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Man fatally shot in Takoma Park
The victim worked as a mobile mechanic, police say
A man was shot and fatally wounded Saturday in Takoma Park, Md., city police said.
Nurhusen Muhammed Hamid, 27, of Silver Spring, was found about 11 a.m. Saturday in the parking lot of an auto-parts store in the 6300 block of New Hampshire Avenue, the police said.
He died Sunday. Police described him as a “mobile mechanic” who operated in Takoma Park, Hyattsville and Northwest Washington. | 2022-07-18T03:07:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A mechanic was fatally shot in Takoma Park - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/mechanic-shot-killed-takoma-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/17/mechanic-shot-killed-takoma-park/ |
Anti-government protesters in Bangkok Nov. 14, 2020. (Surat Sappakun/AP)
iLaw issued one of the new reports, identifying many of the hacking victims by name, including two of its own participants. Another report came from Toronto-based Citizen Lab, which analyzed digital traces left in the phones and named Pegasus as the attack program that broke into the devices in 2020 and 2021. Amnesty International used a different method to examine some of the phones and agreed with Citizen Lab’s conclusions.
Though he was not shocked that he had been hacked, iLaw representative Yingcheep Atchanont told The Washington Post: “I was surprised later when I found out that I was infected so many times during late 2020 and early 2021. That time I was just an observer of the protests, my role is just campaigning on the constitutional amendment.”
Israeli-based NSO Group has been blacklisted from deals with U.S. companies after a wave of revelations that its spyware had been used against peaceful dissidents and their associates around the world, including those close to slain Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as State Department employees.
The fresh reports show that many attacks came around the time the targets were involved in rallies against government policies. Though they do not assert that the Thai government was responsible, one or more Thai agencies would be more logical suspects than those at neighboring companies, Citizen Lab said.
The Thai government won a widely criticized election in 2019 after an earlier coup that clamped down on freedoms. Since then, it has arrested many protest organizers, including some named as hacking victims in the new reports.
Some have been charged under sweeping laws that make it illegal to criticize the king, who lives mainly in Germany. Others were accused of violating emergency decrees that banned some negative media reporting and large gatherings after protests drew tens of thousands.
NSO says it only sells to government agencies and gets Israel’s approval for its deals. The Thai government, which has wide latitude to spy on citizens under recent laws, previously denied hacking activists. NSO’s chief executive did not respond to an email Sunday morning, and an email sent to the Thai embassy in Washington likewise drew no immediate reply.
The company has served as the latest symbol for one of the world’s more complex challenges, how to stop governments from hiring top engineering talent to take advantage of software flaws and spy on whomever they want.
Apple and Facebook parent Meta have both filed lawsuits accusing NSO of breaking U.S. laws by hacking their gear.
In a recent briefing, Apple said it has sent warnings to an undisclosed number of government hacking targets in 150 countries. It also announced that it would be releasing an optional Lockdown Mode intended to make its phones, tablets and computers safer by reducing some of the convenient features, such as receiving iMessage attachments and automatically previewing web links, that also make it possible to install spyware with alerting a user.
Prior reporting had identified Thailand as a location for surveillance operations, including Pegasus.
But the new reports go further by naming victims and giving context for specific attacks.
“The infections occurred from October 2020 to November 2021, coinciding with a period of widespread pro-democracy protests, and predominantly targeted key figures in the pro-democracy movement,” wrote Citizen Lab, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto. “In numerous cases, multiple members of movements or organizations were infected.”
Pegasus is a monitoring system that can capture audio, pictures, texts, contacts, emails and all messages on a phone, including those that are strongly encrypted. It can be installed with any working “exploit,” or attack program, that works against a particular model of Android or iPhone. The most effective exploits do not need the phone’s owner to click on anything to be installed silently. Typically, soon after Apple or another vendor detect an exploit or patch the security flaw it used, NSO and its competitors roll out another one.
The Thais hit with Pegasus include five members and associates of FreeYouth, including former Student Union of Thailand President Jutatip Sirikhan; four members of WEVO, short for We Volunteer, which protects other groups during public actions; and four members of a Bangkok university-based United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration.
Human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, who has defended activists accused of violating the law against insulting the king, was infected repeatedly, including once while he was in jail without his phone.
Also infected, according to the reports, were Thai actress Intira Charoenpura, who publicly supported the protests and called for donations, and rapper Dechathorn Bamrungmuang, who faulted the government in song. Known onstage as Hockhacker, his single “My Country Has” has racked up more than 100 million views on YouTube. | 2022-07-18T03:07:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pegasus spyware used to hack dozens of activists in Thailand - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/17/pegasus-nso-thailand-apple/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/17/pegasus-nso-thailand-apple/ |
Grant Holloway took the gold in the 110-meter hurdles. (Andrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
EUGENE, Ore. — In one corner of Hayward Field, a trio of American hurdlers stood behind their blocks, poised for both elation and heartbreak. On the other side of the oval, a pair of American pole vaulters, Katie Nageotte and Sandi Morris, posed with American flags across their backs and gold and silver medals around their necks. On the infield, Joe Kovacs stood in the throwing circle, arms raised, as a plume of dust wafted into the air where his shot had landed — a celebration that would soon be nullified by Ryan Crouser, his inexorable teammate.
In this track-mad town, they have waited decades for a night like Sunday’s. On Day 3 of the world championships, Americans clogged podiums and hogged medals. U.S. athletes won four golds, and in each of those events a teammate joined the winner on the podium. They needed a traffic cop to sort out the victory laps.
“I’m one one-thousandths slower [in the blocks] and everybody’s happy — ‘Hey, great race, world champ,’ ” Allen said. “It’s a little frustrating. It’s so absolute, which kind of sucks.”
When Allen heard the gun stop the race, he had no concern that he had been flagged — he thought perhaps Holloway hadn’t been set and they would restart the race. He was stunned when the public address announced Lane 3 — his lane — as the culprit.
“I know for a fact I didn’t go until I heard the gun,” Allen said.
One day after the United States swept the men’s 100-meter medals, Crouser, Kovacs and Josh Awotunde, a first-time global medalist, repeated the feat in the shot put. Crouser, the world record holder, stole the title of world champion from Kovacs with his fifth throw, a 22.94-meter bomb.
The U.S. celebrations and victory laps were pierced at the end by honking vuvuzelas, a signal that a Jamaican — or three — has just run a short distance very fast. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce led a repeat of the Jamaican sweep of the 100-meter podium from the Tokyo Olympics, winning her fifth world championship in the event in a blazing 10.67 to go with her two Olympic gold medals.
But this day belonged to the host country. It finished the night with 14 medals, six of them gold, over three days. No other nation has claimed more than three total medals. The table is likely to grow more lopsided. In Michael Norman, Athing Mu, Sydney McLaughlin, Valarie Allman and the combination of Noah Lyles and Erriyon Knighton, the United States possesses the heavy favorite in the men’s 400 meters, women’s 800 meters, women’s 400-meter hurdles, women’s discus and men’s 200 meters. Three of the four relays are the United States’ to lose, too.
But Allen’s elimination placed a cloud over the day. He played football at Oregon, catching 41 passes for 684 yards and seven touchdowns as a freshman in 2014 before he tore a knee ligament on the opening kickoff of the Rose Bowl. He shelved football after college as he forged his track career, finishing fifth at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and fourth in Tokyo nine months after major surgery. He alerted NFL teams of his intention to return to football by working out at Oregon’s pro day in April, and the Eagles, enamored with his speed, signed him days later. He reports to training camp July 26, but his football focus will not mean a pause in the hurdles.
“A lot of people say it’s going to be a choice,” Allen said last month. “As long as I’m young and healthy — which is until I’m 35 — I’m going to be able to do both.”
Introduced at the start line Sunday night as “a U of O legend,” Allen received one of the loudest cheers of any athlete here. This past week, a fan walked through the Hayward concourse wearing an Eagles jersey with Allen’s name on the back and No. 110. “I got to get one of those,” Allen said. “I wish I could wear 110.”
“It would have been kind of a waste to not [make the team],” Allen said after his prelim heat Saturday. “My dad would be excited for me to win worlds and break the world record and play for the Eagles and catch touchdowns. So I’m going to keep doing exactly that.”
Allen was not the only American with a side hustle. When Andersen graduated college four years ago, she followed her coach to Kansas with a nearly empty bank account — the financial reality so many U.S. track and field athletes face. She worked 30 to 35 hours per week at Chipotle and another 20 at GNC. She fit practices and workouts around her shifts.
“I knew I still had a lot left to give to the sport,” she said.
Andersen made her first Olympic team last year and finished 10th in Tokyo. This year, she recovered from nagging injuries and transformed from one of the best current U.S. hammer throwers to one of the best in the world — ever. In April, she launched a 79.02-meter throw that was the fourth best of all time. She won her first national title last month.
Andersen, who now lives in Phoenix, still rings up customers at Chipotle 30 hours per week, although the Nike contract she signed days before worlds may allow her to make throwing her only job. She entered Sunday as the favorite. When Canadian silver medalist Camryn Rogers couldn’t pass her with her final try, Andersen had secured victory one day after Chase Ealey gave U.S. women a throwing gold in the shot put.
“I wanted to start crying because I knew what had just happened,” Andersen said. “But the competitiveness in me was like: ‘You still have another throw. You can throw farther.’ ”
“It’s all worth it in the end,” she said. “If this is the outcome, I’d do it a million times over.” | 2022-07-18T03:55:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. dominates track championships, but Devon Allen is disqualified - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/17/devon-allen-disqualified-usa-track-dominance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/17/devon-allen-disqualified-usa-track-dominance/ |
John is divorced going on two years, so it is understandable that he's not in a place to commit and he doesn't want to marry again.
John has a 9-year-old son, “Caleb,” whom I’ve spent time with. Caleb ignores me, doesn’t answer questions and lacks manners.
John says he’s shy and takes time to warm up, which is fair. I had a similar upbringing so I can empathize to a degree.
Lately, I find that I don’t enjoy spending time with them. Are these signs that this is a casual relationship and works for now, or do I need to cut the cord and move on?
I’m either settling, or I’m learning how to not be so attached. What are your thoughts?
Casual?: First, “Caleb.” He is 9. Nine-year-olds can behave along a wide spectrum, but overall I’d say that a 9-year-old boy whose folks have split up and whose dad is bringing a new friend around would generally behave exactly as Caleb is behaving. You can assume that he gives his mother’s dates or partner the same business.
Even if you believe you’ve forgotten what it really feels like to be in love, I assure you — when you finally find your person, you’ll feel brave enough that you’ll be willing to take on a roomful of angry adolescents to be in a family together.
I think it's time to transition to friendship with John, and issue a “missing person” alert. He's out there.
This is exhausting for me to be around. Self-labeling to elevate one’s status, without earning a title through the hard work seems epidemic.
Buy One: Chiropractors can call themselves “doctors,” but they should not refer to themselves as “MDs.” In the broader sense, doctors are healers, teachers or practitioners. In that context, chiropractors fit the definition.
Single: This dude seems most likely to wander first, wonder later. | 2022-07-18T04:38:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I want a committed relationship but I don’t know if this is one - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/ask-amy-relationship-serious-casual/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/ask-amy-relationship-serious-casual/ |
Dear Carolyn: I’m 50, and after a pretty good run, have had three really cruddy years with one health crisis or traumatic event after another. Unfortunately, I realized while going through this shish kebab storm that all the people close to me — family, friends, co-workers — are dumpers. They come to me with their troubles and I listen and empathize. The problem is that none of them were particularly interested in letting me dump to them.
I understand, it’s been a colossally bad time for a lot of people. I’m actively trying to get a therapist, but what I need is advice about is how to shut off the flow. I can no longer listen to their woes and keep a semblance of sanity. Please give me some words to use. I have no support left to give.
— Hmm
Hmm: Oh, I feel for you. And I’m glad you’re ready to say your piece, because it’s not merely okay to be honest with your people — it’s essential. My first thought is to stop them upfront, and say you’re doing it: “I’m going to stop you upfront: I know you’re struggling and count on me to help. I am dealing with one crisis after another myself, though, and I have no capacity right now to provide comfort.”
This audience has excellent conversation-script-writers, so I’ll include their suggestions, too.
I hope your people surprise you with the compassion you need and deserve.
Audience ideas:
· “I’m sorry, I know you need to talk but I’m on overload right now and I can’t handle it.”
· “Listen, I care about you and want to support you, but my own stress box is overflowing these days. Can we talk about ___ instead?”
· “This is hard for me to tell people, but because we’re so close I know you’ll understand: I’ve been going through a lot of personal crises, and my capacity to give other people support/comfort is just tapped out right now.” And if they don’t get the message, repeat shorter versions as needed: “I’m sorry, but remember what I said about not being able to give support right now?” Or drop the “I’m sorry” — that’s my own reflex.
· “I need to cut you off. I’m not really in a place right now where I can process or help you with your issues, and I think perhaps some professional eyes might be better suited toward them.” If they want to still be friends after that, fantastic. If not, then the basis of the friendship was problematic anyway.
· The “I just can’t right now, sorry” is a vital first step. After that, consider whether your self-image is helping foster one-way support relationships around you. It took me decades to realize I never asked for support, so it mostly didn’t occur to people that I needed it.
· Embedded in CH’s response is the idea that if you stop “dumpers” before they’ve finished unloading their stress, then they won’t get the release they sought by calling you. That might curb their impulse to call you in the first place.
· One piece of advice from my therapist was to practice being “warm and closed” vs. “warm and open.” So you can be your kind, warm self, just not open to their stories: “Wow, that sounds terrible, good luck with that.” If the other person is really dense you can follow with, “Oh honey [that’s me — it’s a verbal tic], I just don’t have the bandwidth. I’m dealing with xyz. Come sit with me and let’s think of happier times.” It is a skill and takes practice. | 2022-07-18T04:38:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Everyone's favorite helper has 'no support left to give' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/carolyn-hax-support-crisis-friends-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/carolyn-hax-support-crisis-friends-family/ |
Dear Miss Manners: The evening news is so often about deaths and murders. I find it very offensive when, for “the story,” a local reporter shoves a microphone in the face of someone whose relative just died. They’ll do this to anyone who will talk, even young children.
As a journalist, Miss Manners could be expected to side with the reporters. She cannot understand the naivete of those who believe that the world would be a better place if bad news were simply not reported.
Dear Miss Manners: I am a fitness instructor with approximately 30 customers in each class. A new gentleman in one of my classes, who comes with his cousin, has severe body odor. He looks like he showers, but I suspect he never washes his clothes, because he always has the same outfit on every time I see him. The last time he came to class, the room was rather full, and everyone around him was horrified at the smell.
It is not often that Miss Manners can get a reader off the hook by foisting the problem on someone else. In this case, she has the satisfaction of relieving you of some awkwardness by telling you to pass it on: Tell the cousin about this issue — discreetly and sympathetically.
As you need not volunteer this information, it is only a matter of responding to inquiries. Miss Manners suggests, “We’re not in close touch, but I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.” | 2022-07-18T04:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I hate seeing grieving people interviewed on the news - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/miss-manners-grieving-news-interviews/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/18/miss-manners-grieving-news-interviews/ |
A nurse checks on a patient in the ICU Covid-19 ward at NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. Mississippi and Arkansas face shortages of available intensive care beds as the delta variant sparks yet another surge in coronavirus cases around the country, reports NBC News. Photographer: Houston Cofield/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
There’s no universally accepted definition yet. According to the World Health Organization, people with what it calls “post Covid-19 condition” have symptoms usually three months after an initial bout of Covid that last for at least two months and can’t be explained by an alternative diagnosis. Symptoms may persist from the acute phase of the illness or appear after -- even in a person who displayed no symptoms initially. They may also fluctuate. Other groups have proposed alternative definitions. The UK’s National Health Service, for example, suggests referring to symptoms that last more than four weeks as “ongoing symptomatic Covid,” and “post-Covid syndrome” if they persist for longer than 12 weeks and can’t be otherwise explained. Another definition may be needed for children.
• A report in May from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found about 1 in 5 adults between 18 and 64 years old had a health problem that might be attributable to a previous Covid infection.
• A study in July that accounted for pre-infection symptoms in a nationally representative sample of Americans in the first year of the pandemic found that 23% experience at least one symptom that emerges around the time of infection and lasts for more than 12 weeks.
• Another large study published last year, using data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, estimated that about 7% of people had at least one symptom of long Covid six months after their infection. The incidence beyond the first 12 weeks of illness was 4.1% among those never hospitalized for Covid, 16% among those who were hospitalized and 23% among patients who were admitted to intensive care. The study also found differences in symptoms by age, race, sex and baseline health status.
3. What are the post-Covid symptoms?
Tiredness and shortness of breath are commonly reported as well as brain fog — difficulty with concentration or memory. Other prolonged symptoms include:
It appears so, though identifying them is complicated by other factors, such as prior Covid immunizations and infections. For example, the UK’s Office for National Statistics found in May that the odds of reporting fatigue, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating and other persistent symptoms were 50% lower following infections likely caused by the omicron BA.1 variant than those likely caused by the delta strain. The difference was only found among adults who were double-vaccinated when infected. Among those who’d had three shots, the difference wasn’t statistically significant. Among triple-vaccinated adults, however, the odds of reporting long Covid were higher following infection with the omicron BA.2 variant than the BA.1 variant, the analysis found.
• the direct effect of the virus on organs and tissues
• the propensity of Covid to cause bleeding and clots that can restrict or block blood vessels including in the lung, which can cause a pulmonary embolism
• excessive inflammation by the immune system
• the body’s failure to properly repair injured lungs and other organs, leading to the formation of scar tissue
• a lack of oxygen in the blood that injures the brain, lungs and other organs
• an imbalance in the microorganisms inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract
• life-saving treatment, including the use of mechanical ventilation, corticosteroids, sedatives and painkillers administered in intensive care.
• chronic, systemic inflammation
• immune dysregulation, such as when the body’s immune system overreacts or underreacts to a foreign invader
• interactions with the host microbiome, or microorganisms living in the body
• problems with the autonomic nervous system
• the persistence of viral particles or remnants in the body.
In a way, in that vaccination is the most effective tool to reduce the risk of getting infected by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid, in the first place and it mitigates the likelihood of becoming severely ill. A UK study found receiving a second dose of a coronavirus vaccine at least two weeks before an infection was associated with a 41% decrease in the odds of self-reported long Covid at least 12 weeks later. Data from Israel support the finding, though a larger study of some 13 million users of the US Veterans Health Administration system in May found vaccination is associated with only a 15.7% reduction in the risk of long Covid.
Most long Covid symptoms don’t seem to be life-threatening, but things like shortness of breath or fatigue can be disabling. For some Covid survivors, the infection may damage vital organs and exacerbate other diseases, the effects of which may not become apparent for months, like a ticking time bomb. Some of the conditions that may manifest later include cardiac arrest, stroke, heart failure, pulmonary embolism, myocarditis and chronic kidney disease. Doctors have also noted an uptick in cases of diabetes linked to Covid. A study in February based on the veterans database in the US found the virus may significantly increase a person’s risk of heart disease for at least a year after recovery -- even if the person wasn’t hospitalized. Other studies from the US, UK and Germany showed that people who were hospitalized for Covid have an increased risk of being readmitted or dying 6 to 12 months later.
The health trajectories of Covid survivors vary widely -- from a complete resolution and a return to previous level of health in most people, to needing lung transplants in a small minority. A UK study of hospitalized patients published in January found that a year after discharge, fewer than 3 in 10 patients reported feeling fully recovered. It’s possible the use of treatments for Covid, including monoclonal antibody therapies and antiviral medications, reduces the likelihood of long Covid, though this hasn’t been demonstrated. There is emerging evidence that multidisciplinary rehabilitation services can improve a patient’s prospects of recovery.
The disability attributable to long Covid could account for as much as 30% of the pandemic’s health burden, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine estimated. An uptick in treatments for depression, anxiety and pain has stoked concern of a spike in suicides and opioid overdoses. Surveys of long Covid sufferers indicate the condition is leading to reduced work schedules and absenteeism, which has implications for labor productivity. With more than 560 million confirmed infections worldwide as of mid-2022, even a small share with long-term disability could have enormous social and economic consequences. The US Government Accountability Office said in a March 2 report that long Covid could affect the broader US economy through decreased labor participation and an increased need for use of Social Security disability insurance or other publicly subsidized insurance.
In the US, the National Institutes of Health was allocated $1.15 billion in funding to support research into the long-term effects of Covid. The studies hopes to get at issues such as the underlying biological causes and how they might be treated and prevented. Some researchers are pressing governments to focus attention on potential long-term organ damage. For example, researchers have shown the virus can infect insulin-producing pancreatic tissue, potentially triggering diabetes that in some cases persists beyond the acute infection. That’s prompted Australia’s Monash University and King’s College London to create a global registry for studying “new onset” diabetes. Some long haulers have reported feeling better after receiving a Covid vaccination, prompting researchers to examine the phenomenon and whether vaccines can offer clues to treatment. Avindra Nath, clinical director of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said vaccines, including for flu, have been known to help patients with chronic fatigue, but relief has almost always been temporary.
(Adds study on global prevalence in section 2, additional information on variant-associated risks in section 4, additional cause in section 5, and study on long Covid after vaccination in section 6) | 2022-07-18T04:39:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Experts Know About ‘Long Covid’ and Who Gets It - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-experts-know-about-long-covid-and-who-gets-it/2022/07/18/f980bc06-0650-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-experts-know-about-long-covid-and-who-gets-it/2022/07/18/f980bc06-0650-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
It was the fist bump seen around the world. Biden was received Friday evening in the Saudi city of Jiddah, as part of a busy four-day itinerary that had taken him from stops in Israel and the West Bank to a regional summit of Arab states hosted by the Saudis. A lot was on the agenda as the Biden administration seeks to subtly reassert U.S. leadership in the Middle East and move along Israel’s rapprochement with an emerging crop of Arab partners.
Rights activists and critics of Saudi autocracy, among others, saw a betrayal of values and a reminder of the impunity afforded to the crown prince. Khashoggi’s fiancee described the sight of Biden greeting the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, as “heartbreaking.” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the meeting “suggests the crown prince is now accepted.”
“The fist bump between President Biden and Mohammed bin Salman was worse than a handshake — it was shameful,” Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan said in a statement. “It projected a level of intimacy and comfort that delivers to MBS the unwarranted redemption he has been desperately seeking.”
There were alternate readings, too, as analysts spied a frostiness between the two leaders. “The fist bump is yet another sign that this is not the president’s comfort zone, and this is not a warm bilateral relationship,” Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Post’s Dan Zak. “And it may not become a warm bilateral relationship under the president. But it will be a relationship.”
There were conflicting accounts of how tough Biden was during hours of closed meetings, with the Saudis suggesting that Biden did not directly confront MBS over Khashoggi’s death, while the U.S. president insisted that he did. As Biden extended a formal invitation to the White House to UAE leader Mohammed bin Zayed, news emerged that Khashoggi’s ex-lawyer, U.S. citizen Asim Ghafoor, had been arrested and in the United Arab Emirates and sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering and tax evasion charges that critics say were trumped up.
The reality of the situation, no matter the White House’s insistence on its commitment to human rights, is that the perceived urgency of the geopolitical moment outweighed whatever lingering outrage was felt in Washington over the misconduct of Arab monarchs. “Challenges you face today only make it a heck of a lot more important we spend time together,” Biden argued as his visit concluded Saturday.
“The United States is clear-eyed about the challenges in the Middle East and about where we have the greatest capacity to help drive positive outcomes,” he said during his final remarks to a coalition of leaders from the Persian Gulf countries and some neighbors. “We will not walk away and leave the vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.”
But Biden headed home with few substantive deliverables to show. In the wake of the chaotic few months in energy markets, Biden did not come away with any guarantees from the Saudis and Emiratis to boost the global oil supply. This wasn’t particularly surprising. Experts had warned before Biden’s trip began that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi had limited extra capacity to inject into the markets.
Biden touted $1 billion in U.S. funding to help address hunger in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and proffered a smaller amount of economic assistance to Palestinians. But the latter was not welcomed by many Palestinians, who have seen their aspirations for statehood wither on the vine and successive U.S. administrations support a status quo that only deepens Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
“It’s the same thing as [former president Donald] Trump: it’s this focus on economic prosperity without addressing the real problems,” Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and activist, told the Financial Times. “It’s not money that we need. It’s the removal of checkpoints, it’s the removal of Israeli pressures not just on hospitals but on cultural institutions.”
“The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights,” wrote Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Yesterday, I met with a few brave human rights activists from the Middle East. Here’s what they had to say. pic.twitter.com/q8WQtp03px
For Biden, the real thrust of the visit was more tectonic. U.S. officials hope to reposition themselves in the region’s shifting geopolitical landscape, as Israel and a clutch of Arab monarchies tighten cooperation in the face of mutual antagonist Iran. Tough rhetoric over the regime in Tehran — not Palestinian rights in Israel or civil rights for dissidents in Arab autocracies — dominated proceedings. New diplomatic initiatives may also redefine the region: Earlier last week, Biden participated in a virtual meeting of the “I2U2” bloc, which brings together Israel, India, the UAE and the United States.
The Saudi decision to open its airspace to Israeli flights was hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid as “the first official step in normalization with Saudi Arabia.” Saudi officials, though, were far less enthusiastic in public about that outcome, emphasizing that the passage of these flights did not mean further steps were in motion. Normalization with Israel, they said, was still contingent on the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.
“Anyone expecting a checklist of achievements was looking at the wrong visit,” Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told me. “Biden didn’t go with a checklist but a long-term agenda.”
Discussions about the price of oil, differences over human rights, negotiations for maintaining the cease-fire in Yemen — these are matters usually handled quietly with one’s interlocutors. “The trip went as well as it was ever likely to, and that, in a very subtle way, it achieved a lot by clarifying Washington’s seriousness about leading a loose but potent security coalition in the region,” Ibish added.
Other analysts are less convinced. “The trip was worth it to his hosts in Israel and Saudi Arabia who each got what they wanted: Carte blanche to the continuation of an apartheid system in Israel and an official end to the Saudi crown prince’s pariah status,” Randa Slim, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told me. “It is unclear what the U.S. got from this trip.” | 2022-07-18T04:39:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Was Biden’s Middle East trip worth it? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/biden-middle-east-saudi-achieved-worth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/biden-middle-east-saudi-achieved-worth/ |
Police use tear gas as protesters storm the office compound of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on July 13, demanding his resignation. Just hours earlier, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had fled the struggling country. (Eranga Jayawardena/AP)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Gotabaya Rajapaksa has left the building, one joyous Sri Lankan wrote on Twitter after the country’s president resigned in absentia Thursday. The island nation’s extreme economic distress and political chaos had triggered huge protests calling on “Gota” to quit, and while his sudden departure brought an end to those demonstrations, it left the government in the hands of an unpopular acting leader and most people deeply worried about what comes next.
The signs of crisis are visible throughout the capital. Its streets are largely empty except for endless lines for fuel. Schools and offices remain closed. Power cuts are keeping traffic lights dark. Spiraling inflation — with the cost of vegetables such as onion and potatoes having doubled in less than a year — means that millions of people need food assistance.
Over the past decade, Sri Lanka had emerged as a South Asian success story. Then it quickly collapsed. The fears and even despair of many men and women are echoed in the experiences of four Sri Lankans who talked to The Washington Post in recent days. The conversations have been edited lightly for clarity and conciseness.
Imthiyaz Abubakr, 58, tuk-tuk driver
For 25 years, Abubakr has zipped around the streets of Colombo in his tuk-tuk — a bright blue autorickshaw — working hard to build a home for his family and educate his three children. He now spends his days waiting to buy gas. On Friday, he was No. 146 in a service station line more than a mile long.
Today is my fifth day in this queue. I don’t know how many more days it will take. There are more than 500 tuk-tuks in the line, 300 bikes and around 400 cars, but since yesterday, no fuel supply has arrived at this gas station. There is no way to leave the queue because I have no fuel. I have to keep waiting.
When it’s suffocatingly hot, I take out my back seat and sleep on the pavement. But the mosquitoes make it impossible to rest. I never thought that at this age I would be sleeping on pavements, away from my family. I go to a nearby mosque to use the washroom. Yesterday, I asked a fellow driver in the queue to look after my vehicle so I could go home for one night. I was stinking. I needed a shower.
How can anyone not be angry? We were not well-off [before Sri Lanka’s economic crisis], but life was comfortable and there was peace of mind. I worked hard and earned enough to provide three square meals to my family. We used to eat chicken often. Now all we can manage is rice and coconut sambol [a local condiment of chile, onion and grated coconut]. The price of rice and vegetables has skyrocketed. I have been surviving on tea and egg sandwiches from a cheap canteen nearby.
The last few years have been difficult. First there was covid, then Gota and his family robbed the country. That is why there is no money left.
I don’t know what else to do; I have to ensure my children have a future. If someone offered me a job abroad, I would go. I never wanted to leave, but there is no point now in living here.
I have lost all hope.
Sanjana Mudalige, 39, former retail worker
A single woman living alone, Mudalige loved her job at one of Colombo’s largest malls — helping people shop for clothes. She would dress up every day, put on makeup and on her break from work enjoy a meal of nasi goreng at the food court. Such meals are only memories these days.
I pawned my first piece of jewelry — a gold bangle — when prices began to rise in January. I did not know that things would unravel so quickly. I have since pawned jewelry worth $700, which I had purchased by saving bit by bit over the years. I don’t think I will ever be able to get them back.
In May, my salary was slashed in half. The commissions I used to make on sales had crashed as there were no tourists. As transport became expensive [because of fuel price hikes], I ultimately quit the job because travel cost more than my salary.
Every aspect of life has been affected. Cooking gas became scarce. When I could not find gas for days, I began to use firewood and kerosene. It’s very tedious to collect wood from outside and hack it into pieces. There is a lot of smoke, and it makes me cough. Now even kerosene is in short supply. I have half a bottle left.
I eat a quarter of what I used to eat. Right now, all I have left is half a plate of boiled rice, a little tea and one packet of biscuits. I go to the protests to get food to eat. The crisis has forced me to become a beggar.
No one has asked me in all these days how I am doing. You’re the first. I pray to Lord Buddha to send me a savior. I have given my passport to an employment agency to look for a job abroad.
The Rajapaksa family is responsible for this. They did not care for the people. I went to see the president and prime minister’s homes, and I was amazed to see their grandness. Did they never think of the inequalities when they lived in such luxury?
Gotabaya would not have left without the uprising. We want a new face. But there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. The political parties all have the same ideas.
I cry to sleep most nights. The difference between my life then and now is like the distance between the sky and the earth.
Manodya Jayarathne, 23, student protester
A software engineering student, Jayarathne first pushed for Rajapaksa’s ouster in his hometown of Kurunegala. He left for the capital this spring and began running a radio channel for the “Gota Go Home” movement, setting up in a tent amid a sprawling protest site across from the presidential office.
Last year in August, when I saw a huge queue for cooking gas in my hometown, I told my father that if people came on the streets to protest, I will join them.
It happened in April. I got on top of a clock tower and addressed the gathering on why we needed to protest. I thrust myself into organizing. We received a lot of pressure from the local police to shut it down and were threatened with legal action. I told them that it was people organizing themselves.
My mother was frightened and asked me to step back. The turning point for me was an encounter with an elderly lady. She had come for a food camp we had set up. She asked, “Aren’t you going to chase these people out? Take these people down.” That is when I decided to come to Colombo.
We set up the radio channel to communicate directly with the people. We gave a call to gather on July 9, to mark two months [since an attack on protesters by Rajapaksa supporters]. We never expected the crowd that turned out. There was barely any space to move.
I was doing a Facebook Live near the presidential office when the police tear-gassed the crowd. There was no plan to storm any building; the police action propelled the public.
We quickly organized ourselves at all the buildings. We gave tours to the public, cleaned up things, locked up parts to stop looting and vandalism. At the president’s house, behind a bookshelf, we found a hidden staircase leading to a bunker. All the bathrooms were air-conditioned. I have seen these things only in films. One day I slept in the master bedroom.
I am impacted by the crisis, just like everyone else. I am unable to live my life the way I would like. My mother, a government nurse, has seen a salary cut, and my father discontinued his jewelry business as no one has money.
Harini Amarasuriya, 52, member of Parliament
Amarasuriya is one of the few women in Sri Lanka’s male-dominated politics, a former academic who in 2020 was nominated to the Parliament by a coalition of left-leaning parties. She has thrown herself into organizing public meetings to open up the discussion about the country’s path forward.
I’ve heard so many stories of people going hungry. As a member of Parliament, you’re supposed to have power, but in real terms I have been able to do very little. I can mobilize some things, but that’s a drop in the ocean when you think about the number of people who need help.
I’ve had problems with transportation. I’ve had problems with cooking gas. I have an 83-year-old mother who recently had a fall. What do I do in an emergency? That’s been very stressful. But I still eat three meals a day. My [problems] are absolutely mild compared to what many others have to go through.
I was [at the protest] on July 9 with some colleagues. As a party we made a choice that we had to be there.
When the protesters stormed the presidential house, I was like “wow.” In that moment, it was owned by the people. Something really touched me watching the video of a scraggly man on the treadmill and a photograph of an old lady sitting on a grand chair grinning from ear to ear.
The politics in Sri Lanka are so removed from the lives of ordinary citizens. The Rajapaksas’ politics were about corruption, about facilitating an oligarchy consisting of senior military, business, media, politicians and religious leaders. There was a group that extracted wealth from the country and held power.
The consequences have been huge inequalities, rural poverty, a very precarious kind of economic structure and the complete collapse of social protection sectors.
There is no easy way out. The Parliament no longer has a mandate. We need a fresh election.
Hafeel Farisz contributed reporting. | 2022-07-18T05:08:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The fears of four Sri Lankans epitomize the country's huge challenges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/sri-lanka-crisis-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/sri-lanka-crisis-future/ |
An employee monitors for gas leaks during safety checks at the Uniper SE Bierwang Natural Gas Storage Facility in Muhldorf, Germany, on Friday, June 10, 2022. Uniper is playing a key role in helping the government set up infrastructure to import liquified natural gas to offset Russian deliveries via pipelines. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
It’s a falling chain of energy dominoes — one in which each tile is worth many billions of euros. A failed utility here, a nation’s supply there. When the dust settles, the total bill for rescuing the European energy market this winter will easily top $200 billion.
Let’s start from the utility side. Germany’s Uniper SE, the biggest buyer of Russian gas, has all but failed. It recently asked for a government bailout, and preliminary estimates put the bill at 10 billion euros. That’s likely to prove conservative. Electricite de France SA has failed as a reliable producer of electricity and needs help. Paris, which already owns a majority stake, will renationalize the rest, at a cost of at least 8 billion euros.
The state-backed loans aren’t trivial. Earlier this month, the Czech government gave the country’s state-controlled utility CEZ an emergency loan of 3 billion euros. That’s for a company that serves a country of little more than 10 million people. The German government, via its state-owned bank KwF, has already given 15 billion euros in loans to the country’s gas-market operator to buy gas and fill up storage ahead of winter. Whether those loans will ever be repaid is a question mark.
Now let’s look at the households. The UK is paradigmatic of the problem. In February, London announced a multi-billion-pound bailout to cushion the impact of a 54% increase in the country’s retail energy cap — a limit on how much utilities can charge families per year for electricity and gas. Back then, the price cap was rising from 1,277 pounds ($1,512) to 1,971 pounds per year, effective April 1. From October, the price cap is set to jump to about 3,300 pounds per year. The near 70% increase is set to be announced in early August.
Yet the median pre-tax annual household income in the UK is £31,770. That means a typical household will spend more than 10% of its income paying for electricity and gas — that’s the standard definition of energy poverty. Without government money, families will default on their bills, creating a debt problem for their energy providers. Either London bails out the families, or it has to bail out the utilities.
The likely size of the British government’s help? Earlier this year, a £693 increase in the price cap triggered a £9.1 billion handout. Back-of-the-envelop math suggests the £1,300 or so increase that’s coming would trigger a 17 billion-pound bailout.
Factor in just these known examples, and a $200 billion bill in European bailouts, nationalizations, state-backed loans and the like doesn’t sound that flippant anymore.
And the problem can get a lot worse very quickly. Again, consider Uniper. Because Russian President Vladimir Putin has cut gas supply to Germany by about 60%, Uniper is losing about 30 million euros every day from having to buy the same gas in the spot market. That’s about 10 billion euros per year — roughly the cost of what the German government is currently planning to spend to keep it afloat. If Putin completely shuts down the flow, the utility’s daily losses will jump to about 100 million euros a day, or more than 35 billion per year. The government will have to provide that sum if it wants to keep people’s power on.
If the utilities are allowed to pass higher gas costs onto the consumers, Goldman Sachs reckons that European households will have to pay 470 euros per month for electricity and gas, up 290% from the typical cost in mid-2020. That’s clearly unaffordable to many, perhaps most, and a much bigger bailout will be needed to help consumers get by. | 2022-07-18T06:09:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europe’s Energy Crisis Will Cost You $200 Billion — Probably More - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europes-energy-crisis-will-cost-you-200-billion-probably-more/2022/07/18/4b8362a0-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europes-energy-crisis-will-cost-you-200-billion-probably-more/2022/07/18/4b8362a0-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Whatever British firms are doing to attract and retain Black talent, it’s not enough.
Some 46% of Black professionals in the UK say they plan to stay with their employer for two years or less, versus 34% of White professionals, according to a survey published last week by New York-based nonprofit Coqual. For Black female professionals, the figure was 52%. The findings show that efforts to improve diversity in recruitment are wasted if firms can’t then inspire confidence in career development and provide an inclusive working environment.
The higher propensity to leave was in part explained by a sharp differential in perceptions of fairness in promotions, performance evaluations, hiring and pay, Coqual found. Nearly two-fifths of Black professionals said their company’s processes were “not at all” or only “slightly” fair, versus only about one-fifth of White professionals. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, was one of the sponsors of the research.
The situation should alarm UK employers. It’s not just that they are losing the benefit that an array of backgrounds brings to collective decision-making. Black professionals reported vastly higher levels of ambition than those from other racial groups in the Coqual survey — and they will take that elsewhere.
Attrition risks being self-perpetuating. If Black professionals leave, they won’t be represented in the executive leadership unless the firm can make lateral hires. In turn, that sends a message to potential new joiners that there’s a glass ceiling if you don’t look like the current team at the top. The most recent study of the UK FTSE-100 index of blue-chip firms by London consultancy Green Park found no Black chairs, chief executives or chief financial officers among its constituents. Note that the CFO role is often a gateway to being CEO as well as to non-executive roles on other boards.
There can be a tendency in the UK to look at the ethnic minority population as a whole instead of focusing on the day-to-day experience of specific groups. Last year’s report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities drew criticism for suggesting that terms such as “institutional racism” were overused. At the moment, much attention is focused on the ruling Conservative Party’s diverse roster of candidates to succeed Boris Johnson as its leader and the country’s prime minister.
But just as pandemic health outcomes varied across ethnic groups, so people’s experiences of the workplace are not universal. Black professionals were significantly more likely to report experiencing racial prejudice at their current or former employers than their Asian and White counterparts were, Coqual found. Common microaggressions experienced by Black professionals include being underestimated (being told, for example, that they’re “articulate”), having their hair touched without permission and being expected to represent their entire race.
Nor are the experiences of Black professionals uniform. Black Caribbean employees were more likely than Black African peers to say that their company’s processes were either not fair or only slightly fair, and less likely to say they have role models at their firm.
The corporate action plan for this is not difficult — it just needs implementing.
Companies must understand their culture before they can improve it. That means using surveys to audit how employees experience the workplace (with questions set by an independent organization), raising awareness and providing anti-racism training (recognizing that employees’ racial literacy will vary).
At the same time, firms should scrutinize the procedures that govern how people move up the company. Middle managers do most of an organization’s hiring, firing and promotion. Ensuring that the processes they control are fair and objective — and are seen to be so — should be part of performance evaluation and incentive pay.
Accountability should also be to the public sphere. There is a strong case for publishing ethnicity pay gaps with explanatory narrative where feasible.
One question is whether senior leaders’ sponsorship of up-and-coming talent is being used effectively. Last year’s update on the 2017 “Race in the Workplace” review by British Chambers of Commerce President Ruby McGregor-Smith found that progress on mentorship for ethnic minorities had slowed despite strong demand — above all from Black African employees. Firms can also do more to facilitate networking opportunities for Black professionals with other companies.
The great resignation is bad enough for the UK corporate sector. But employers should pay special heed to what’s making Black employees consider joining the trend. | 2022-07-18T06:09:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK Companies Are Failing Black Professionals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/uk-companies-are-failing-black-professionals/2022/07/18/4b4510d6-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/uk-companies-are-failing-black-professionals/2022/07/18/4b4510d6-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
It is the last-chance saloon for Tunisian democracy. A week from today, the country where the 2011 Arab Spring first bloomed will have what may be the final opportunity to prevent its president from institutionalizing a new dictatorship.
