summer League championship after defeating the New York Knicks in the title game Sunday. (AP Photo/John Locher)
LAS VEGAS — Portland Trail Blazers rookie Jabari Walker opened the small red and black box at midcourt, a smile breaking across his face when he saw the glimmering championship ring inside.
“I haven’t even put it on yet,” Walker said. “It looks too nice for me. It doesn’t even feel right wearing it. It’s like a trophy.”
Wide-eyed joy has been a scarce commodity of late for the Blazers, who have endured a season-ending abdominal injury to all-star guard Damian Lillard, an internal investigation into their workplace culture, major personnel changes and even rumors of the franchise’s potential sale over the past 12 months.
But those tumultuous developments were put to the side Sunday, when the Blazers defeated the New York Knicks, 85-77, to claim the Las Vegas Summer League championship at the Thomas & Mack Center. After winning the 2018 championship in Las Vegas, Portland joined the Sacramento Kings as the only franchises with multiple titles since the developmental event for younger players adopted a tournament format in 2013.
Since its first-round loss in the 2021 playoffs, Portland has been in a constant state of upheaval. The Blazers replaced Terry Stotts with Chauncey Billups as head coach and fired general manager Neil Olshey amid allegations of workplace misconduct. Joe Cronin, Olshey’s replacement, engineered a dramatic youth movement at the February trade deadline by shipping out veterans CJ McCollum, Norman Powell and Robert Covington.
Meanwhile, longtime Blazers president Chris McGowan resigned in November as head of business operations, and owner Jody Allen issued a statement earlier this month denying that the franchise was involved in “sales discussions” after reported interest from Nike co-founder Phil Knight.
With Lillard sidelined, Portland went 27-55, marking its worst record since the 2005-06 season. Yet the transition year created opportunities for a young core, including Trendon Watford, Brandon Williams, Keon Johnson and Greg Brown III, that proved key in Las Vegas.
While the Blazers lost prized lottery pick Shaedon Sharpe to a shoulder injury in his Summer League debut, their group of second-year players drove a 4-1 run at the 11-day desert showcase. Their balanced offense and tenacious defense seemed to please Lillard, who watched this week from courtside seats alongside fellow veterans Jerami Grant, Jusuf Nurkic and Anfernee Simons.
“Very proud of our players, coaches and organization for a great Summer League,” Cronin told The Washington Post. “This was an important developmental experience that showed our younger players what they are capable of when they play together and defend at a high level.”
The 21-year-old Watford, who went undrafted in 2021 before catching on with Portland last season, posted 19 points and seven rebounds to earn championship game MVP honors. Williams added a game-high 22 points and five assists, while Walker, the No. 57 pick in last month’s draft, continued a standout week with 14 points and 11 rebounds off the bench.
As he accepted his MVP plaque in a postgame ceremony, Watford shouted “seat belt,” a reference to Portland’s tight defense, which held New York to 40 percent shooting and 24 percent three-point shooting in the title game.
“We buckled in and locked up,” Watford said. “We took that very personal. This whole tournament we locked in on defense and it showed. ... It’s going to be another one of these [rings] in Portland, soon.”
No team finished a perfect 4-0 entering Sunday, so the Blazers and Knicks qualified for the title game by posting the top point differentials among teams with 3-1 records. In the championship game, the Blazers overcame a slow start — making just three shots while committing nine turnovers in an unsightly first quarter — to beat the Knicks for the second time this week.
With owner James Dolan, General Manager Leon Rose and Coach Tom Thibodeau sitting courtside at various points, the Knicks put together a strong week thanks to a high-scoring offense led by second-year guards Quentin Grimes and Miles McBride.
But New York, which averaged 95.3 points in its first four games, went cold Sunday, going 6-for-26 from outside and falling behind by as many as 16 points in the second half. Grimes led five Knicks in double figures with 19 points while shooting just 5-for-16 from the field.
The Knicks made a last-gasp push in the fourth quarter, cutting the Blazers’ lead to seven points with seven minutes remaining. Watford responded with a flourish: He hit a corner three, grabbed a steal, went coast-to-coast to set up a transition layup and scored in the paint to put the Blazers back up by double digits.
In a summer environment that often sees disorganized play, Portland triumphed thanks to its experience and chemistry.
“We had a lot of roster guys that played at the end of the regular season, and they came in with the mind-set that they wanted to get better,” Blazers summer league coach Steve Hetzel said. “They didn’t come in with the mind-set that they wanted to dominate [individually], they wanted to play well, execute and learn how to win.” | 2022-07-18T00:04:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trail Blazers beat Knicks in NBA Summer League title game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/trail-blazers-knicks-nba-summer-league/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/trail-blazers-knicks-nba-summer-league/ |
IMG Academy's Elijah Green was the Nationals' top pick. (Mike Janes/Four Seam Images/AP)
With the fifth pick in the MLB draft, the Washington Nationals selected outfielder Elijah Green on Sunday night, landing a top-rate high school position player for the second year in a row.