On July 25, exactly a year after Kais Saied fired the government, suspended parliament and assumed absolute authority, Tunisians will vote in a referendum on a new constitution that would cement the president’s complete control of their country. As Zaid al-Ali, the preeminent scholar on constitutions in the Arab world, wrote in the Washington Post: “The draft looks very much like the 1959 constitution, which laid the framework for Tunisia to be governed as an autocracy for half a century, until the breakdown that led to the 2011 uprisings.”
The outcome of the referendum may not make the international headlines that accompanied those uprisings. But it will be watched closely in other Arab countries, especially in Iraq and Libya, where democratic shoots are shriveling as political parties prove, just as in Tunisia, incapable of delivering good governance. The vote also will be followed with interest in Algeria and Sudan, where pro-democracy uprisings of the past two years are withering under sustained pushback from entrenched elites.
Where the tiny Mediterranean nation once raised aspirations across the Arab world by ejecting its tyrant, a vote for a return to one-man rule would represent a body blow to democratic movements across the Middle East and North Africa.
The Tunisian president has put his fingers on the scale to ensure things go his way. He has interfered with the drafting of the constitution itself: The head of the committee appointed for the job resigned in protest. Saied has jailed opponents, muzzled the media and extended his authority over the judiciary. In May, he appointed a new election commission — one member has already quit.
Saied is hoping to capitalize on despair about democracy at home and apathy abroad. He grabbed power just as Tunisians were giving up hope that their dysfunctional government and gridlocked parliament would be able to look past petty political bickering to address deep-seated economic problems. Many hoped the president, unbeholden to any political faction, would be able to do just that.
The initially positive response to the coup from many Tunisians allowed the international community to absolve itself of any responsibility to protect the democratic institutions that Saied was undermining. The United Nations wrung its hands ineffectually; the US and European nations wagged a disapproving finger, weakly. France, which exercises considerable influence over Tunisian affairs because of its colonial history and trade ties, treated the autocrat with kid gloves.
It didn’t take long for Tunisians to realize Saied was less interested in solving their problems than consolidating his power. Their hopes of last fall had turned to ennui by this spring, when few bothered to participate in an online survey that was meant to inform the new constitution. Turnout in municipal elections in March was even lower than in 2018 — undermining the president’s claim that direct democracy, centered on local elections, is a better fit for the country than the parliamentary system enshrined in the current constitution.
But the international community hasn’t gotten off the fence: The Biden administration, for instance, has only expressed mild concern about Saied’s systematic appropriation of authority over the past year. Sterner measures, such as targeted sanctions against the president and his enablers, haven’t even been threatened.
So the Tunisians are on their own against an autocrat, just as they were in 2011. This time, they may not need to take to the streets, although there have been scattered protests in recent days. The referendum gives them a chance to defeat Saied at the ballot box. Although he has the support of the armed forces, the generals have historically bowed to public pressure. A wholesale rejection of his constitution will leave the president no choice but to restore power to Parliament.
Biden Should Welcome the Middle East’s New Player: India: Mihir Sharma | 2022-07-18T06:10:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tunisia Once Again Is a Test for Arab Democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tunisia-once-again-is-a-test-for-arab-democracy/2022/07/18/4b0a76ce-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tunisia-once-again-is-a-test-for-arab-democracy/2022/07/18/4b0a76ce-0657-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Mornings in Mexico
The unwelcome landmarks continue to fall. Last week, US inflation rose above 9% for the first time in four decades, and the value of a euro dropped below the value of a dollar for the first time in two. Round numbers shouldn’t matter, and both continued trends that had been around for a while. But of course they do.
To try to gain a perspective, let me offer how all of this is perceived in Mexico, where I spent last week. The grand country of 129 million that shares a long border with the US has a frustrating recent economic history of failing to grow despite many sincere attempts. But Mexico’s story does cast the battle against inflation and the strength of the dollar in a new light.
And given that Mexico’s growth continues to disappoint, while organized crime is tightening its grip over ever more of the country, some of its performance is surprising. Turning to inflation, remarkably, it is lower in Mexico than in the US, as I showed last week:
Meanwhile, the peso has held up very much better than most currencies as the dollar has surged. This is how the euro and the peso have performed compared to the US dollar since the beginning of 2000. Despite everything, Mexico’s currency has held its value slightly better over that time than the euro:
If we look at a ranking of emerging market currencies against the dollar so far this year, the picture of Mexican resilience continues. It has barely given any ground against the dollar, while two other Latin American nations, Brazil and Peru, have gained slightly. For others, it’s a different story:
All of this has happened as Mexico churns through the fourth year of the presidential term of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO, his initials), an aggressive populist who had scared foreign investors throughout the two decades he acted as the left’s figurehead and campaigned for the presidency. AMLO has not made the mistakes many had feared. He may well, however, have made some very different but equally serious ones whose pain is not yet totally apparent.
Austerity, AMLO Style
The big thing that many didn’t grasp about AMLO is that frugality is his thing; he hates spending money and regards tight spending as virtuous. That meant that Mexico did less in fiscal terms than any comparable country to alleviate the hurt caused by the pandemic. Looking at the budget deficit of Mexico and the US as a percentage of gross domestic product, it’s impossible to tell that the pandemic even happened south of the border, while it led to a historic deficit north of it:
Hair-shirt economics like this help to strengthen the country’s currency and credit rating. After various economic disasters in the last 50 years, this is a big deal. AMLO witnessed the last two presidents to attempt sweeping populist growth policies suffer severe peso crises and hyper-inflation as they left office: Luis Echeverria in 1976 and Jose Lopez Portillo in 1982. Both borrowed and spent heavily. He has successfully avoided making the same mistake. But is this a good idea? Weirdly, many of his critics on the right in Mexican politics, along with many allies on the left, now complain that he has been too conservative.
Carlos Capistran, chief Mexico economist for Bank of America, suggests that austerity is not the same thing as fiscal discipline:
Mexico plans to continue with austerity as the driver of its fiscal policy. For the administration, austerity means keeping a primary balance close to zero no matter what. To achieve this “fiscal rule,” the government cuts expenditure (ex-emblematic projects) to whatever revenues (resources) it is able to get without hiking taxes. Investors have welcomed Mexico’s austerity because it has kept rating agencies at bay. But lower expenditure contributes to weak growth which turn into lower revenues which under austerity turn into low expenditure. This vicious circle will be difficult to maintain as expenditure cannot be cut ad infinitum. Fiscal discipline is sustainable, austerity is not.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development shows that Mexico’s investment is startlingly low compared to the average of OECD members:
Meanwhile, domestic critics point out that Costa Rica, a much smaller country with fewer natural advantages, has managed to keep its GDP growing over the pandemic era. Mexico has not:
The risk is that a “social deficit” catches up with Mexico in the longer term, with the weakening of public services and failure to invest for industrial growth leading to a later reckoning. With many small companies forced out of business during the pandemic and receiving no compensation, the coronavirus era (which hit the country very hard) is likely to have longer lingering economic effects than in other nations.
Mexican inflation is lower than in the US. Nevertheless, shouldn’t prices be rising more slowly? Mexico, as we’ve seen, didn’t do anything like America’s fiscal splurge. Its central bank also started to hike rates 12 months ago, long ahead of the Federal Reserve. With both fiscal and monetary policy far less likely to be inflationary, and with a growth problem, how to account for an inflation rate that has risen alarmingly to 8%?
The argument here is that Mexico’s minimum salary has grown sharply under AMLO (and had also started to grow in the closing years of his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto). Economic orthodoxy suggests that this should be inflationary, and more minimum salary rises are planned. However, policy makers rebut this by pointing out that the minimum wage was allowed to tank in real terms after the Tequila Crisis of late 1994, when the peso’s value against the dollar collapsed, ushering in an era of high inflation. In real terms, taking the minimum salary and deflating it by the Mexican consumer price index, it was irrelevant for two decades. Even now, after sharp increases, it’s only a third higher than before the Tequila Crisis. That’s not great growth for the workforce of a growing nation:
The other defense offered by policy makers is to blame Mexico’s very openness. It depends on exports to a great degree and is unavoidably exposed to its huge neighbor to the north. On which subject...
El Superpeso
What about the strength of the peso? It’s impressive because Mexico’s open economy (exports account for 40% of GDP, compared to 17% for Brazil and 10% for the US) tends to make the currency deeply sensitive to the strength of global growth. As Capital Economics Ltd. of London points out, the peso’s correlation with the global stock market is stronger than any other currency, bar the Korean won:
The peso has avoided falling as the global stock market swoons in large part because it is so inextricably entwined with the US. As a rule, when US growth is doing well, the peso is doing even better, and vice versa. A US recession, much feared, would have a serious impact on the Mexican economy and would also undermine support for the currency:
There are risks, then. The peso is currently attracting flows as a perceived haven, while its relative high yield and stability also draws funds from “carry traders” who short other low-yielding currencies such as the yen and euro. Such a trade is working very well at present, and helping to prop up the peso. History suggests, however, that this can turn around quickly.
Points of Light
There are perhaps two key factors that are helping Mexico navigate the rough market waters. First, the flow of money from migrant workers, the great majority of whom are in the US, has reached new heights. In May, the last month for which there are data, it topped $5 billion for the first time. Typically, these are checks going to mothers in poor regions that have been hollowed out by migration. Thus they function as a direct injection of funds to the people who most need it and are most likely to spend it.
Also, incidentally, note that as Mexican workers tend to be in the least well-paid jobs, these numbers suggest robust health in the US labor market. In the context of inflation, that can be read as either good or bad news:
The other great source of hope is in manufacturing exports. It’s been a central aim of Mexican policy since at least the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 1994 to try to build a manufacturing sector. The country has succeeded in doing this. Manufacturing exports stagnated for several years after Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, which was a disaster for Mexico (the last WTO member to vote to admit China). They dipped during the recessions that followed the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020, but over the last three years the success has been clear:
Mexico made a bet on globalization — and would have liked to make an even greater one by gaining freedom of movement for labor. It hasn’t delivered anything like the growth that had been hoped for. But the country has found a way to make things that other people will buy, while its migrant workers are providing a service for which people will pay. In certain vital ways, globalization is paying off.
Austerity does seem to have worked as a way to avoid currency devaluation of a market attack on the sovereign rating. Others take note. It also may have helped to moderate inflation. But Mexico’s openness to the world economy made inflation almost unavoidable. Anyone trading as heavily as Mexico does is going to suffer higher prices. To avoid inflation at home might therefore have required not only austerity but also some retreat from globalization. As for Mexico itself, the “tail risk” of a major crisis is much smaller than in other similar countries; as jitters about the risks created by the strong dollar intensify, the peso is likely to maintain its role as a (very unlikely) haven.
The main readthrough, though, is to avoid making assumptions about the economic policy that any given politician will apply when in office. AMLO is certainly a “populist” rather than a liberal (“pueblo” comes up all the time in his speeches, while “libertad” almost never does). But many question whether it’s even accurate to call him “left-wing.” He talks in soaring language, but it tends to be free of the left’s ideological buzzwords.
In Mexico, it’s natural for a populist to have a deep distaste for the comfortable and corrupt life many bureaucrats enjoy — hence a campaign of austerity. And having watched a succession of presidents borrow too much and fall foul of international markets as a young man entering politics, it’s not surprising that AMLO was determined to avoid the same mistake. It’s an idea to listen to politicians when they say what they believe in. He’s declared loudly that a president who devalues the currency also devalues his presidency, and his previous tours in governments were also marked by austerity.
Those who thought that an AMLO presidency meant an imminent risk of another classic Mexican financial crisis were wrong. But an attempt to cut down on government while not encouraging investment by the private sector isn’t a great way to create growth. This version of populism has proved equal to the challenge of keeping the currency strong. We’ll know in a few years whether maintaining austerity during a pandemic was a good idea. At this point, it’s hard to believe that it is.
OK, another tip for anyone considering traveling to Mexico City. It claims to have more museums and art galleries than any other city in the world, and I can believe it. The whole place is a feast for the eyes. Artists and photographers have long been attracted to the country by the color and the light.
To follow the beaten path (but it’s still great), you can track the star-crossed lovers Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The giant bauble known as the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the center of town is full of Rivera’s greatest murals; Frida’s house (the “casa azul”) in the Coyoacan neighborhood is extraordinary, as is the modernist studio designed for them in nearby San Angel by the architect Juan O’Gorman; and the most fun is the Museo Dolores Olmedo at the city’s south end. Olmedo was an extraordinary figure who enjoyed affairs with three different Mexican presidents. She also had a lengthy affair with Rivera, mostly while he was married to Kahlo. Ironically, the museum, set in gorgeous grounds, has a massive collection of Kahlo’s paintings. It also has some of Rivera’s smaller scale works, which show that he — like Picasso — could have been a great artist in any format. And most impressively, Olmedo seemed determined to prove that she and not Kahlo had been the greatest love of Rivera’s life. The place is full of affectionate letters and gifts from the artist, and Olmedo also took care to place Rivera’s nude charcoal sketches of herself and Kahlo next to each other. Let’s say they certainly give the impression that Rivera was more attracted to Olmedo.
For a less well-known treasure, try the Centro de la Imagen, which is a great treasure trove of photography. Current exhibitions include Mujeres de Peso (women of weight) by Patricia Aridjis — and please note that the link will take you to photos that include nudity — and a retrospective of the photography of Mariana Yampolsky, who recorded Mexican society for decades.
It’s all good. Now, back to inflation and equity and bond bear markets in New York. Have a great week everyone. More From Other Writers at Bloomberg:
• Supreme Court ‘Originalists’ Are Flying False Flag: Noah Feldman
• Dollar ‘Doom Loop’ Threatens World Markets: Alloway and Weisenthal | 2022-07-18T06:10:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When Austerity Is a Bigger Problem Than Inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/when-austerity-is-a-bigger-problemthan-inflation/2022/07/18/2eae2e3a-065c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/when-austerity-is-a-bigger-problemthan-inflation/2022/07/18/2eae2e3a-065c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Sri Lanka’s Prabath Jayasuriya, center, celebrates the wicket of Oakistan’s Abdullah Shafique during the first day of the first test cricket match between Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Galle, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 16, 2022. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP)
GALLE, Sri Lanka — Logistical challenges caused by Sri Lanka’s economic and political crisis forced cricket organizers to move the second cricket test against Pakistan from Colombo to Galle. | 2022-07-18T07:41:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sri Lanka switches venues for 2nd cricket test vs Pakistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/sri-lanka-switches-venues-for-2nd-cricket-test-vs-pakistan/2022/07/18/85010322-065f-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/sri-lanka-switches-venues-for-2nd-cricket-test-vs-pakistan/2022/07/18/85010322-065f-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Americans should be able to sponsor refugees who can stay permanently
The U.S. does too little for too few, but Canada has a program worth adopting and improving
Perspective by Ilya Somin
Sabine El-Chidiac
Ukrainian refugees and their children at a border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on March 18. (Bloomberg News)
Even before President Donald Trump, the refugee resettlement process was slow and cumbersome, but Trump made things much worse by slashing the annual refugee quotas to a low of 18,000 for fiscal 2020 and 15,000 for fiscal 2021, before Biden increased it, which in turn led many resettlement organizations to shut down or scale back. President Biden raised the 2021 cap to 62,500 in May of that year — and set a cap of 125,000 for 2022 — but has not been able to restore the resettlement infrastructure that Trump undercut. As a result, the higher quotas remain largely unfilled, with a record-low 11,411 refugees admitted in 2021, even though many more would love to come. Even in the current fiscal year, the administration expects to fall far short of its target, Axios reports.
The Biden administration has tried to ease the logjam — at least for Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression — by creating the Uniting for Ukraine program, under which private citizens can sponsor Ukrainian refugees. Ukrainians wishing to enter must first get a U.S.-citizen sponsor, who has to prove that they can financially support the new arrival for two years; they must also pass certain health and security checks. The Ukrainians can seek permission to work but may stay for only two years. U.S. sponsors have filed applications on behalf of some 60,000 Ukrainians under this policy. The administration has pledged to help at least 100,000 Ukrainians relocate overall.
The war in Ukraine is on track to be among modern history’s bloodiest
The program is a decent start, but it could be improved by adapting a similar, better-run Canadian program.
Since 1979 — inspired by the massive numbers of people displaced by the Vietnam War and its aftermath — Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees program has allowed ordinary people and community groups to support refugees financially and otherwise for 12 months (or until the refugee is self-sufficient, whichever comes first). Sponsors can include private citizens working together (a “Group of Five”) or a group that holds a sponsorship agreement with the Canadian government, such as a religious institution or cultural organization. In an important contrast with the U.S. program, the refugees can stay permanently after the sponsorship period, and the program is not limited to people from specific nations. The combination of monetary assistance with more personal support, such as helping refugees find language classes or sign their children up for schools, gives the refugees a chance to hit the ground running. The recipients of private aid must be a refugee as defined by the United Nations (or according to a few other criteria). In 2022, Canada’s target number for privately sponsored refugees is 31,255, while the goal for government-sponsored refugees is 19,790. Relative to Canada’s population size — just over a tenth that of the United States — these figures are several times higher per capita than Biden’s unmet quota of 125,000.
Privately sponsored refugees tend to be better-educated than government-assisted refugees, but even after controlling for such variables, a recent Canadian study found that those privately sponsored had higher employment rates and earnings than government-sponsored ones.
The Canadian program is superior to America’s Uniting for Ukraine in part because it offers refugees a permanent solution. How many Ukrainians admitted under the U.S. program will be able to go home in two years? The Russia-Ukraine war shows little sign of ending, and even if it was over tomorrow, many Ukrainians might be unable to return to destroyed cities and houses. Past refugee crises, such as those triggered by the Syrian civil war, make clear that many people forced to flee war zones need permanent new homes.
Opening sponsored resettlement to people facing a multitude of dangers across the globe, as Canada does, makes more sense than a temporary program targeting one nationality. To take just one example, the United States should open its doors to Russians fleeing the intensifying oppression of Vladimir Putin’s regime. We should welcome people fleeing war and repression, regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality.
Creating a program more like Canada’s could help the United States meet the moral imperative of helping Ukrainians and other refugees (permanently, not just temporarily). It would also help advance American economic and strategic interests. Studies find that migrants bolster the U.S. economy and disproportionately contribute to scientific and technological innovation, and that even refugees are net contributors to the public treasury. In addition, accepting them deprives hostile governments of valuable human resources and bolsters our position in the international war of ideas against Putin and other authoritarians. Refugees from allied nations, like Ukraine, can also help their countries of origin by sending remittances back home and by fostering political liberalization; studies indicate that having a diaspora in advanced liberal democracies often has a liberalizing effect on countries of origin. Given all these advantages, we contend that there should be no cap on the number of privately sponsored refugees — or, if political factors demand one, that the cap should be very generous.
Adopting a version of the Canadian system could also save taxpayer money. Private Canadian sponsors often spend $28,000 or more to support refugees and their families during that first crucial year (roughly what the government spends on refugees that it assists). The sponsored refugees are not eligible for social assistance during the sponsorship period, unless the sponsor breaks their agreement, in which case the government may demand reimbursement from the sponsoring group.
The Canadian private sponsorship system does have some flaws. Limiting the program, as Canada does in some cases, to people who meet the strict definition of refugee, as established by the United Nations, is arguably too onerous. The UN definition covers only those whose “life or freedom would be threatened on account of [their] race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Many people fleeing war, as opposed to repression based on race or religion — including many Ukrainian migrants today — don’t fit these parameters. The United States would do well to omit such limitations.
Private refugee resettlement would allow the United States to augment its damaged refugee system, thereby helping many more people, saving taxpayer money, and advancing U.S. strategic and economic interests. The United States should learn from Canada’s example — and improve on it. | 2022-07-18T09:12:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Americans should be able to sponsor refugees who can stay permanently - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/18/refugee-sponsored-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/18/refugee-sponsored-ukraine/ |
This photo provided by the fire brigade of the Gironde region shows a wildfire near Landiras, southwestern France, July 17. (AP)
PARIS — Britain on Monday braced for what could become its hottest day on record, as French authorities warned of a “heat apocalypse” and emergency services across Europe confronted spreading wildfires and rising death tolls.
British authorities for the first time issued a “red extreme” heat warning for large parts of England, while France’s meteorological service placed a stretch of its Atlantic coast under the highest-possible alert level.
Forecasters predicted that a number of heat records could be toppled on Monday, with Britain expecting temperatures of up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) — far above the current record of 101.7 degrees (38.7 Celsius), which was set in 2019. Temperatures in France were expected to top 104 degrees (40 Celsius) and the heat was expected to linger until at least Tuesday.
Nikos Christidis, a climate attribution researcher at Britain’s Met Office, said it reflected scientists’ expectation that climate change is making extreme heat events more frequent.
“The chances of seeing 40°C days in the U.K. could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence,” he said in a news release.
Across Europe, the human toll of the continent’s most recent heat wave was becoming increasingly visible on Monday. Thousands more were expected to be evacuated amid rapidly-spreading wildfires in Spain, France and Portugal. Authorities warned that the heat was likely to degrade air quality in major urban population centers, and hundreds were feared dead from the high temperatures. Much of Italy’s north, which is facing one of its worst droughts in decades, remained under a state of emergency.
In many parts of France and Spain, firefighting and hospitals were increasingly strained. France’s Interior Ministry announced it would deploy hundreds of additional firefighters to the most severely hit regions, including the popular beaches and vacation spots on the country’s west coast. In Spain, authorities said in many places, the available firefighting planes were already working at capacity.
“Full solidarity with firefighters and disaster victims,” wrote French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. Her Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez on Sunday paid tribute to a dead emergency service worker.
Hospital unions in France and other countries warned that the heat is putting an additional burden on services that are already dealing with a renewed rise in coronavirus-linked hospitalizations in recent weeks.
Models by Spain’s public Carlos III Institute estimate that over 350 people died as a result of heat in the country last week — far above the weekly average of around 60 deaths, but largely comparable to the toll of similar heat episodes in prior years. Over 800 heat-linked deaths were reported by the institute in June, when similarly scorching temperatures hit the country and other parts of Europe, with temperatures reaching between 104 and 110 degrees (40 to 43 Celsius).
Historic June heat wave smashes records in Europe
Across Europe, the heat was expected to force trains to slow down, prompting railway operators in multiple countries to issue warnings of severe delays. Britain’s Network Rail said customers should only travel if “absolutely necessary” in the first part of the week. In France, national railway operator SNCF urged travelers to carry water bottles and to be prepared for delays.
The most recent heat wave has revived a debate over how to prepare citizens for the impact of climate change.
After a heat wave killed an estimated 15,000 people in France in 2003, French nursing homes developed emergency plans. Many of them are now equipped with air-conditioned rooms, additional ventilation, or sprinklers that cool down building facades.
In Paris, city authorities encourage residents and tourists to use a dedicated website to find over 900 “islands of coolness” which include city parks, cemeteries, swimming pools and museums. The site also points to dedicated “cooling routes” — for example streets with lush trees — that connect those spaces. Other French cities rely on misting devices.
Studies suggest that such measures have brought down heat-related mortality since 2003. But as climate change progresses, increasingly brutal heat domes that build up in urban areas could pose risks that may be difficult to address with conventional solutions. Many of the elderly residents who died in recent heat waves in France were at home and not in nursing facilities.
In rural areas, heat waves are expected to have an increasingly serious impact on agricultural production. This year, French farmers faced a mix of frost, a record-hot May accompanied by a spring drought, intense hailstorms that brought heavy rain this year, followed by more drought this summer.
“What we see now is just the very beginning of the potential impact” of climate change, said Christian Huyghe, scientific director at France’s National Institute of Agricultural Research. | 2022-07-18T09:13:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. set for record temperatures as heatwave hits Europe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/britain-europe-heatwave-record-temperatures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/britain-europe-heatwave-record-temperatures/ |
June and Hubert Malicote, both turning 100 this month, adhered to one rule when they had disagreements
June and Hubert Malicote at their shared 99th birthday party last July. The couple have been married for 79 years. (Family photo)
It turns out, Hubert didn’t blow it at all: The two have been married for nearly 80 years — and according to both husband and wife, they are still smitten with each other. Through the entirety of their decades-long marriage, the couple claim they have never quarreled. Not even once.
Quarreling might be in the eye of the beholder, but the fact that this is how they describe their marriage is telling.
“It works like a charm,” said Hubert, who is joining his wife as a centenarian later this month. June turned 100 on July 13, and Hubert’s birthday is July 23.
The pair live in Hamilton, Ohio — where they met at a church in September 1941, when they were 19. At the time, Hubert worked at a manufacturing company for 35 cents an hour, and June was working at an ice cream parlor earning 10 cents an hour.
After the service, a group of churchgoers — including Hubert and June — walked to a park together. Hubert struck up a conversation with June, and within seconds, he said, he knew.
The attraction was mutual: “He was so handsome,” said June, who had a stroke in January 2020 that left her with limited speech. She spoke sparingly in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “I just fell for him.”
“The following Sunday, I went back to church to meet her again,” Hubert said, adding that Sunday mornings became their standing date, until he got up the courage to invite her to the county fair.
Still, the prospect of leaving June behind — especially without the promise of a future together — felt gutting. He proposed marriage and she said yes.
On June 8, 1943, the couple tied the knot in the same church where they met. Over the three years Hubert spent in the military — he was stationed in Rhode Island, Pearl Harbor, San Diego and at Naval Station Great Lakes — they faithfully wrote each other letters.
Despite the occasional disagreement, he said, the couple made a conscious effort to “never criticize each other,” Hubert said, explaining that taking space — even for an hour or two — prevented misunderstandings from morphing into full-fledged arguments. “Whenever she smiled, all of those problems would go away.”
The Malicotes were both raised on farms — he in Indiana and she in Kentucky. Hubert was one of 13 siblings, and June was one of eight. They both lived simple lives and said they longed for little.
Because of that, Hubert said, “we knew how to deal with problems, how to take care of money, how to spend and how to save.”
Their daughter Jo Malicote, 70, said her parents’ bond is stronger than ever.
The Malicotes marked their 100th birthdays with a joint celebration July 15 at Eaton Road Church of God — where they met and got married and have remained congregants.
Dozens of family members — including their seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren — and close friends came to commemorate the family matriarch and patriarch. | 2022-07-18T10:13:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | June and Hubert Malicote share secrets of their 80-year marriage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/18/secrets-happy-marriage-malicote-longevity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/18/secrets-happy-marriage-malicote-longevity/ |
Preservationists say Library of Congress makeover plan is ‘vandalism’
The library’s Main Reading Room, included in a $60 million renovation of the Thomas Jefferson Building, lands on the D.C. Preservation League’s list of endangered places
Patrons walk through the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress in 2019. (Will Newton for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post)
A proposed change to the ornate Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress that critics say would remove the symbolic and functional heart of the 1897 Beaux-Arts masterpiece has landed the library on the D.C. Preservation League’s 2022 list of Most Endangered Places.
The Library of Congress plans to remove the mahogany librarian’s desk that rises some 16 feet in the middle of this spectacular, first-floor room and replace it with a circular window in the floor that will offer a view of its decorative dome to visitors looking up from the floor below.
When the D.C. Preservation League announced the listing last month, it described the alternation as ill-advised and unnecessary and said it would “desecrate the Reading Room’s character and function.” It asked Congress and the Architect of the Capitol, the federal agency responsible for the Capitol complex, to stop it.
The league’s listing is the most recent and public criticism of the proposal, which was unveiled more than three years ago. It follows a retired librarian’s complaint submitted to the Library of Congress inspector general in April and expressions of outrage from arts and civic leaders.
“I’m appalled at this proposal,” Arthur Cotton Moore, the consulting architect on the building’s renovation between 1981 and 1997, said in a recent phone interview. “We are trying to head off a tragedy.”
The Library of Congress wants to attract more visitors. Will that undermine its mission?
The alteration is part of a $60 million makeover of the Thomas Jefferson Building, one of three Library of Congress structures on Capitol Hill. The makeover includes additional exhibition space, a learning lab and an orientation center and is intended to improve the visitor experience and increase attendance.
Principal Deputy Librarian of Congress Mark Sweeney called the project a “game changer” that is critical to the library’s future. The D.C. Preservation League’s posting about the plan has several errors, he added, including the idea that the library is turning away from its central function as a place for scholarship.
“We have definitely taken care of the researchers. Question is, have we taken care of other people? I reject vehemently this idea that we can't serve more than researchers. We have to. We have to democratize access to this. And it can be done well, tastefully, but not without some level of change,” he said.
The plan does not remove the entire circulation desk as preservationists contend, he added. The outer circular wooden structure will remain, while the inner desk, which Sweeney calls the tower, will be disassembled, inventoried and stored. “It could be returned if there’s ever a desire to do that in the future,” he said.
The book delivery system will be moved to the perimeter of the room, and a retractable fire curtain will be installed. This safety feature will not be visible through the window or by researchers in the reading room, he said.
The Library of Congress is not required to hold public hearings on the plan, but it has met regularly with congressional committees and the Architect of the Capitol. The library’s donor group, the James Madison Council, has been briefed.
“This is one of the most important buildings in the United States, and nobody has any idea this is happening,” D.C. Preservation League Executive Director Rebecca Miller said.
David Rubenstein gives $15 million to the Holocaust Museum
Congress has given the library $40 million for the project since 2019 and the library is close to reaching $20 million in private donations to cover the balance, Sweeney said. Philanthropist David M. Rubenstein has pledged $10 million.
The design is not finished, although the library hopes to have final plans by the end of the year, Sweeney said. That leaves the plan’s critics little time.
“This is nothing short of vandalism. This is one of the most recognizable interiors in the nation, and that room is its heart,” said Pat Tiller of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City. “If it were a critical need, that would be one thing. But for a viewing platform? It’s a small, silly gesture.”
Library management does not see it that way.
“More people need to visit the library, need to experience it, to understand why it’s important, who we serve. We’re very excited about this,” Sweeney said. | 2022-07-18T10:13:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Preservationists say Library of Congress makeover plan is 'vandalism’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/18/library-congress-preservation-league-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/18/library-congress-preservation-league-protest/ |
Crash in Prince George’s County kills woman, injures 4 other people
Police in Prince George's County said four people were hurt in a crash and one woman died. (Prince George's County Police)
Police said a woman died and four other people were hurt Sunday night in a crash in Prince George’s County.
The incident happened at the intersection of Kettering Drive and Kettering Place. The road was closed for several hours.
Few details were given about the crash.
An initial investigation found that five people were in a car and were all taken to a hospital. Police said the woman, who was a passenger in the car, was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after the crash. | 2022-07-18T10:39:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Four hurt, one dead after crash in Prince George's County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/woman-killed-prince-georges-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/woman-killed-prince-georges-crash/ |
Two-bedroom, two-bathroom house in D.C.’s Anacostia lists for $399,900
Built in 1910, the house has been recently painted and includes a front porch with columns and fish-scale siding. (Arian White)
House hunters with a budget that tops out at $400,000 often end up buying in the D.C. suburbs. If they want to buy within the city limits, a condo is almost the only option.
The median sales price for a home in D.C. was $650,000 in May, according to Bright MLS. But there are always exceptions, and buyers who are determined to find a single-family house in the city can sometimes find an affordable option if they’re willing to accept a smaller property and a location farther from a Metro station.
For example, the single-family house at 1824 Gainesville St. SE is priced at $399,900. No homeowner association or condo fees are required, and annual property taxes are $2,380.
Located in Anacostia, this 896-square-foot house has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Built in 1910, the house has been recently painted and includes a front porch with columns and fish-scale siding. The main level includes hardwood floors, high ceilings, recessed lighting, a powder room and a new kitchen with quartz counters, new cabinets and stainless-steel appliances. Upstairs are two bedrooms with new carpets, a laundry closet with a washer and dryer, and an updated full bathroom.
The house includes a large, fenced lot with a deck in the backyard. Parking is available on the street. Multiple bus routes serve the neighborhood, and the Anacostia Metro station is 1.3 miles from the house. Residents can walk to the Fort Stanton Recreation Center and the Anacostia Community Museum. The 11th Street Bridge Park, expected to open in 2025, is 1.4 miles from the house.
Assigned schools include Moten Elementary, Kramer Middle and Anacostia High.
For more information, contact real estate agent Jo Ann Kennel with Re/Max Allegiance at 703-403-3899. | 2022-07-18T10:43:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two-bedroom, two-bathroom house in D.C.’s Anacostia lists for $399,900 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/18/anacostia-home-lists-for-under-400k/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/18/anacostia-home-lists-for-under-400k/ |
Analysis by Aaron Brown | Bloomberg
If you read financial news long enough, you’re sure to come across that phrase “stock picker’s market,” although there’s considerable difference of opinion about what that means. Many people, including the great founder of Vanguard Group Inc. John Bogle, reject the idea out of hand. After all, they argue, money made by one stock picker is lost by another, so no market can be good for both.
Academics have studied various precise definitions to see if stock-picking equity mutual funds beat their benchmarks more in some types of markets than others. This work has not led to firm consensus, but there is marginal statistical evidence that high individual stock volatility, low index volatility, low pairwise correlations among individual stocks and high dispersion among stock returns help active managers relative to benchmarks.
If this is correct, we had a pretty good stock-pickers’ market from the end of 2016 to Sept. 30, 2020, but things have changed. The opposite of a stock pickers’ market is often said to be a quant equity market. When stock prices are deviating from long-term historical relations, pickers thrive, but when fundamental factors drive markets, quants are kings. At least that’s the theory.
Actively managed US equity mutual funds have underperformed their benchmarks by an annualized average of 2.3% per year since Sept. 30, 2020, compared with 0.7% over the period from Dec. 31, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2020. The latter figure is roughly the average expense ratio of these funds. Over the long term, actively managed equity mutual funds tend to underperform their benchmarks by somewhat more than their expense ratio, so 2016 – 2020 was a better-than-average period, but hardly anything to celebrate as a stock-pickers’ market. Since Sept. 30, 2020, however, it seems to be a stock pickers’ nightmare.
But perhaps the good stock pickers work for hedge funds, not public mutual funds. From Dec. 31, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2016, long-short equity hedge funds—stock picking funds—had annualized excess returns of 7.3% per year. These returns are not as reliable as public mutual fund returns for many reasons, and experience suggests average hedge fund investors usually do a bit worse than the published indexes. Still, we can look at relative numbers. From Dec. 21, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2020, long-short equity hedge funds had an annualized average return of 8.2%, twice as good as the prior 17 years, enough to dub the period a stock-pickers’ market. But their annualized excess return since Sept. 30, 2020 has been even better, 8.5%, so we may still be in good stock-picker territory.
Long-short equity hedge funds focus on individual stocks, global macro hedge funds focus on broad economic drivers. You might expect global macro to thrive in the opposite type of market that is good for long-short equity. If all stocks are going up and down together in response to macro news like inflation and currency regimes, you’d expect big-picture analysts to deliver more value than individual stock researchers. Global macro hedge funds delivered an annualized excess 7.2% from 2000 to 2016, 4.6% from 2016 to Sept. 2020, and 7.6% since then. So, the alleged stock pickers’ market hurt macro fund returns, but the end of that market merely returned them to their historical average performance.
The beneficiaries of the regime change in September 2020 were quant funds. The table shows the performance of five Fama-French factors. These are simple investment rules used as standards in academic finance. The “size” factor, for example, is the total return of a portfolio that buys the 30% smallest stocks and shorts the 30% largest stocks, rebalancing once a year at the end of June.(2) The value portfolio similarly buys the 30% of stocks with the highest book-to-market-price ratios once a year and shorts the 30% of stocks with the lowest book-to-market.
The period from 2017 to September 2020, known as the “quant winter,” was the worst for the factors as far back as they have been computed—1963. Value got killed, size and conservative had terrible returns, and robust delivered only anemic results. Only momentum did well. Things reversed in September 2020, with the first four factors delivering exceptional returns, and momentum losing.
Fama-French factor portfolios are not meant to be held as stand-alone investments, but to be added to an equity index fund. A portfolio consisting of an equity index plus 20% of each of the factors outperformed the market by 4.8% from 2000 to 2016, but reversed that to 4.7% underperformance from 2016 to September 2020. It roared back to 15.3% outperformance since.(1)
Quant mutual and hedge funds use much more sophisticated factor strategies, and some non-factor strategies as well. Nevertheless, it’s usually true that when Fama-French factors are doing well, quant is thriving, and when Fama-French factors falter, quant has troubles.
While past performance is no guarantee of future results, market regimes do seem to persist in the medium-term. Looking at public mutual funds it’s a bad time to be picking stocks, but long-short equity hedge funds seem to be doing all right. Macro funds had a mediocre time from 2016 to September 2020, and quant funds a terrible one. Global macro reverted to historical mean, quant funds seem to be enjoying an exceptional run.
While I have no crystal ball, macro factors like inflation, Federal Reserve actions, midterm elections, Ukraine, energy, the euro and China seem likely to drive markets for at least the remainder of 2022. It seems to me like a good time to try to be on the right side of global economic forces rather than a time to get into the weeds of individual stock prospects.More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
(1) I have oversimplified, the actual construction is a bit more complicated, but this is the general idea.
(2) You can loosely think of this as a portfolio that double-weights stocks in the top 30% of all five quant factors, holds zero of stocks in the bottom 30% of all five quant factors, and has intermediate weights of stocks with mixed quant signals.
Aaron Brown is a former managing director and head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is author of “The Poker Face of Wall Street.” He may have a stake in the areas he writes about. | 2022-07-18T10:43:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is This a Stock Picker’s Market? It’s Complicated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-this-a-stock-pickers-market-its-complicated/2022/07/18/35e4461a-0681-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-this-a-stock-pickers-market-its-complicated/2022/07/18/35e4461a-0681-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
“Love and Thunder” also faced a trio of newcomers, though none came close to toppling Chris Hemsworth’s god of thunder. Best among them was Sony Pictures’ “Where the Crawdads Sing,” Olivia Newman's adaptation of Delia Owens' 2018 North Carolina-set novel. It opened well despite weak reviews (36% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). | 2022-07-18T10:44:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Thor' stays No. 1, while 'Crawdads' opens strong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/thor-stays-no-1-while-crawdads-opens-strong/2022/07/18/20078436-0683-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/thor-stays-no-1-while-crawdads-opens-strong/2022/07/18/20078436-0683-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
A video of Stephen K. Bannon speaking is shown on a screen during a hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Nichols agreed with prosecutors’ argument that under binding legal precedent, Bannon’s reasons for not complying with the House panel subpoenas were irrelevant if he willfully disregarded them. The judge also disputed that former president Trump asserted executive privilege for Bannon, or that it would cover the conversations in question because the latter left the White House in 2017 and was a private citizen at the time.
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. His trial comes during amid high interest in hearings that the Jan. 6 committee have been holding to investigate the 2021 breach of the Capitol.
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report. | 2022-07-18T10:44:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steve Bannon trial: Jury selection set to begin Monday morning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/steve-bannon-trial-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/steve-bannon-trial-jury/ |
The Jara family gathered for a Pride festival in Orlando in October 2021. From left, father Dennis; son, Jaiden, now 16; mom Jaime; and son Jaxson, now 14. The youngest child, daughter Dempsey, now 10, is standing in front of them. (Family photo)
Baetsen remembers the teacher’s reaction: “Just come to me at the beginning of class and let me know what name and pronouns you want to go by for that day.” It was better than Baetsen expected — not only acceptance but someone who was able to “wrap their head around my situation.”
Still, it was six more months before the teenager told their parents. “You fear the worst,” said Baetsen, now 20.
Surprising many families nationally, public schools often don’t inform parents when students socially transition. They see confidentiality as a priority — operating under gender-identity guidelines that put student privacy and safety above family consent or knowledge.
Schools leaders say there are good reasons for the approach — mainly, to avoid outing kids who could be in harm’s way at home or aren’t ready to tell their parents. They worry about family rejection and students’ mental health. Transgender students are at a greater risk of suicide and substance use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are twice as likely to experience depressive symptoms. They, along with other LGBTQ youth, constitute a larger share of the foster-care population and are at higher risk for homelessness.
At least 18 states, along with D.C. and Puerto Rico, have issued school guidance in some form focused on inclusion and treatment of transgender and gender nonconforming students, said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, which advocates for LGBTQ issues in schools. “Not all state guidance is as strong as it should be,” she said.
But where stronger rules are in place, school leaders have come under increasing fire for their perceived secrecy. Critics argue they have no business cutting families out of a critical part of children’s lives. The practice has prompted lawsuits in Massachusetts, Florida, Wisconsin, Kansas, Virginia and Maryland. Many of the legal actions point to an especially controversial practice: requesting teachers use new trans names in class but revert to the original “dead” names when talking with parents.
“These policies mandate automatic affirmation for children of any age, without confirming that parents are aware,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal nonprofit that has filed suit in a string of cases. In many places, schools won’t tell parents unless students say it’s okay, he pointed out. “These policies are starting with the assumption that the parents are the problem,” he said.
Yet schools see what happens as more of a process — supporting students while they ready themselves to come out to their families, said Asaf Orr, senior staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and director of its Transgender Youth Project. Research shows the single-largest factor in the well-being and health of transgender students is the level of support or rejection from their families, he said.
“This is the high-wire act of gender-inclusive practices,” Orr said.
‘I was the last to find out’
Experts say the number of gender-questioning youth is on the rise, partly because there is far less social stigma. Nearly 16 percent of people slightly older than today’s teenagers — those in Gen Z — identify more broadly as LGBT, according to a Gallup poll, a striking increase from the generations before it.
In schools, gender identity is often expressed through a change of names and pronouns. Some parents already know about their child’s transition by then. But others don’t, and may not be told in the short term if a student feels they would not be supportive.
Parents across many political beliefs argue that they can’t be supportive if no one tells them that their child came out. They also point out that withholding the information seems wrong, when schools routinely send notes home to parents about lesser matters — playground tussles, missing homework, social events.
A California mother who lives in a suburb outside the Bay Area went two years without knowing her sixth grader had transitioned at school. “Basically, I was the last one to find out,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her child’s privacy. “They were all saving my kid from me.” The mother only made the discovery, she said, when she took her child to the hospital one day and a doctor told her. She was stunned.
Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist who is a transgender woman and former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, said leaving parents in the dark is not the answer. “If there are issues between parents and children, they need to be addressed,” she said. “It’s not like kicking a can down the road. It only postpones, in my opinion, and aggravates any conflict that may exist.”
In Maryland, a sixth-grade student told his parents a couple of months after starting to transition at school. His father said one of his reactions was: “Oh my God, how did I not know this was happening with my own child?” But he also thought of his growing up. If he were a trans teen, he said, “I can’t imagine I would have wanted to come out to my parents first.” One thing the father never expected was the school to tell him: “Your kid is the only one who should do that,” he said.
Ideally, Joel Baum of the nonprofit Gender Spectrum said, families of gender questioning students would be able to say: “Even if we don’t quite understand, we see you. We get you. Let’s talk about it.”
Students including Alex Prince, 16, of Virginia Beach, who identifies as nonbinary, said those who are coming out best understand what they could be up against at home. “I have many friends who have parents that would kick them out if they found out they were queer, or beat them so badly they could wind up dead,” he said. “That’s not an exaggeration — that’s the environment that LGBTQ+ teens exist in.”
Nationally, LGBTQ students have been under attack, with a cascade of anti-transgender legislation under consideration around the country — more than 300 bills this year — as conservatives push to exclude transgender athletes from school sports, limit lessons that teachers can give about gender identity, remove LGBTQ-affirming books from school libraries and criminalize efforts to provide hormone therapy and puberty blockers to minors. Political campaigns and cable TV have driven up the tension, with Republican candidates attacking transgender rights and Fox host Laura Ingraham referring to public schools as virtual “grooming centers for gender-identity radicals.”
In central Florida, Jaime Jara’s youngest is a trans girl. She kept her birth name, and teachers at her elementary school welcomed her. By first grade, everyone used her chosen pronouns: she/her. Now 10 years old, she has close friends and feels like she belongs. She loves dancing and TikTok.
“She’s a regular 10-year-old kid,” Jara said.
Jara knows that her daughter is fortunate to find a world so accepting — and certainly better-off than some of Jara’s students. About 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender, according to the CDC.
A history teacher, Jara has brightened her high school classroom with rainbow-colored accents and a “safe space” sign on the door, and she hears sometimes from transgender students who struggle at home, she said. “If your own parent is not accepting, how heartbreaking is that?” she said.
FAQ: What you need to know about transgender children
Since 2006, more than 25 states have adopted laws or regulations that affirmed LGBTQ rights — on bullying, school facilities, suicide prevention, health programs, sex education — according to the research organization Child Trends, but 2021 marked a turning point. “I really think that the tide turned from a more affirming and supportive type of policy environment to one that is more exclusionary,” said Deborah Temkin, who led the research.
In Florida, the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law, has fired up supporters and critics. The measure, which took effect July 1, restricts instruction on LGBTQ issues at schools and does not allow school employees to keep from parents any issues that affect their child’s mental, emotional or physical health.
As Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed the bill, he pointed to a case in Leon County, where January Littlejohn and her husband are suing the public school system for what they alleged was concealing information about their 13-year-old’s gender-identity transition, violating their rights as parents and harming their relationship with the teen. A spokesman for the school system did not return calls, but the superintendent has said that the situation was misrepresented and that the district was following instructions from Littlejohn.
More recently, the school board in Leon County voted in late June to turn a spotlight on transgender students — mandating that all families be informed when “a student who is open about their gender identity” is part of a PE class or on an overnight trip, in case other parents want to remove their children .
In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, public schools in the college town of Harrisonburg are among the most recent legal battle ground. School officials there keep student gender transitions confidential and say that students’ gender identities should be affirmed, according to a staff presentation last October. “The ultimate goal is to help a student safely come out to their parents with support from trusted adults,” the presentation said.
But a lawsuit brought in June by six parents and teachers — all said to be practicing Christians who believe “each of us is born with a fixed biological sex that is a gift from God” — argues that the district’s practices usurp parents’ rights, violate free speech protections and force school employees to go against their religious faith. “Public schools should never hide information from or lie to parents about a child’s mental health,” the complaint, filed by ADF, begins. “And schools should never compel teachers to perpetrate such a deception.”
In a publicly posted exchange of letters between ADF and the school system, Superintendent Michael Richards said he had not received complaints in line with what lawyers presented and was not inclined to support rescinding a practice “that offers support and resources to some of our most vulnerable students and their families.” The district uses “a team approach” to address student and family needs case by case, he said.
For schools, approaches vary
To support those transitioning socially at school, some school systems create a “gender support plan” that outlines how a student’s situation will be handled — with details about restrooms, extracurricular activities, trusted adults and privacy.
In Colorado’s Jeffco School District, outside of Denver, officials honor names and pronouns that align with students’ gender identities. But the 69,000-student system brings parents into the conversation as a way to support students, said spokeswoman Kimberly Eloe, pointing out there is no real privacy in place if people are using new names and pronouns in school.
In Maryland’s largest school system, parent involvement is ideal but not required. “Under the guidelines, we do support the student,” said Gregory Edmundson, director of student welfare and compliance in Montgomery County, with 159,000 students. ’
“If they are not out to their families, then we honor and respect that,” he said. “It’s not about trying to keep secrets. It’s about us trying to keep kids safe.”
In the last three years, 350 to 400 Montgomery County students have completed gender identity support plans to change names and pronouns to match their gender identity, Edmundson said. One question asks the student to rate their parents’ support level, from a low of 1 to a high of 10.
Montgomery County is being sued, too. Lawyer Frederick W. Claybrook Jr., who is listed on the complaint with the Christian conservative National Legal Foundation and an attorney based in the county, took the school system to court in 2020 on behalf of three parents.
“Parents should be in the loop on this kind of decision,” Claybrook said. “The fact that they aren’t doesn’t even allow them to help their children get professional care, which might well be very supportive of their transitional choice. But this is a difficult decision that can have some very life-changing effects — and parents are principally in charge of helping their children through those types of situations.”
“This is not us against them,” he said. “We have to all come together to support these issues because they’re not easy, they’re complicated.”
For a mother of three living outside Seattle — historically liberal in her politics — the complications began when her child was in fifth grade. One day she opened an email from a teacher and did not recognize the student’s name. At first she thought the teacher had sent it to the wrong parent.
She soon realized it was her daughter. The fifth-grader had taken on a new name and male pronouns in school. “I feel like they lied to us by omission,” the mother said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her child’s privacy.
The experience led to a couple years of home-schooling, which coincided with the pandemic. She says her daughter now identifies again as a girl. The mother said she was not bothered by the child thinking through issues of sex and gender. “A lot of us tried on different identities when we were young,” she said. But being transgender could eventually lead to medical treatment, she said, and “once a kid says this, there is the automatic assumption that it has to be true.” Even more, “they are protecting children from parents without ever giving us a chance to be supportive.”
“They call us if they’re going to give our kids a Tylenol or if they have a scratch, but not with this?” she said.
Baetsen, who came out to their Maryland teacher while in eighth grade, said it is important that schools make sure not to out students. Baetsen finally told their parents in ninth grade, finding their parents were “very, very supportive,” asking questions but understanding. “You don’t know how people are going to react,” Baetsen said. | 2022-07-18T10:44:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gender transitions at school spur debate over when, or if, parents are told - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/18/gender-transition-school-parent-notification/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/18/gender-transition-school-parent-notification/ |
Can rappers be jailed for lyrics and image? History shows they can.
The recent indictments of rappers Young Thug and Gunna echo the case of a New Orleans rapper, McKinley ‘Mac’ Phipps, over 20 years ago
Perspective by Ashley Steenson
Ashley Steenson is a PhD student in American intellectual and political history at The University of Alabama, where her research considers the connections between political ideologies in the South and Northeast during the early 20th century.
Gunna performs at the Wireless Music Festival in London on Sept. 10. (Scott Garfitt/AP)
On May 9, police arrested Atlanta rapper Young Thug (Jeffery Lamar Williams) and raided his home. Citing journalist Michael Seiden, Complex News reported that Thug was “charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and participation in criminal street gang activity.” On May 11, rapper Gunna (Sergio Giavanni Kitchens) turned himself in. The rappers are two of 28 individuals named in an indictment of the Young Slime Life or Young Stoner Life (YSL) record label, which authorities call a gang. YSL rapper Lil Keed (Raqhid Jevon Render), 24, died on May 13 in Los Angeles. The cause of his death is unknown.
Charges against YSL include murder, assault and additional racketeering-related offenses. Specifically, the indictment claims YSL protected and enhanced “the reputation, power and territory” of a criminal enterprise by posting messages, images and videos that displayed “a willingness to engage in violence.”
The indictment accuses YSL of involvement with the Bloods gang, in part through the use of “colors, clothing, tattoos and hand signs, as well as verbal and written identifiers.” In this case, Young Thug’s and Gunna’s artistic choices, like lyrics and social media posts, can be used as evidence in court.
This is not the first time art has been a key element in a criminal case involving a Southern rapper at the peak of his career. In the late 1990s, McKinley “Mac” Phipps was a young artist signed to Master P’s No Limit Records. Phipps’s case exposed that law enforcement can misunderstand rap music and culture — and then misuse both to prosecute artists.
The story of No Limit Records began at the Calliope public housing complex in New Orleans. A product of the New Deal, Calliope was initially promoted as a safe choice for families. The city invested in the neighborhood by building a gym in 1949 and additional units in 1954.
But by the 1980s, with the introduction of crack cocaine, residents confronted the problems of addiction and violent crime. With the rise of the war on drugs, residents were met with the increasing presence of law enforcement. As residents began recording rap music, interactions with crime, drugs and police shaped their sound and the scene surrounding it.
The work of three Calliope residents and brothers — Silkk the Shocker (Vyshonn King Miller), C-Murder (Corey Miller) and Master P (Percy Miller) — was at the heart of this scene. After a few years in California, Master P launched the New Orleans iteration of No Limit Records in 1995. The label’s eclectic sound combined the new West Coast style of rap, influenced by artists like Snoop Dogg, with genres like bounce, a strain of New Orleans club music.
As Master P established himself as a businessman, he and C-Murder never left Calliope behind. Among other charitable ventures, the brothers provided residents with school supplies and food. C-Murder also made the documentary “Straight From the Projects” (2004), which told the story of No Limit’s rise against the backdrop of life in the 3rd Ward of New Orleans. The documentary shows salesmen advertising life insurance for children and gun violence breaking out at a second line parade.
As C-Murder demonstrates, violence was part of life and had an outsize influence on the music of No Limit artists, exemplified by lyrics to songs like Phipps’s “Soldier Party” (1998) and “We Deadly” (1999). No Limit artists often claimed the identity of soldiers and compared their surroundings to war zones, drawing from both their life experiences and military elements.
Phipps joined No Limit in 1996 after competition from multiple labels. Known as the “New Orleans Nas,” Phipps put out his first record at 13, debuting an unprecedented style that combined musical production influenced by New York rap with lyrics commenting on the world around him in New Orleans.
Though he did not grow up in Calliope, Phipps’s lyrics drew from violent memories similar to those of Master P and his brothers. He drew from and made original contributions to No Limit’s brand, which featured references to self-reliance and militarylike discipline.
Phipps’s lyrics and artistic persona made him a law enforcement target. In 2001, he was convicted of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. In court, the prosecution quoted lyrics from Phipps’s song “Murda, Murda, Kill, Kill” to persuade the jury to convict, arguing that violent lyrics indicated violent actions.
The prosecution also mentioned one of Phipps’s monikers, “The Camouflage Assassin.” After joining No Limit, Phipps referred to the name in songs and wore camouflage in photos. Yet prosecutors ignored how it fit within No Limit’s brand. The label’s logo was a tank — a tribute to Master P’s grandfather, who was a veteran. Along with alluding to the military in her lyrics, No Limit rapper Mia X also wore camouflage in 1997 for Source Magazine. In 1998, Master P even released an action figure of himself, wearing his trademark chain and camouflage.
But the state’s strategy to use rap music and fashion choices to win its case was successful. The jury convicted Phipps without direct evidence and despite failing to reach a unanimous verdict — something the Supreme Court made illegal in 2020.
In 2021, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) granted Phipps clemency as a result of public pressure after a video surfaced in 2016 showing another man confessing to the shooting. The state of Louisiana has yet to exonerate Phipps.
After his release, Phipps explained that while his songs and fashion technically could not legally count as evidence, the prosecution nonetheless exploited his art to “paint a character of [him]” that urged the jury to convict.
Phipps’s case holds warnings about the indictments against Young Thug and Gunna — particularly the references to words, colors and even emoji in the charges. This indicates that prosecutors may again use art and image to demonstrate intent. Law enforcement may again seek to portray rappers’ lyrics as proof of violent acts, rather than as artistic representations or social commentary on violence. As Gunna argued recently in a June 14 statement, “My art is not allowed to stand alone as entertainment, I’m not allowed that freedom as a Black man in America.” | 2022-07-18T10:44:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can rappers be jailed for lyrics and image? History shows they can. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/18/can-rappers-be-jailed-lyrics-image-history-shows-they-can/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/18/can-rappers-be-jailed-lyrics-image-history-shows-they-can/ |
The Christian right’s version of history paid off on abortion and guns
How this version of American history shaped two key Supreme Court decisions
Perspective by Lauren R. Kerby
Lauren R. Kerby is a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society and Religion. She is the author of "Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation’s Capital and Redeem a Christian America" (UNC Press, 2020).
A celebration outside the Supreme Court on June 24, in Washington. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years. (Steve Helber/AP)
Two crucial Supreme Court rulings in June hinged on history — one on abortion and one on gun rights. The court’s conservative majority applied a nostalgic view of the past to make it harder to limit the right to carry a concealed firearm. Meanwhile, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that any right not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution must be “rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition” and claimed that the right to an abortion did not meet this standard.
In both cases however, historians quickly pointed out that the court’s conservatives mangled the history. Justice Elena Kagan and other critics suggested that the conservative justices are playing the role of amateur historians, a job well outside the scope of their duties and training.
But the court’s conservatives did not invent this history — they merely borrowed it from the Christian right.
In the 1970s, White conservative Christians needed a strategy to reclaim the political and cultural power they believed was rightfully theirs. They abhorred the changes wrought by liberal activists in the previous decade that threatened the racial, religious and sexual hierarchies they believed to be ordained by God. They mourned the Supreme Court’s decisions to ban school-sponsored prayer and devotional Bible reading in public schools, legalize abortion and curtail government aid to religious institutions. They longed for the America of their childhoods.
A message coalesced: America needed to return to its old, righteous ways. The changes of the 1960s and early 1970s were not progress but decline. To save the nation, Americans needed to emulate the past.
To do that, however, White conservative Christians needed a narrative of the past that indicted the present and supported their vision for the future. So their leaders and intellectuals created one. In that Christian heritage story, the United States was founded by devout proto-evangelical Christians in a unique covenant with the Christian God. As the 1977 best-selling book “The Light and the Glory” put it: “In the virgin wilderness of America, God was making His most significant attempt since ancient Israel to create a New Israel of people living in obedience to the laws of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.”
This new Christian heritage story taught Americans to revere the founding era as the most morally authoritative moment in the American past, when Christian heroes and their God worked together to make a righteous new nation. In that story, life was uncomplicated by musings on power and privilege. White Christian men ruled the country, and White Christian women ruled the home. Liberal historians of the 1960s and 1970s had corrupted American history with their critiques of the Founders and their desire to tell the stories of women, people of color and other marginalized groups.
The Christian heritage narrative “saved” American history by denying any mistakes made by the Founders or the other White Christian heroes. From this perspective, Americans should emulate the past, not learn from its mistakes. Soon the Bible and American history blended into one continuous story of God’s plan for the world’s salvation — sometimes literally.
To celebrate the American bicentennial in 1976, the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist Christian ministry published a special edition of the King James Bible that included biographies of U.S. presidents, the texts of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, and essays on “America’s Christian Heritage” and “The Christian Foundations of Our Nation.”
Falwell continued to preach this message for the rest of the 1970s, including through his I Love America rallies. He founded Moral Majority in 1979, arguing that “despite the moral sickness which pervades our society God has not finished with us as a nation.”
Other leaders of the nascent Christian right made similar arguments. Beverly LaHaye founded Concerned Women for America in the late 1970s to “inform women in America of the erosion of our historical Judeo-Christian moral standards.” Equipped with that history, conservative Christian women could work to protect “the traditional family” through prayer and political action primarily aimed at thwarting feminist policy proposals. As new conservative Christian organizations formed through the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian heritage story united them into a cohesive movement to “restore the nation.”
Conservative Christian leaders found allies at other conservative organizations. The Heritage Foundation gave money, office space and advice to the founders of the Christian Voice, a lobbying organization “committed to returning America to traditional values.” Meanwhile, the Federalist Society preached a new gospel of judicial interpretation called “originalism.” According to law professor Ann Southworth, both the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society mediated between the Christian right and other factions of the conservative movement, uniting them around their shared goal of turning back the clock to an imagined point in the past.
This nostalgic reimagining of the past accomplished two strategic goals for the Christian right in the late 1970s and 1980s. First, by providing examples of past Christians who participated in worldly politics, it activated conservative Christians to vote and campaign at a grass-roots level. Their support proved crucial in the election and reelection of former president Ronald Reagan, and they became a key constituency of the Republican Party from that point forward.
Second, an important legal argument was embedded in this version of American history: the idea that Christianity and the American government were thoroughly entangled in the past, and that the courts had erred in attempting to fully separate church and state in the mid-20th century.
That legal argument, however, hinged on the notion that anyone could interpret the past, just as Protestants believed that anyone could interpret the Bible. Christian heritage proponents saw no need for specialized training or professional expertise, in part because they took the written records of the past at face value with little interrogation of context or the potential that narrators might be unreliable.
As the Christian legal movement emerged in the 1980s, its lawyers relied on this approach to history to gradually undo what they saw as the damage of the Supreme Court’s efforts to decenter Christianity in American law and policy. They tended to include long lists of quotes about Christianity from the Founders to support their arguments — typically failing to provide context for these quotes and ignoring the possibility that other contemporary Americans might have disagreed.
Over time, conservative Christian lawyers persuaded the court that if the Founders engaged in public displays of religion and directed government money to religious organizations, today’s government could do the same in any number of ways. States could display the Ten Commandments on state property, religious leaders could offer prayer at city council meetings, and government money could resurface a church playground or pay tuition to a private religious school. Who could argue against the precedent of history and traditions?
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, respectively, replicated the Christian heritage story, both in content and in method of inquiry. Like Christian heritage proponents, they located America’s moral standards in the past, primarily in the founding era. Any innovations since then are not progress but a sign of decline. And the simplistic past they described makes no room for contradictory sources, marginalized voices from that time period or errors that Americans should not want to replicate.
This past, the court tells us, sets the boundaries of our constitutional rights today. We all must live by this distorted view of history, even though some Americans will die because of it.
Under the guise of upholding America’s history and traditions, the court’s conservatives have finally established conservative Christian values as the law of the land. | 2022-07-18T10:44:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Christian right’s version of history paid off on abortion and guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/18/christian-rights-version-history-paid-off-abortion-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/18/christian-rights-version-history-paid-off-abortion-guns/ |
By Kimberly Kindy
Demonstrators attend a gun rights rally in Richmond in January 2020. (Timothy C. Wright for The Washington Post)
Now, red-flag laws have once again become a focal point, thanks to the bipartisan gun deal signed into law last month by President Biden, which aspires to spark more states to adopt the measures by providing a legislative framework and implementation grants, and to improve public education about the laws in states that already have them. Proponents say they are common-sense laws backed by numerous studies showing they save lives.
Even in supportive states, dangerous people are often not reported to police, according to experts and numerous studies — often because of a lack of public knowledge about the laws. That has led critics to question their effectiveness, pointing to recent mass shootings in states with red-flag laws, including the July 4 killings at an Illinois parade or the May 14 massacre at a Buffalo grocery store.
The public, and even a majority of gun owners, also broadly support the laws, according to recent surveys. An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll taken after the May 24 shooting inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., found that 73 percent of Americans back red-flag laws, including 60 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of gun owners.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said the resolutions are nothing more than “an expression of opinion.” Mace also acknowledges that the status is “just people saying I don’t want my rights trampled on.”
Studies have repeatedly shown that most red-flag protection orders are granted in response to petitions filed by law enforcement, even in states that allow for health-care workers, school superintendents or families to file petitions with the court. Research by the Injury and Violence Prevention Center at the Colorado School of Public Health found 85 percent of protection orders granted by judges were filed by law enforcement. And a study by University of California researchers of the state’s red-flag law found more than 96 percent were filed by police officers.
In New Jersey, state Sen. Edward Durr (R) introduced a bill in May that would repeal his state’s three-year-old red-flag law. It is not expected to get a hearing in the Democratically controlled legislature, experts said.
A 2019 study by researchers at the University of California at Davis found that 21 extreme-risk restraining orders were issued in response to mass shooting threats from 2016 to 2018, the first two years in which the law was in effect. In each case, the possible shootings were prevented. The lead researcher, Garen J. Wintemute, said that although it is impossible to know if each of the possible mass shooters would have followed through with their threats, “zero for 21 is really pretty good.” | 2022-07-18T10:45:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden's push for state red-flag laws meets GOP, gun group resistance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/red-flag-laws-biden-state-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/red-flag-laws-biden-state-gop/ |
Advocates want Cyber Ninjas, which led Ariz. ballot review, barred from federal work
The Arizona Senate hired the firm to do a partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results in a key county
Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Arizona State Senate, examine and recount ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 8, 2021 in Phoenix. (Courtney Pedroza for The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — Four voting and democracy advocacy groups in Arizona are asking federal officials to ban Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to conduct the partisan ballot review of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, and its CEO from doing business with the federal government.
Citing work that fell below election-auditing standards, a refusal to abide by a court order to produce public records tied to the review, the promulgation of conspiracies and federal scrutiny tied to the operation, the advocacy organizations on Monday asked the Interagency Suspension & Debarment Committee to consider the company and its CEO Doug Logan for “debarment.” The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law sent the letter on behalf of the groups.
Suspension and “debarment actions” are intended to protect the government’s business interests from potential harm caused by poor performance or poor business integrity.
The federal government has previously awarded contracts to Cyber Ninjas, including with the Federal Communications Commission between 2016 and 2018.
“If Cyber Ninjas is permitted to continue engaging in publicly-funded operations, the company will continue to undermine confidence in our federal elections,” said the letter, obtained by The Washington Post.
“The damage Cyber Ninjas has already wreaked under its Arizona State Senate contract, along with the potential for future harm should Cyber Ninjas continue to operate as a federal government contractor, necessitate debarring Cyber Ninjas,” the letter added.
The action was requested by two nonpartisan groups, All Voting Is Local Arizona and Arizona Democracy Resource Center, and two liberal organizations, Living United for Change Arizona, and Mi Familia Vota.
Logan and Cyber Ninjas representatives have stood by the Florida-based firm’s work. In January they said the business was shutting down and laying off its workers, news that came as a judge ordered the company to pay $50,000 each day in fines until it complied with public records requests involving the ballot review to media and oversight groups.
Logan told the Associated Press he planned to start a new company and hire some Cyber Ninjas employees; the status of those plans are unclear.
Either way, the groups are seeking to make the case to federal officials that Cyber Ninjas’ work on the state-funded ballot review should disqualify it from meeting basic government-contracting standards, like being financially sound and “responsible.”
During the review, for example, tabulation machinery was left unsecured prompting a need to replace them, the firm failed to meet its own timelines, and ballot counters erroneously had blue pens, which can alter the ballots.
The groups also questioned Logan’s own integrity and business ethics, citing his “embrace of election conspiracy theories.”
Logan made clear on social media he viewed the 2020 election results as fraudulent and claimed the election was rigged. He also wrote a document posted on former-Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s website that he has said was written to help U.S. Senators who planned to object to certification of electors from certain states on Jan. 6, according to the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Logan had no previous election auditing experience but was hired to conduct the exercise by the state’s GOP-led Senate.
“Doug Logan’s involvement in the Arizona Senate’s audit in spite of his inability to lead an impartial audit exemplifies his own lack of the integrity and business ethics necessary to be deemed presently responsible,” the letter said.
For months, Trump hailed the review as a legitimate effort to investigate his unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. Election experts assailed it as a deeply-flawed partisan process intended to deepen doubt in the democratic process.
At its conclusion, it found no evidence of such fraud but cited flaws in the election process. It found Joe Biden won by a slightly larger margin than the official election results. | 2022-07-18T11:27:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Advocates want Cyber Ninjas, which led Ariz. ballot review, barred from federal work - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/18/cyber-ninjas-federal-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/18/cyber-ninjas-federal-work/ |
‘Pro-life’? Women’s suffering is forced-birth zealots’ doing.
Kara Beasley, a physician, protests the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, in Denver on June 24. (Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
Just as advocates of abortion access warned, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is resulting in increased pain, anguish and risk of death for pregnant women. It’s forcing health-care providers into a Catch-22 where they increasingly must navigate between their professional obligation to provide appropriate medical care and their fear of criminal prosecution and loss of their medical licenses.
The Post reports that “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.”
Forced-birth zealots have set up a system in which doctors in states with draconian and/or hopelessly vague abortion bans are compelled to defer medically recommended abortion until the woman is at imminent risk of death. In those states, too, pharmacists resist filling a prescription for medication to resolve miscarriages — because exactly the same drug is used for abortion.
The new legal thicket can delay access to medical abortions (generally available up to 10 or 11 weeks) and thereby require women to undergo more expensive and risky surgery. Confusion about the legal status of treating ectopic pregnancies — virtually none of which would result in a live birth — can put women’s health in grave danger. (The Post reports: “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.”)
Lauren Thaxton, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Texas at Austin, tells me that because medical risks associated with pregnancy (e.g., hypertension, diabetes, cardiac conditions) might develop later in pregnancy, possibly manifesting suddenly, these new, stringent requirements prevent doctors and patients from responsible planning that would weigh the risk of death and risk to the woman’s long-term health.
Doctors may be at the mercy of hospital lawyers, who themselves may not be able to predict how imprecise state laws, written in nonmedical terms, might be applied. While doctors are used to assessing what they might reasonably expect, state laws might demand a level of certainty to perform an abortion that simply does not apply in medical settings.
If, for example, a woman suffers a ruptured membrane (water breaking) before 22 to 24 weeks, the chance of the fetus’s survival is negligible while the woman faces risk of infection or hemorrhaging, Thaxton explains. A responsible OB/GYN almost certainly would not delay or deny an abortion; under Texas’s rigid six-week abortion ban, that might be precisely what the doctor is compelled to do.
The impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on girls should make all but the most heartless forced-birth advocates shudder. “New bans in nearly a dozen states do not make exceptions for rape or incest, leaving young adolescents — already among the most restricted in their abortion options — with less access to the procedure,” the New York Times reports. “Even in states with exemptions for rape and incest, requirements involving police reports and parental consent can be prohibitive for children and teenagers.”
The disastrous episode involving a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio could be repeated countless times as abortion bans with no exception for rape or incest multiply.
Even before Dobbs’s full impact is known, Americans are already expressing deep opposition to a new legal landscape that puts consideration of women’s well-being, even their lives, at the bottom of the list. In the latest Fox News poll, 60 percent oppose the court’s overturning of Roe, and the new regimen in many states is hugely unpopular. Only 9 percent would ban abortion if the woman’s life is at risk and only 11 percent if her health is endangered or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
Pro-women’s-life-and-health advocates have an opportunity to focus voters’ attention on state ballot measures regarding abortion rights (in Kansas next month, in Michigan in November), and on the abortion stances of candidates in state and local elections.
On Thursday, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to take up a bill that would guarantee women’s right to travel to another state to obtain an abortion. Now we are beginning to see just how tyrannical and radical is the mind-set of forced-birth crusaders.
Congress would be well advised to hold hearings not only in Washington but also in states where bans are going into effect to educate state lawmakers, governors and voters about the the post-Roe world the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have imposed on Americans.
It behooves the media, the medical profession and anyone defending the dignity, health and life of women to demand that Republicans face up to the consequences of their handiwork — and to demand accountability for the damage they are causing. | 2022-07-18T12:15:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Dobbs will inflict pain, suffering and death on women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/dobbs-abortion-suffering-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/dobbs-abortion-suffering-republicans/ |
By Rick Reilly
UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson runs the ball in for a touchdown as USC linebacker Ralen Goforth defends in Los Angeles on Nov. 20. Both teams recently announced that they are moving from the Pac-12 conference to the Big Ten starting in 2024. (Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo, File)
Big Ten teams are now conveniently located near their banks, not each other. Take USC, which is near Hollywood, and their new conference foe Rutgers, which is somewhere near “The Sopranos.” This is going to be such an exciting new rivalry. One team has six Heisman Trophy winners, can claim 11 national championships and over the years has spent 91 weeks as the No. 1 team in the country. The other is Rutgers.
Without the Sooners and the Longhorns, the Big 12 is left with a lot of teams such as Texas Tech and Iowa State, which don’t fluff up anybody’s pom-poms. Two-four-six-eight! Why’d we leave the tailgate?
As for talk of a possible merger between the Big 12 and Pac-Whatever … fine. You can make a tofu and wheatgrass smoothie. There’s still no meat in it.
And the egghead teams that aren’t at all watchable, such as Vanderbilt in the SEC and Northwestern in the Big Ten? They’ll get kicked down to one of the JV conferences and eventually become accountants for TaxSlayer. | 2022-07-18T12:15:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The college football lunacy isn’t permanent. It’s going to get worse. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ucla-usc-college-football-lunacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ucla-usc-college-football-lunacy/ |
Women denied abortion rarely choose adoption. That’s unlikely to change.
Experts say there are powerful reasons why the 1 million-plus wait list to adopt a U.S. infant will not shrink much, despite the end of Roe v. Wade
Crystal, 35, plays with her two-month-old son Alex in their home in Fort Worth, Texas on July 10, 2022. She and her husband adopted him. (Photograph by Allison V. Smith for The Washington Post) (Allison V Smith/for The Washington Post)
In the Supreme Court’s momentous decision over turning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito referred to the availability of adoption to women who find themselves pregnant with a child they do not want to parent.
“...A woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home,” Alito said, writing for the majority and summarizing the views of many Americans who oppose abortion. In a related footnote, he cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report juxtaposing the tiny “domestic supply of infants” in 2002 with the nearly one million Americans waiting to adopt.
Amid the furor that followed the court’s 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an important point has been lost: The waiting lists to adopt infants will almost surely remain very long.
“What we’re going to see I think is many more people parenting children that they did not intend to have," said Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist and researcher on abortion and adoption in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California San Francisco.
For powerful emotional reasons, she said, “adoption has always been the rarest path to take.”
The number of domestic infants relinquished in private adoptions that did not involve a step-parent have dropped roughly two percent a year since 2012 to just 19,658 in 2020, according to the National Council for Adoption, a non-profit, non-partisan organization for adoption professionals and research. That’s a far cry from the peak of roughly 89,000 non-relative adoptions in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide.
Sisson estimates that the new abortion bans will make an additional 10,000 infants available to adopt annually. That figure represents nine percent of the estimated number of women who will be denied abortion.
The increase will barely make a dent in the adoption waiting lists. Although there is no national source of reliable data, experts estimate the number of prospective parents at between one and two million. That’s partly due to a decrease in international adoptions, which plummeted about 93 percent between 2004 and 2019, to 2,971 placements, as foreign governments eliminated or greatly curtailed the practice. The pandemic has accelerated the decline in both international and private domestic adoptions.
Adoption experts and agencies – including many in the 26 states that have banned, will ban or are likely to ban most or nearly all abortions — do not expect that imbalance to change much.
“My view on what [the SCOTUS ruling] will do for adoption is probably more conservative than what I’ve been reading out there,” said Mark Melson, president and chief executive officer of The Gladney Center for Adoption, one of the largest adoption agencies in Texas, which has a near total ban on abortions. "I believe there may be a little bit of a spike for a few years, and then it’s going to settle back down.”
Abortion access, which at least initially will remain much more prevalent than before Roe, is just one factor in women’s decision-making, he and others noted. The increased societal acceptance of single motherhood is also a big one.
Another: The hard truth that placing a child for adoption is an extremely difficult emotional step for most women to take.
“If you think about human biology, our bodies are built to reproduce,” said Janice Goldwater, founder and chief executive officer of Adoptions Together, an adoption agency based in Silver Spring, Md. “You have to override what your body is saying in order to make an adoption plan, and it takes a human being with a certain capacity to be able to do that.”
Even before Roe legalized abortion, unmarried pregnant women rarely chose adoption. “There were just a magnitude more abortions happening than there were adoptions,” Sisson said, adding that many more women also chose single parenthood over adoption.
In the decades following Roe, many birth mothers and adult adoptees have spoken out about their experiences of trauma and loss related to adoption. Researchers have also documented the reluctance of unmarried women denied abortion access to make adoption plans.
In a 2016 analysis as part of the five-year Turnaway Study, which found that abortion denial results in more harm to women than the procedure itself, UCSF researchers looked at the frequency with which participants chose adoption and the factors involved in their decisions.
The study found that one week after being denied an abortion due to a late-term pregnancy just 14 percent of 171 study participants reported plans to place the baby for adoption or considered it as an option. Only nine percent of those who went on to give birth – 15 women — actually placed their newborns for adoption. Nine percent of unmarried pregnant women relinquished their babies before Roe, Sisson said.
In interviews with researchers, Turnaway participants gave several reasons for deciding to parent, including finding relatives were more willing to help than they anticipated and the bond they felt with their infants after birth. Lastly, they said they would feel guilty if they chose adoption “either because they believed adoption was an abjuration of responsibility, or because they believed it meant they’d have no ongoing knowledge of their child,” the report summarized.
Those who chose adoption expressed strong satisfaction with their decisions, but follow-up interviews “revealed mixed emotions,” the report said.
The 2016 analysis concluded: “Political promotion of adoption as an alternative to abortion is likely not grounded in the reality of women’s decision making.”
Some of the reasons women do not choose adoption may be based on misconceptions rooted in adoption’s long history of secrecy and coercion, adoption professionals say.
The maternity homes where ‘mind control’ was used on teen moms to give up their babies
During the “Baby Scoop" years from the end of World War II to 1973, the needs of the birthmother and the adoptive child were usually trumped by the desires of the adoptive parents. In fact, many of the older domestic adoptees who are voicing their trauma now in the media were adopted under the conditions of that era.
While there continue to be some bad actors in the private adoption world, “the adoption landscape has completely changed in the last 50 years," said Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, which has about 100 member agencies.
About three-quarters of private domestic adoptions are now “open,” involving some degree of ongoing contact between adoptive parents, adoptees and the birth family, according to the nonprofit’s data. Birthmothers are now typically involved in choosing the adoptive parents, who are often required to fill out questionnaires about themselves and provide photos of their lives.
Hanlon and other adoption professionals note that the language around adoption in the media – like “real parents” and “gave up for adoption,” implying a hasty decision – as well as outdated popular culture portrayals of adoption feed the stereotypes.
“We need to do a better job of educating people about what adoption really means,” Hanlon said.
Crystal and Aaron, both in their mid 30s, waited 14 months to adopt their newborn son, Alex, through Gladney. His birthmother chose the couple after viewing their profile book. On the eve of the placement, they met her in person over lunch along with Alex’s birth grandmother.
“We all felt really good about it,” said Aaron, who requested that The Post withhold the family’s last name to protect their son’s privacy.
He and his wife, who live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, email Alex’s birthmother updates and photos on a monthly basis and hope to expand contact to include regular in-person visits.
“We want him to know who she is,” Aaron said.
The deeper connection will need to wait as Alex’s birthmother grieves. “It was a real difficult time for her and it still is,” he said.
Adoption involves loss by definition and there’s an open acknowledgement of that among many adoption professionals. Many agencies offer grief counseling and post-adoption services to help birthparents and adoptees reconnect.
But some point out that adoption’s complexities are often measured against an idealized conception of what single parenting will be like.
The demographics of the typical birthmother have changed over the decades, with increased access to abortion and the decline in the teenage pregnancy rate. Women who relinquish their babies for adoption today are apt to be in their mid-to-upper 20s, unemployed with less than $5,000 in annual income and on Medicaid, Sisson said, citing UCSF data. Most of them also have children already.
Experts expect those who cannot access abortion in the post-Roe era, at least at first, to be mostly low-income and disproportionately of color.
Adoption advocates have expressed concern that one result of decreasing access to abortion will be a spike in the number of children who wind up in foster care.
Many of them, they believe, will be the children of poor African American and Latino women unable to access abortion who will be overwhelmed by the cost and stresses of raising more kids. At the same time, they will be less likely to relinquish their offspring to non-relatives due in part to cultural and historical reasons.
“Their children will languish in the system, and the cycle will continue,” said Stacey Reynolds, a former longtime board member for the National Council for Adoption.
Right now there are about 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S. on any given day, a number that has remained fairly steady over the last 10 years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2019, about 15 percent were adopted, a third by relatives.
Sisson said it’s possible that there will be more children in foster care, especially if abortion is criminalized in some states, although the the Turnaway Study did not show that children were more likely to wind up there.
Antiabortion activists and adoption skeptics often agree on one thing: poor women who plan to parent their infants will need much greater access to child care, affordable housing, job training and other services and necessities to improve their standards of living.
In Sisson’s view, such assistance would help narrow the socioeconomic gap between high-income prospective adoptive parents and birthparents, who would then feel less pressure to relinquish their infants, Sisson said.
“We make single parenting very, very hard in this country,” she said.
Melson concurs. An adoptive parent of a child who was in foster care, he is among those concerned about an uptick in foster care as women attempt to parent their infants without enough resources.
“But there also needs to be greater resources and support if a woman chooses adoption,” he said. “Everybody sort of stops right there. Well, she's placed her child. She doesn't have any of the financial burdens of raising a child. She's okay. And the reality is she's not. How can we help this woman who is likely coming from a real hard situation?”
Right now, Texas law prevent agencies from telling pregnant women who are considering adoption about services they offer after the adoption.
He understands the reason for that, he said. The birthmother “has to want to place her child because of the benefits to the child versus the resources we can throw at her.”On the other hand, he said some in the industry are “very transactional," facilitating adoptions and ignoring the birthmothers’ ongoing needs.
He said Gladney, which is licensed to place children for adoption in several other states, has begun lobbying the Texas legislature to require adoption agencies and others in the industry to provide a “minimal level” of specified services to birthmothers after the adoption, such as grief counseling and help with housing and job training.
Still, he does not believe that improved services for birthmothers will lead to a boom in adoptions. In that, he and the UCFS researchers are in agreement.
“We’re not looking at adoption as an alternative to abortion,” he said. “It’s an alternative as it relates to parenting.” | 2022-07-18T12:15:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women denied abortion rarely choose adoption. Roe v. Wade's end won't change that. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/adoption-abortion-roe-dobbs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/adoption-abortion-roe-dobbs/ |
How ophthalmologist Wendy Gasch would spend a perfect day in D.C.
A third-generation Washingtonian, ophthalmologist Wendy Gasch has served her community since 2000 by providing eye exams and other services through So Others Might Eat, a nonprofit that combats homelessness and extreme poverty in the District. Although Gasch says her desire to do good was instilled by her caring parents, she happily acknowledges that such endeavors aren’t entirely about altruism.
“I always find helping others sort of self-perpetuating because you exchange benefits,” says Gasch, who also has volunteered for the Southern Poverty Law Center and Aid Association for the Blind. “I’m repaid with a little bit of a sense of accomplishment, and sometimes at least making a little difference.”