Green, an 18-year-old from IMG Academy in Florida, stands out with his size — 6-foot-4, 225 pounds — and plus speed. Two National League scouts, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to do so publicly about opposing teams, projected Green to stay in center field because of his range and strong arm. A right-handed hitter, Green has displayed power to all fields and raised mild concerns about his production against off-speed pitches. But more than anything, he is still a teenager, meaning the pick is both a show of confidence in his potential and a big task for the Nationals’ player development department.
This was the Nationals’ highest pick since they chose Bryce Harper first in 2010. Under General Manager Mike Rizzo, who assumed that role in 2009, Green is the club’s fifth top-10 selection, joining Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Drew Storen and Anthony Rendon. And much like those before him, Green will be a critical piece of a Nationals rebuild. He’s the son of Eric Green, a two-time Pro Bowl tight end, and was committed to the University of Miami.
The slot value for the fifth pick is about $6.49 million, and Washington’s entire bonus pool is $11,007,900. If the Nationals sign Green to a higher bonus than the slot value, they would have less money to spread across their other 19 selections. The opposite goes for if Green’s eventual bonus is lower.
A few hours before Green became the newest member of the organization, the Nationals finished the first half at 31-63, MLB’s worst record, so they have the inside track to another high pick in 2023. The current state of the franchise, and the growing potential that Juan Soto is traded this month or in the near future, added weight to what already felt like a consequential pick. But with Rizzo often promising a quick reboot, many recent mock drafts connected Washington to Kevin Parada, a 20-year-old catcher out of Georgia Tech, figuring he best served the desire to quickly build a contender around Soto.
The logic was that Parada — or a proven college player like him — could immediately help fill a gaping void of hitters in the Nationals’ thin system. Green, on the other hand, was more of a project than any high-ranked batter who has faced Division I pitchers for two or three years.
Yet Parada was never atop the team’s draft board. He ultimately went 11th to the New York Mets. Before picking fifth, the Nationals watched the Baltimore Orioles select shortstop Jackson Holliday, the Arizona Diamondbacks take outfielder Druw Jones, the Texas Rangers take pitcher Kumar Rocker, and the Pittsburgh Pirates go with infielder Termarr Johnson. Once the Rangers chose Rocker, a shock to the industry, Washington zeroed in on Johnson and Green, according to multiple people with knowledge of their thought process.
Then the Pirates basically made the selection for them. Green was the Nationals’ guy.
When it comes to position players, the Nationals love to build through the middle with catchers, shortstops and center fielders. In the past year, they took shortstop Brady House with the 11th pick last summer, added outfielder Daylen Lile in the second round and acquired catcher Keibert Ruiz, a top prospect, in the Trea Turner/Max Scherzer trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Luis García, 22, is in the majors and trying to stick at shortstop, the position the club signed him to play out of the Dominican Republic in 2016. And at the most recent international signing deadlines, they brought in shortstop Armando Cruz and outfielder Cristhian Vaquero on massive bonuses.
Green is the latest hitter the Nationals are putting a lot of stock in. Needless to say, his development will be key. | 2022-07-18T01:36:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Nationals draft Elijah Green in MLB draft - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/elijah-green-nationals-mlb-draft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/17/elijah-green-nationals-mlb-draft/ |
Gunman kills 3 at Indiana mall; armed bystander killed shooter, police say
Shoppers leave the Greenwood Park Mall in May 2020, in Greenwood, Ind. A gunman shot and killed three people and injured two others at the mall on Sunday. (Darron Cummings/AP)
A gunman fatally shot three people and injured two others at a mall in Indiana on Sunday evening before he was fatally shot by a “good Samaritan” bystander, officials said.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired about 6 p.m. local time at the food court in Greenwood Park Mall in the city of Greenwood, just south of Indianapolis. The two people wounded by the gunfire were hospitalized, Ison said, adding that information about their conditions would be forthcoming.
A “good Samaritan” who was in the vicinity of the episode shot and killed the gunman, Ison said, adding that the bystander “appears to be cooperating fully.”
Greenwood Mayor Mark W. Myers said in a statement that “we experienced a mass shooting this evening,” adding that there was “no further threat.”
The gunman was “shot by an armed individual,” Myers confirmed. “This tragedy hits at the core of our community.” Ison said he believed the bystander had a handgun.
Lawmakers in states across country are seeking to pass legislation expanding or restricting gun access in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex. Indiana’s new handgun law, which took effect July 1, lifted the permit requirement to carry, conceal or transport a handgun in the state.
Indiana still has some restrictions on who can possess a handgun. For certain groups — including people who have committed felonies, been “adjudicated as a mental defective” under state law, and those under the age of 18 — it is still illegal to carry a handgun.
Grace Moon and Nick Parker contributed to this report. | 2022-07-18T01:57:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indiana shooting: Gunman kills 3 at Greenwood Park Mall - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/indiana-mall-shooting-greenwood-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/indiana-mall-shooting-greenwood-park/ |
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