It’s not the Northwest D.C. resident’s only philanthropic endeavor: She also wrote “Guide to Gargoyles and Other Grotesques,” a 2003 guidebook to Washington National Cathedral — now in its third printing — whose proceeds go back to the institution. In a tongue-in-cheek collision of Gasch’s areas of expertise, she even presented the cathedral with a population-based study of the gargoyles’ eyes.
“About 34 percent of the gargoyles have proptosis — you know, bulgy eyes — which goes along with hyperthyroid,” she says with a chuckle.
Gasch also is an accomplished hiker and rock climber, with ventures including Machu Picchu, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Everest base camp. On her ideal day in the D.C. area, the temperatures hang in the low 70s with a few clouds and little humidity — perfect weather for outdoorsy activities and trekking around the city.
I would start my dream day around 6 a.m. with a brief walk from my condo, with camera in hand, to the Bishop’s Garden adjacent to Washington National Cathedral. It is designed after medieval walled gardens and is perfect for macrophotography early in the day, when the temperature is cool, so the butterflies and bugs on the flowers are sluggish. Perhaps I would also check on some of the cathedral’s grotesques, which include Darth Vader and lots of whimsical creatures.
Next, I would get the avocado smash at Bluestone Lane in Spring Valley. The design there provides a vicarious, tranquil escape to Australia, and the breakfast menu is offered all day, which I appreciate because breakfast is my favorite meal. Then I would head for the parking lot across the street from Peirce Mill, which was built in 1829, and meet a friend or two or three to hike in Rock Creek Park.
My favorite hike there is a delightful 10½-mile loop: You take the Western Ridge Trail along the west side of Rock Creek, cross the creek at the Boundary Bridge and return to Peirce Mill on the Valley Trail. The Western Ridge Trail passes near the earthworks of an American Civil War-era fort, Fort DeRussy, which was built in 1861 as part of the Defenses of Washington. The Valley Trail passes by Pulpit Rock, which provides a striking vista and was a favorite hiking destination of Theodore Roosevelt during his presidency.
Very near Peirce Mill is Hillwood Home, an estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post. The mansion was built in the 1950s and houses much of her Imperial-era Russian art collection. The estate also includes 13 acres of magnificent gardens and a small, cheerful cafe, where I would have lunch after seeing the current exhibit in the mansion, which features the Princess Grace of Monaco. I recently crossed paths with a friend who went to the cafe and very much liked the coronation chicken salad sandwich, so now I’m curious to try it.
After that, off I would go to Planet Word, a language arts museum housed in the Franklin School and the world’s first voice-activated museum. From there, I would walk to the National Geographic Museum to see the exhibition celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Then it’s on to Dolcezza for gelato and coffee before attending a late-afternoon author talk at Politics and Prose in Chevy Chase. Ideally, my dream day would be 48 hours so I could also fill my afternoon with a walking tour by Washington Walks and tennis at the Rock Creek Tennis Center.
Then I’d get a lobster roll at Millie’s in Spring Valley — with blueberry ice cream for dessert — or the lunch special platter at Cafe of India. I always enjoy a good movie, so I’d meet a friend to see “Mr. Malcolm’s List” or “Where the Crawdads Sing” at the Avalon Theatre, which was built in 1923 and is the oldest operating movie theater in the D.C. area. And I would cap off the evening by catching up with my friend over a glass of red wine at the Parthenon Restaurant lounge. | 2022-07-18T12:15:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ophthalmologist Wendy Gasch's perfect day in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/wendy-gasch-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/wendy-gasch-dream-day/ |
Antoleano Ramirez with rotisserie chicken in the kitchen at District Rico. (Scott Suchman for The Washington Post)
Brothers Juan and Fernando Sanchez, owners of the two District Rico locations in, well, the District, had reliable mentors when they decided to get into the Peruvian chicken business: Their parents have been selling pollo a la brasa in the greater D.C. area since the late 1990s, and before that, their grandmother had a shop in Lima.
By Juan’s accounting, the siblings and their parents own or co-own 11 shops in the Washington-Baltimore region, which makes the Sanchez family one of the leading producers of Peruvian chicken in the DMV. (The list doesn’t even include outlets owned by Juan and Fernando’s uncle.) So why isn’t the family name or brand as recognizable as, say, Sardi’s, El Pollo Rico or Crisp and Juicy?
The answer is probably twofold. First, the family doesn’t sell chicken under a single unifying name but instead trades under multiple brands, including Chicken Rico, District Rico, Poyoteca and Super Chicken, each with different ownership groups. But the second and perhaps more telling reason is the family just isn’t that interested in self-promotion, which is either a groundbreaking concept in the age of look-at-me influencers or a real missed opportunity. I mean, the clan’s social media game is not strong, a startling situation given that Peruvian chicken, all charred and glistening, is practically made to activate the saliva glands on the ’Gram.
But Juan tells me the family is more grass-roots and hands-on. They trust word-of-mouth advertising over anything generated via the vagaries of social media algorithms. They, in short, rely on customers to brag about their Peruvian chicken, which the family will tell you differs from many others in one important way: The recipe actually has its roots in Peru, where it was created by Juan and Fernando’s grandmother, Dora Giordano, who ran her own pollo a la brasa shop, Las Tinajas in Lima, for years. This chicken has history.
“I have not touched that recipe,” Juan tells me. “That’s a sacred document.”
As with most family recipes, let alone sacred documents, the Sanchez brothers are loath to reveal its secrets. But here’s what I know: The chickens are dry-brined for 24 hours in the walk-in, with a seasoning mixture that includes fragrant amounts of sweet, earthy cumin. From there, the whole birds are skewered and placed into rotisserie ovens that smolder with natural wood charcoal, generating enough heat to cook the poultry in about an hour.
Here’s what else I know: When fresh from the oven, this chicken has few peers. One afternoon, I had stopped at the Home Depot off Rhode Island Avenue NE to pick up some grill supplies. I was contemplating lunch while loading my car. That’s when I spotted District Rico’s newest location, in a strip center right next door to Popeyes, as if the landlords were conducting an experiment to find out if Washington’s palate leans toward Louisiana or Peru.
Personally, I’ll pick smoke over oil nine times out of 10 when it comes to cooking chicken. (Okay, maybe closer to seven times out of 10, but still.) I ordered a quarter chicken, dark meat, which was cheaper than its white counterpart, and paired the leg and thigh with chicken fried rice. It was chicken two ways, takeout style: one smoky, juicy and aromatic, dunked in those iconic containers of yellow and green sauces; the other a kind of Peruvian dirty rice, with pieces of smoky bird accented with soy sauce and scallions. If I’ve eaten better for less than 11 bucks, I can’t remember when.
Like Sardi’s, District Rico stretches the definition of a pollo a la brasa shop to include not only other Peruvian staples (a saucy version of lomo saltado with three varieties of onion — red, white and spring — stirred into the succulent beef and soggy fries) but also salads, burritos and subs that incorporate the rotisserie chicken. If District Rico wanted to open a shop dedicated just to salads featuring its star bird — like a Peruvian Chopt, where a meat cleaver replaces the mezzaluna — I’d be all in. The chicken heightens the experience of the brothers’ Inca salad, providing elements of smoke and spice to an otherwise standard-issue bowl. Same goes for the Mission-style burrito, in which the pollo a la brasa takes the dish to levels that Chipotle could never touch.
The District Rico location on H Street NW — it started life as Chicken Rico, but the guys decided to rename it to avoid confusion with El Pollo Rico — has a hip, distressed-wood vibe that separates it from its more utilitarian counterpart in Brentwood. At lunch, the H Street spot becomes a melting pot, attracting a mix of office drones, construction workers and students from nearby Gonzaga College High School. “We look like the Gonzaga cafeteria sometimes,” Juan tells me.
I think this says something important about how quickly Peruvian chicken has become assimilated into everyday life in Washington — without losing its essential character. It hasn’t even been 25 years since the brothers’ parents, Mirian Giordano and Fernando Sanchez Sr., opened their first Super Chicken in 1999 in Falls Church, where they often catered to their own community. In the days before DoorDash, the elder Sanchez or an employee would serve as delivery drivers, with nothing more than a map to guide them. “They’d get lost more times than not,” Juan tells me.
As the family’s audience has expanded, so has its idea of a pollo a la brasa shop. You can, for instance, get sides such as Brussels sprouts, chickpeas, and spinach and potatoes (watery but delicious) instead of yuca fries, black beans or plantains, though, frankly, I prefer sticking with the classics. You can also order skewers in which the chicken is grilled and charred, not smoked over charcoal. The kebabs come drizzled with a garlic-heavy chimichurri sauce, and they are tasty, but the real treat is buried under those grilled nuggets in their takeout container: The rice, saturated with meat drippings and sauce, is good enough to make you forget all about Peruvian chicken.
District Rico
91 H St. NW, 202-842-5007, and 1060 Brentwood Rd. NE, 202-516-4846; districtrico.com.
Hours: H Street location: 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Brentwood location: 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday.
Nearest Metro: H Street: Union Station, with a half-mile walk to the restaurant. Brentwood: Rhode Island Ave-Brentwood, with a short walk to the restaurant.
Prices: $3.50 to $54.99 for all items on the menu, including family meals. | 2022-07-18T12:16:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | District Rico review: Peruvian chicken shop can trace its roots to Lima - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/18/district-rico-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/18/district-rico-review/ |
Low-income families can find it rough paying for housing, food and other necessities — and those insecurities might take a toll on parents and their relationships.
But fathers might bear the brunt of that instability, increasing destructive conflict within their families.
A recent study in the journal Family Relations finds that fathers who have trouble making ends meet are more likely to be depressed, and that 1 in 5 might have volatile relationships with their partners as a result.
The research drew on data from about 2,800 families involved in the Building Strong Families project, which followed a national group of low-income families with small children between 2005 and 2008. The families had an average monthly family income of $2,363.
Researchers wanted to know how material hardship, which occurs when it’s tough to pay bills, afford health care or keep stable housing, affected parents’ mental health and relationships with one another. Previous research didn’t focus on how fathers’ experiences with finances might affect their families.
Both mothers and fathers with trouble making ends meet had more depressive symptoms. But for 21 percent of the fathers, material hardship contributed to depressive symptoms, which then led to destructive conflict called verbal aggression — such as yelling and putdowns — that can damage relationships. Mothers didn’t show the same effect.
Traditional gender roles could be to blame, Joyce Y. Lee, an assistant professor of social work at Ohio State University who led the study, said in a news release. “When fathers feel they aren’t economically providing to alleviate material hardship in their families, that can lead to depression and more conflict with their spouse.”
The researchers say their analysis method makes it clear that income doesn’t reveal the whole story for stressed-out parents.
Fathers’ stress-depression-conflict cycle could be alleviated with employment training and efforts to connect them to community programs, among other things, the researchers write. But programs that don’t take hardship into consideration could overlook families whose incomes exceed eligibility thresholds, yet still face economic instability at home.
“If basic needs for housing, food, utilities and medical care aren’t sufficiently met, then interventions to help parents manage their conflict is only going to help so much,” Lee said. | 2022-07-18T12:16:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Study: Dads’ money woes can set stage for family conflict - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/18/conflict-fathers-money-trouble/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/18/conflict-fathers-money-trouble/ |
Good morning! Climate 202 researcher Vanessa Montalbano is taking over today while Maxine is on vacation this week.
🚨: In today's edition, we have an exclusive about a bipartisan group of former Environmental Protection Agency administrators who are pushing the Senate to quickly confirm David Uhlmann as head of the EPA's enforcement office. More on that below. But first:
When an unprecedented heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest last July, emergency rooms sought any way possible to lower the core body temperatures of patients coming in droves with heat-related ailments.
Many emergency departments in the region began putting people in body bags filled with ice to help safely adjust their temperatures. But despite their lifesaving efforts, around 1,000 excess deaths occurred from the brutal heat.
The scramble to save lives paints the challenging reality that many hospitals and medical workers are facing again this year as severe weather-related health emergencies escalate because of extreme climate events.
“We unfortunately had a real live stress test here for the Pacific heat dome because the temperatures were so high and we had a 69-fold increase in hospital-related presentations,” said Kristie L. Ebi, the founder of the center for health and global environment at the University of Washington.
At the same time, the health care sector contributes significantly to the worsening climate crisis, representing nearly 8.5 percent of all U.S. emissions.
According to an analysis conducted by World Weather Attribution, that excessive heat wave was made at least 150 times more likely from human-induced climate change.
Last fall, the editors of over a dozen health journals from across the globe simultaneously published a joint editorial calling for urgent climate action to avert catastrophic warming. Without it, the editorial said, rising temperatures will lead to more deaths from heart and lung illness, allergies, kidney problems and pregnancy complications.
“The greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5° C and to restore nature,” the authors wrote.
The New England Journal of Medicine went one step further this spring in launching a series focused on highlighting health hazards linked to planet-warming pollution, our colleague Sarah Kaplan reports.
Renee Salas, a researcher at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard University and contributor to the series, says that doctors have a moral obligation to speak out against fossil-fuel use and other planet-warming activities.
“The burning of fossil fuels, the root cause of both air pollution and climate change, threaten medicine's core mission. They harm health and threaten health care delivery, making our jobs not only harder, but sometimes impossible.”
Too heavy of a lift?
As The Climate 202 reported last month, 61 of the nation's largest hospital and health-sector companies have joined the Health Sector Climate Pledge to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030.
The commitment is meant to help advance President Biden’s target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and includes more than 650 hospitals and thousands of providers, including two of the five largest U.S. private hospital and health systems, Ascension and CommonSpirit Health.
“The health care industry has come to realize that traditional health care accounts for only about 20 percent of an individual's (or community's) overall health,” said Craig Cordola, Ascension’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “Social determinants and one's physical environment play an even greater role. It’s imperative that we focus where we can have the greatest impact.”
But Ebi said that it's difficult to uproot the entire energy system of a health facility. For one, cost is a major factor. Depending on the institution's profit margin, switching to sustainable machines that leak fewer greenhouse gases might not be possible given their routine expenses.
There are also some things that hospitals can’t adjust, such as leaving the lights on overnight or being unable to reuse certain plastics for hygiene, to satisfy medical protocols.
What’s on the horizon for hospitals
Still, Ebi mentioned that there are smaller opportunities that hospitals can — and should — be pursuing to reduce their carbon footprints, whether that be through energy and waste management or by working to improve the well-being of patient communities.
Each of the organizations that signed onto the pledge — which included public hospitals, health-care centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical-device makers and suppliers — are expected to develop climate-resilience plans for their facilities, including plans to support individuals or communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
According to Ebi, any plan should mention what she called the “low-hanging fruit,” including:
Understanding your patient base, and how it could shift with climate change
Outlining community vulnerabilities to global warming (for example, care centers that are based in a flood plain)
Planning personnel schedules around forecast weather events, or rescheduling surgeries to ensure anticipated surge capacity
Providing opportunities for patients that benefit their health and the environment, such as a garden to supply fresh food for the cafeteria
As for Ascension, the system aims to reach net-zero carbon and waste by 2040. In its climate-resilience plans, Cordola said it will work closely with the individuals and communities most vulnerable to the impacts of a warming planet.
“Our focus is on creating healthier communities, including reducing the effects of climate change,” he said. “Leading health systems like Ascension have a role to play in demonstrating our commitment to this work not only to others in the health care industry, but to other industries as well.”
Exclusive: Former EPA administrators push for confirmation of enforcement nominee
Five former Environmental Protection Agency administrators from both Republican and Democratic administrations are calling on Senate leadership to confirm a permanent head of the agency’s enforcement office before the August recess, according to details shared exclusively with The Climate 202.
David Uhlmann was nominated by President Biden more than a year ago to lead the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which is charged with holding companies accountable when they violate the nation's environmental laws. But Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has yet to discharge the nomination vote to the Senate floor after the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-10 in April to advance Uhlmann's nomination.
A Schumer spokesman previously said in an email to The Climate 202 that “David Uhlmann’s nomination is a priority and we hope to move to discharge soon.”
In a joint letter signed by the EPA administrators from the Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama administrations, the people argue that Uhlmann’s background as an environmental-crimes prosecutor for the Justice Department does not justify the prolonged delay and instead allows dangerous pollution to continue to go unregulated.
“We are concerned about the decline in EPA enforcement that has occurred over the last decade, which leaves vulnerable communities less protected from the harmful effects of pollution and puts law-abiding companies at a competitive disadvantage with companies who flout the law,” they wrote. “The failure to confirm an EPA enforcement chief compounds these problems.”
The joint statement was signed by Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly, Carol M. Browner, Christine Todd Whitman, and Lisa P. Jackson.
Climate policy hangs in the balance after Manchin upends talks
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Friday indicated that he is unwilling to strike a deal on new climate spending over inflation concerns, all but collapsing the Biden administration's goal of quickly reducing the nations greenhouse-gas pollution. But as Congress remains in a gridlock, the planet continues to warm, Jonathan Weisman and Jazmine Ulloa report for the New York Times.
The move has frustrated many environmentalists and progressive Democrats who argue that sweeping action is necessary to avert existential disaster, with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) saying that Manchin's decision after months of negotiations was “nothing short of catastrophic.” Still, climate change remains an issue that has little power for either party in the face of a weakened economy, despite the nation being the second-largest emitter on Earth.
Meanwhile, Congress's failure to secure concrete action on climate has not only wounded trust at home, but also abroad, Maxine Joselow and Brady Dennis reported for The Washington Post on Friday.
“U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry speaks well about what needs to be done by all countries, but loses credibility whenever the U.S. is unable to deliver even the most modest actions that the U.S. government has promised,” Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, said.
The United States is falling incredibly short of President Biden's 2021 promise to slash emissions by 50 to 52 percent by the end of 2030 compared to 2005 levels, Chris Mooney and Harry Stevens report for The Post. But now, without a major spending package in Congress focused on climate, those emissions reductions are becoming virtually impossible.
The decision by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) not to move forward with new climate spending “makes it harder, and it makes any additional actions by the executive branch that much more critical. The stakes are now that much higher,” said John Larsen, a partner with the Rhodium Group, a research firm that closely tracks emissions policies.
When broken down, however, each of those tons connected to ambitious policy accounts for how much time small islands have to adapt to sea-level rise or whether the Arctic would still have sea ice in the summer, among other extreme events fueled by warming.
On Tuesday: The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources will hold a legislative hearing to examine four pending bills, including one to no longer allow mineral development on certain lands operated by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will meet to assess the authority of federal agencies to regulate the development of interstate hydrogen pipelines, storage, import and export facilities.
The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on the Environment will hold a hearing to discuss the role that agriculture can play in combating the climate crisis while increasing food production.
On Thursday: The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife will hold a hearing to consider pending legislation, including a bill Introduced by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) to reauthorize funding for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Climate Change and Water Program, which requires the agency to create strategies to mitigate the future impacts of global climate change on water resources.
A new gold rush pits money and jobs against California’s environment — Scott Wilson for The Post
Northeast enjoys blissfully mild summer as Plains and South bake — Jason Samenow and Ian Livingston for The Post
National emergency in Britain as deadly heat wave sweeps over Europe — Matthew Cappucci for The Post
Me: I don't need a shopping cart.
Me (6 min later): pic.twitter.com/2x15OUqkpM
— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) July 14, 2022 | 2022-07-18T12:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change is pushing hospitals to tipping point - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/climate-change-is-pushing-hospitals-tipping-point/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/climate-change-is-pushing-hospitals-tipping-point/ |
Man was paralyzed by officer and left in a cell for 20 hours, lawsuit says
Christopher Shaw says he was paralyzed from the chest down after he was body-slammed by an officer in jail. (KBMT)
In June 2021, Christopher Shaw was being held at a jail in Beaumont, Tex., when a police officer grabbed him, flipped him over and slammed him onto the concrete floor, according to Shaw’s attorneys.
Shaw, who was handcuffed, landed on his head, and his spine was fractured in several places, a new lawsuit claims. It further alleges that Shaw was left in a cell for some 20 hours before receiving proper medical attention.
Now, Shaw is paralyzed from the chest down, the lawsuit says. He is suing Beaumont Police Officer James Gillen and the City of Beaumont, alleging that Gillen used excessive force and violated Shaw’s civil rights. Shaw is also suing CorrHealth, the jail’s medical contractor, alleging its employees ignored his pleas for medical assistance. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and attorneys fees.
Neither the Beaumont Police Department nor the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, immediately responded to requests for comment from The Washington Post late Sunday. Todd Murphy, the president of CorrHealth, declined to comment. Beaumont Police Chief James Singletary told KBMT last September that, while he felt “very badly about the gentleman that got injured,” Gillen “was just doing his job.”
Shaw appeared in a wheelchair at a news conference on Thursday next to his lawyers, who announced the lawsuit. They said his case mirrors that of Randy Cox, a Black man who in June suffered a severe spinal injury while being transported without a seat belt in the back of a police van in Connecticut. Cox’s lawyers say the incident left him paralyzed from the chest down. Shaw is also Black.
“This is happening all over the country,” Chance D. Lynch, a lawyer representing Shaw, said at the news conference. “Time and time and time and time again, we see with individuals their rights have been violated by the hands of those who took an oath to protect them.”
Shaw’s lawyers said they have seen video of this incident and are seeking for it to be released publicly.
Black man paralyzed after abrupt stop in police van, attorneys say
On June 12, 2021, Shaw was arrested on a misdemeanor public intoxication charge after Gillen encountered him that afternoon standing in the roadway, slurring his words, the lawsuit says. After being evaluated at the hospital, Shaw was transported by Gillen to the Jefferson County Correctional Facility in Beaumont, where deputies had to restrain Shaw for “noncompliance,” the lawsuit states.
At one point, Shaw “raised one of his legs” as Gillen stood in front of him, although he did not make contact with Gillen and was not attempting to strike him, according to the lawsuit.
Detention officers had Shaw under control when Gillen suddenly “threw an object” across the room, approached Shaw and yanked him away from the officers, according to the lawsuit. He then allegedly slammed Shaw to the ground, causing Shaw’s head to smack on the concrete floor. Shaw went unconscious, “with blood pouring from his head,” the lawsuit states.
Shaw was transported to the hospital for a second time but quickly released and taken back to the jail, according to the lawsuit. Upon arrival, “Shaw clearly showed signs of paralysis,” according to the lawsuit. He was placed in a wheelchair, and at times Gillen and another officer had to lift up Shaw’s legs to keep them from dragging on the ground, it adds. The officers also had to carry Shaw to the dressing room to be fitted in an inmate uniform.
It’s not immediately clear why his injuries weren’t diagnosed during the hospital visit.
Shaw was then taken to a cell, where he was placed in a chair. He eventually slid out of the chair and onto the floor, according to the lawsuit. Shaw pleaded for medical assistance from jail staff and CorrHealth employees, but they would not help him, the lawsuit states. When he asked the attending nurse for help, she allegedly replied, “I won’t help you until you help yourself.”
All the while, Shaw had “defecated and urinated on himself multiple times due to his inability to control his bowels and kidney function,” the lawsuit states, adding that he remained on the ground for approximately 20 hours before an ambulance was called and Shaw was transported to the hospital again.
At the hospital, doctors determined that Shaw had several spinal fractures, and he received several emergency surgeries.
A grand jury indicted Shaw on a charge of assaulting a peace officer and cleared Gillen of wrongdoing, KFDM reported in September. Shaw in May rejected a plea deal that would have sent him to prison for 10 years with chances for parole, the Beaumont Enterprise reported. Preston Strickland, Shaw’s defense attorney, said Thursday that Shaw is fighting the charge, which he said is “nothing but a tactic and an attempt to minimize his justice that he deserves.”
The lawsuit says that Shaw is now bedridden and bound to a wheelchair.
Gharrionna Cooper, Shaw’s niece, said at a rally in September that Shaw’s entire family has been affected by her uncle’s paralysis, the Enterprise reported. She said family members needed to visit Shaw every day just to help him get out of bed.
“My mama has to work two jobs to make sure she can keep her house and his house afloat because he can’t go to work for himself,” she said, according to the Enterprise. “And it just don’t make no sense. Just — we tired.” | 2022-07-18T12:32:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawsuit: Beaumont man paralyzed after excessive force by jail officer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/christopher-shaw-lawsuit-beaumont/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/christopher-shaw-lawsuit-beaumont/ |
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks to President Biden during the Jiddah Security and Development Summit in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16, 2022. (Saudi Royal Court/Reuters)
President Biden, fresh off a controversial visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accused a senior government official there of not telling the truth about a discussion he had with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden publicly said he confronted Mohammed, the de facto Saudi ruler of Saudi Arabia known as MBS, about his role in the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul nearly four years ago. Biden said he indicated to Mohammed in a meeting that he holds him personally responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
While Saudi officials confirmed that Biden raised the issue with the crown prince, the two sides’ accounts of the conversation have since diverged. The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, said Saturday he “didn’t hear” Biden tell Mohammed this.
When Biden stepped off Air Force One in Washington after midnight on Sunday, journalists asked him about Jubeir’s comment.
One reporter asked: “The Saudi foreign minister says he didn’t hear you accuse the crown prince of Khashoggi’s murder. Is he telling the truth?”
Biden answered, “No.”
It was the latest controversy to emerge from Biden’s first visit as president to the kingdom, which Biden once promised to make a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s killing and other human rights abuses. Critics back home argued that Biden’s trip was a public relations win for Saudi Arabia that delivered little for the United States.
Biden traveled to Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia last week on a four-day trip aimed at improving relations with Middle Eastern nations whose support the United States seeks to address challenges such as runaway oil prices, the war in Ukraine and competition with Russia and China.
While in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, for a meeting of the heads of Gulf Cooperation Council members and their allies, Biden met with and fist-bumped the crown prince — yielding photos that some in the United States have held up as evidence of chumminess between the two leaders, even as Biden made clear his discomfort with the notion of sitting down with the Mohammed.
Biden told reporters in Jiddah on Friday that he raised Khashoggi’s murder “at the top of the meeting” with Mohammed.
“I said very straightforwardly: For an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights, is this consistent with — inconsistent with who we are and who I am? I’ll always stand up for our values,” Biden said of their exchange.
When asked how the crown prince reacted, Biden said he “basically said that he was not personally responsible for it.”
“I indicated that I thought he was,” Biden added. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Mohammed directed the killing of Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post and an outspoken critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudi leader has denied any personal involvement, and a Saudi court sentenced five people to death for the crime, although their sentences were later reduced to 20 years in prison.
Two top Saudi officials, who briefed reporters after the meeting, described the exchange about Khashoggi as less confrontational than Biden had suggested, even as they confirmed that the president did raise the issue with Mohammed.
“It was candid. It was honest. It was open,” said Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. “And what I found profoundly refreshing is the president said, ‘I just need to be clear and direct with you,’ and the crown prince said, ‘I welcome you being clear, candid and direct, because that’s the way that we move forward.’”
But on Saturday, Biden’s last day in Saudi Arabia, Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, appeared to diverge from Biden’s version of events in an interview with Fox News’s Alex Hogan that another Fox News reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, said was arranged by the Saudi government.
In a clip of the interview, Hogan asked Jubeir how Mohammed responded to Biden’s comment “that he holds him directly responsible” for Khashoggi’s murder.
“I didn’t hear that particular phrase,” Jubeir answered.
“The president mentioned that the U.S. is committed to human rights,” the Saudi official continued.
“I didn’t hear that particular phrase” - a senior Saudi official tells me regarding @POTUS telling the Crown Prince he’s responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. More from our interview to come… pic.twitter.com/uCfLSquiuE
And here’s Biden, upon returning to the White House:
The U.S. president on Friday sought to downplay the time he spent with Mohammed in Saudi Arabia.
“I didn’t come here to meet with the crown prince,” Biden said from Jiddah. “I came here to meet with the GCC and nine nations to deal with the security and … the needs of the free world, and particularly the United States, and not leave a vacuum here, which was happening as it has in other parts of the world.”
In Washington on Sunday, Biden chastised a reporter who asked if he regretted his fist-bump with MBS. “Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters?” Biden asked. “I’m happy to answer a question that matters.”
In an op-ed for The Washington Post earlier this month, Biden explained the rationale for his visit to Saudi Arabia. “Fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad,” he said.
“As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure,” Biden wrote. “We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world. To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them.” | 2022-07-18T12:36:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden disputes Saudi version of talk with crown prince on Khashoggi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/biden-saudi-khashoggi-mohammed-salman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/biden-saudi-khashoggi-mohammed-salman/ |
Juan Soto debuted his Soto shuffle diamond pendant earlier this month. (MASN)
Juan Soto stepped to the plate in the first inning of a game on July 8 in Atlanta with a sparkly new accessory dangling from his neck — a diamond pendant in the shape of himself doing his signature Soto shuffle. Soto’s bling shuffled along with him as he drew a six-pitch walk against the Braves’ Charlie Morton. It was tucked into his Nationals jersey for his next plate appearance, a two-run homer in the third inning that extended his hitting streak to 11 games.
Soto had picked up the pendant from Icebox Diamonds & Watches a few hours earlier. The jewelry store, which is located about 20 minutes from Truist Park, is a popular destination for hip-hop artists, athletes and other celebrities. Business has been booming since 2009, when rapper T-Pain commissioned Icebox to make him a $400,000, 10-pound diamond necklace that read, appropriately, “Big A-- Chain” in capital letters.
Development of Soto’s slightly more modest design began back in March, according to Icebox’s Skylar Langfeldt, who has been with the company for almost nine years.
“I think it wasn’t even a question that we were going to do a shuffle piece,” Langfeldt said in a phone interview. “From there, it was just deciding the details.”
In the early stages of the design process, Icebox sent Soto a 3D-printed wax version of the pendant to give him an idea of the proposed shape and size. Icebox representatives and Soto went back and forth over the next couple of months until the design was finalized. (For what it’s worth, there’s no curly W or “Nationals” script in the finished product, so it won’t require an update if Soto, who recently turned down a 15-year, $440 million offer from Washington, is traded. Not that he couldn’t afford it.)
“Originally we had it completely iced out for him,” said Langfeldt, who declined to reveal the price of Soto’s necklace. “Then we started changing the face design. We wanted to pay homage to his World Series win, so that’s why we did the yellow gold accents on his bat and shin guard.”
The piece took about a month to manufacture. Different people in Icebox’s shop were responsible for melting the metal, polishing it and then setting the stones. The pendant is made of 14 karat white gold, with more than four carats of diamonds, and hangs from a 4-millimeter white gold rope chain. The back is laser engraved with Soto’s No. 22 and “WS 2019” to commemorate the Nationals’ World Series title.
Icebox has a huge social media presence, including more than 6.9 million followers on TikTok. The company has posted videos since 2018 of celebrities shopping at its store on YouTube. (A 12-minute video of rapper Lil Baby in the showroom earlier this year has more than 2.5 million views.) Cameras were rolling when Soto and Nationals teammate Andrés Machado dropped in. Soto received a tour, took a selfie with a fan and looked at Rolex watches and a rose gold Miami Cuban chain during his visit. In addition to his shuffle necklace, he went home with a jewelry travel case.
Langfeldt said the Nationals star was most impressed with the detail in the cleats, made up of tiny diamonds, on the pendant.
“We asked him if he was going to wear it on the field,” Langfeldt said. “He said no, because he was worried about diamonds falling out or something happening to it. We told him that we make our pieces to be worn for life, and if anything were to ever happen to it, we would take care of it.”
Soto told MLB.com that teammate Ehire Adrianza helped convince him to wear the necklace on the field and “let people see what I like.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Nationals Manager Dave Martinez said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t wear it. But it’s pretty cool.”
Soto, who will participate in Monday’s Home Run Derby at Dodger Stadium, has five home runs in nine games since debuting his shuffle pendant. It was dangling outside his jersey during Thursday’s loss to the Braves, in which he collected another two hits.
“It’s kind of been a good-luck charm,” Langfeldt said. “I feel like since he’s gotten it he’s been hitting home runs.” | 2022-07-18T13:20:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juan Soto’s diamond ‘Soto shuffle’ necklace was months in the making - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/juan-soto-diamond-necklace/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/juan-soto-diamond-necklace/ |
Blame Schumer for Democrats’ Failures? Not so Fast
With the Democratic agenda in Congress shrinking yet again with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin ruling out the climate provisions of what was once the ambitious Build Back Better spending plan, people are looking for someone to blame for what went wrong.
Political scientist Jonathan Ladd of Georgetown University takes aim at Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Referring to an agreement Schumer and Manchin had last summer on spending, taxes and energy priorities, Ladd concludes: “Schumer really shouldn’t be leader after this. He had this offer and he should have known that time was not on his side. It’s very hard dealing with Manchin, but that’s the job. And if you’re not up to it you should resign as leader.”
Plausible! Somewhat similarly, supporters of the most liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives are arguing that their threat to block the final vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed last year has been vindicated by subsequent events. Recall that originally the House strategy had been to move ahead on the bipartisan infrastructure measure only if the Senate had also moved on Build Back Better, on the assumption that approving the bipartisan bill would cost liberals key leverage over Manchin. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, decided to pass infrastructure over their objections and predictions — which have proved accurate — that once infrastructure passed the other bill would fail.
The problem with all of this, however, is that it rests on a belief that there was a deal available that could have had 50 votes (plus Vice President Kamala Harris’s) in the Senate. And while that’s possible, we just don’t know.
Begin with the two-bill strategy, which broke the original Democratic program into two bills — “infrastructure” and “everything else” — and attempted to pass the first measure with bipartisan support and the other one through the reconciliation procedure that lets some kinds of fiscal measures succeed in the Senate with just a simple majority. Splitting the bills that way attracted enough Republican senators to defeat a filibuster by most Republican senators, which produced both a substantive and a symbolic victory for President Joe Biden and the Democrats — that is, they got spending they wanted on transportation, broadband and utilities, and a chance to brag about bipartisan success.
But the remainder of the plan, and the bulk of what Democrats hoped for, always rested on an assumption about Manchin’s ranked preferences — that he wanted the infrastructure portion of the Democratic agenda so much that he would sign off on things he didn’t want to get it. And we still don’t know whether that assumption was true. It’s quite possible, and in my view more likely than not, that Manchin didn’t really care much about the infrastructure bill. If so, that bill wouldn’t have been useful as a hostage.
As for Schumer, it’s just hard for outsiders, and even close observers, to really know if any deal was available at any point. If Manchin was negotiating in bad faith, then there wasn’t much that Schumer (or Biden, or Pelosi or anybody else) could have done. And so far, there’s a lot more in the reporting that suggests that Manchin, not Schumer, was the problem. If that’s the case, then there never was a real offer for Schumer and the rest of the Democrats to agree to. But it’s hard to know.
Meanwhile, the context, as always, is that Democrats were trying to get an awful lot done with tiny margins in both chambers of Congress. As political scientist Matt Grossman points out, it’s extremely difficult for the majority party to get what it wants without any buy-in from the other party, even with comfortable margins. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t try. Had Schumer or Pelosi decided in January 2021 to ignore the bulk of the party’s agenda, they wouldn’t have lasted long as party leaders. Had Biden done so, he would have immediately and perhaps permanently lost most of the support from Democratic party actors and quite a bit of support from Democratic voters, and it’s hard to see where he would have gained much elsewhere.
The truth is that under current conditions, with ambitious programmatic parties especially on the Democratic side, newly elected majorities are inevitably going to disappoint much of their own party, at least when it comes to achieving policy goals.
That still leaves plenty of room for getting more or less done, and it’s fair to question whether Democrats could have passed at least a bit more of their agenda than what appears likely to be the limit in this Congress. For example, some have criticized their major relief bill, passed early in 2021, for only including temporary spending rather than more permanent changes. But once again, it’s quite possible that this decision was made to try to keep all 50 Senate Democrats on board.
Remember, too, that more bipartisan legislation passed during this Congress than expected, including postal reform, the long-stalled latest version of the Violence Against Women Act, a gun safety bill and aid to Ukraine. Would all that have happened had Democrats been more successful on partisan bills? Granted, almost every Democrat in Congress would have been more than happy to trade postal reform for a robust climate bill. But it’s that “almost” that was always going to be the problem for them.
None of which really answers the question about how effective Chuck Schumer has been as majority leader. And that’s where it’s probably best to leave it for now. Sometimes, we just don’t have enough evidence to draw conclusions. | 2022-07-18T13:46:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blame Schumer for Democrats’ Failures? Not so Fast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blame-schumer-for-democrats-failures-not-so-fast/2022/07/18/27c8fb74-0696-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blame-schumer-for-democrats-failures-not-so-fast/2022/07/18/27c8fb74-0696-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Analysis by Julianna Goldman | Bloomberg
In another focus group of hers, this time with voters who supported Trump in 2020 but not in 2016, one female voter said: “They keep talking about the results of the election and I feel like even when he’s doing his roadshow, he keeps bringing that up, like it’s, you know, a grudge.” The woman added, “I just feel like we’ve moved past that.”
The research does show that Democrats have an opportunity to tie the hearings to abortion rights. In focus groups, voters have been making connections between the extremism they are learning about in the hearings and the Supreme Court’s decision, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that overturned its 1973 abortion-rights precedent Roe v. Wade. | 2022-07-18T13:47:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Good News for Democrats: Even Republicans Are Tiring of Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/good-news-for-democrats-even-republicans-are-tiring-of-trump/2022/07/18/88846568-069e-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/good-news-for-democrats-even-republicans-are-tiring-of-trump/2022/07/18/88846568-069e-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Haircuts were $10. Now they’re $40. They should be more.
“Oh … she was mad at you for not asking for her number.”
“Wait. What? … Why didn’t you tell me before we drove away!?!?”
This is just one of dozens of examples I could cite of the status-shifting and life-altering properties of the Black barbershop. I have been a regular at them for 40 years. My first barbers were at Wade’s in Homewood in Pittsburgh. Then, when I was at Canisius College, I was a regular at Sean’s House of Masters. When I came back home, I left Wade’s and started going to East Liberty Kutz. In 2015, after 15 years there, I thought it was time for a change and began going to the Barbers Inn. And then, earlier this year, I left the Barbers Inn for the Natural Choice. In that span, this cadre of artisans has helped me navigate dates, breakups, job interviews, work trips, weddings, vacations and funerals. They’ve powered me through depression. They’ve given movie recommendations and discount sneaker hookups. They’ve offered advice on children, money, relationships and sex. Sometimes the advice is bad. Very bad. So bad sometimes I thought the barber was having a stroke. (“Fam. Is your brain, um … broke?”)
These barbershops are not utopias. They’re vulnerable to the same issues characteristic of male-dominated spaces. Which means that sometimes dated and dangerous politics cultivate environments where people who are not male or not straight feel less comfortable. But while the value of each physical shop is dependent on how much it means to the community it exists in, and how welcome the entire community is made to feel there, the value of a good haircut surpasses the monetary and enters the metaphysical. Because it’s not just about the physical transformation, but the entire metamorphosing process. The cape draped over your body. The steady, sedative buzz of the clippers. The theatrical spin in the chair. And the elegant sting of the peroxide applied to your scalp. If you have a skilled and focused barber, you are guaranteed to leave the shop feeling better than when you entered. How much is that worth?
The value of a good haircut surpasses the monetary and enters the metaphysical. | 2022-07-18T13:47:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: Haircuts were $10. Now they’re $40. They should be more. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/18/damon-young-haircuts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/18/damon-young-haircuts/ |
Uncertainty has vexed Louisiana abortion clinics as the court considers the state’s trigger laws.
With a Louisiana temporary restraining order in place, the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La. continues to see patients, (AP Photo/Ted Jackson)
A Louisiana judge on Monday will consider temporarily blocking the state’s trigger laws until a district court determines whether the state’s near-total abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest, violates Louisiana’s constitution.
The legality of abortion in Louisiana has changed rapidly in the weeks since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and gave states the power to enact restrictions. The ensuing confusion has left patients and abortion providers scrambling as the courts have blocked, unblocked and the re-blocked the ban.
“We’re still getting a lot of desperate phone calls from women who are angry or sobbing,” said Kathaleen Pittman, who runs an abortion clinic at Hope Medical Group in Shreveport, La. “They seem so totally beaten down because they’ve been trying to access care and, in one moment, it’s available in a few weeks; the next minute, it may not ever be available here.”
Monday’s hearing is the next step in a lawsuit brought by abortion providers who have challenged the state’s trigger laws as “constitutionally vague.” A judge in Baton Rouge will hear arguments on the motion for a preliminary injunction, which would keep the state’s near-total abortion ban from taking effect until a panel of judges rule on the merits of the case, which could take weeks.
The laws "do not clearly determine what conduct has been made illegal and what conduct is allowed,” said Joanna Wright, an attorney representing the abortion providers who are challenging Louisiana’s abortion restrictions. “And the Louisiana state constitution requires that criminal laws provide proper notice of what is and is not illegal.”
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision in late June, the plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order that allowed abortion providers to keep offering services as the case moved forward. That order was granted on June 27, but then dissolved on July 8 when the lawsuit was moved to a different jurisdiction. For a few days, abortion was illegal throughout Louisiana.
Another judge granted a second temporary restraining order last week, again pausing the state’s abortion ban.
“When we were granted the most recent [temporary restraining order] – I don’t know how to describe the staff except for giddy,” Pittman said. “The relief was palpable around here.”
Pittman’s clinic had to halt abortion services when the first restraining order expired on July 8. Physicians continued to meet with prospective patients and offer them counseling, ultrasounds and initial consultations. But patients could not access the procedure while the courts considered the request to temporarily block the ban.
“Some of these women had been waiting weeks, or even months,” Pittman said.
Hope Medical Group had a waiting list of 300 to 500 patients even before the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back the federal protections guaranteed by Roe. Many patients scheduled to have an abortion shortly after the Supreme Court decision had their appointments cancelled as the clinic halted the procedure for several days because of the state’s trigger laws. Some were able to reschedule after the court blocked the trigger ban – but abortions stopped again when the first temporary restraining order expired.
A judge granted a second temporary restraining order and Pittman’s clinic resumed abortions once more on July 14.
“Some of the women we’re seeing today have already had appointments cancelled on them twice now,” Pittman said last Thursday, the first morning that her clinic was able to perform abortions after the second restraining order took effect.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has sought to discourage patients from seeking abortions even while the state’s ban is blocked by the courts. On July 14, when some clinics resumed services after the second restraining order went into effect, Landry tweeted out a “reminder.”
“Louisiana's laws banning abortion have not been enjoined,” he wrote. “Subject to certain exceptions, abortion remains a criminal offense in our State! Anyone performing abortions, pending outcome, will be culpable when the case is closed in favor of the laws of our State.”
But legal experts say that criminal laws are not typically applied to actions that took place when those laws were blocked by the courts.
“Most people would tell you there is a real retroactivity problem there,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin. “You can’t apply criminal law that didn’t exist at the time to a provider who was operating under a TRO or a preliminary injunction.”
Landry also criticized the court for temporarily blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion laws that have been supported “at the ballot box and through their elected legislature again and again and again.”
“To have the judiciary create a legal circus is disappointing and what discredits the institutions we rely upon for a stable society,” Landry tweeted shortly after a judge granted the second temporary restraining order. “The rule of law must be followed, and I will not rest until it is. Unfortunately, we will have to wait a little bit longer for that to happen.”
Monday’s hearing will likely decide whether Louisiana’s trigger law that bans abortion will continue to be blocked as the case winds its way through the courts. If the law is not blocked, the state’s three abortion clinics will have to close their doors to patients, Pittman said.
"We absolutely have to have that preliminary injunction,” Pittman said. | 2022-07-18T13:47:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Louisiana judge will decide whether to keep blocking abortion ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/louisiana-abortion-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/louisiana-abortion-ban/ |
Alonso, who won the Home Run Derby in 2021 and 2019, returns for the 2022 edition in Los Angeles on Monday.
“I just love coming to the yard. I really take pride in what I do. This is my craft. This is my job. And as much as I take myself seriously, I love having fun along the way,” Pete Alonso said. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
“People are just born to do certain things, and he’s born for that,” Soto said. “He is a guy who loves it and has a lot of power. Not many guys love it more than he does.”
Few guys love baseball more than Alonso, who can be so earnest on the field, in interviews or in a Mets love letter in the Players’ Tribune, that discerning observers might wonder if he is playing a role.
When a driver ran a red light and crashed into Alonso’s truck, flipping it, during spring training, he debated whether to tell the media, whether to address his teammates. He wasn’t hurt — not physically. But he was grateful. Ultimately, he decided to tell reporters and to hold a meeting with his teammates to explain what happened — but mostly to tell them to live life to the fullest.
“I just love coming to the yard. I really take pride in what I do. This is my craft. This is my job. And as much as I take myself seriously, I love having fun along the way,” Alonso said in a recent interview. “Your time is limited. I want to enjoy every single day I have here.”
Juan Soto rejects $440 million offer; Nats will consider trade
Persistent enthusiasm often meets skepticism in major league clubhouses. The game is too hard, too often, for anyone to enjoy every second. The schedule is too punishing, too often, for anyone in his right mind to be grateful every day.
But in everything from the detail with which he situates his old-school stirrups before each game to the notes he writes himself at his locker, from exuberant interviews to famously adding an emphatic “F” to “LGM” on social media, Alonso offers daily evidence that he is not so much trying to seem like a perfect New York baseball star but that he cannot help but be this way.
“That is him. He is a gem. He is completely transparent,” said former New York Mets bench coach Dave Jauss, now an adviser for the Washington Nationals. “He loves his teammates. He loves the game. He’s great for our industry.”
Jauss is a bit of an enthusiasm outlier in his own right, the rare batting practice pitcher who emerged as a cult hero after helping Alonso to victory in 2021, a baseball lifer who says he is “blessed” to do just about everything, signs his texts with “peace” and asked Alonso for two pots of coffee and a case of beer as thanks for throwing to him in this week’s Home Run Derby in L.A.
Jauss joined Luis Rojas’s Mets staff as bench coach before the 2021 season, threw batting practice to Alonso on his first day at spring training, then threw to him every day for the rest of that campaign. By the end of the year, he and his family were having dinner with Alonso and his now-wife, having built a friendship that has continued even after Jauss departed when Rojas and his staff were relieved of their duties last year.
Still, the 65-year-old admitted that in the back of his mind, he planned for a trip to Los Angeles this summer. He even prepared. Jauss spent part of this year traveling with MLB’s Home Run Derby X tour, throwing to former players in London. And as he travels around the Nationals’ minor league system, he says he tries to throw batting practice at every stop there, too. If he can give a weary coach a rest, he says, he likes to do it.
But all-star festivities can be a pyrrhic privilege, too. They replace a few fleeting days of rest with hurried travel and dozens of interviews for tired stars and the support staff that follow them. Jauss flew to Hickory, N.C., on his way to Los Angeles to meet up with the Nationals’ Class A affiliate, part of his rounds. Alonso’s Mets were in Chicago on Sunday. Within 18 hours or so, Alonso would be on the field defending his title.
Because of the whirlwind, many stars choose not to make the trip. Fewer plan for it quietly all spring, crossing their fingers for the opportunity to add an exhausting, otherwise meaningless event to their already exhausting schedule. But Alonso wanted to be here all along.
But despite 24 homers, 78 RBI and an .856 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the first half, Alonso wasn’t guaranteed an all-star spot after St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt was voted a starter by the fans. As of early July, he had said publicly he would participate in the derby if he were on an all-star roster, but what wasn’t clear was whether he would still participate if he weren’t. Many players have done that over the years. None of them have used the moment to lift them into stardom quite like him.
In 2021, for example, Alonso made more money with his Home Run Derby win ($2 million) than he had made in three seasons with the Mets (approximately $1.5 million). Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Alonso dominates this event: Since his rookie season, he leads all hitters with 130 homers, 19 more than the next-closest guy.
“I’ve thrown to a lot of guys, and his approach to the derby is really good,” Jauss said. “I’ve probably thrown to guys that have more raw power — Russell Branyan, for example — but for being able to use it like that, those are the Mark McGwire’s you’ve seen, [Ken] Griffey [Jr.] in a different body type, Albert Pujols, same sort of stuff.”
Asked to detail Alonso’s derby strategy, Jauss demurred as if preserving a closely held secret. Alonso said he tries to hit hard line drives and hope they go over the wall, though many a slugger has tried that approach without generating the consistent results on the big stage like he has.
“Some of it, I don’t know,” Jauss said. “Why could [Tony] Gwynn always get a hit to the shortstop hole? The manager and the hitting coach and the guy throwing BP still didn’t know. That’s how good guys like this are.”
Guys like this are such rarities that only one person has won the derby more than Alonso had entering Monday, a player who personified enjoying the game and playing with visible passion like few before him. Griffey won three Home Run Derbies, and he spent Saturday in the dugout at the All-Star Futures Game rendering prospects speechless with his presence. Alonso, who was a toddler when Griffey won his titles, said he does the derby as a gift to that younger self. Little Pete Alonso would have loved this, he said. As it turns out, 27-year-old Pete Alonso loves it, too. | 2022-07-18T13:48:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pete Alonso returns to Home Run Derby seeking third title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/pete-alonso-home-run-derby/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/pete-alonso-home-run-derby/ |
Epidemiologist Luke Nyakarahuka sprays disinfectant on scientists Jonathan Towner and Brian Amman in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, in 2018. The scientists were researching how bats transmit the Marburg virus to humans. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
After the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of monkeypox cases, news of another virus can trigger nerves globally. The highly infectious Marbrug virus has been reported in the West African country of Ghana this week, according to the World Health Organization.
Two unrelated people died after testing positive for Marburg in the southern Ashanti region of the country, the WHO said Sunday, confirming lab results from Ghana’s health service. The highly infectious disease is similar to Ebola and has no vaccine.
Health officials in the country say they are working to isolate close contacts and mitigate the spread of the virus, and the WHO is marshaling resources and sending specialists to the country.
“Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a head start preparing for a possible outbreak. This is good because without immediate and decisive action, Marburg can easily get out of hand,” said the WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti.
Fatality rates from the disease can reach nearly 90 percent, according to the WHO.
Here’s what we know about the virus:
Marburg is a rare but highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever and is in the same family as Ebola, a better-known virus that has plagued West Africa for years.
The Marburg virus is a “genetically unique zoonotic … RNA virus of the filovirus family,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The six species of Ebola virus are the only other known members of the filovirus family.”
Fatality rates range from 24 percent to 88 percent, according to the WHO, depending on the virus strain and quality of case management.
Marburg has probably been transmitted to people from African fruit bats as a result of prolonged exposure from people working in mines and caves that have Rousettus bat colonies. It is not an airborne disease.
Once someone is infected, the virus can spread easily between humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people such as blood, saliva or urine, as well as on surfaces and materials. Relatives and health workers remain most vulnerable alongside patients, and bodies can remain contagious at burial.
The first cases of the virus were identified in Europe in 1967. Two large outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany, and in Belgrade, Serbia, led to the initial recognition of the disease. At least seven deaths were reported in that outbreak, with the first people infected having been exposed to Ugandan imported African green monkeys or their tissue while conducting lab research, the CDC said.
Where has Marburg been detected?
The Ghana cases are only the second time Marburg has been detected in West Africa. The first reported case in the region was in Guinea last year. The virus can spread quickly. More than 90 contacts, including health workers and community members, are being monitored in Ghana. The WHO said it has also reached out to neighboring high-risk countries to put them on alert.
Cases of Marburg have previously been reported elsewhere in Africa, including in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The largest outbreak killed more than 200 people in Angola in 2005.
The virus is not known to be native to other continents, such as North America, and the CDC says cases outside Africa are “infrequent.” In 2008, however, a Dutch woman died of Marburg disease after visiting Uganda. An American tourist also contracted the disease after a Uganda trip in 2008 but recovered. Both travelers had visited a well-known cave inhabited by fruit bats in a national park.
The illness begins “abruptly,” according to the WHO, with a high fever, severe headache and malaise. Muscle aches and cramping pains are also common features.
In Ghana, the two unrelated individuals who died experienced symptoms such as diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting. One case was a 26-year-old man who checked into a hospital on June 26 and died a day later. The second was a 51-year-old man who went to hospital on June 28 and died the same day, the WHO said.
In fatal cases, death usually occurs between eight and nine days after onset of the disease and is preceded by severe blood loss and hemorrhaging, and multi-organ dysfunction.
The CDC has also noted that around day five, a non-itchy rash on the chest, back or stomach may occur. Clinical diagnosis of Marburg “can be difficult,” it says, with many of the symptoms similar to other infectious diseases such as malaria or typhoid fever.
Can Marburg be treated?
There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the Marburg virus.
However, supportive care can improve survival rates such as rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids, maintaining oxygen levels, using drug therapies and treating specific symptoms as they arise. Some health experts say drugs similar to those used for Ebola could be effective.
Some “experimental treatments” for Marburg have been tested in animals but have never been tried in humans, the CDC said.
Virus samples collected from patients to study are an “extreme biohazard risk,” the WHO says, and laboratory testing should be conducted under “maximum biological containment conditions.”
Anything else to know?
The WHO said this week it is supporting a “joint national investigative team” in Ghana and deploying its own experts to the country. It is also sending personal protective equipment, bolstering disease surveillance and tracing contacts in response to the handful of cases.
More details are likely to be shared at a WHO Africa online briefing scheduled for Thursday.
“It is a worry that the geographical range of this viral infection appears to have spread. This is a very serious infection with a high mortality rate,” international public health expert and professor Jimmy Whitworth of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told The Washington Post on Monday.
“It is important to try to understand how the virus got into the human population to cause this outbreak and to stop any further cases. At present, the risk of spread of the outbreak outside of Ashanti region of Ghana is very low,” he added. | 2022-07-18T13:48:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WHO identifies deadly Marburg virus in Ghana: What to know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/marburg-virus-disease-ghana-africa-who/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/marburg-virus-disease-ghana-africa-who/ |
“Free tickets for redheads on the hottest days ever,” read an Instagram post from Showcase Cinemas.
A woman on a bus in Britain. (Kypros/Getty Images)
LONDON — As temperatures soar to dangerous heights across Britain this week, one movie theater chain is offering shelter from the sun to one potentially vulnerable group: Redheads.
“Free tickets for redheads on the hottest days ever,” read an Instagram post from Showcase Cinemas earlier this week, prompting many to tag their flame-haired friends and family members in the comments section so they wouldn’t miss out on the offer to cool off in an air-conditioned venue amid the national emergency.
The offer, which is strictly for redheads only, will run from Monday to Tuesday, when temperatures are expected to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
Research has found that people with pale skin, freckles and red hair, are more at risk of developing skin cancer due to their genes — though heat of this scale is dangerous for anyone. Hundreds of people have died in recent days as a punishing heatwave sweeps Britain, France, Spain and Portugal.
Unlike the United States, many locations and homes in the United Kingdom do not have air conditioning. Most cinemas, however, do.
“Since redheads are often more vulnerable than most to the sun’s rays, we’re giving them shelter from the sun inside our fully air conditioned cinema screens,” the cinema said in a statement. The company told The Washington Post that it was looking forward to seeing “how many red heads take us up on the opportunity.”
For the first time on record, red “extreme” heat warnings are in place across parts of Britain, including London — a country where infrastructure is not built for intense heatwaves. The heatwave has also sparked wildfires in Europe.
Experts say the extreme weather is yet another reminder of human-caused climate change, with some warning that future summers will only get worse if the world does not work to combat the crisis.
On social media, many hailed the cinema’s idea as a positive way to help during a heat and cost of living crisis – though some branded the initiative “offensive” to the redhead community, saying it unfairly singles out this group.
Lucy McCollum, a 29-year-old from Sheffield, who describes herself as “happily ginger” and has a baby boy that also has red hair, said the offer would not just help those struggling with the heat, but also those struggling financially.
Annual inflation in Britain hit a 40-year high of 9 percent earlier this year, sending the price of food and energy soaring — a result of Brexit, take hikes and the coronavirus pandemic.
“With the cost of living crisis, you’ve got to take what you can get on the entertainment front,” McCollum said.
In Britain, a trip to the cinema is usually expensive — especially if one wants movie snacks and a recliner chair. General admission tickets for adults cost around 12 pounds ($14) although the price can vary depending on the type of film and selected comfort level. Some tickets sell for up to 23 pounds per person ($27).
While tempting, McCollum said she would be unable to attend due to work commitments as a teacher.
Others didn’t seem to like the attention: Some posts on social media noted that redheads can often be bullied at school for their rarer hair coloring — and that the offer may ostracize the community further.
Sarah Jackson — a 27-year-old who goes by “Gingerrcurls” on Instagram who was bullied as a child for what she called her “frizzy ginger hair” — said she thought the cinema’s offer was “hilarious” and that she would have taken organizers up on the offer had there been a cinema closer to her house.
“I am constantly joking how I, as a ginger, cannot stand summer because of the heat, so when I saw the Showcase was offering free tickets for redheads during the current heatwave I immediately shared it with my friends and boyfriend,” said Jackson, who has accumulated thousands of followers including by posting about techniques that help people manage curly hair and products for people with pale skin and warmer hair tones.
The offer also forced some who were once redheaded but now losing hair to question if they were eligible for a free ticket. “Does a ginger beard count?” wrote one person. Others debated how strict the movie theater might be – or if they would take a “strawberry blonde.”
Luke Young, 31, from Peterborough, a city in the east of England, was one of those pondering his redheaded roots.
Young told The Washington Post that he did not identify as full redhead — instead describing himself as “fair-skinned" with a beard the color of a “Moroccan sunset."
Young said the idea was “good marketing.” “A free ticket is a free ticket,” he said. | 2022-07-18T13:48:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain’s redheads offered free cinema entry in national heat emergency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/uk-cinema-heatwave-redheads-free-tickets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/18/uk-cinema-heatwave-redheads-free-tickets/ |
Like the UK and much of the world, the US bans discrimination against older workers. Yet such discrimination seems to be an ingrained part the culture in finance. Although insiders have railed against the trend, bankers in general, and traders in particular, have long complained that a “rampant ageism” forces them into early retirement.
That’s why the March 2020 settlement of an age discrimination suit against PricewaterhouseCoopers is so significant. The amount of money involved — $11.6 million — is trivial, given that after deducting attorney’s fees, the sum was to be divided among some 5,000 individuals. Far more important is PwC’s promise to consider applicants over 40 years old for entry-level positions. This is no small concession. The agreement potentially breaks the link between perception of age and perception of ability. One needn’t be young to be ambitious and hungry.
To be sure, older and younger financial professionals often differ. For example, as bankers age, their tolerance for risk tends to decline. But a greater concern for risk is often a positive quality. Besides, laws against discrimination exist, among other reasons, to prevent the unfair application of averages to individual cases. Yes, we could all tell tales of giants in our respective fields who refuse to admit the waning of their powers. On the other hand, most of us have also been lucky enough to know towering intellects who remain sharp as ever in their eighties and nineties.
Which brings us back to Niels Kirk’s complaint against Citigroup.
The employment tribunal’s original decision against the company rested heavily on evidence that Kirk’s supervisor had referred to him as “old and set in his ways” and emphasized the need for someone more “agile” in his position. One can scarcely imagine a more vicious and hackneyed stereotype. (Kirk’s supervisor denied making the remarks, but the Tribunal found as a fact that he had, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal did not dispute the finding.)
The appellate panel, however, ruled that the tribunal had not taken sufficient account of the fact that although at the time of the events in question Kirk was 55, his replacement was 51, and that a majority of senior bankers in the office were over 50. The panel further instructed the tribunal to consider the evidence that the supervisors perceived Kirk and his replacement as being in the same age bracket.
How can this evidence be relevant if the supervisors nevertheless made the comments Kirk says they did? According to the appellate panel, to call someone “set in his ways” or insufficiently “agile” isn’t necessarily to state a prejudice; a younger worker can manifest the same characteristics. What the panel didn’t mention but perhaps should have is that as with many other biases, researchers have had trouble detecting in the data a significant correlation between holding stereotyped ageist views and discriminating on the basis of age. In the jargon, the prejudices are not always activated.
On the other hand, even taking into account the evidence that the appellate panel said was ignored, the tribunal could still renew its ruling in Kirk’s favor. To see why, imagine an employee who claims he was fired because of his race. The employer replies that the replacement is of the same race. The employee should nevertheless be able to make out a case by showing that members of his race are judged by standards different from those the employer applies to the rest of the workforce.
The difficulties Wall Street and the City have had in diversifying their image as bastions of White maleness are well documented. But ageism is another prejudice that the finance world should battle. And while I won’t venture to guess how the dispute between Citigroup and Kirk will ultimately play out, the case serves as a useful reminder that preferring younger workers to older ones is, quite simply, against the law.
• The Justice Department Should Indict Donald Trump: Jonathan Bernstein
• The ‘Right to Life’ Will End Up Killing Women: Kathryn Edwards | 2022-07-18T15:17:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Citigroup Age Bias Lawsuit Pits 50-Somethings Against Each Other - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/citigroup-age-bias-lawsuit-pits-50-somethings-against-each-other/2022/07/18/eae32b7e-06a6-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/citigroup-age-bias-lawsuit-pits-50-somethings-against-each-other/2022/07/18/eae32b7e-06a6-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Analysis by Hal Brands | Bloomberg
President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly rewriting its National Security Strategy, which the White House is required to send to Congress annually, to account for the lessons of the war in Ukraine. One issue that this document will have to grapple with outside its traditional focus on statecraft and diplomacy: food.
A recent report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization makes for grim reading. The number of undernourished people in the world rose by perhaps 150 million between 2019 and 2021, due principally to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, moderate or severe food insecurity increased by roughly as much as in the previous five years combined. Nearly 3.1 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet; by some estimates, the number of people on the verge of starvation has multiplied tenfold since 2019.
“This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards” in the fight against hunger, the FAO concluded. Now the war in Ukraine has compounded the problem.
The World Food Program estimates that in 2022 an additional 47 million people may fall into acute food insecurity — meaning that they can’t get enough food to live a healthy, productive life. In Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and other countries, deaths due to hunger are rising as scarce aid dollars are redirected to Ukraine. Don’t count on the pain passing quickly: It could become more severe if a long conflict disrupts progressive Ukrainian harvests.
Russia aims to isolate Ukraine from its international supporters by generating waves of global turmoil that will eventually make Kyiv’s backers tire of the fight. Russian diplomats may be pretending to participate constructively in negotiations to reopen Black Sea commerce. Yet Putin has no interest in seeing those talks succeed, because that would deprive him of one of his most potent forms of leverage.
Don’t underestimate the global fallout. Intense hunger in the Middle East and North Africa could generate refugee flows that would further upset Europe’s politics and exacerbate its internal divisions. Food shortages can cause a rush into overburdened cities, create misery that extremist groups exploit, and otherwise precipitate violence and instability.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, has blamed Russian policy for exacerbating the food shortages that caused the fall of Sri Lanka’s government.
Putin’s strategy could eventually succeed, causing Kyiv’s less-committed supporters to call for Ukrainian concessions. It could also fail catastrophically, provoking Washington and other Western countries to break Putin’s Black Sea blockade by force. Or it could simply produce more political and strategic turbulence in a world that was hardly steady before.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time food and geopolitics have interacted in explosive ways. The Russian revolution of 1917 occurred when World War I had overburdened an inadequate railway system and made it impossible to feed an angry population. That revolution, in turn, knocked Russia out of the war; it also unleashed an ideology, communism, that helped make the 20th century history’s bloodiest.
A decade into the next century, the Arab Spring occurred in part due to rising food prices that set off mass unrest. The military and political upheaval in the Middle East has yet to fully subside, with civil wars in Syria and Libya among other effects. Food insecurity and international insecurity go together. Or, as my Johns Hopkins colleague Jessica Fanzo has written, “No food security, no world order.”
There are things that governments and international bodies can to do alleviate the problem: increasing agricultural yields, prioritizing production of foods that are essential to a healthy diet, strengthening emergency support for the poor and directing greater international aid to affected populations. The US is trying to increase Ukrainian grain exports by using land and river routes to ship it through neighboring countries and then abroad. Yet this will probably free only a fraction of the Ukrainian grain being held hostage.
The root of the problem in Ukraine is not technocratic but geopolitical: A ruthless tyrant is squeezing the world’s food supplies in hopes of isolating and then conquering his neighbor. The US and other leading democracies haven’t figured out how to solve that problem — which may be a preview of the way that food and conflict will increasingly interact in a fragmenting world.
Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, he is co-author, most recently, of “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China” and a member of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. | 2022-07-18T15:18:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Food May Be the Ultimate Weapon in the 21st Century - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/food-may-be-the-ultimate-weapon-in-the-21st-century/2022/07/18/bab33312-06a2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/food-may-be-the-ultimate-weapon-in-the-21st-century/2022/07/18/bab33312-06a2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) at the Nebraska GOP state convention July 9 in Kearney, Neb., with Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.). (Gregory Schneider/The Washington Post)
Is seven months as governor enough time to begin to test the presidential political waters?
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is upping the pace of his not publicly acknowledged but undisguised ambitions to be a player in the 2024 presidential sweepstakes. He may be doing himself more harm than good by seeming disengaged at home while he tests the elasticity of truth and credulity campaigning elsewhere.
Earlier this month, Youngkin — far from mastering the task of being governor early in the freshman year of the nonrenewable term Virginia allows him — was addressing a gathering of Nebraska Republicans. He spoke about beating a Democratic titan. It’s a good enough story on its own merits, but Youngkin wasn’t above rank embellishment.
Betraying a basic understanding of either Virginia’s political environment or his own sense of the truth, he told the Cornhusker crowd that he had won in “dark blue” Virginia.
That’s rhetoric that even Democrats shied from after the 2019 election when they consolidated — briefly — their hold on elective power over state government, taking majorities in the House and Senate to complement a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam.
The truth is — and long has been — that Virginia is purple. Its centrist electorate, much of it suburban and highly attuned to the political rhythms of neighboring Washington, often meanders back and forth across the political median to favor one party during one period and then the other.
After the Democrats had won all three statewide offices — governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general — in the three 1980s elections, and then after Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, Virginia became fatigued with the party’s progressive lurch and surged right, fueling a GOP renaissance led by George Allen and Jim Gilmore. It swayed center-left again in the early 2000s and handed the governor’s office to Democrats Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, back-to-back, as George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq on phony pretexts grated on the nation. Then, after the market crash of 2008 and the presidential election of Barack Obama, Republicans regained control with Robert F. McDonnell’s election as governor and solid GOP legislative majorities.
In the second decade of the 21st century, however, two factors pushed Virginia leftward. The first was a scandal that ensnared McDonnell’s administration and an unpalatable hard-right Republican nominee who looked to succeed him. That contributed mightily to legendary Democratic fundraiser Terry McAuliffe’s election as governor in 2013.
Second, just as Virginia Republicans began to pull out of their tailspin in 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential bid, won the nomination and then the presidency. For five full years, his odious brand poisoned Virginia Republicans across the board until, in 2019, they were pushed utterly out of power in Virginia, losing House and Senate majorities, both U.S. Senate seats, a once-dominant majority of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats and the governor’s office.
The deep blue that Youngkin imagined was a blue mirage, an anti-MAGA loathing in moderate Virginia that dissipated after the 2020 election forced Trump’s grudging exile to Mar a Lago.
With Joe Biden in the White House and razor-thin Democratic majorities in Congress, Democrats appeared ineffectual and indecisive, unable to enact their new president’s grand agenda, because they failed to win a commanding congressional majority and the mandate it carries. Biden’s red carpet was badly frayed by the time Youngkin faced off against McAuliffe in November. In its bellwether statewide election, it was clear that, at least to Virginians, it was time for new solutions for a republic struggling to emerge from the pandemic.
Rather than talking up their accomplishments from two previous years and forward-looking answers to voters’ concerns, Democrats chose to fight the previous years’ battle, trying to make Youngkin and his party a proxy for Trump.
Youngkin gladly leveraged the Democrats’ real-time failings and years of pent-up restiveness against a whiplash-fast leftward lurch to win the argument with moderate suburban voters that a course correction was needed. He shaved off enough suburban support from Democrats that a resounding turnout in heavily Republican rural areas carried the election.
Meanwhile, the rookie governor has struggled mastering state policy, sometimes seeming tone-deaf, disengaged or flat-out mistaken.
Sunday before last, on the CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Youngkin tried to dodge a question about whether he would keep same-sex marriages legal in Virginia if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 2015 ruling establishing it as a right nationally. In the interview, he said same-sex marriage is protected by law in Virginia. It isn’t: An amendment in the state Constitution, ratified by voters in 2006, outlawed same-sex unions until it was rendered unenforceable by the court’s Obergefell decision. If the court reverses Obergefell, much the way it recently reversed the 49-year-old Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, same-sex marriages would instantly become illegal in Virginia.
Since the controversial abortion ruling, Youngkin has staked out differing positions on restrictions he would like to see in Virginia. The day the ruling was announced, he proffered a ban after 15 or 20 weeks of gestation, but The Post days later reported him saying in an online forum with the antiabortion Family Foundation of Virginia that he believes life begins at conception and that his publicly stated position was merely a placeholder and that he would seek more stringent laws if the GOP can hold its House of Delegates majority and take the state Senate in next year’s legislative elections.
Youngkin isn’t the first sitting Virginia governor to indulge national ambitions on the job.
If Youngkin is looking for what not to do, he might call the most recent predecessor to attempt the feat while still in office: former governor L. Douglas Wilder.
His 1992 presidential bid crashed and burned, taking his poll numbers back home with it. | 2022-07-18T15:18:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin is stumping out of state while stumbling at home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/youngkin-is-stumping-out-state-while-stumbling-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/youngkin-is-stumping-out-state-while-stumbling-home/ |
Anthony Richardson, no longer calling himself “AR-15,” throws under the watchful eyes of Eli and Peyton Manning at the Manning Passing Academy in Thibodaux, La., last month (Matthew Hinton/Associated Press)
The quarterback of the University of Florida Gators will no longer use the nickname “AR-15″ because of its association with the semiautomatic rifle which has been used in many mass shootings, including the deaths of 19 children and two adults this spring in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. | 2022-07-18T15:19:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida quarterback no longer wants to be known as 'AR-15' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/florida-qb-anthony-richardson-ar-15/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/florida-qb-anthony-richardson-ar-15/ |
Analysis by Mike Hume
The top tier of Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription service features a total of 700-plus titles spanning all the way back to the original catalogue of the first PlayStation. Players opting for the Premium tier can jump into “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales” then bop over for some sparring in “Tekken 2”; rekindle the campy nostalgia of the original “Resident Evil” and then settle in to stream “Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.” It’s a true smorgasbord of hits both past and present.
There is plenty in PS Plus to enjoy and justify its tiered pricing structure. When I first opened the menu upon its June 13 launch in American markets, I thought I’d be spending days with all the games and features it had to offer. Turns out, in the month afterward, I didn’t.
It’s not that PS Plus isn’t good or robust enough to justify its price tag of $119.99 per year. It’s more that modern gaming makes it extremely hard to extract the full value of the new PS Plus.
When you think about the competition Sony faces around its subscription service, by default attention turns to Xbox Game Pass, a product with 400-plus games and over 25 million subscribers. As I spent several weeks sampling the PS Plus goods, however, it occurred to me that the biggest competitor for PS Plus isn’t another game subscription service, but rather games themselves. That’s because the biggest factor undermining the value of PS Plus — or any game subscription service on the market for that matter — isn’t money. It’s time.
From an economic standpoint, the case for subscribing to PS Plus Premium is remarkably palatable. For starters, if you need cloud storage or want to play any kind of online, multiplayer PlayStation game, you’re obligated to pay at least $59.99 a year to get access to PS Plus Essential. From there, justifying an increase to the Premium tier — which gets you access to the aforementioned catalogue of over 700 current-gen and classic games, the ability to stream games from the cloud and access to timed trials of new games — is a pretty easy sell. For the cost of just one additional new game a year ($60), players get access to a library of hundreds. If you have the money to spare, why wouldn’t you do that?
But even if you have the money, do you have the time? Let’s say, liberally, you have two hours to play every weeknight and six hours across Saturday and Sunday. That’s 22 hours a week spent gaming, which seems like a lot until you consider the modern gaming landscape of massive open-world games like “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” and live-service titles that continually add new content to the game to engage players, rewarding them with new unlockable features and cosmetics all the while.
For the past two-plus years, my friends and I have congregated regularly around “Call of Duty: Warzone,” a free-to-play, live service battle royale game in the Call of Duty series that offers up fresh seasons of new maps and experiences every two months. It’s my go-to game. Sure, I’ve been playing “Elden Ring” and “MLB The Show 22,” finished “Uncharted 4” and even dabbled in “Grand Turismo 7,” but if I’m playing any game on a given night and one of my friends is on “Warzone,” I’m popping over to join them. Comparatively, I’ve spent a fraction of that time on other titles — and made relatively little progress as a result.
That accounts for almost all my free time spent gaming in a given week. So if I don’t have time for the rest of PS Plus Premium’s 700 games, what are they really worth to me? I’d love to have time to play more titles and get further in storylines, but amid work and family obligations, I just don’t.
While I’m sure not everyone shares the gaming habits of a 41-year-old father of two, there’s no shortage of similarly massive live service franchises that dominate players’ time. Even single player games like “Horizon Forbidden West,” “Red Dead Redemption 2” or the aforementioned “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” ensnare players and then shower them with hours upon hours of content, giving them little reason to seek another title if they’re enjoying their time in one game. What do they need another 700 titles for?
After 300 hours of ‘Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’ I am dead inside
The complexity of modern games can also make them more demanding gameplay wise, which serves as a deterrent from bouncing from one involved title to another. Take “Elden Ring,” which isn’t on either PlayStation’s or Xbox’s subscription service, but has been my main gaming side hustle this year. To pick up where I left off and fully enjoy the game, I have to recall what’s happening in the story’s plot, what the controls are (ARGH! I hit the square button and drank the Crimson Tears AGAIN!!!), what side quest I may or may not be in the middle of and, of course, the attack chain for Garth the Uncouth, Mildred the Overly Perspirant or whatever the name is of the boss that keeps beating me like a thumbtack under a sledgehammer.
Truly, these subscription services are made for people (like our friend and colleague Gene Park) who so thoroughly grasps hundreds of games that putting down one and picking up another is a frictionless process. These folks will get boundless value — and good on them for it. But for me, the offer just means paying an extra $60 to stare at the titles on the spines and think, “That’d be fun to play some day.”
For everything offered with PS Plus Premium, this should be a no-brainer purchase. When it comes time to renew, though, I’m not sure it will be for me. Given the sheer volume of time I spend playing a single game (“Warzone”) am I really going to be able to extract enough value from PS Plus Premium to justify spending $120 a year on the service? The same question goes for Xbox Game Pass.
It would be great to have access to all of these games, but is it worth tethering myself to a recurring annual fee if I’m only picking up titles in fits and starts, if at all? My eventual answer will likely come down to time more than money, and there’s nothing PlayStation, Xbox, nor any other game company can do — be it adding more retro games or new titles to the catalogue — to solve that problem for me. | 2022-07-18T15:19:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass can't compete with live-service games - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/18/playstation-plus-xbox-game-pass-analysis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/18/playstation-plus-xbox-game-pass-analysis/ |
By Fred A. Bernstein
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's sculpture “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington. (Juana Arias/The Washington Post)
Claes Oldenburg, a Swedish-born artist whose lighthearted caricatures of everyday things — such as monumental renderings of a lipstick and binoculars as well as “soft sculptures” of hamburgers and ice cream cones — made him a leading force in pop art, died July 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.
His death was confirmed by Steve Henry, a senior partner at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, which represents him. He said Mr. Oldenburg had been in poor health but did not cite a specific cause. Mr. Oldenburg divided his time between Lower Manhattan, where he had lived since 1971, and Beaumont-sur-Deme, France.
In Washington, his work is represented by a gargantuan steel and fiberglass typewriter eraser in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Art. Although the subject of the sculpture is a mystery to many younger visitors, its giant pink wheel and wavy bristles give it a compelling form.
In “Claes Oldenburg: Object into Monument,” the catalogue of a 1973 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Oldenburg described the ideas behind the scissors. As he envisioned the piece, the red handles would be buried in deep troughs, their exposed blades opening and closing in the course of a day.
“Like the scissors, the U.S.A. is screwed together,” he wrote, “two violent parts destined in their arc to meet as one.”
Mr. Oldenburg probably never expected the scissors to be built. David Pagel, a professor of art theory and history, wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2004 that “more often than not” Mr. Oldenburg’s preposterous proposals were primarily great excuses to make great drawings.” (In the case of the scissors, one of those drawings is in the collection of the National Gallery.)
Mr. Oldenburg’s second wife, Dutch-born sculptor Coosje van Bruggen, was his collaborator from 1976 until her death in 2009. Although critics sometimes questioned the extent of van Bruggen’s role, the couple maintained that theirs was a true artistic partnership. The ideas for sculptures were conceived jointly, they said. Then Mr. Oldenburg produced drawings while she handled fabrication and siting.
Mr. Oldenburg’s work pleased collectors as well as critics. His 1974 “Clothespin Ten Foot” sold for more than $3.6 million at auction in 2015. In 2019, he sold his archive of 450 notebooks (along with thousands of drawings, photographs and other documents) to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
New movements
When Mr. Oldenburg arrived in New York in 1956, the era of abstract expressionist painting was coming to an end. Young artists were pioneering conceptual, performance and installation art. After spending a couple of years painting, Mr. Oldenburg threw himself into the new movements. “I wanted work that would say something, be messy, be a little mysterious,” he told the New York Times.
His first solo exhibition, in 1959 at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, consisted largely of abstract sculptures made of paper, wood and string — things he said he had found on the street. His early work, “based on the castoff and the crude, on the flotsam and jetsam of modern life — was a hit from the beginning with his contemporaries,” Kennedy reported in the Times.
In 1960, while working as a dishwasher in Provincetown, Mass., Mr. Oldenburg found himself fascinated by the shapes of food and tableware. In early 1961, he unveiled an installation called “The Store” comprising plaster models of actual grocery-store items.
At that point, his colors became “very, very strong,” Mr. Oldenburg said in a recorded talk in 2012. And his pieces became curvaceous. “My disposition really is to the tactile,” he said. “I see things in the round, and I want to make them in the round. I want to be able to stroke them and touch them.”
For a second version of “The Store,” at the end of 1961, Mr. Oldenburg rented a real storefront on East Second Street in Manhattan. There he displayed a 10-foot-long ice cream cone, a 5-by-7-foot hamburger and a nine-foot slice of cake. The pieces were made of fabric, and their chief seamstress was Patricia Muschinski, known as Patty Mucha, an artist who was married to Mr. Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970. Those were among the first of hundreds of soft sculptures he produced over the years.
According to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which owns a poster for “The Store,” the piece was “a milestone of Pop art” that “heralded Oldenburg’s interest in the slippery line between art and commodity and the role of the artist in self-promotion.”
By the mid-1960s, Mr. Oldenburg was an art world star. In 1969, he was the subject of the first major pop art show at the Museum of Modern Art. The show included more than 100 of his sculptures (including a re-creation of “The Store”) and dozens of drawings.
In 1969, he created “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks,” a giant lipstick with an inflatable tip mounted on a plywood base that resembled military tank treads. Commissioned by a group of Yale architecture students, it was parked prominently on the university’s campus.
The sculpture was both a physical manifestation of the antiwar slogan “make love, not war” and a platform from which speeches could be made. But in 1974 (after Mr. Oldenburg rebuilt the piece in metal), the university moved it to a less prominent location.
After “Lipstick,” Mr. Oldenburg created one “Colossal Monument” after another. They included a large Robinson Crusoe umbrella in Des Moines; a Brobdingnagian electric plug in Oberlin, Ohio; and an immense rubber stamp in Cleveland. How the piece was connected to the site was sometimes clear only to Mr. Oldenburg and van Bruggen.
The Oldenburgs occasionally collaborated with architect Frank Gehry, who incorporated their giant binoculars into the West Coast headquarters he designed for the ad agency Chiat/Day in Los Angeles, which opened in 1991. (Standing up, the binoculars form a kind of archway through which cars enter the building’s garage.)
Many relocations
Claes Thure Oldenburg was born in Stockholm on Jan. 28, 1929. His mother had been a concert singer, and his father was a Swedish consular officer whose job required the family to relocate often.
The Oldenburgs moved to Chicago in 1936. Claes’s strongest memories of that period, he has said, were of his mother filling notebooks with photos from American magazines, including advertising images similar to ones that later turned up in his work.
Mr. Oldenburg studied literature and art at Yale. After graduating in 1950, he worked as a reporter in Chicago while taking art classes at night. He also spent time in San Francisco, where he made a living drawing boll weevils for pesticide ads, before moving to New York.
Survivors include two stepchildren, Maartje Oldenburg and Paulus Kapteyn; and three grandchildren. His younger brother, Richard, who died in 2018, spent 22 years as director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and later was chairman of Sotheby’s America.
For all Mr. Oldenburg’s success, only a small fraction of his proposed monuments were built.
Unrealized ideas include planting a giant rearview mirror — symbolic of a backward-looking culture — in London’s Trafalgar Square (1976) and replacing the Statue of Liberty with a giant electric fan to blow immigrants out to sea (1977).
He also proposed a drainpipe for Toronto, a windshield wiper for Grant Park in Chicago, an ironing board for Manhattan’s Lower East Side and a banana for Times Square, as well as the scissors for Washington.
At times, he didn’t expect to be taken seriously. In a taped interview that accompanied a 2012 exhibition in Vienna, Mr. Oldenburg said, “The only thing that really saves the human experience is humor. I think without humor it wouldn’t be much fun.” | 2022-07-18T15:57:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Claes Oldenburg, a whimsical father of pop art, dies at 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/18/artist-claes-oldenburg-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/18/artist-claes-oldenburg-dead/ |
Garland’s caution may have put the Justice Department in a quandary
Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers a statement at the Justice Department on July 6. (Bonnie Cash/AP)
What the heck is Attorney General Merrick Garland up to?
That’s the question many democracy defenders have been asking in response to some unnerving reports about the Justice Department’s investigation into the attempted coup. First was the news, as the New York Times reported, that the Justice Department was “astonished” by the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, before the House Jan. 6 select committee. The Times also reported that the Justice Department had only recently intensified its investigation of Donald Trump’s closest associates and that the defeated former president’s name has essentially gone unmentioned in internal discussions about the investigation.
One school of thought counsels patience: Take Garland at his word when he says he is following the facts or that he has not excluded Trump from the inquiry. These things take time, especially when the department is burdened with hundreds of cases against those directly involved in the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
On the other hand, democracy defenders worry that given Garland’s natural caution and obsession with appearing nonpolitical, he was never going to take the monumental step of indicting a former president absent conclusive proof of Trump’s involvement in planning the violence. Garland likewise may have doubted from the start that Trump’s pressure on state officials, the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence fit within the definition of various criminal statutes.
In other words, the Justice Department may have viewed the violent assault on the Capitol as the totality of the crime and never expected to find conclusive proof of Trump’s involvement. By starting at the bottom of the chain, the Justice Department failed to look for evidence in Trump’s inner circle regarding his connection to the violent phase of the insurrection. That might explain why prosecutors were surprised that Hutchinson’s testimony tied Trump to the violence (e.g., she said Trump knew the people in the mob were armed and had planned to lead them to the Capitol after his speech).
Regardless of whether that explanation of Garland’s outlook is correct, it is clear the Jan. 6 committee has made far more progress linking Trump to possible criminal violations than federal prosecutors have. It went looking for those connections and found them. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s methodology (akin to investigating a crime organization) seems to have caused investigators to miss what was in front of their noses (White House witnesses who could tie Trump to violence), to waste valuable time and to make it virtually impossible to bring an indictment against Trump or those in his inner circle before the midterms.
The Jan. 6 committee’s remarkable success in fact-finding and presenting evidence against Trump leaves the Justice Department on the defense and scrambling to staff up. The department now faces the prospect that Trump will announce his presidential run in the fall, which the former president will use to cast any subsequent charges as political efforts to keep him from office.
Rolling Stone reports that the legal threat Trump faces is “front-of-mind” for him as he considers a presidential run, according to four of the former president’s associates:
Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe, who was once Garland’s law school professor, has a message for the attorney general based on that account: “Mr. Trump is counting on your concerns about not ‘appearing’ political when he makes clear his belief that you wouldn’t dare approve his indictment once he announces.” Tribe added, “You must prove him wrong. Make him a target now. No time to lose.” It’s far from clear Garland will heed that advice.
The Justice Department now finds itself in a quandary. Polls increasingly show the public thinks prosecution of Trump is necessary. The Jan. 6 committee has laid out the facts and the legal theories to do so. A refusal by Garland to indict Trump could be viewed as confirmation that the president is above the law and can engineer a coup with impunity. Such an abdication of responsibility to defend our democracy would amount to the greatest failure in the department’s history. Is that going to be Garland’s legacy? | 2022-07-18T16:14:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Garland’s caution may have put the Justice Department in a quandary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/merrick-garland-donald-trump-indictment-justice-department-in-a-quandary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/merrick-garland-donald-trump-indictment-justice-department-in-a-quandary/ |
In this 2021 photo provided by GMO, is Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO, who has correctly predicted several of the biggest market bubbles around the world, going back to Japan in the late 1980s. (GMO via AP) (Uncredited/GMO)
NEW YORK — Early this year, with the S&P 500 near its all-time high, famed investor Jeremy Grantham warned that stocks were in a “super bubble.” Since then, their prices have fallen about 20%, and Grantham says they can still drop more. | 2022-07-18T16:49:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Famed bubble caller Jeremy Grantham: Stocks can fall more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/famed-bubble-caller-jeremy-grantham-stocks-can-fall-more/2022/07/18/e40c42ea-06ab-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/famed-bubble-caller-jeremy-grantham-stocks-can-fall-more/2022/07/18/e40c42ea-06ab-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Analysis by Sarah Green Carmichael | Bloomberg
Not all offers stick. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
It’s not a situation anyone wants to face: After sending out resumes, enduring multiple interviews and going through the agony of negotiation, you’ve landed a fantastic new job … only to have the offer rescinded. Although rare, some job offers are being withdrawn in this bad-vibes economy. What’s a jilted job hunter to do?
First — and this advice works for all sorts of situations — don’t slam anyone on Twitter. Limit venting to close friends and family. “When we get the bad news, every molecule of fear, anger and helplessness rushes in,” says executive coach Liz Kislik. “Sometimes we can say things that are not useful to our future selves.” Instead, look for ways to express disappointment without burning the bridge. “It doesn’t hurt to tell them, ‘I am crushed that I will not be able to join your company and I hope that when your circumstances change we will have another opportunity to work together.’”
A lot of people will tell you that it’s a blessing in disguise that your offer has been rescinded, because it probably means you’re dodging a troubled company. But if it’s your dream job, it’s worth hoping that the company will get its act together and change their mind (again).
Nathan Furr, a strategy professor at Insead, told me his path to a faculty position at the prestigious France-and-Singapore-based business school was full of U-turns. The school seemed to be on the cusp of formalizing an offer, then said they didn’t want to hire him after all, and then — nine months later — came back with an offer. So if the job that evaporated is one you really want, don’t give up on it, said Susannah Harmon Furr, an entrepreneur and Nathan’s spouse and co-author on “The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown.”
If you’ve already given notice at your current job, consider trying to un-resign. “If you still have a fantastic relationship with your old boss, get on the horn,” says Kislik. “Say, ‘If my old job is available, I would like to come back, and I would like to talk to you about how we can make it a better situation on both sides.’” Acknowledge the social awkwardness of the situation, and admit that your about-face has been disruptive. That could help assuage the fears of an employer who now has extremely good reason to see you as a flight risk.
Let other places you interviewed know you’re back on the market. There is an old-fashioned idea that companies will be too put off by a candidate who withdrew to give them another chance. But Laura Mazzullo, founder and owner of New York-based recruiting firm East Side Staffing, says the power dynamic between employees and employers is now more balanced. “The rule book of 10 years ago, five years ago, really isn’t relevant right now,” she says.
If returning to a previous job isn’t possible and other opportunities have dried up, come up with a short-term plan to manage your cash flow. For about 40% of all job seekers, it takes six months to find a new job, and the Federal Reserve estimates that only one in four US households has emergency savings that would last that long.(1)
If yours is among them, perhaps you can reframe this unwanted employment break as a spontaneous sabbatical. Have you always wanted to apply for a fellowship, take a class or volunteer abroad? Maybe this is your chance.
But be intentional about how you use this windfall of time. A 2015 study showed that unemployed men tend to spend most of their waking hours watching TV, and unemployed women spend a ton of time on housework. You probably don’t want to look back on this period to find you spent it vacuuming. Besides, having “extracurriculars” will make you more attractive to a potential employer.
The Furrs cautioned against taking a job, any job, just to end the uncertainty. Kislik, too, warned that taking a pay-the-bills gig can drain some of the energy needed for a job search. Perhaps a better short-term answer is part-time consulting work or freelancing; the company that withdrew your offer might even have some leads. Seems like the least they could do.
Realistically, with even some high-earning Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck and full-time employment still an essential source of health insurance, you might have to take a job you aren’t that thrilled about while you keep looking for something better. It used to be considered a professional sin to stay less than a year — but that’s one of those outmoded rules that serves employers more than employees. As long as you leave gracefully, the short tenure won’t haunt you.
In all sorts of ways, work has become more fluid and less rigid than it was in previous decades — for better and for worse. We dress more casually, boomerang back to former employers and blur the line between business and pleasure travel (giving us hideous portmanteaux like “workation” and “bleisure”). Employers ghost applicants, and applicants ghost would-be employers. Nine-to-five is now “always on.” And formal, written offers don’t mean what they used to, either for new hires — who sometimes back out after signing — or for employers.
Of course, employers shouldn’t rescind job offers — it’s not fair to the candidate and it reflects poorly on the company. “This is a horrendous thing to do for their brand,” says Mazzullo. Nonetheless, there is only so much a person can do to prevent it. One way to protect yourself might be to ask for a sign-on bonus; that way, if the offer evaporates, you’ll have a cash cushion to fund your search for a new one. Ideally, one that sticks.
Anxious About a Recession? Start Thinking Like a Freelancer: Erin Lowry
How to Win the Hybrid Workforce Revolution: Adrian Wooldridge
If You Already Hate Your New Job, It’s Fine to Quit: Kathryn Minshew
Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X All Basically Agree on WFH: Chris Hughes
(1) That estimate is from a 2018 study, but is in line with more recent surveys.
Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion editor. Previously, she was managing editor of ideas and commentary at Barron’s and an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted “HBR IdeaCast.” | 2022-07-18T16:49:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Job Offer Rescinded? What to Do If You Had Already Given Notice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/job-offer-rescinded-what-to-do-if-you-had-already-given-notice/2022/07/18/4e20801c-06af-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/job-offer-rescinded-what-to-do-if-you-had-already-given-notice/2022/07/18/4e20801c-06af-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Members of the U.S. Secret Service stand guard as the Marine One helicopter carrying President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump departs from the South Lawn of the White House on March 19, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, the U.S. Secret Service was facing a scandal.
Kerry O’Grady, the special agent in charge of the agency’s Denver bureau, posted a private Facebook message the prior October, after The Washington Post revealed the existence of a video in which Trump described groping women.
“I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here,” O’Grady wrote. She added, “I am with Her” — a reference to Hillary Clinton’s competing candidacy.
The message was leaked to a reporter at the conservative Washington Examiner after O’Grady updated her Facebook profile to indicate support for the anti-Trump “resistance” movement the day of the Women’s March in Washington. The public attention helped spur formal investigations into O’Grady and, ultimately, a demotion, later reversed.
In her book “Zero Fail,” Post reporter Carol Leonnig tells O’Grady’s story in part to show how the unique nature of the 2016 election spurred even a longtime Secret Service official to new political activism. But she also shares O’Grady’s story to make another point: that O’Grady’s offense was, in part, that she expressed the wrong flavor of politics.
“No supervisors complained about field office agents who had ‘Make America Great Again’ hats on their desks,” Leonnig wrote. “Supervisors hadn’t raised the same harsh objections when friends on the job shared ‘Crooked Hillary’ memes that depicted the former secretary of state with red eyes and a devil’s pointy ears, or swapped crude jokes about her inability to satisfy her husband.”
Many agents, Leonnig wrote, were “pleased to see the man who spoke their language” assume the presidency.
The ongoing investigation into the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has spurred new attention to the political independence of the Secret Service. Last week, Leonnig and The Post’s Maria Sacchetti reported on a new eyebrow-raising development: The agency had deleted a number of text messages sent to and received by agents during the time period of the attack. This was attributed to a “device-replacement program” — turning over old devices and receiving new ones — but the agency’s inspector general said that the deletions occurred only after his office had requested the texts.
In a statement, the Secret Service said it is “cooperating … in every respect” with the investigation. It also said that the migration “was well under way” when the inspector general’s request was made.
Such mistakes do happen. A number of messages between two FBI officials involved in Trump’s counternarrative about the Russia investigation went missing during device transfers, although they were ultimately recovered. The missing Secret Service messages from the period around the riot, though, reflect a different set of concerns, given the way in which some agents offered public praise for the events of the day.
“One Secret Service officer called the armed protesters ‘patriots’ seeking to undo an illegitimate election, and falsely claimed to her friends that disguised antifa members had started the violence,” Leonnig reported in “Zero Fail.” “One presidential detail agent reposted a popular anti-Biden screed that criticized Democrats for their relentless attacks on Trump.”
An agent “reposted the image of an upside-down American flag, a military signal for extreme distress,” she added, accompanied by language criticizing coronavirus containment measures and the political left. The post concluded: “Then they accused *us* of the coup.” That some Secret Service agents would be sympathetic to the outgoing president should not have come as a surprise, Leonnig reports, since “many agents were cheering for Trump’s reelection.”
The question about the text messages came a few weeks after the stunning testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in front of the House select committee investigating the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Among the new revelations was that Hutchinson had been told that Trump attempted to physically divert his presidential vehicle toward the Capitol following his speech near the White House on Jan. 6. Hutchinson testified that she heard this from Tony Ornato, himself a controversial figure within the agency.
Ornato grew close to Trump as the head of his personal security detail. Trump, who had for decades promoted allies (including security staff) to more senior positions, wanted to make Ornato the head of the Secret Service after firing the agency’s director in 2019. When Ornato demurred, Trump instead moved him into a position within his administration: deputy chief of staff for operations. Such a transition from apolitical agent to political appointee was unprecedented in the agency’s history.
In his new role, Ornato was at the center of one of the most infamous pre-election incidents of Trump’s tenure: the clearing of Lafayette Square of protesters on June 1, 2020.
A report last year centered on the actions of the U.S. Park Police determined that the square just north of the White House was slated to be cleared and reinforced even before Trump’s trek to a damaged church just beyond the park. Left unexamined in that report, though, was the role of the Secret Service. The Secret Service joined the Park Police in protecting Lafayette Square, and it was uniformed Secret Service agents who first moved to clear the square shortly before Trump left the White House.
There’s been a great deal of revisionism on the incident. It’s clear, though, that the square was cleared because Trump was planning to walk across it. This is obvious from Attorney General William P. Barr’s question to Park Police when he visited the scene shortly before Trump emerged: “Are these people still going to be here when POTUS comes out?”
It’s also hinted at by Ornato’s involvement. Ornato joined Barr in visiting the square less than an hour before it was cleared. As The Post reported at the time, Ornato “contacted the Secret Service to arrange for the president to make a brief appearance at the church, according to two people familiar with the plans.” The Secret Service informed other law enforcement that it would need assistance. A few minutes after Barr and Ornato left the area, Secret Service agents on the northern edge of the square began moving to clear the scene, the first law enforcement officers to do so.
After Hutchinson testified about hearing of Trump’s effort to grab the steering wheel in the presidential limousine, Ornato denied having told her so through a spokesperson. (A request for comment from the Secret Service for this article did not receive a response by deadline.) As The Post’s Aaron Blake has documented, however, Ornato’s denials have been repeatedly challenged in the past.
Again, Ornato is simply the most obvious example of questions about the agency’s response to the 2020 election. As Leonnig and The Post’s Philip Rucker reported in their book “I Alone Can Fix It,” there’s some indication that Vice President Mike Pence was wary of the Secret Service’s response to the riot itself. As agents cajoled Pence to leave the Capitol, he declined, insisting on remaining in the building to finalize the counting of electoral votes confirming Trump’s (and his) loss.
“I trust you, Tim,” Pence told the head of his security detail, Tim Giebels, “but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”
At the White House, Pence’s national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, was making a similar argument to Ornato. Ornato indicated that the Secret Service planned to move Pence to Joint Base Andrews.
“You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said, according to Leonnig’s and Rucker’s reporting. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”
In a recent interview, Leonnig explained the significance of this discussion.
Ornato, she said, “was viewed as being so pro-Trump that he was suspected — even though he’s a professional, he’s a career Secret Service agent — he was suspected by the vice president, one of his top aides, as being someone who would try to whisk Vice President Pence away from the Capitol at a critical moment.”
But Ornato, once again, denies having had this discussion with Kellogg. That spurred former White House staffer Olivia Troye to call for Ornato to testify under oath. After all, she wrote on Twitter, “those of us who worked w/ Tony know where his loyalties lie.”
Ornato is now back at the Secret Service, serving as assistant director of the agency’s training department. His first appearance in “Zero Fail” occurs in the context of the initial investigation into Kerry O’Grady for displaying overt partisanship. She had been picked up at the airport in Washington, told to hand over her firearm and was brought to the Secret Service’s internal affairs division.
“While she waited to go into an interview room,” Leonnig reports, “Tony Ornato, the head of Trump’s detail and a colleague she knew well, emerged from that same room and glared at O’Grady. ‘Hey, Tony,’ she said, but he walked away without responding.”
She had the wrong flavor of politics. | 2022-07-18T16:50:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 probe renews questions about Secret Service independence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/jan-6-probe-renews-questions-about-secret-service-independence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/jan-6-probe-renews-questions-about-secret-service-independence/ |
The approaching arrival of the Saudi golf tour at Donald Trump's New Jersey club has angered relatives of Sept. 11 victims. (Seth Wenig/Associated Press File)
Members of the 9/11 Justice group requested a meeting with Trump in a letter dated Sunday and noted that he has previously blamed Saudi Arabia for the terrorist attack. The tournament, part of the Saudi-financed LIV Golf series, is set for July 29-31. The finale of the LIV tour’s season is set for late October at Trump Doral in Florida.
“We simply cannot understand how you could agree to accept money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s golf league to host their tournament at your golf course, and to do so in the shadows of Ground Zero in New Jersey, which lost over 700 residents during the attacks,” the group writes in a letter obtained by The Post.
“It is incomprehensible to us that a former president of the United States would cast our loved ones aside for personal financial gain,” the group’s letter continued. “We hope you will reconsider your business relationship with the Saudi golf league and will agree to meet with us.”
Before it even arrives, golf’s rogue tour roils a small Oregon town
LIV Golf’s upcoming presence is particularly painful for some residents of northern New Jersey.
“We’ve had to grow a tough skin over the last 20 years, but this is cruel and callous,” Dennis McGinley of Haworth, N.J., whose brother, Daniel, died in the attack, told NorthJersey.com. “Forget that it’s unpresidential,” he said of Trump. “It’s so hurtful to the 9/11 community.”
As a presidential candidate, Trump had raised the issue of Saudi involvement in the attacks. The letter noted a 2016 Fox News interview in which Trump asked, “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis. It was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia.” He added, “The people came, most of the people came from Saudi Arabia. They didn’t come from Iraq.”
Over 20 years after the attacks, the arrival of LIV Golf further reveals a U.S.-Saudi relationship that remains complicated. President Biden traveled to the country last week and met with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince trying to rehab the kingdom’s global image and the man the CIA said ordered the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In a letter to Biden dated from Sunday, the group 9-11 Families United asked to meet with the president, and wrote: “It pains us to say it but you are the first president since the Sept. 11 attacks who has not met with the families and survivors. Yet you just traveled halfway around the world to fist-bump Saudi crown Prince Mohammed vin Salman, where he had the gall to lecture you about human rights and ‘values.’ ” | 2022-07-18T16:50:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 9/11 families urge Trump to cancel LIV Golf event at his club - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/9-11-families-trump-liv-golf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/9-11-families-trump-liv-golf/ |
Park Service to hold public meeting on Tidal Basin repair project
The sea wall has been sinking into the mud for years as sea levels rise
Blooming cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin on March 21. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The National Park Service will host a virtual public meeting Tuesday to review the environmental impact of the proposed project to repair the sinking sea wall around Washington’s historical Tidal Basin.
The meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m., and instructions for participation are available online.
The Park Service said it will present an overview of the project and answer questions.
The agency is proposing a massive project to restore 6,800 feet of sea wall around the Tidal Basin and in West Potomac Park and a re-landscaping of the shore line.
A $5.7 million contract has been awarded to begin the planning.
The basin, which dates back more than a century, is a beloved focus of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, when it is crowded with people who gather to view and photograph the blooming cherry trees.
The basin is also the site of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, which draw visitors year-round.
But parts of the sea wall have been sinking for years, and the structure and its walkway are often submerged by tidal inundations. In some places, the wall has settled as much as four feet since it was rebuilt in the 1930s and ’40s, the Park Service said.
A decade ago, the agency spent more than $12 million to fix the sea wall in front of the Jefferson Memorial, where it was slipping away and sinking into the mud.
That section was believed to have failed because it was built on a foundation of wooden pilings that were not long enough to reach bedrock. The old foundation was replaced with concrete pilings and caissons resting on bedrock.
A contract to design and execute the project will be awarded next year or in early 2024, the Park Service said. | 2022-07-18T17:11:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | National Park Service to hold public meeting on Tidal Basin repair project - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/tidal-basin-repair-meeting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/tidal-basin-repair-meeting/ |
D.C. leads the nation in monkeypox cases per capita
Workers sit outside of D.C. Health's first monkeypox vaccination clinic, which is administering the first Jynneos vaccine doses distributed in the U.S. capital, in Washington, June 28, 2022. (Gavino Garay/Reuters)
Washington, D.C., has more cases of monkeypox per capita than any state, prompting public health officials to launch an aggressive vaccination campaign aimed at blanketing the most at-risk communities.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) — at a news conference Monday outside Whitman Walker Health, which specializes in LGBTQ and HIV care — said District officials are working to administer vaccine quickly and encouraged residents to preregister free appointments at PreventMonkeypox.dc.gov.
D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt said Monday said by far the hardest-hit community is people in their early 30s who belong to the LGBTQ-plus community, but she emphasized that the virus can infect anyone.
“It is important that we do not create stigma at this time and that we encourage individuals to be on the lookout for symptoms,” she told reporters Monday.
D.C. was part of the initial tier of recipients and has received significantly more vaccine than neighboring states. The District expects to receive another 4,000 doses next week, and is looking for partners, especially those serving the Black LGBTQ community, to host pop-up clinics, Nesbitt said.
Tens of thousands of monkeypox vaccines rushed to clinics
Patrick Ashley, senior deputy director at the D.C. Department of Health, on Friday said the District has recorded no biologically female cases.
A few District residents have been hospitalized for pain control, but no one has been hospitalized directly because of monkeypox complications, he said.
“Monkeypox can be exceptionally painful especially if there are lesions on the penis, a lot of penial swelling, on the anus as well, it can be significantly painful,” Ashley said. “This is not chickenpox.”
“If they see something strange on their body whether it’s a rash or a lesion or something that just doesn’t look right, that they talk to their provider,” he said. “People can be apprehensive about talking to their doctor about things on their body that could be monkeypox or something else. We want individuals to feel comfortable seeking care.”
Monkeypox cases surge as WHO stops short of declaring a global emergency
District contact tracers had identified about 560 close contacts, but the true number is higher, Ashley said. Officials recognized early on in the global outbreak that because of the nature of the most affected population — people with multiple partners and those having anonymous sex — it would be impossible to contact everyone who may be at risk. In response, D.C. designed the vaccination effort to blanket the community with protection.
“Part of the reason we’re doing expanded post-exposure prophylaxis is that very reason,” Ashley said. “We know there these exposures in the community but we can’t actually track them down and say you are at risk.”
As of Friday, 7,600 residents had preregistered for vaccine, he said.
Among those vaccinated, 99 percent are male, 99 percent are gay or bisexual, 76 percent are 25 to 39 years old and 76 percent are White, while 83 percent are non-Hispanic, Ashley said.
About 3,000 appointments opened on Thursday and by Friday more than 2,600 were booked, Ashley said. The vaccine is currently available in D.C. for District residents who are 18 or older and are men who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners in the past 14 days; transgender women or nonbinary people assigned male at birth who have sex with men; sex workers, or staff at bathhouses, saunas and sex clubs. Proof of residency is required.
District officials encourage people who don’t meet the strict eligibility criteria at this time to preregister for any future eligibility expansion.
As with coronavirus, contact tracers are following individuals as well as potential outbreaks.
For example, a bath house in Logan Circle, Crew Club DC, hosted a private event in early June that resulted in some infections. The organizer, Mass Collab, emailed attendees about two weeks later to let them know “a small number of known attendees” tested positive or were contacted by a health department about a possible exposure.
“In terms of how our community is coping, symptoms have been very painful and it’s been scary for everyone involved,” Mass Collab said in a statement. “It’s brand new for everyone in our community so we’re all learning about its symptoms and transmissibility as quickly as possible.”
In Maryland, the health department has been allocated 682 doses and, in turn, redistributed 200 doses to the three highest-risk jurisdictions: the city of Baltimore and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, spokesman Chase Cook said.
In Virginia, the health department received 3,925 doses and 70 doses were administered as of Friday, said Laurie Forlano, deputy director of the office of epidemiology. Health departments in Northern Virginia, where most of the state’s cases are concentrated, have already received some doses, she said.
“The amounts will be relatively small at this time, both to be mindful of the supply and make sure there is no wastage and we’re still trying to get a sense of the demand here,” she said, adding that state will likely redistribute vaccines using similar criteria as the CDC. “The numbers are increasing but it’s hard to say what the trajectory will be.” | 2022-07-18T18:16:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. has most monkeypox cases per capita - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/monkeypox-dc-vaccine-cases/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/monkeypox-dc-vaccine-cases/ |
Exchange-traded funds have been around since the 1990s. They started out as a cheaper alternative to mutual funds for investors just wanting to track broad stock indexes. As is typical, their success prompted Wall Street bankers to come up with riskier iterations that offered the potential for bigger returns by employing derivatives. Hence, the “leveraged” ETF was born. Many traders and investors have become disillusioned with these products because of the hidden risks and “decay” around the daily rebalancing. Nevertheless, the Securities and Exchange Commission has just approved leveraged and inverse ETFs on single stocks. As they say on social media, I’m left SMH.
There’s nothing complex about these products, and the mechanics are the same for a leveraged ETF tied to an index as they are for a single-stock ETF. The issuer has a basic swap or, in the case of an inverse ETF, is short a swap on the underlying stock, one that is adjusted on a daily basis. The real question is, what is the motivation for these products in the first place?
You might recall that in 2002, single-stock futures were created on a variety of large capitalization, liquid stocks. The thinking was similar, that maybe someone would want to take a leveraged position on a single stock beyond what they could get with Regulation T margin requirements. You might also recall that the quarterly triple-witching expiration of stock index futures, index options and single-stock options became quadruple witching to include the single-stock futures. But single-stock futures are no longer around because there was practically no interest, yet we still call it quad witching to this day.
Single-stock ETFs are likely to be different. For one, there are some barriers to entry in trading futures that don’t exist with ETFs. Second, ETFs are convenient, in that you can trade them along with any other stock on your brokerage app. And yet I have to wonder if there really is a market for leveraged single-stock ETFs when one can achieve the same leverage or more by just using margin. I imagine some of these products will be successful, but largely limited to the handful of stocks like Tesla Inc. where there is widespread interest from retail investors. I don’t anticipate a lot of interest for leveraged Pfizer Inc. ETFs.
The SEC has approved single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs for only a small amount of leverage — typically 1.5 times and under. Still, this seems like an odd time to be encouraging more speculation. And you have to wonder what economic purpose this serves, other than speculation. As head of the ETF desk at Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. in 2004, when these products were first proposed on broad indexes, I thought they were insane. You might recall that leveraged ETFs exacerbated moves in the stock market during the financial crisis.
Still, they are useful for some people. If you’re long a leveraged ETF, you’re actually long autocorrelation — the likelihood that a coin will come up heads many times in a row. Probably the most popular ETF of the last 10 years was the ProShares UltraPro QQQ, the three-times-levered ETF tied to the Nasdaq 100 Index. It gained 900% between late March 2020 and late November 2021, because of the long uptrend in tech stocks. But that was the exception, rather than the rule, and it has since tumbled 69%, compared with the 28% drop in the Nasdaq 100.
For years, I’ve been hoping that these products would be retired or eliminated, but now we have even more. It’s possible that we could have multiple degrees of leveraged ETFs plus inverse ETFs for every stock in the S&P 500, perhaps resulting in an increase in market volatility and a great deal of ticker clutter. Reg T margin hasn’t changed in 50 years. Somewhere along the line we decided that two times leverage is all anyone needed in the stock market. I think that qualifies as wisdom. As far as financial innovations go, leveraged single-stock ETFs are pretty far down the list.
• Wells Fargo and Citi Clients Are Still Spending: Paul J. Davies | 2022-07-18T18:20:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Single-Stock Levered ETFs Are Financial Mutants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/single-stock-levered-etfs-are-financial-mutants/2022/07/18/e1b9f02c-06bb-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/single-stock-levered-etfs-are-financial-mutants/2022/07/18/e1b9f02c-06bb-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
FBI agents gather at the scene of a deadly shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall outside Indianapolis on July 17. (Kelly Wilkinson/AP)
Ison declined to release many details about the shooting Sunday night — another example of a summer day at an iconic American institution, the suburban mall, shattered by gun violence. It follows recent mass shootings at a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Ill., a doctor’s office in Tulsa, an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., and a grocery store in Buffalo.
As violence marks America, local leaders ask: Where will it hit next?
Two people — the shooter and one other person — died at the scene. Two victims died at Indianapolis hospitals Sunday night, the Johnson County Coroner’s Office said on Facebook. Two others were in stable condition, including a 12-year-old girl with “a very minor wound” who returned home before her parents called police, according to Ison.
The permitless carry bill sparked divisions even among Republicans in the GOP-held statehouse before Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) signed it into law in March. Police officials, including the state police chief and the Fraternal Order of Police, spoke out against the measure, saying the lack of a permit requirement would put officers at risk and undermine their ability to quickly determine whether someone was legally allowed to possess a gun, the Indianapolis Star reported.
The bill’s author, state Rep. Ben Smaltz (R), said at a hearing in January that the legislation would level the playing the field against criminals because law-abiding residents are the only ones who go through the process to obtain a permit, according to the Star.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), an advocate for tighter gun restrictions, called for more gun control on Twitter after Sunday’s shooting, writing that he has “lots of family” who shop at the Greenwood Park Mall.
Bryan Pietsch and Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report, which is developing and will be updated. | 2022-07-18T18:21:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greenwood Park Mall shooting: Police search Indiana home of gunman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/greenwood-mall-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/greenwood-mall-shooting/ |
People wait in line to receive the monkeypox vaccine at the Bushwick Education Campus in Brooklyn on July 17. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)
Benjamin Ryan has been covering infectious disease and LGBTQ health for two decades and contributes to the New York Times, NBC News, the Guardian and Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Countless public health experts have uttered statements such as this in the past two months. Members of the media and politicians have parroted the message ad nauseam without stopping to dissect what it implies or obscures.
This broad-strokes maxim — that everyone on Earth is susceptible to this troubling viral infection — might be factual on its surface. But it is so egregiously misleading it amounts to misinformation.
Those who make such statements don’t intend harm. On the contrary, leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and elsewhere repeat them because they commendably want to combat the societal stigma faced by gay and bisexual men, who have been disproportionately impacted by monkeypox. They know that stigma harms public health, including by discouraging infectious-disease testing. And they don’t want the rest of the public to be complacent in the face of a potential new pandemic.
An uncomfortable truth, one documented in peer-reviewed papers, is that sexual behaviors and networks specific to gay and bisexual men have long made them more likely to acquire various sexually transmitted infections compared with heterosexual people. This includes not only HIV, but also syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, hepatitis B and sexually transmitted hepatitis C.
Such experts have also asserted that the risk of monkeypox to the broader population not having multiple sex partners remains low — even “very low.” This is hopeful news, and the wider public deserves to be reassured accordingly. Assuaging fears of contagion will help fight unhelpful hysteria and prevent gay and bisexual men from being subjected to even greater stigma should they be painted as culprits of the spread of virus to others.
Such enmity devastated the gay community during the height of the AIDS crisis, when the CDC waged a long-running, misleading public service campaign with variations of the slogan “anyone can get HIV/AIDS.” Those claims belied the truth about the relative risk of HIV, which in Western nations has always predominantly affected gay and bisexual men.
Because the same is true of the monkeypox outbreak, newly launched vaccination campaigns appropriately target this group — in particular, those reporting multiple recent sex partners, which data indicate is associated with monkeypox acquisition. Sadly, state and local public health departments in the United States are failing to report to the CDC vital demographic details about people diagnosed with monkeypox. This stymies the nation’s capacity to respond to the outbreak with impactful interventions, such as targeted vaccines, and to promote health equity.
By contrast, the rich data collection in Britain helps address the question of whether monkeypox only appears to be occurring predominantly among gay and bisexual men because the vast majority of testing is being conducted among them. As we know from covid-19, differences in test-positivity rates help control for differences in testing rates. And those figures in Britain are stark: The U.K. Health Security Agency reported that half of men screened for monkeypox tested positive; women, by contrast, tested positive only 0.6 percent of the time. No one under the age of 18 tested positive.
Tragically, the monkeypox outbreak is occurring just as a shocking resurgence of anti-LGBTQ sentiment grips the United States. But public health officials cannot be expected to police the public’s reactions to epidemiological facts. | 2022-07-18T18:21:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Gay men deserve the unvarnished truth about monkeypox - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/monkeypox-gay-men-deserve-unvarnished-truth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/monkeypox-gay-men-deserve-unvarnished-truth/ |
Are Republicans coming for marriage equality next? Yes they are.
(Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Having dispatched Roe v. Wade, Republicans may soon be coming for marriage equality. Many Republicans say that’s not true: Their line of the moment is that while the Supreme Court decision that established marriage equality was a terrible miscarriage of justice, they have too much else to worry about at the moment to push for it to be overturned.
Should you believe them? Probably not. After all, right now this is not a party that is unwilling to revisit its past defeats to see if they can be reversed. And the best way for Democrats to stop it from happening is to make it an issue, and use against every Republican.
In his decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. referred to the “unfounded fear” that after declaring there is no constitutional right to abortion, the court might next overturn other decisions, including Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that established marriage equality. Not to worry, Alito said; this decision was about abortion and nothing else.
But other conservatives were not so coy. In his concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas cited Obergefell as one of a series of “demonstrably erroneous” cases that must be overturned. And on a recent podcast, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a past and future presidential candidate, said that “Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history,” and that it was “clearly wrong when it was decided.”
Cruz went on to say, “I don’t think this court has any appetite” to overturn Obergefell and other decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down state laws outlawing contraception. That’s possible. But one of the only ways Democrats can keep it from happening is to demonstrate to the court’s Republican majority that it would be a political disaster for their party if they did so.
Forget about Republicans saying, “Don’t be silly, we don’t want to make same-sex marriage illegal.” When they say that, what they really mean is, “Let’s talk about something else.”
This is what we used to call a “wedge issue,” one that drives a wedge between one part of your opponent’s party and another. And if Democrats want to figure out how to do it, they should look at how public opinion on marriage equality was transformed in the first place.
Not all that long ago, the idea of same-sex couples marrying was considered so radical that few Democratic politicians wanted to touch it. When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, his position was that those couples should be able to get civil unions — a kind of second-class substitute — but not marriage.
He eventually came around, as did every other Democrat, because politicians usually don’t lead public opinion, they follow it. And the transformation in public opinion was extraordinary. According to Gallup, support for same-sex marriage was at around 40 percent when Obama was elected. When Obergefell was decided it was around 60 percent, and today it’s over 70 percent. Even a majority of Republicans now believe everyone should be able to marry who they choose.
A good deal of credit goes to the marriage equality movement, which decided the right strategy would be to appeal to values even conservatives held, especially the desire for strong and stable families. Many of their TV ads didn’t even include gay people; they featured family members testifying to their love of their gay relatives and the hope that they would be able to raise families of their own.
It was extraordinarily effective — probably the most effective campaign of political persuasion in memory (with the possible exception of the Bush administration’s effort to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction). And it offers a guide for how Democrats can talk about what Republicans are doing now and might do in the future.
It’s hard to imagine what would be more anti-family than nullifying existing marriages and barring committed couples from marrying in the future. Do Republicans really want to break up stable families? What will happen to the kids? Don’t we need more secure families?
If they say “We don’t want to go that far,” one might remind them that the Texas Republican Party just approved a platform saying:
We affirm God’s biblical design for marriage and sexual behavior between one biological man and one biological woman, which has proven to be the foundation for all great nations in Western civilization. We oppose homosexual marriage, regardless of state of origin.
Lest there be any confusion, they added that Obergefell “has no basis in the Constitution and should be nullified.”
That may not be the position of most Republicans — at least for now. Up until a year ago, this appeared to be an issue on which the party had essentially surrendered. Most Republicans hadn’t changed their opposition to marriage equality, but they had accepted that they lost the argument and didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
But the overturning of Roe has energized Republicans, convincing them that they can ride this backlash farther than they thought. Just about everything is up for grabs. And even if most of them don’t want to outlaw same-sex marriage, the conservative base does — and they drive the party’s agenda.
Which is why Democrats should force Republicans to answer whether they want to break up families and make it illegal for millions of Americans to get married. Let’s see if they’ll stand up to their base and say unequivocally not just that this isn’t something they’re interested in pursuing, but that every American should be able to marry the person they love and marriage equality should remain the law of the land.
If they won’t say that, you’ll have a pretty good idea of their real intentions. | 2022-07-18T18:21:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | After ending Roe v. Wade, Republicans will go after marriage equality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/republicans-coming-for-marriage-equality-obergefell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/republicans-coming-for-marriage-equality-obergefell/ |
Claims that drop boxes were a vector for rampant fraud keep crumbling
A ballot drop box stands outside the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza during the first day of early voting in Maryland on July 7, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Polls in the 2020 presidential election closed about 895,000 minutes ago, as of writing. Allies of former president Donald Trump have been assiduously (if slapdashedly) trying to prove the election was stolen for all 895,000 of them.
So far, not only has no proof of rampant fraud been demonstrated, there hasn’t been any evidence of even small-scale fraud. A few people in various states have been charged with voter fraud offenses — a number of them Trump supporters. But there’s nothing beyond wispy allegations or error-riddled statistical analyses to suggest anything broader occurred. Certainly nothing to suggest that Joe Biden lost that contest.
On Sunday, the Associated Press reinforced the lack of evidence with a report centered on ballot drop boxes. That mode of voting, allowing people to deposit completed ballots to be counted, increased in 2020, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. The AP’s review of the use of the boxes across the country determined that no state reported “any instances in which the boxes were connected to voter fraud or stolen ballots,” nor were there incidents of vandalism that might have affected election results by destroying ballots.
In other words, there’s literally no evidence that drop boxes facilitated rampant fraud — or that they were a vehicle for fraud to any significant degree whatsoever.
The AP conducted a similar wide-ranging examination of fraud allegations last year. Then, it found that ballots considered suspicious in swing states amounted to only a small fraction of ballots cast. Even if all of those suspicious votes were illegal — which will not turn out to be the case — it wouldn’t have affected Trump’s loss in any state.
Those findings should not be expected to undercut the narrative offered by Trump’s allies. Drop boxes have emerged as a focal point of fraud claims thanks largely to the film “2000 Mules” from right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza.
Trump’s allies have seized on D’Souza’s suggestion that ballots were collected and submitted via drop boxes at a scale significant enough to affect the results of the 2020 election, despite the film’s complete failure to provide even one example of a fraudulent ballot being submitted. A cadre of right-wing legislators in the House nonetheless demanded an investigation into the “potentially widespread illegal activities” shown in the film — a sentence in which the word “potentially” has been asked to do more work than at any other point in its existence. Wisconsin’s elected, conservative Supreme Court declared that, since drop boxes weren’t explicitly authorized in 2020, their use was illegal — and that this “weakens the people’s faith that the election produced an outcome reflective of their will.” With this dubious bit of argumentation, the boxes are banned moving forward.
D’Souza, still in salesman mode on his film (now only $19.99 to stream!), responded to the AP’s report with characteristic dismissiveness.
“This AP article contends that mail-in drop boxes are fine because: 1. Election officials say so. 2. There have been hardly any cases of dropboxes being vandalized or damaged,” he wrote on Twitter. “Everyone that has seen #2000Mules will recognize how pathetic and silly this is!”
For the record: I have seen “2000 Mules,” and I recognize that there is far more value in state officials from Democratic and Republican states saying clearly that there’s no evidence of abuse of ballot drop boxes than there is in granting D’Souza the benefit of the doubt on his movie’s unproven assertions.
After all, the movie centers on the idea that analysis of cellphone geolocation data shows thousands of people visiting multiple ballot drop boxes in the month before the 2020 election — visits that allegedly included depositing ballots as part of a wide-ranging scheme to throw the election. The film doesn’t show any examples of this analysis or any footage of people casting a vote at more than one drop box. The viewer is simply asked to take it on faith.
Which appears to be what D’Souza did. He didn’t complete the analysis, a group called True the Vote did. The organization’s Gregg Phillips — known to have made false, evidence-free claims about election fraud in the past — purportedly led the research comparing huge numbers of cellphone location pings with ballot drop-box locations. The film hinges entirely on Phillips’s claims, which, in a May interview with The Post, D’Souza suggested he took at face value, in part because of purported law-enforcement review of the material.
“Phillips’s data has been shared with multiple authorities in Wisconsin, in Arizona and in Georgia,” D’Souza claimed. He cited a decision not to investigate from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI): “I read very carefully the response of the Georgia investigators to True the Vote’s data. They said, ‘Just because these guys went to 10 or more drop boxes, it doesn’t mean that they necessarily were committing crimes.’ ”
Here is the actual statement.
New - last month, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told the GAGOP + True The Vote that geolocation of cell phones near multiple drop boxes wasn't enough evidence to warrant investigation into alleged ballot harvesting in 2020, according to a letter obtained by GPB News. pic.twitter.com/EMneLZJgmK
— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) October 21, 2021
It does not say what D’Souza says. It also faults D’Souza and Phillips for failing to make a purported “whistleblower” available to be interviewed — someone D’Souza himself admitted he hadn’t spoken with.
One underappreciated detail of that letter is that the GBI apparently identifies the type of data at issue. Apparently, the evidence True the Vote handed over was not GPS data — which can be (but isn’t always) quite precise — but “cell site location information” (CSLI). That means it is triangulated data derived from a cellphone’s connections to cell towers, not data from onboard GPS connections. It is, in other words, much less precise. Reinforcing the idea that this data is what the True the Vote analysis depended on is D’Souza’s reference to a 2018 Supreme Court case arguing for the use of precisely this sort of data by law enforcement.
Even were the data from phone GPS pings, the idea that True the Vote could identify visits to drop boxes is unlikely. Finding that someone is within 100 feet of an address associated with a drop box is very different from having precise evidence that they visited the drop box at that address. Reduce the accuracy of the data, and the claim deteriorates further.
Phillips did not respond to a request for comment for this article. I called a phone number I believed was associated with Azeddine Rahlouni, identified by the GBI as having worked with Phillips on the data analysis. I received a call back from someone identifying himself as “Azeddine” who disconnected when I informed him that I was calling from The Washington Post.
D’Souza did respond to queries from The Post. He said that True the Vote “did not exclusively use CSLI data” and that True the Vote told him that the GBI had misrepresented his data. He claims that he was shown “the specific moments of several mules,” though no such movements were included in the film.
Contrast all of this with the AP’s straightforward finding: No one, in any state, articulated any incident of fraudulent voting through drop boxes. And it’s not as though this goes unexamined; ballots submitted through drop boxes were subject to the same validation processes as other absentee ballots. Trump’s allies — including those in state or county election offices — have had 20 months to find examples of fraud. They haven’t.
Americans are, therefore, asked to either believe D’Souza — whose claims have been broadly debunked and whose movie shows literally no examples of the pattern he alleges — or the reporters of the AP and the bipartisan elections officials with whom they spoke.
Only in America in 2022 would this be a difficult choice for some people. | 2022-07-18T18:21:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Claims that drop boxes were a vector for rampant fraud keep crumbling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/claims-that-drop-boxes-were-vector-rampant-fraud-keep-crumbling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/claims-that-drop-boxes-were-vector-rampant-fraud-keep-crumbling/ |
D.C. United set to acquire forward Miguel Berry from Columbus Crew
Crew forward Miguel Berry, left, battles for the ball with D.C. United defender Donovan Pines in October. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
D.C. United continued its midseason roster overhaul under incoming coach Wayne Rooney by agreeing to acquire forward Miguel Berry from the Columbus Crew for financial considerations, a person with knowledge of the deal said Monday.
United will send Columbus $225,000 in general allocation money that will be spread over two years, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the move wasn’t publicly announced. That amount could increase with performance-based incentives.
Berry, 24, has recorded 10 goals and two assists over 34 games (22 starts) since being selected by the Crew with the seventh overall pick in the 2020 MLS draft. Although Berry’s emergence as the Crew’s first-choice striker led Columbus to trade U.S. national team veteran Gyasi Zardes to the Colorado Rapids in April, his minutes dwindled following the recent signing of Colombian forward Cucho Hernández.
Hernández scored twice in the Crew’s 2-2 draw with United on Wednesday at Audi Field, while Berry was left off the game-day squad.
Born in Spain and raised in Southern California, Berry racked up 38 goals and 16 assists while playing at the University of San Diego from 2016 to 2019. He joins a D.C. forward corps that includes Norwegian veteran Ola Kamara (seven goals this season), offseason signing Michael Estrada (four goals, four assists) and reserve Nigel Robertha (one goal, three assists).
MLSSoccer.com, the Athletic and the Columbus Dispatch also confirmed the trade, which came three days after United dealt wing back Julian Gressel to the Vancouver Whitecaps for up to $900,000 in allocation money. United last week announced the hiring of Rooney, the English superstar who played for D.C. from 2018 to 2019, though interim coach Chad Ashton will continue to lead the team on the sidelines until Rooney receives a work visa.
At 5-11-3, United has the worst record in MLS and is mired in a 1-6-3 skid since early May. The club is targeting several European-based players ahead of the Aug. 4 transfer deadline, including attacking midfielder Ravel Morrison, a 29-year-old Jamaica international who played under Rooney for England’s Derby County. | 2022-07-18T18:21:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. United to acquire forward Miguel Berry from Columbus Crew - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/dc-united-miguel-berry/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/dc-united-miguel-berry/ |
The Ethiopian genocide commands attention
Members of the Afar militia in Abala, Ethiopia, on June 8. (Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images)
As the world is focused on Ukraine, a genocide is taking place in Ethiopia. Mass killings targeting ethnic Amharas have been taking place since the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power four years ago. In the past few weeks alone, hundreds of innocent civilians, many of them women and children, were killed in Wollega, a region in Oromia, where the massacres have become alarmingly despicable and frequent.
The government’s failure to protect its citizens makes the tragic situation more horrendous. Because of the recurring threats and attacks on civilians, the number of displaced people is staggering. Thousands of displaced families continue to suffer under brutal circumstances. Moreover, and sadly, those who are committing the massive crimes have not been brought to justice. These catastrophes could have been prevented if the Ethiopian government were determined to stop those who are terrorizing communities. Mr. Abiy and officials at the federal and regional levels, including leadership of the security forces, should be held accountable for the thousands of lives lost in the past four years.
The people of Ethiopia want a government that can ensure the rule of law and protect basic human rights. The world needs to be aware of and condemn this genocide in Ethiopia. The victims and their families deserve justice.
Tewodros Abebe, Accokeek | 2022-07-18T18:51:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Ethiopian genocide commands attention - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ethiopian-genocide-commands-attention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ethiopian-genocide-commands-attention/ |
Manchin should leave the past in the past
Coal cars wait in line to be loaded on April 2, 2020, in Belle, W.Va. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Regarding the July 15 news article “Manchin says he won’t support new climate spending or tax hikes on wealthy”:
It’s human nature to pine for the “old days,” but most people have never heard of “breaker boys” working in coal mines. They were mostly teenagers tasked with removing as much foreign material as possible before the coal left the mine. This was long before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or any restrictions on child labor. Coal mines now employ 38,000 people.
Someone needs to tell Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) that progress is hard to overcome. In the 1940s, AT&T had 350,000 telephone operators, not counting the switchboard operators employed in business offices. Elevator operators mostly disappeared in the 1960s.
Mr. Manchin, please start supporting renewable energy rather than dying fossil fuels.
Earle Mitchell, Springfield
The stonewalling of President Biden’s economic package by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), which effectively dooms key elements of the administration’s climate and energy programs, is a decisive blow to this country’s war on climate change. Coming just weeks after the Supreme Court’s ill-advised stripping of the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in limiting fossil-fuel emissions, Mr. Manchin’s effective veto in the 50-50 Senate of the president’s package that includes funding for climate change essentially paralyzes this country’s long-term efforts to meet the challenge of global warming.
The world needs to benefit from U.S. leadership on climate change.
Mr. Biden’s agenda to restore our leadership is far too important to be effectively decided by one senator, who, as a representative of the special interests of a state with less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, exerts disproportionate power at the expense of the well-being of the country at large.
Roger Hirschberg, South Burlington, Vt. | 2022-07-18T18:51:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Manchin should leave the past in the past - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/manchin-should-leave-past-past/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/manchin-should-leave-past-past/ |
Claes Oldenburg, a Swedish-born artist whose lighthearted caricatures of everyday things — such as monumental renderings of lipstick and binoculars as well as “soft sculptures” of hamburgers and ice cream cones — made him a leading force in pop art, died July 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.
RAFA RIVAS/AFP via Getty Images
His death was confirmed by Pace Gallery and Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, which represent him. The cause was complications from a fall, said Adriana Elgarresta, director of public relations at Pace.
Jan. 18, 1973 | Chicago, Ill.
Artist Claes Oldenburg, who designs and builds oversized objects in his expression of art, stands at Chicago's Art Iinstitute with giant replica of a three-way electric plug, one of his works being displayed in an exhibit, "Object Into Monument."
Larry Stoddard/AP
May 12, 1971 | New York
Claes Oldenburg's "Ice Bag-Scale C", a programmed kinetic sculpture, after installation at Museum of Modern art in New York. The silver neoprene-fiberglass bag, powered by machinery, changes in shape and light reflections.
Dec. 28, 1973 | Greenwich, Ct.
Claes Oldenburg's 12-foot high sculpture.
May 16, 1984 | Switzerland
"Balancing Tools" is the title of this huge metal sculpture erected by artist Claes Oldenburg and now set up in a private compound of a local company owner. The sculpture which features tools as hammer, screwdriver and nippers is a present by the sons of the company owner to their father's birthday.
MK/AP
Feb,. 9, 1995 | Washington
Artist Claus Oldenburg and his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, stand in front of his giant lipstick sculpture outside the National Gallery of Art. Mr. Oldenburg’s second wife, Dutch-born sculptor Coosje van Bruggen, was his collaborator from 1976 until her death in 2009.
Charles Tasnadi/AP
April 26, 1986, | New York
Artist Claes Oldenburg, left, poses with his wife Coosje Van Bruggen at their home on Broome St. in lower Manhattan.
David Bookstaver/Associated Press
Jan. 26, 1986 | Duisburg, West Germany
"Extinguished Match Stick," a sculpture by Oldenburg is exhibited at the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum.
KARL-HEINZ KREIFELTS/AP
Dec. 17, 1986 | New York
"Knife Ship" from the 1985 performing "Il Corso del Coltello" (The Course of the Knife), featuring a large scale sculpture of a ship in the form of a Swiss Army Knife, was created by sculptor Claes Oldenburg, writer/curator Coosje van Bruggen and architect Prank O. Gehry. The ship, which will be exhibited at New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through mid-February, measures approximately 40 feet in length, 8 feet in height and 11 feet in depth.
Oct. 30, 1997 | Berlin
Children play in front of the sculpture "Houseball, constructed by the artists Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, at the former Checkpoint Charlie.
JOCKEL FINCK/Associated Press
In Washington, Oldenburg’s work is represented by a gargantuan steel and fiberglass typewriter eraser in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Art. Although the subject of the sculpture is a mystery to many younger visitors, its giant pink wheel and wavy bristles give it a compelling form.
May, 5 1999 | Washington
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's, "Typewrter Eraser, Scale X," 1992, at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden.
Dec. 20, 2000 | Washington
President Bill Clinton applauds sculptor Claes Oldenburg after presenting the National Medal of Arts during ceremonies at Constitution Hall. The award is presented to individuals for their contributions to the arts in America.
STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP via Getty Images
March 1, 2002 | Philadelphia, Pa.
Oldenburg's "Clothespin" sculpture is displayed in the Center City section of Philadelphia.
Dan Loh/AP
Nov. 19, 2002 | Minneapolis, Minn.
The skyline is seen behind "Spoonbridge and Cherry" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in the city's Sculpture Garden near the Walker Art Center.
JIM MONE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 21, 2005 | Frankfurt, Germany
The headquarters of the DG Bank is seen with the plastic "Inverted Collar and Tie" designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images
Aug. 15, 2006 | Cleveland
The Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen sculpture "Free Stamp" is shown at Willard Park.
MARK DUNCAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sept. 27, 2006 | Seoul, South Korea
An imposing 20-meter high (66-foot) statue designed by Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje Van Bruggen stands at the head of the Cheonggye stream.
June 5, 2009, | Cleveland
A sculpture titled "Giant Toothpaste Tube" by Claes Thure Oldenburg rests in front of a painting titled "Marilyn" by Andy Warhol in the new east wing galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art Friday.
Aug. 1, 2021 | Tokyo, Japan
The large-scale street art "Saw, Sawing" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen is seen outside the Main Press Centre facility on day 9 of the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Oct. 29, 2012 | Bilbao, Spain
Claes Oldenburg poses during the presentation of the exhibition "Claes Oldenburg. The Sixties" at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum.
Photo editing and production by Troy Witcher; Text by Fred A. Bernstein | 2022-07-18T19:04:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos: Claes Oldenburg, a whimsical father of pop art, dies at 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/photos-artist-claes-oldenburg-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/photos-artist-claes-oldenburg-dead/ |
In ‘The Metaverse,’ a leading evangelist shies away from prediction
(Washington Post illustration; Liveright Publishing)
When Matthew Ball first published an explainer in 2021 about the “metaverse,” the nebulous term had yet to appear in the dozens of investor relations calls of companies aiming to build the next internet. It hadn’t yet become associated with blockchain technology, nor fueled countless headlines in technology and financial publications. It would be half a year before Facebook would rename itself “Meta.”
Ball, a former Amazon Studios executive and strategist, is regarded by industry peers as one of the leading voices on the metaverse. With his new book, “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything,” landing on shelves on July 19, he attempts to keep pace as the world charges after the term he helped explain. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The metaverse is widely discussed, if poorly understood by most. (In the book, Ball refuses to provide a singular definition of the metaverse, writing that executives and companies alike do not yet agree.) Still, Ball is bullish, writing that the industries creating the metaverse will be collectively generating trillions of dollars. Across 309 pages, he covers the visions described by various companies like Epic and Nvidia when pitching the metaverse, how the term was coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash” and what it would take to build a connected digital world in which people can participate. He also writes that the video game industry is leading efforts to build the next version of the internet, working on real-time rendering of three-dimensional worlds.
Epic Games believes the Internet is broken. This is their blueprint to fix it.
The book is encyclopedic, with touchpoints ranging from Pokémon to payment systems. Ball, however, avoids guessing at which definition of the metaverse will prevail, or laying out his opinion of which company (or companies) will create it first. In a phone interview with The Post, Ball explained why he passed on making predictions, and laid out his outlook for the metaverse.
Launcher: How did the book come about?
Matthew Ball: I had been writing about the metaverse since 2018. After I released my nine-part primer, which is about 32,000 words, I immediately started getting requests from a number of publishers, interested in republishing the primer and putting a little bit more around it. And I ended up agreeing to a book the next month. This was actually months before Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company, but it was also before he said publicly the goal was to transform Facebook into a Metaverse company. So that sudden surge of popularity certainly wasn’t the case at the time and certainly was not something I predicted.
Last July, even when you were getting interest from book publishers, people didn’t really talk about the metaverse as much. Then, it started to be more in the news. How did the fast-paced change of current events impact your work on the book? How did you make sure it was still relevant by the time that it hit publication?
Ball: Right after I submitted the final manuscript, Microsoft announced the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which of course, is the largest acquisition of big tech history. And in the final sentence of the first paragraph in the announcement, [CEO Satya Nadella] says that it will provide the building blocks for the metaverse. A few days after that, Brad Smith, the [Microsoft vice] chairman, outlined a policy memorandum that essentially outlined how Microsoft was going to be a positive force in the metaverse from a policy perspective. And so that’s an example of where I wrested the manuscript back from the publisher to make some changes.
There have been some announcements since. Meta has pushed out its AR glasses release. Obviously, the crypto crash happened after March as well. But the book was not intended to be hyper-specific to any one product or time or narrative. It’s designed to explain [the metaverse] to place it in the context of the 48-year-old internet thus far, and to talk about what’s going to be required to build it. That is intended to endure.
Read more: Microsoft announced historic purchase of video game giant Activision Blizzard
In recent months, some companies’ enthusiasm for NFTs has waned, the price of bitcoin has crashed and the economy is not looking as good as it did last year. Were you thinking about that while working on the book, or was it too late to make changes at that point?
Ball: The crypto crash came after the book was locked. But you’ll note two things in the blockchain chapter: I outlined five different perspectives on blockchain, and I don’t personally weigh in on whether and to what extent I believe that blockchains are critical to the future. I also do say that some sort of crash is inevitable. The trillions of dollars in the crypto ecosystem in my mind exceeded the proven value and product market fit of the technology by some order of magnitude.
So that’s a good example of where events happened after the book was locked, but the book was written with that inevitability in mind.
Who did you picture as your target audience when writing the book?
Ball: I was imagining this book as having the same target audience that a book on the internet in 1995, or 2003, might have, which is a generalized audience. Those deeply interested in how technology and networking was going to transform nearly every facet of our economy over the unfolding decades.
What was your writing process? Did you have to go back and do more research? Or did you talk to other people about what the metaverse is?
Ball: The interesting thing about this book is, I was writing, researching and preparing for it for years without knowing it. Which is to say, I wrote the book over about four months. And it would never have been possible to have had the coverage, the depth and the examples during that time. But instead, it turned out that decades of playing games, reading science fiction, working in investing and partnering on projects relating to the metaverse was the primary research.
Part of my goal with the book was also not to express a single company’s perspective or give any specific theses on how and by whose hand the metaverse will unfold, but to talk about the many competing visions of the future. Different theses from a technological perspective.
Zuckerberg’s Meta promises a ‘future’ these video games delivered years ago
The book unfolds, as ‘This is what the metaverse is, here’s the topic and explanation,’ but I didn’t see much of your opinion, your perspective and analysis. I wonder if that was purposeful.
Ball: I’m mindful in the book about what you can and cannot predict. And when you go back in time, most specific [computing and networking] predictions were wrong. Because technology is recursive. Someone produces a new technology that leads to new behaviors or use cases, that is responded to with other technologies, and so on and so forth till you get to Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok, Salesforce and [Amazon Web Services].
As you kind of repeat throughout the book, nobody has a clear, single definition of the metaverse. Everyone’s definition is different and the value of these companies is also up in the air. Did you face any challenges around that while writing this book?
Ball: I highlight in the book that this uncertainty, confusion, conflation and disagreement over the metaverse is what produces the opportunity for disruption. A certain consensus and predictable transformation tends not to lead to much change. And so I see that as a feature, not a bug of the metaverse opportunity.
When you’re talking about the oscillating valuations, that, again, is a feature of change. There’s almost no way in the late 1990s or early 2000s, to imagine a future where Yahoo was immaterial. Where Skype had been surpassed by a dozen other messaging platforms several fold over. Where Microsoft was not the world leader in consumer or enterprise operating systems. And so the oscillations, to me, are emblematic of how the future is likely to be different.
Any parts of the book you’d like to highlight?
Ball: Chapter four. I talk a lot about how weird it seems that the next generation of the internet is being pioneered by a relatively small portion of the leisure economy — gaming. I then help to explain why the gaming industry, though niche thus far, is so important to our future. That was a lot of fun.
I like the example you gave in the latter half of the book where you talked about whether an iPhone 12 could exist in 2008. And then you said that even if Apple spent as much money as it could, it still couldn’t make that happen.
Ball: That’s an important example to me, because I actually think it’s a point of inspiration that [Epic Games CEO] Tim Sweeney or Mark Zuckerberg or [Microsoft CEO] Satya Nadella can’t themselves build the metaverse. They can be powerful and important players. But this is an ecosystem. And that means that everyone has agency shaping this future, not just in which companies we patronize directly, but the millions of entrepreneurs and developers upon which all of those later products depend. And it’s really easy to forget that. We often distill or characterize these enormous technological transformations around a single product — Facebook, or the iPhone — and fail to recognize how many other things, creations, contributions, people, support them.
When structuring this book, did you have a particular vision of the metaverse in mind? Are you just careful not to say too much so as to not be wrong in the future, if things don’t go exactly as you predicted?
Ball: What everyone wants is a clean answer to what their life in the metaverse will be in 2032. ‘What will I do when I wake up? What will I do at work, what will I do when I get home?’ It’s important to me in the book, to be honest about what can and cannot be.
There will be some who read my hesitancy to answer that question directly as hedging, or a lack of confidence in the premise of the book. Instead, it’s informed by our lessons from the last 40 years. In my book, I’m not designing to avoid answering that question. I try to be very upfront about what I’m certain about, what I’m uncertain about, and what I believe we simply cannot know today.
Do you think that this book can deflect critics who would say that, once again, there is no standard definition of the metaverse, and it still seems like a buzzword that people use to throw around to raise money for their company?
Ball: I’m hopeful that it will help align people on some of the key concepts and provide a generally greater understanding of what the metaverse isn’t, such as the idea that it does not require VR headsets, even if they may become one of the best, most popular, preferred ways to access it. I think that clarity will help everyone and in particular, the entrepreneurs that are most deserving. | 2022-07-18T19:04:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In "The Metaverse," former Amazon exec Matthew Ball avoids prediction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/18/metaverse-book-matthew-ball-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/18/metaverse-book-matthew-ball-interview/ |
How artist Alok Vaid-Menon lives beyond the gender binary
By Neeti Upadhye
(Neeti Upadhye/The Washington Post/Washington Post illustration)
It’s hard to find the words to describe Alok Vaid-Menon. But that’s precisely the point. The 31-year-old nonbinary artist has amassed more than 1 million followers on Instagram by leading a life beyond labels. In their work, Vaid-Menon aims to encourage others to understand that gender identity is fluid, unconstrained by societal expectations.
“The gender binary is the cultural choice to divide billions of complex souls into one of two categories: man or woman,” Vaid-Menon said. “And that doesn’t just hurt us as trans and nonbinary people; it actually hurts everyone, because it makes us only recognize people for what they should be, and not what they actually are.”
5 percent of young adults identify as trans or nonbinary, survey says
Vaid-Menon is on a world tour for their poetry-comedy show, which oscillates seamlessly between heart-wrenching verses on trauma and loss, and witty quips about studying heterosexual behavior. The Washington Post met with them backstage before their San Francisco performance on June 25 to talk about the state of LGBTQ rights in a post-Roe world and how to the queer community is staying resilient.
On the Roe reversal affecting trans lives
Nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon emphasized the importance of "queer joy" in the face of anti-trans legislation and the fall of Roe v. Wade. (Video: Neeti Upadhye/The Washington Post)
The momentous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade was decided on June 24 — the same weekend as New York’s and San Francisco’s Pride parades. The news came as a devastating blow to a community whose rights are already under attack.
Transgender advocates say the end of Roe has dire consequences
“I think there’s this framing of reproductive justice and trans rights as if they’re separate issues,” Vaid-Menon said. “But I think it’s important to understand that trans justice is reproductive justice because there are trans and nonbinary people who need safe access to abortions as well.”
Many trans men and gender nonconforming people can get pregnant. Advocates are particularly worried for this community in places where abortion access is curtailed; according to a recent study, about 30 percent of transgender people reported delaying or not seeking needed heath care due to fear of discrimination.
And in the face of an onslaught of anti-trans legislation, queer joy is more important than ever, Vaid-Menon said. As they put it, it gives the LGBTQ community the power to push back and say, “You don’t get to dictate how I take up space.”
How allies can be more inclusive
In an interview on June 25, nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon explained what the gender binary is and offered tips on how to be more inclusive. (Video: Neeti Upadhye/The Washington Post)
For those who want to be more respectful and inclusive allies, Vaid-Menon says there are “so many small things that people can do in their day-to-day to dream and exist beyond the gender binary.” For example, Vaid-Menon explained how to handle slipping up on someone’s pronouns, and emphasized the importance of using gender-neutral language — like “people who get pregnant” — when discussing topics like pregnancy, fertility or adoption.
“It’s not just about being inclusive, it’s about being accurate to the reality of who’s experiencing this injustice.”
Advice for those struggling to live authentically
In an interview with The Washington Post on June 25, nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon shared advice for queer people who are struggling to live authentically. (Video: Neeti Upadhye/The Washington Post)
Although Vaid-Menon is now a well-known advocate, the process of coming out wasn’t simple for them. Vaid-Menon grew up in an Indian American household in the conservative town of College Station, Tex., where they said they did not have safe spaces to express themselves fully. The colorful tapestry of Vaid-Menon’s life slowly unfurled over time, they said, which is why the queer thought-leader is able to offer sound advice to people who are struggling “to make the difficult and impossible choice between safety and authenticity.”
“The work is not just about resisting what people are doing to us,” they said. “It’s actually about unlearning self-hatred. And it’s about learning to love ourselves and love one another.” | 2022-07-18T19:17:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon on coming out, living authentically - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/18/alok-vaid-menon-nonbinary-artist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/18/alok-vaid-menon-nonbinary-artist/ |
Parkland gunman’s death penalty trial begins as U.S. reels from mass shootings
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz looks down as prosecutor Michael J. Satz delivers an opening statement in the penalty phase of his trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on July 18. (Carline Jean/Pool/Reuters)
The trial, being held at the Broward County Courthouse, comes after Cruz has already pleaded guilty to carrying out one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history when he was 19. The jury of seven men and five women is being asked to decide whether Cruz, now 23, should receive the death penalty or be sentenced to life in prison for his crimes.
During his opening statement, Broward County prosecutor Michael J. Satz accused Cruz of conducting a “cold, calculating, manipulative and deadly” attack that involved gruesome and shocking levels of violence.
After explaining to jurors that much of Cruz’s rampage was caught on surveillance video, Satz noted that some of Cruz’s victims huddled together in hallways or classroom alcoves after being shot, but Cruz returned a few minutes later and fired even more rounds into their bodies. Cruz, who was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and wearing a tactical vest, fired 139 rounds during his rampage on Feb. 14, 2018.
Satz also told jurors that they will hear evidence about how Cruz, a former student at the school, had been planning his attack for months. Satz noted that police recovered a video from Cruz’s cellphone that he made three days before he had an Uber driver drop him off at school to carry out his attack in Parkland, Fla.
“Hello, my name is Nick. I am going to be the next school shooter of 2018,” he said on the video, according to Satz. “My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds. It’s going to be a big event, and when you see me on the news, you will know who I am. You are all going to die.”
“One week ago today, I was at the White House [with President Biden] to celebrate signing [of] gun safety legislation,” Fred Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-daughter, Jaime, in the shooting, wrote on Twitter Monday morning. “Today, I am at the courthouse for the start of the penalty phase of the criminal trial of the person who murdered my daughter with an AR-15. This is the reality of gun violence.”
After Buffalo massacre, AG Garland weighs federal death penalty and racial equity
The sentencing portion of Cruz’s trial comes as the United States reels from a spate of mass shootings that have renewed the debate around gun laws and sparked furor as people are shot dead at places meant to be safe — including schools. A massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex., left 19 students and two teachers dead in May. A Texas House investigative report released Sunday pointed to numerous egregious errors by local and state law enforcement in responding to the attack.
Cruz, wearing a gray and black sweater, had his face partially obscured by a black face mask during Monday’s proceedings. As Satz outlined prosecutors’ case, Cruz fidgeted with a notepad and scrawled notes to his attorneys.
In a surprise move, Cruz’s legal team waived its right to deliver an opening statement, saying it will start presenting its case to the jury at a later date.
But Cruz’s legal team is expected to ask jurors to spare his life because he had turbulent family upbringing and had been receiving mental health counseling. Cruz’s mother died in 2017, and he had been living with a foster family when he carried out his attack.
During her opening instructions to the jury, Scherer said under Florida law jurors will first have to unanimously decide if Cruz’s attack included one of seven possible “aggravating factors” for a capital crime. If they do, the jury will consider other possible “mitigating circumstances” that causes them to instead spare Cruz from capital punishment.
His brother confessed to gunning down 17 people in Parkland. But he’s the only family Zach Cruz has left.
During his opening state, Satz presented the aggravating factors that he said prosecutors will argue in favor of capital punishment. Under Florida law, the potential aggravating factors that jurors are weighing include: whether the defendant had previously been convicted of a violent felony; that the defendant knowingly created great risk to a large number of people; that a murder was especially “heinous, atrocious or cruel;” that a murder was premediated; the crime was done to disrupt a government function; the victim was an appointed public official in performance of their duties; or that murders were committed during the course of a burglary.
Satz said prosecutors Cruz’s crime encompasses all seven of those factors. | 2022-07-18T19:25:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s death penalty trial begins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/parkland-school-shooter-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/parkland-school-shooter-trial/ |
A girl stands near the crosses, flowers and other items at the memorial outside Robb Elementary School on May 31 in Uvalde, Tex. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
1A robust police response, but no leadership</b>
2Children were on the playground as the gunman began firing at the school</b>
3An officer requested permission to fire on someone he thought was the gunman, but it was a school coach</b>
4Officers treated the gunman as a ‘barricaded’ suspect, even as they received word of 911 calls from injured student</b>
5A gunman with a troubled family life</b>
6Ramos offered ominous clues about his plans, but no one told authorities</b>
An exhaustive account of an 18-year-old gunman’s rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., found deep “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved, including hundreds of law enforcement officers who waited more than an hour to confront the shooter.
The 77-page report released Sunday by a special Texas House investigative committee presented stunning new details about the “chaos” and “confusion” during the May 24 attack at Robb Elementary School, which killed 19 students and two teachers.
Investigators assailed the “void of leadership” among the nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers at the scene. And they offered a broad indictment of other failures, including lax security measures that left the school vulnerable and a litany of ignored warning signs from the troubled gunman, Salvador Ramos.
Here are five takeaways from the report, which was based on committee testimony from responding officers, school officials and eyewitnesses along with other evidence including video from the scene.
A robust police response, but no leadership</b>
Within minutes of receiving a report of shots fired near the school, officers from the school district and the Uvalde Police Department responded. Others quickly followed.
In all, 376 law enforcement officers across 23 local, state and federal agencies gathered at the scene — a greater number than previously known. The total included 149 Border Patrol officers and 91 Texas state troopers — agencies that are “better trained and better equipped than school district police,” the report noted.
One of the first officers on the scene was Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the school district police chief, who wrote the school’s active-shooter response plan and assigned himself as incident commander in such a scenario. But Arredondo, who rushed inside the school without the two radios he used to communicate with other police and law enforcement agencies, told investigators he considered himself to be “responding as a police officer” and not in charge of the scene.
That led to confusion among other officers, who were captured on body-camera video questioning what they were supposed to be doing. Rather than isolating the blame on Arredondo for missteps that led to a delay in confronting Ramos, the report faults everyone at the scene. “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,” the report says. “Yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative.”
Children were on the playground as the gunman began firing at the school</b>
A school coach told the committee she saw Ramos jump the fence and begin firing and thought he was aiming at her. She radioed a warning to the front office about the gunman and then ran toward a group of third-graders on the playground, screaming at them to take cover. “She expected to then hear an announcement of a lockdown, but she did not hear one right away,” the report says.
“Bad wi-fi” and poor mobile coverage interfered with staff getting word to lockdown, and no announcement was made over the school intercom. Teachers including Arnulfo Reyes, who was shot but survived, later recalled no notification or alert. Reyes had previously complained that the door to his classroom, Room 111, did not lock properly, and said he had almost no time to react before the gunman opened fire on him and his students, 11 of whom died.
The report faulted lax security at the school, saying the district “did not treat the maintenance of doors and locks with appropriate urgency.” It also cited “relaxed vigilance,” because of frequent security alerts over “bailouts,” or police chases of smuggler vehicles carrying suspected illegal immigrants. The school had been placed on lockdown at least 50 times since February, leading to a diminished sense of urgency among staff.
“Because of these failures of facilities maintenance and advance preparation, the attacker fired most of his shots and likely murdered most of his innocent victims before any responder set foot in the building,” the report said. “Of the approximately 142 rounds the attacker fired inside the building, it is almost certain that he rapidly fired over 100 of those rounds before any officer entered.”
An officer requested permission to fire on someone he thought was the gunman, but it was a school coach</b>
The report outlines harrowing new details about the chaos at the scene. One unidentified officer told investigators he “saw children dressed in bright colors in the playground, all running away.” That same officer then saw a person “dressed in black, also running away.”
Believing that person to be the attacker, the officer asked Uvalde Sgt. Daniel Coronado for “permission to shoot,” but Coronado later testified that he “hesitated” because there were children present and “officers are responsible for every round that goes downrange.”
That turned out to be a lifesaving decision. The report identifies the man in black as another coach at the school, who was trying to rush the kids to safety.
Officers treated the gunman as a ‘barricaded’ suspect, even as they received word of 911 calls from injured student</b>
According to the report, Arredondo and other officers contended they were justified in treating the attacker as a “barricaded subject” rather than an “active shooter” — which would have required a faster response — because of a lack of visual confirmation of injuries or other information. Arredondo and the officers did not reassess their approach, even as they began to receive reports of 911 calls from at least one injured student and word from the husband of teacher Eva Mireles, who is a school district police officer, that his wife had told him she was shot.
One problem, the report notes, is that the two groups of officers — one convened on the north side of the hallway near the classrooms and the other on the south side, did not appear to be communicating with one another.
Arredondo, who was on the south side, told investigators that he saw empty classrooms near Rooms 111 and 112, where Ramos was holed up, which gave him hope the classrooms occupied by the gunman might be empty, too. He instead focused on trying to evacuate other children. “I guess, if I knew there was somebody in there, I would have — we probably would have rallied a little more, to say, ‘Okay, someone is in there,’” Arredondo testified.
A gunman with a troubled family life</b>
The report, which deliberately does not name Ramos, says the gunman was driven by a “desire for notoriety and fame” and that he had displayed signs of mental instability and violent tendencies to family and social media acquaintances. But none of those warning signs were ever reported to authorities.
Authors detail a troubled childhood, in which Ramos had a strained relationship with his parents and few friends. He struggled academically in part because of a speech impediment and complained of bullying. By the time Ramos reached third grade, school officials had identified him as “at risk because of consistently poor test results,” according to the report, and had suggested speech therapy. But Ramos never received special education.
By 2018, Ramos was averaging more than 100 school absences annually, along with failing grades and poor test scores, according to the report. Officials say there is no evidence that school resource officers ever visited his home. By 2021, at age 17, Ramos had completed only the ninth grade. In late October 2021, about six months before the attack, Uvalde High School “involuntarily withdrew him.” After a “blowout” argument with his mother, the gunman moved in with his grandmother, where he slept on the living room floor.
Ramos offered ominous clues about his plans, but no one told authorities</b>
Ramos took fast-food jobs, including one at a restaurant, and “hoarded money,” according to relatives who thought he was saving up for an apartment or a car. He asked two relatives to buy him guns before he turned 18, but both refused. He began stockpiling gun supplies, including rifle slings, and on his 18th birthday, he purchased the weapons used in the attack and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
An uncle told authorities that he drove Ramos to a local gun store twice — the first time after Ramos told him he was hungry and wanted to pick up food from the store’s restaurant. Instead, Ramos emerged with a long, narrow box. His uncle claimed not to know what was inside, and said the visit did not cause any red flags, even as Ramos had told his cousin that he “did not want to live anymore.”
Ramos repeatedly dropped hints to online acquaintances that he was planning something ominous — saying that he would make the news and sharing photos of the guns he had purchased. Authorities say he saved news stories about the mass shooting in Buffalo and quizzed his cousin’s son, who attended Robb Elementary, about the school’s schedule, including lunch periods.
Ramos’s grandmother, Celia Gonzales, told him he could not have a gun in her home so the uncle “agreed to store the first rifle at his house,” according to the report. “He believes the attacker snuck it out after staying the night a few days later,” the report states. Ramos hid the second rifle outside his grandmother’s home and brought it inside the night before the shooting, according to text messages obtained from Ramos’s phone.
“The attacker had no experience with firearms, and based on other investigators’ interviews of friends and family, the shooting was likely the first time he fired one,” the report says. | 2022-07-18T19:38:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 6 takeaways from the Uvalde shooting report - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/uvalde-school-shooting-report-takeaways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/uvalde-school-shooting-report-takeaways/ |
Influx of concealed-carry applicants worries Md.-area gun instructor
Kareem Lamb, 50, is a gun instructor in Maryland who thinks too many students get a concealed-carry permit without enough training. (Petula Dvorak/The Washington Post)
“Think about it,” the firearms instructor boomed, addressing 58 newly minted gunslingers at a suburban firing range on Sunday evening.
“Think about how you shot today. How you handled the pressure,” he said, staring some of them down. “And ask yourself, ‘Is this really where I want to be?’”
At just about the same time that night, 600 miles away, a predator fired a long gun at shoppers at a mall in suburban Indiana, killing three people. The bloodshed ended when a nearby 22-year-old drew his legally carried concealed weapon and took the shooter out.
The day before, according to police, an off-duty officer out to dinner at one of D.C.’s sparkliest new entertainment districts saw someone pointing a gun and pulled out his concealed weapon, killing the gunman in the middle of a crowd at the Wharf.
Off-duty police commander kills gunman at The Wharf
Boom. That was it. That was the moment that all 58 students who got their concealed-carry licenses at Maryland Small Arms Range on Sunday night were preparing for. Yes, they too want to be the good Samaritan.
The instructor, Kareem Lamb, doesn’t think all of them are ready.
I met Lamb, whose company is called Kaution Arms, on Sunday night while reporting a story at the range on another instructor. His tirade was hard to ignore. He’s a 50-year-old Army veteran who specialized in combat arms training. A necklace with an assault weapon charm rests on his substantial chest. He’s a safety and protocol freak, using fear to scare students into getting more training. And he was helping out another company on Sunday (a company that told me they will no longer ask for his help after some students complained about his aggressive style).
They’ve all been flooded with students anxious to get concealed-carry permits in Maryland after the Supreme Court lowered the bar in June on what it takes to qualify: Just 16 hours of training. Conference room slide-show presentations. Paper tests. 25 rounds fired. That’s it.
It’s not enough. Lamb waved toward the paper silhouette of a human torso, some pocked with holes at center mass — through the heart and lungs — as they were instructed. Others had those little holes all over the place: past the head, three inches from the right shoulder, in the white space around the suspect.
“I look at what you’re missing. That’s an innocent person y’all just killed,” he said, staring down some of the students. “That’s an innocent person y’all just killed, shooting blindly. Scared.”
He was tough on them at the range, barking into a megaphone just a few feet from their heads: “What are you doing?” “Reload!” “Fire!” “It shouldn’t take all day to load a magazine!”
He wasn’t celebrating when they got the right to carry the weapons to the grocery store, to the mall, to church. Just like him — after thousands of hours of military training.
“Just ’cause they say you can do it, you wanna do it,” he said, just as some of them began high-fiving and hugging because they passed. “But you ain’t preparing yourself to do it.”
On June 23, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling 6-3 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, made preparing for it pretty easy.
Teachers are outraged at the idea of being required to carry guns
The ruling eliminated the New York provision requiring a gun owner to give a compelling reason for needing to carry a concealed weapon. That used to mean, for example, business owners transporting lots of cash or other special circumstances. Now, it’s anyone who can pass the course. And other states are following the court’s ruling.
Meanwhile, the firearms trainers — the kind who obsess over gun safes and locks and protocols and safety checks, mostly folks with a military background — aren’t thrilled.
“So what I was yelling at you,” Lamb told the students. “Guess what? If you can’t handle it, reevaluate why you’re getting a gun.”
The truth is, Lamb told them and repeated to me, untrained people die when they try to use firearms.
A recent study at Stanford University also found that people living with handgun owners are twice as likely to die by gunfire in homicides as nearby neighbors living in gun-free homes.
“Despite widespread perceptions that a gun in the home confers security benefits, nearly every credible study to date suggest that people who live in homes with guns are at higher — not lower — risk of dying by homicide,” said the study’s lead author, David Studdert, a professor of health policy in the medical school’s Department of Health Policy and professor of law at Stanford Law.
Lamb knows that training is what drops that statistic. But he doesn’t agree with me that gun permits should be like driver’s licenses. My son had to log 40 hours in the car with one of us, then 10 more hours at night before he got his provisional license.
If driving laws were like gun laws, he’d be able to do some work in a classroom, drive across a parking lot and walk away with a license. Lamb was silent when I asked him about that comparison.
This is one of the biggest problems in the gun debate. The folks who understand how much training it would take to be the unflappable hero who can draw a weapon and safely take down a bad guy in the middle of chaos are often the same people who fight every inch of legislation and regulation that ensures gun owners have to reach that level of training. Right now, they’re hoping people simply want to.
Gun instructors are busy, trying to pack in as much as possible in the 16 hours the state of Maryland requires, including laser simulators, tests and stances. But watching Lamb’s students learn to reload, it’s clear that the smoothness of muscle memory — the kind you see in the movies — comes with practice.
“It takes a lot of time,” Lamb said a day after that class and his emotional tirade. Some students were rattled by the boom of gunfire. The muzzle flash was intense. The recoil shook their bodies. “And I just don’t see people putting in the time it takes.” | 2022-07-18T19:47:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Army veteran Kareem Lamb scares his concealed carry students on purpose - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/kareem-lamb-concealed-carry-training/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/kareem-lamb-concealed-carry-training/ |
Severe thunderstorm and flood watches for D.C. area into this evening
Storms are most probable between 4 and 8 p.m. Localized damaging wind gusts and flooding are possible.
3:35 p.m. — Strong to severe storms from Frederick to Front Royal sweeping east-northesat
A pretty potent line of storms has pushed east of Interstate 81 and now stretches from Frederick to Front Royal, which are both under severe thunderstorm warnings. This activity — which has brought down trees near Frederick — is advancing east-northward more quickly (around 35 mph) than anticipated earlier. It should arrive in northern Fauquier, eastern Loudoun and western Montgomery counties over the next 30 to 60 minutes. It may approach the Beltway by around 5 p.m., maybe even a little earlier.
Severe Thunderstorm Warning continues for Frederick MD, Mount Airy MD and Urbana MD until 3:45 PM EDT pic.twitter.com/ZcLGyrY2xb
Our next update will be a little after 4 p.m.
It’s hot and muggy and a cold front is approaching the Washington area. Those are key ingredients for strong to severe thunderstorms that could produce very heavy rain and strong — even damaging — winds.
The National Weather Service has issued both severe thunderstorm and flood watches for the region into this evening.
Storms were already developing along and east of the Interstate 81 corridor mid-Monday afternoon and are projected to sweep across the Washington region in the late afternoon and early evening hours. Storms may reach the Route 15 corridor from Frederick to Warrenton by 3 or 4 p.m., the Beltway closer to 5 p.m., and Southern Maryland and the bay by 6 or 7 p.m.
The severe storm watch, which stretches from Northern Virginia to western Connecticut, affects 40 million people and expires at 10 p.m. “Thunderstorms will intensify this afternoon along a corridor from Northern Virginia into southeast New York,” the watch says. “The stronger cells will pose a risk of locally damaging wind gusts.”
A severe thunderstorm watch has been issued for parts of CT, DE, DC, MD, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WV until 10 PM EDT pic.twitter.com/eal2Prh0i3
Remember that a severe thunderstorm watch means conditions are favorable for intense storms, but not a guarantee. If a severe thunderstorm warning is issued for your location, on the other hand, it means a severe storm is imminent and you should seek shelter immediately.
Given the prospect of heavy downpours and how soggy it’s been over the last week or so, the Weather Service has also issued a flood watch until midnight.
“Afternoon to evening showers and thunderstorms may produce very heavy rainfall capable of flash flooding. This could include multiple rounds of storms which would enhance the flood risk,” the Weather Service writes. “Rainfall rates may reach 1 to 2 inches per hour, locally higher in spots. The D.C. and Baltimore metros will be the most susceptible given recent heavy rainfall the past couple of weeks.”
Remember, if you’re traveling late this evening, try to avoid routes that normally flood and, if you encounter high water, turn around, don’t drown. Places most susceptible to flooding include spots near creeks and streams as well as low-lying, poor drainage areas.
Also be aware that a few storms could be severe, with damaging gusts. Remember, “when thunder roars, go indoors.”
Severe storms with a damaging wind threats may tend to focus in areas north and northeast of Washington.
Even though the atmosphere has destabilized in advance of the cold front, and an approaching jet stream disturbance will increase uplift of air, the most intense wind shear and potential for widespread severe storms resides over Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Severe cells may be somewhat more isolated farther to the south.
The Washington region may be a little more prone to flooding given the exceptionally moist atmosphere overhead which will make for heavily raining storm cells. While these cells will be on the move, the very wet prevailing soils may present some patchy flooding concerns.
It’s been a very stormy stretch in the Washington region over the past two weeks. Multiple severe storm and flooding episodes have affected the area. Reagan National Airport has already picked up 6.57 inches of rain this month, the 21st wettest July on record with still nearly two weeks left.
The repeated storminess is tied to the fact that the jet stream, along which storms track, has consistent flowed through the Mid-Atlantic region. One silver lining of the jet stream pattern is that it has mostly kept away excessive heat. | 2022-07-18T19:47:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Severe thunderstorm and flood watches for D.C. area into this evening - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/07/18/severe-thunderstorms-flooding-dc-watch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/07/18/severe-thunderstorms-flooding-dc-watch/ |
How Science Links Global Warming to Extreme Weather
Analysis by Eric Roston and Brian K. Sullivan | Bloomberg
Scientists have predicted for decades that burning fossil fuels would push average temperatures ever higher and conjure dangerous extremes, such as those seen in the UK’s current tropical heat. A new branch of science, called extreme event attribution, that’s emerged in the past 15 years connects global warming to severe episodes of weather with a much greater level of specificity. Many individual heat spells, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires are now routinely tied to climate change.
1. What extreme weather is most tied to climate change?
Heat waves are the weather events most directly linked to humanity’s greenhouse gas pollution. And heat, along with dryness and wind, fuels forest fires, which is why scientists have become so confident that climate change is making wildfires in the western US, Australia and elsewhere much worse. (The US fire season is two months longer than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.) Global warming is making tropical cyclones -- also called hurricanes or typhoons -- more intense, but not necessarily more frequent. Warmer water and moister air -- two results of global warming -- provide added fuel to tropical cyclones and other storms.
2. How certain is the link?
The vast majority of extreme weather events reviewed by researchers since 2011 -- 70% -- were shown to be more likely to occur, or were made more severe, because of global warming. That’s according to a count maintained by CarbonBrief.org, a UK-based nonprofit that covers developments in climate science.
3. How is cold weather connected?
Climate change has made winters shorter and blizzards and extreme cold snaps less likely. Earth’s poles are warming faster than elsewhere, with the North Pole heating up more than twice as fast as the rest of Earth for the last 30 years. This has caused a decrease in the contrast between the heat of the equator and the cold of the North Pole, and that has consequences. The record cold that crippled the Texas power grid in February 2021, for example, was the result of the polar vortex -- a girdle of winds that typically keeps cold bottled in the Arctic -- buckling and releasing cold air across much of the US.
4. What are other recent examples of extreme weather?
A heat wave in India and Pakistan in the first half of 2022 killed at least 90 people. Floods in Germany and Belgium killed more than 200 people in June 2021. That same month, the British Columbia town of Lytton set Canada’s all-time high temperature -- 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a day before wildfires destroyed it. Brazil and Argentina struggled with severe droughts in 2021, and wildfires devastated Australia in 2019 and 2020. Two of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the US Gulf Coast, as measured by windspeed at landfall, were Laura in 2020 and Ida in 2021. Vast areas of the American West have been consumed by wildfires in recent years, including parts of Oregon and Washington that were once too wet to produce the required dry brush as fuel.
5. Where is this headed?
The world has warmed more than 1.1 degrees Celsius since the mid-19th century, according to the most authoritative source on the matter, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. At the current pace, that increase will reach 1.5 degrees -- the level at which global warming becomes extra dangerous, in the view of climate scientists -- as soon as the 2030s. From there, the intensity of extreme weather grows exponentially, doubling if global warming reaches 2 degrees and quadrupling at 3 degrees, the IPCC says.
6. What are the ramifications?
More than 5 million people die each year globally because of excessive temperatures, and deaths tied to heat in particular are rising, according to a study in the Lancet Planetary Health. In addition to changing living conditions fundamentally, climate change is affecting many financial calculations, since huge parts of the global economy including agriculture, travel and insurance face risks tied to the weather. Insurers were hit by $89 billion of losses from disasters in 2020, the fifth-costliest year for the industry in data going back five decades, according to Swiss Re. The bulk of those costs were from natural catastrophes, including hurricanes Laura and Sally. It’s been estimated that climate change added $4 billion to the damage Typhoon Hagibis brought to Japan in October 2019, and that higher seas made Hurricane Sandy, which hit the US in 2012, $8 billion costlier. | 2022-07-18T19:52:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Science Links Global Warming to Extreme Weather - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-science-links-global-warming-to-extreme-weather/2022/07/18/80b19e1a-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-science-links-global-warming-to-extreme-weather/2022/07/18/80b19e1a-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
J.W. Milam, on left, his wife, second from left, Roy Bryant, far right, and his wife, Carolyn Bryant, sit together in a courtroom in Sumner, Miss, on Sept. 25, 1955. Roy Bryant and Milam were charged with murder but acquitted in the kidnapping and torture slaying of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant. (AP)
In an unpublished memoir, the White woman whose accusation of improper advances prompted the 1955 kidnapping and killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till called herself “a victim” and declined to retract her disputed account of the events leading to Till’s murder.
Carolyn Bryant Donham claimed in the book, obtained by reporters, that she pleaded with her husband and his brother not to hurt Till.
But lawyers and members of Till’s family say the book is filled with inaccuracies. “From Day 1, Carolyn Bryant has lied in this case,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a civil rights lawyer who has followed the case closely. “And her lies have now piled up to the point where we can clearly see the contradictions, including in the memoir.”
Donham wrote in “I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Story of Carolyn Bryant Donham” that the last time she saw Till alive, he had been dragged into her kitchen by her husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother, along with other White men, demanding that she identify him.
“They stood between the kitchen and bathroom, with the young man standing in the center,” Donham wrote. “Roy turned to me and growled, ‘Is that him?’ ”
She claimed that she didn’t want Till hurt, so she told Roy he had the wrong person. “‘No, it’s not him,” she said, according to the memoir. “ 'You have the wrong person, it’s NOT him.’ All I could think was, ‘Take him home, please take him home.’ I was terrified for his safety.”
The revelation of the unpublished memoir comes more than 67 years after Donham, who was then known as Carolyn Bryant, encountered Till in her family’s general store in Money, Miss.
That summer, Till had traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives. A few days after he arrived, he and his cousins went to buy candy at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Relatives said that Till, who had grown up in Chicago and did not know the dangers of White people in the South, had playfully whistled at Carolyn Bryant. A wolf whistle from a child, they said, should not have meant a death sentence.
“A fourteen-year-old young man walked into our store in Money, Mississippi early evening as I worked alone,” wrote Donham, who is now in her late 80s and lives in North Carolina. “That night, I was frightened beyond words.”
She wrote that inside the store, the boy grabbed her waist — an allegation Till’s relatives said they did not believe.
Four nights after Till left the store, Donham wrote, “My husband, Roy Bryant, his brother, J.W. Milam, and a group of other men tortured and killed that young man. The horror that played out that night changed both my life and my country forever.”
Cynthia Deitle, the former unit chief of the FBI’s civil rights division, said she wished Donham had the courage and compassion decades ago to tell Till’s family the truth. “She destroyed them,” said Deitle, “but it’s not too late for her to do what’s right and tell the truth to law enforcement and Emmett’s family. It’s the least she could do.”
The last time Till’s relatives saw him alive was in the home of his great-uncle, Mose Wright. Roy Bryant and his brother went to Wright’s home that night and demanded the boy come out. Wright pleaded with the men to leave Till alone, but they ordered him to lead them to Till. The White men, holding flashlights, found Till asleep in bed. They made him get dressed.
Days later, on Aug. 31, Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River, weighted with a cotton gin pulley twisted around his neck with barbed wire. His face was swollen beyond recognition. His teeth were missing. His ear was severed. His eye was hanging out of its socket.
His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, identified her son only by a ring he wore. In her grief, she called the Chicago Defender, one of the country’s leading Black newspapers, and told reporters she wanted the world to see the barbaric act committed against her son. Gruesome photos subsequently published in Jet of the boy with a beaten, bruised and bloated face prompted national outcry across the world and helped spark the modern U.S. civil rights movement.
Emmett Till’s brutal murder changed America. Now his home is a historic landmark.
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were charged with murder and kidnapping and tried in September 1955 in Sumner, Miss. They were acquitted by an all-White jury after about an hour of deliberations. The acquittal shocked the world. Several months later, on Jan. 24, 1956, Look Magazine published their confessions.
Nowhere in Donham’s 99-page narrative, which was dictated in 2008 to her daughter-in-law Marsha Bryant, did she retract her accusation against Till, though she wrote that she was never hurt in the store, only frightened. She claimed she pleaded with her husband “to forget it happened.”
“The young man had scared me,” she wrote. “I felt violated but I was not raped. I knew how bad Roy’s temper could get and I didn’t want it to gain control over him.”
Earlier this month, a team looking for new evidence in Till’s death discovered an unserved 1955 warrant for Donham’s arrest in a file folder in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. The discovery has prompted renewed calls for her arrest.
“Execute warrant now!” tweeted the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.
But Jefferson said the warrant is “a historical piece of paper” but legally useless. The kidnapping charge had a two-year statute of limitations. “No court in Mississippi will uphold a claim that the warrant commenced a prosecution that has last for almost 70 years,” Jefferson said.
Still, Jefferson argued, Donham could be charged with manslaughter if attorneys presented a case that she “should have known that her actions could harm Emmett — and there is little doubt that she did know.” In the memoir, Donham wrote that her husband had a “hot temper” and that “I knew if he found out, he’d be mad at me and also want to hurt the young man.”
Donham also wrote that she learned about the unserved warrant decades after Till’s killing, when she was interviewed by the FBI.
In much of the memoir, Donham portrayed herself as a victim. “I always felt like a victim as well as Emmett,” she wrote. “He came in our store and put his hands on me with no provocation. Do I think he should have been killed for doing that? Absolutely, unequivocally, no! Did we both pay a price for it, yes, we did. He paid dearly with the loss his life. I paid dearly with an altered life.”
She wrote that she hoped the book would affect the way she’s characterized in the story. “I am not an evil woman,” she wrote. “I did not wish Emmett any harm and could not stop harm from coming to him, since I didn’t know what was planned for him.”
On Friday, the Mississippi attorney general’s office told the Associated Press it did not plan to prosecute Donham. “There’s no new evidence to open the case back up,” said Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Attorney General Lynn Fitch. | 2022-07-18T19:52:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emmett Till accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham calls herself victim in memoir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/18/caroyln-bryant-memoir-emmett-till/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/18/caroyln-bryant-memoir-emmett-till/ |
By Carl Bildt
A medic in the Ukrainian military treats a soldier on July 1 in Perelzne, a Ukrainian village west of the embattled city of Lysychansk. (Heidi Levine/The Washington Post)
When will the war in Ukraine end? How will the conflict shape the international order? When will peace return to Europe?
Observers have pondered these questions, but the honest answer is that no one really knows. The conflict is likely to continue for years; Ukraine will be devastated and Russia deeply weakened as a result. But wars end — and there is a clear set of conditions that might allow that to happen in the future.
The first is change in the Kremlin. This is President Vladimir Putin’s war. The decision to invade Ukraine was his and his alone. His vision — restoring a “Greater Russia” — has become an obsession born of personal resentments. He has relied on propaganda and intense repression to mobilize support for the invasion and minimize criticism among Russians, but from my conversations with Russians who recently left, there seems to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm among Russian elites. They certainly don’t want to lose the war at this point, but most of them say they would never have started it.
As the fighting continues, and territorial gains become harder to solidify, Putin might agree to a cease-fire or two, temporarily and strategically settling for less, but no one should be fooled. Putin’s tight grip on power means he will try to push the war to a conclusion he deems fitting for Russia’s grand ambitions.
But it’s possible Putin, 69, might not live long enough to see his vision fully realized. What comes after him is anyone’s guess. There is no clear possible successor with the kind of political power to drag on what has become a controversial and unpopular war in many circles. It’s also unlikely that a successor will share his obsession with Ukraine. The prospect of lasting peace will only emerge after Putin is gone.
But having Putin out of the picture will not be enough. The second and equally important condition is laying the groundwork for Ukraine’s stability and security. If Ukraine becomes a failed state, with no functioning economy and institutions and a bitterly fractured political scene, peace will be elusive.
If Ukraine descends into chaos, even a post-Putin Kremlin might be tempted to continue intervening, while the appetite of Europe and the United States for continued support might start to wane..
Supporting Ukraine militarily is critical today, but the willingness of the European Union to live up to its commitment to open the door for membership will be more important going forward. Admission to the E.U. is neither a cure-all nor an easy process, but it should be the lighthouse that guides Ukraine into becoming a stable and resilient country. It will take years, but the pace of the process will ultimately be decided by the ability of Ukrainians themselves to meet the challenge with the necessary reforms.
The country will also need large investments and support, but progress won’t be possible or enough without security. If NATO membership remains off the table, strong bilateral commitments to help Ukraine build up its defense efforts will be essential. Discussions on this should happen parallel to reconstruction efforts starting to emerge.
The conflict in Ukraine has been going on for nearly two decades, but it is now in an acute, dangerous and possible decisive kinetic phase. Europe and the world’s democracies need to start making the financial, economic and political commitments to guarantee that Ukraine will push away the Russian threat and emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. | 2022-07-18T19:53:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This could end the war in Ukraine, but it won’t happen soon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ukraine-russia-conditions-that-could-end-the-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ukraine-russia-conditions-that-could-end-the-war/ |
FILE - This undated file photo provided by Robert Brown Public Relations shows Greg Lindberg. The North Carolina-based insurance magnate, whose convictions on corruption-related counts were overturned by a federal appeals court, has been released from prison on Friday, July 15, 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website. (Robert Brown Public Relations/Greg Lindberg via AP, File) (Uncredited/Robert Brown Public Relations/Greg Lindberg) | 2022-07-18T19:53:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Insurance magnate out of prison after convictions overturned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/insurance-magnate-out-of-prison-after-convictions-overturned/2022/07/18/026897ca-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/insurance-magnate-out-of-prison-after-convictions-overturned/2022/07/18/026897ca-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Hanamaki Higashi’s Shohei Ohtani throws against Osaka Toin during a game of the national high school baseball tournament in Nishinomiya, western Japan, on March 21, 2012. Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels is arguably the greatest baseball player in the history of the game. His roots are deep in northeastern Japan where he played high school baseball and got his start. (Kyodo News via AP) (Uncredited/Kyodo News) | 2022-07-18T19:54:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shohei Ohtani is 'Made In Japan' with American adaptations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/shohei-ohtani-is-made-in-japan-with-american-adaptations/2022/07/18/bc5ddf00-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/shohei-ohtani-is-made-in-japan-with-american-adaptations/2022/07/18/bc5ddf00-06ca-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Jason Kander on politics and PTSD
Once a rising star in the Democratic party, veteran Jason Kander’s post-traumatic stress disorder forced him to withdraw from public life. On Wednesday, July 27 at 1:30 p.m. ET, Kander joins Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart to discuss this experience in his new book “Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD.”
President, National Expansion, Veterans Community Project
Author, “Invisible Storm” | 2022-07-18T19:54:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jason Kander on politics and PTSD - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/27/jason-kander-politics-ptsd/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/27/jason-kander-politics-ptsd/ |
U.S. says it did not seek lawyer's arrest
The UAE sentenced Ghafoor over the weekend to three years in prison on charges of money laundering and tax evasion after an in-absentia conviction sometime in the past, according to the Associated Press.
The UAE said Saturday that U.S. authorities had requested UAE help with an investigation into Ghafoor’s alleged crimes. Price, however, said the United States did not seek Ghafoor’s arrest and conveyed to the UAE its expectation that he “be afforded a fair and transparent legal process and that he be treated humanely.”
Ghafoor’s attorney, Faisal Gill, said his client had not heard anything about his conviction in the UAE before his arrest or seen any documentation for the charges. Ghafoor was not facing any criminal charges in the United States, Gill said.
When asked whether the United States had requested that the UAE investigate Ghafoor in the first place, Price referred the question to the Justice Department.
— John Hudson and Kareem Fahim
Drug lord's extradition to U.S. to be delayed
The judge issued what amounts to an injunction preventing Caro Quintero from being sent to the United States without going through the formal extradition process.
After Caro Quintero’s arrest Friday, the U.S. government said it would seek his “immediate extradition.” That process began Saturday, but, as expected, Caro Quintero’s attorneys intervened.
The man allegedly responsible for the murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985 was captured in the state of Sinaloa. Few details about the capture have been made public.
Caro Quintero had blamed Camarena for a raid on a marijuana plantation in 1984. The next year, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, allegedly on orders from Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.
Quake in Afghanistan injures 10: An earthquake shook a remote area of Afghanistan, injuring at least 10 people, a Taliban official said. It struck in the same eastern region where an earthquake last month killed hundreds of people. The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest quake had a magnitude of 5.1. Last month's temblor ignited yet another crisis in the struggling country, underscoring the Taliban's limited capabilities and international isolation. United Nations officials said at the time that 770 people were killed; the Taliban put the death toll at 1,150.
Dutch court jails 2 for 5 years for attack on reporter: A Dutch court sentenced two men to five years in prison on charges of attempted murder and arson for throwing a molotov cocktail into a journalist's home last year. The court said the men carried out the attack because one objected to what he considered the negative tone of the reporter's coverage of protests over coronavirus lockdown measures. Nobody was injured in the attack, but the reporter, Willem Groeneveld, said in a victim impact statement that since the attack "he has always been on his guard and feels partly deprived of his journalistic freedom," the court said. | 2022-07-18T20:44:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 18, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-18-2022/2022/07/18/05718ba0-06a4-11ed-b8b5-cef2de23ed20_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-18-2022/2022/07/18/05718ba0-06a4-11ed-b8b5-cef2de23ed20_story.html |
Independence Hall in Philadelphia in April 2019. (Matt Rourke/AP)
There’s a lot to like about the burgeoning “national conservative” movement, which stands against the increasingly stale, pre-Trump intellectual orthodoxy on the right. But if a recent statement of principles is any guide, this new conservatism may be even more out of touch than the old.
National conservatives often have the right enemies. They oppose the reigning free-market fundamentalism of the pre-Trump right, which has upended the lives of working-class Americans of all races and ethnicities with globalized free trade and high levels of illegal immigration. They resist efforts to undermine their ability to raise their children and express their values in their public lives. And they despise unwise or poorly executed foreign wars that cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars with precious little to show for it.
But to win political elections, a movement must be for something, too. Which is why the latest brand of national conservatism, laid out by the Edmund Burke Foundation, fails spectacularly. Its vision clearly rejects America’s founding principles.
America dates its nationhood from the Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. That document affirmed that the United States had a right to “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them” because the British king had violated Americans’ natural rights. Its famous words — “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — are not only the inspiration for oppressed people around the world ever since. They are the foundation of who Americans are as a people.
But the national conservative statement never mentions the idea of human or natural rights. Indeed, it implicitly rejects the core American notion when it claims that each nation “should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance.”
The document makes specific statements about the signatories’ belief in limited government, self-government and recognition of minority beliefs. Its avoidance of any clear statement that the citizens of those nations have rights that a just government must recognize to be legitimate, however, sunders those beliefs from any firm grounding. They become mere preferences, which a national majority can ignore in the self-proclaimed national interest. Black Americans whose ancestors lived in the Jim Crow South understand the fault of that thinking.
If a nation’s “particular inheritance” is not democratic, for example, then a self-governing nation could legitimately form a nondemocratic government — much as Russian President Vladimir Putin openly draws inspiration from his nation’s despotic, czarist past. National conservative principles would apparently have nothing to say against these tyrannical pursuits.
Abraham Lincoln made this distinction deftly. In a letter in 1855, he criticized the Know-Nothings, a party that campaigned against Catholic immigration, for reading the Declaration as “all men are created equal, except negroes, foreigners, and catholics.” He said he would rather emigrate to Russia, “where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of [hypocrisy],” than live in a country that pretended to love liberty but in fact oppressed its people.
The national conservative effort to effectively write the Declaration out of American nationhood is manifest. It cites the Constitution and lifts language from it, but never does the same for the Declaration. It contends that “all men are created in the image of God” but says nothing about being created equal. Indeed, though it frequently praises nations and liberty, it never states the basic truth of human equality, which is the starting point for America’s founding principles. This is not an accident.
The omission means any American political endeavor founded on the statement is bound to fail. American politics has largely been about the interpretation of the Declaration’s principles ever since its author, Thomas Jefferson, bested Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party in the election of 1800. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan all rooted their transformative political campaigns in their interpretation of the Declaration’s meaning. The anti-slavery movement drew its inspiration from it, as did the early female suffragists and Martin Luther King Jr. American conservatism must reflect the Declaration’s centrality to American national identity, or it will fall in any contest to those who at least pay it lip service.
One must first understand America if one wants to put America first. The national conservative statement of principles has been weighed in the balances and been found wanting. | 2022-07-18T20:57:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Beware of ‘national conservatives’ who dispense with American ideals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/beware-national-conservatives-who-dispense-with-american-ideals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/beware-national-conservatives-who-dispense-with-american-ideals/ |
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 1, 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Texas’s law banning abortion contains exceptions to save the life of the mother or to prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is either woefully ignorant of this lifesaving provision or thinks he can willfully defy it in pursuit of his extremist political goals. Those are the conclusions to be drawn from his legal challenge to a directive from the Biden administration that underscores the obligations of physicians to their patients.
At issue is guidance issued last week by the Department of Health and Human Services that puts hospitals on notice that they will be in violation of federal law if they fail to provide abortions needed in response to medical emergencies. Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), passed in 1986 to deal with the problem of hospitals turning away poor and uninsured patients, hospitals are required to screen and provide stabilizing treatment to patients at risk — including those in labor. When there are pregnancy complications, such as severe preeclampsia or premature rupture of the membrane, an emergency abortion might be recommended to prevent serious permanent injury or death. The administration made clear that the requirement to provide stabilizing treatment exists even in states with abortion laws that contain no exception for the life or health of the mother. Violation of EMTALA could result in a government fine, a patient lawsuit or loss of Medicare funds.
Days after the guidance was issued, Mr. Paxton filed a federal court lawsuit challenging the directive, alleging it would create an “abortion mandate” that would “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.” Mr. Paxton has made a cottage industry of legal challenges to President Biden’s directives, filing numerous suits over immigration and covid-19 policies. So while his challenge of the EMTALA guidance was predictable, that does not make it any less pernicious.
Medical decisions should be made by the health professionals, and their judgment calls should be based solely on what is in the best interests of their patients — not fear of being hauled into court. “In Texas now,” University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper told The Post’s Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, “doctors have to worry that they will face homicide charges or be labeled as ‘murderers’ for acting to save a pregnant person’s health or life in severe emergencies. Across the country, doctors who have largely been shielded from abortion politics are going to find that the criminal law is hanging over their shoulder.”
Already, the New York Times reported, some patients who have miscarried have reported hurdles receiving standard surgical procedures or medication. A study undergoing peer review for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, according to Mother Jones, detailed how, after Texas passed a law imposing civil penalties on doctors who perform abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, some hospitals changed their approach to treating patients with pregnancy complications, waiting for their condition to deteriorate before taking action.
Mr. Paxton professes to be pro-life. Yet he is saying that in cases where an emergency abortion is needed to save a woman’s life, the doctor does not have a duty to save the woman’s life. The courts should dismiss this harmful lawsuit. | 2022-07-18T20:57:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Texas attorney general Ken Paxton's abortion lawsuit is hypocritical - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-abortion-lawsuit-hypocritical/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-abortion-lawsuit-hypocritical/ |
Tunisian President Kais Saied in Brussels on Feb. 18. (Johanna Geron/Reuters)
In the greater Middle East, President Biden’s trip through Israel and Saudi Arabia has dominated the news and all but monopolized diplomatic attention. This might have been inevitable — but it is nevertheless unfortunate, to the extent it distracts from the ongoing destruction of democracy in Tunisia. President Kais Saied, though legitimately elected in 2019, has been using his power to undermine the country’s once-promising political institutions, established in the wake of a 2011 uprising against dictatorship. Tunisia’s revolt triggered the Arab Spring, which has tragically failed or been defeated by dictators around the region. Mr. Saied’s plans for a new constitution, which he seeks to ratify in a referendum set for July 25, could deepen this political winter.
That date marks the anniversary of the day in 2021 when Mr. Saied dismissed the prime minister and suspended parliament, citing presidential emergency powers and the need to deal with Tunisia’s undeniable political and economic crisis. Troops blocked legislators from entering parliament, a signal that Mr. Saied enjoyed military support. Indeed, many Tunisians, frustrated with corruption and partisan gridlock, applauded his move. Since then, however, economic and social problems have persisted. The president has resorted to rule by decree and cracking down on those who push back against his power grab — including the elected parliament, which he purported to dissolve March 30 in retaliation for attempting to reassert its constitutional powers.
Certainly, Mr. Saied has controlled drafting of the proposed constitution, which was not finalized until July 8. In place of the mixed parliamentary-presidential system created under the post-uprising 2014 constitution, Mr. Saied’s document would move back toward a system reminiscent of the one Tunisia had before the Arab Spring. The president could hire and fire a prime minister without input from the legislature; the latter’s only recourse against the president’s hand-picked cabinet would be a no-confidence motion requiring a two-thirds majority. The president could dissolve parliament but could not be impeached. While presidents would be formally limited to two five-year terms, that tenure could be extended. The elected parliament would be further weakened by the creation of a vaguely defined new “council of regions.” Other measures could curtail judicial independence.
Elected with more than 70 percent of the vote in 2019, Mr. Saied campaigned as a populist and is counting on residual popularity, coupled with voter apathy and sheer lack of information, to win this hastily arranged plebiscite. He is also counting on a passive response from Tunisia’s allies in the European Union and the United States, which have issued various verbal admonishments. The most recent E.U. statement was especially tepid; it merely “takes note of concerns” about the new constitution. Likely more impressive to Mr. Saied was the Biden administration’s threat in April to cut bilateral military aid from $122 million to $61 million next year, but that has not yet been enacted into law. More leverage exists in the form of bilateral U.S. economic aid and Tunisia’s potential need for an International Monetary Fund bailout. Western governments must use it, or the cause of Arab democracy will lose. | 2022-07-18T20:57:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Stop Tunisia's slide to one-man rule by President Kais Saied - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/tunisia-president-kais-saied-one-man-rule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/tunisia-president-kais-saied-one-man-rule/ |
Protesters at a Sunday news conference held by the Texas House committee investigating the Uvalde shooting. (Eric Gay/AP)
An infuriating new report on the shameful police response to the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting “absolves no one,” according to The Post’s print headline. A better way to put it would have been that the report “implicates everyone” for delaying more than an hour while 19 children and two teachers were dying or lying dead.
But the question here is not whether the existing system could have been made to perform better. It’s whether we need a whole new system to confront the mass shootings that have become a tragic fact of American life.
I see these indiscriminate killing rampages as terrorism. My rule with terrorism is to blame the terrorist — in this case, an alienated young man. I believe there is no reason any American should be allowed to obtain an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle like the one he used to rip those children’s small bodies apart. And I believe it is insane that Republicans in the U.S. Senate — who accept the Second Amendment as a death warrant for tens of thousands of Americans each year — will not even agree to legislation raising the minimum age to purchase such weapons of war to 21.
Shame on this country for refusing to take those guns out of the shooters’ hands — or to prevent them from buying those guns in the first place.
But because we have effectively decided to tolerate school shootings and other mass killings of innocents, we need a system in which schools and other vulnerable institutions, such as churches and even shopping malls, are more effectively locked down. We need a system in which it is clear who is taking charge of the police response and in which incidents are considered “active shooter” until proved otherwise.
The unforgivable failure in Uvalde was the refusal of police, who arrived on the scene minutes after the shooting began, to act. The school district police chief, Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, was among the first to arrive on scene, along with the Uvalde Police SWAT commander. The report says Arredondo concluded that he was dealing with a “barricaded subject” rather than an “active shooter” — which is absurd, given that officers and observers could still hear occasional gunshots.
Meanwhile, 911 calls and other pleas for help were coming from inside the classroom. Officers in the corridor outside spent an hour waiting for orders. Parents who gathered outside in dismay at the lack of action were restrained by police and stopped from going inside to save their children. No one really took charge of the situation — not Arredondo, not anybody else. In another understatement, the report by a Texas House of Representatives committee blamed “systemic failures” for the abysmal police response.
According to the report, it is “plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait” for 73 minutes between the moment the first police officers arrived and the moment when a different group of officers finally took action. A total of 376 law enforcement officers were on hand, some in the hallway right outside the classroom where they could hear the shooter’s sporadic gunfire. The people inside that room weren’t police to the rescue, but the fourth-graders who were being slaughtered.
What we really need in this country is a system of common-sense gun control. That would make schools safer for fourth-graders, teachers and administrators — and for police officers, too. But if we can’t have that, we at least need police officers who understand the job we’ve hired them to do.
America is resigned to mass shootings — but not to cops who fail to act | 2022-07-18T21:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Uvalde shows we need a better class of police officer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/19/uvalde-need-a-better-class-of-cop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/19/uvalde-need-a-better-class-of-cop/ |
China’s Economic Engine Is About to Start Shrinking
For a few decades now, China has been converging with the US economically. Depending how you measure it, its gross domestic product has either already passed that of its great global rival or is getting ever closer. Average incomes are still much lower in China, but by another key metric of living standards, life expectancy, China matched the US in the pandemic year of 2020.
As this century progresses, though, it appears that China will be experiencing economic convergence with the US of another, less positive kind. The country’s working-age population of nearly a billion (defined here as those ages 15 through 64) has been essential to its economic rise, enabling it to become the workshop of the world and a vast consumer market. But according to population projections released last week by the United Nations, this cohort will start declining rapidly in the 2030s, and shrink by almost two-thirds by the end of the century. With the US working-age population projected to be about the same size in 2100 as it is now, China’s will go from more than four times larger to less than twice as big. Throw in Canada and Mexico, which aren’t exactly part of the same labor market as the US but do share a free-trade zone, and China’s working-age population is projected to be only 1.2 times bigger.
These projections, from the “medium scenario” of UN forecasters, are arguably over-optimistic about population trends in China. They assume that the country’s fertility rate will rebound from its sharp decline of the past few years and edge closer to that of the US as the century progresses.
The projections may be too optimistic about fertility trends in the US as well, but this country can at least rely on another source of population growth that China hasn’t embraced and probably won’t in the future: large-scale immigration.
The UN also offers a “low-fertility scenario” in which birth rates stabilize at lower levels in both China and the US. In it, China sees its working-age population drop by more than 80%, and North America’s surpasses it in 2097.
The year 2097 is a long time from now, of course, and none of this — beyond the 2030s drop in China’s working-age population that’s already been baked in by the recent decline in births — is fated. The UN has been making long-term population projections since the 1950s, and while these have been quite good at capturing the overall trajectory of global population growth, they’ve often been much less accurate in the particulars. The disappearance of two-thirds or more of the working-age population envisioned for China is unprecedented in the modern world, and the threat of it may bring policy and societal changes that slow or even halt the trend. Lots of other things could happen in the next 75 years to supersede these forecasts: climate catastrophes, world wars, alien invasions, the singularity, you name it.
Also, the UN population forecasts contain other information about future labor supply that may end up being much more important than how China and the US stack up. Africa is projected to be the big gainer, with a working-age population expected to nearly equal Asia’s by the end of the century. (For its continental/regional groupings, the UN puts Mexico in Latin America and defines “Northern America” as the US, Canada, Bermuda, Greenland and St. Pierre and Miquelon.)
Still, with the working-age population decline that faces China in a few years already underway elsewhere in East Asia — Japan’s 15-64 population has fallen 17% since 1994, while South Korea’s and Taiwan’s appear to have peaked in 2017 and 2016, respectively — the region’s shift from growth to shrinkage is going to be hard to ignore. Here’s another striking comparison, which I’ve run all the way back to 1950 to get the full effect.
The rise of East Asia has been perhaps the single most important global economic trend of the past half century. What does that imply about its decline?
By “decline” I don’t necessarily mean something akin to the fall of Rome. Japan remains an affluent, advanced economy despite its quarter century (so far) of working-age population decline. But its share of nominal global GDP has fallen to 5.1% in 2021 from 17.9% in 1994. All wealthy nations have ceded GDP share to make room for China and other emerging markets, but the US declined just to 23.9% from 26.1%, and the European Union share declined to 17.8% from 25.7%.
In 2021, China’s share of global GDP was 18.5% and its share of global working-age population was 19.2%. The latter percentage is projected to fall to 6.1% by century’s end. One way for Chinese leaders to prevent an equivalent decline in GDP would be to make reforms and investments that keep per-capita incomes rising faster than the global norm. But as my fellow Bloomberg Opinion columnist Hal Brands and Tufts University China scholar Michael Beckley argued in Foreign Policy last year, fear of reduced economic clout in the future could also elicit a less-productive, more externally aggressive response: “The most dangerous trajectory in world politics is a long rise followed by the prospect of a sharp decline.”
The US faces no such prospect, at least not for demographic reasons. One can even envision it returning to population growth through a renewed embrace of immigration, a more supportive environment for parents or both. At a time of great pessimism among Americans, that’s an interesting prospect to contemplate.
Joe Biden Is Fighting the Wrong Battle Against China: Minxin Pei
Thugs for Hire Hint at a More Unstable China: Matthew Brooker
Xi Jinping Is Sending Mixed Messages to Investors: Shuli Ren | 2022-07-18T21:23:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China’s Economic Engine Is About to Start Shrinking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinas-economic-engine-is-about-to-start-shrinking/2022/07/18/5e5d12b8-06d4-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinas-economic-engine-is-about-to-start-shrinking/2022/07/18/5e5d12b8-06d4-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Britain may see record temperatures as European heat wave moves north
Temperatures as high as 104 Fahrenheit expected early this week in large part of Britain.
People play in a fountain in London, England, on Monday during unusually hot weather. Britain's meteorology office has issued an extreme heat warning through Tuesday. Many homes, schools and office buildings there have no air conditioning because summer weather is usually mild. (Neil Hall/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Millions of people in Britain stayed home or looked for shade Monday during the country’s first-ever extreme heat warning, as hot, dry weather from mainland Europe moved north, disrupting travel, health care and schools.
The red heat alert covers a big chunk of England and is due to last through Tuesday, when temperatures may reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for the first time, posing a risk of serious illness and even death among healthy people, according to the Met Office, Britain’s meteorological agency.
The highest temperature recorded in Britain is 101.7 (38.7 C), a record set in 2019. The country isn’t prepared to handle such heat — most homes, schools and small businesses in Britain don’t have air conditioning.
The village of Cavendish in eastern England hit 99.5 (37.5) by 3 p.m. and Wales provisionally recorded its highest-ever temperature, the Met Office said, a recording of 95.5 (37.1) at Hawarden in northeastern Wales.
While Monday may bring record highs to southeastern England, temperatures are expected to rise further as the warm air moves north Tuesday, Met Office CEO Penelope Endersby said. The extreme heat warning stretches from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north.
Hot weather has gripped southern Europe since last week, triggering wildfires in Spain, Portugal and France. Almost 600 heat-related deaths have been reported in Spain and Portugal, where temperatures reached 117 (47) last week.
Climate experts warn that global warming has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, with studies showing that the likelihood of temperatures in the U.K. reaching 40C is now 10 times higher than before the mid-1800s. Drought and heat waves tied to climate change have also made wildfires harder to fight.
Train operators asked customers not to travel unless absolutely necessary, saying the heat was likely to warp rails and disrupt power supplies, leading to severe delays. Some routes were running at reduced speed or shutting down entirely from midafternoon, when temperatures were expected to peak.
Some schools closed, and others set up wading pools and water sprays to help children cool off. Most British schools have not yet closed for the summer. Some medical appointments were canceled to relieve strains on the national health service.
The high temperatures are even more of a shock since Britain usually has very moderate summer temperatures. Average July temperatures range from a daily high of 70 (21) to a low of 53 (12). | 2022-07-18T21:23:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain may see record temperatures as European heat wave moves north - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/18/britain-extreme-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/18/britain-extreme-heat/ |
After a complaint from the former president, the board took the unusual step of reviewing the stories — and deciding they were indeed worthy of their prizes
DES MOINES, IOWA - OCTOBER 9: Former President Donald Trump departs after speaking to supporters during a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Saturday, Oct. 09, 2021 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) for use with hornaday_villian (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The board that administers the Pulitzer Prizes has rejected former president Donald Trump’s request to rescind the 2018 prizes awarded to The Washington Post and the New York Times for their reporting about his campaign and administration’s connections to Russia election interference.
Trump challenged the awards on three occasions, including last year, arguing that the articles were based on “false reporting of a non-existent link between the Kremlin and the Trump Campaign.” He called the stories “no more than a politically motivated farce which attempted to spin a false narrative that my campaign supposedly colluded with Russia despite a complete lack of evidence underpinning this allegation.”
The Pulitzer board rejected that claim on Monday after undertaking the journalistic equivalent of a state election recount. In an unusual move, it authorized two independent reviews of the articles submitted by the newspapers — and essentially recertified the results.
“The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes,” it said in a statement.
The Post, for example, first reported on the Justice Department’s concerns that Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to vice president Mike Pence about details of his communications with Russia’s ambassador, making him potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail. The Times, meanwhile, broke the news that Donald Trump Jr. had agreed to a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer compromising information about Hillary Clinton and that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy.
Former Washington Post editor Martin Baron, who supervised The Post’s 2017 reporting, said Monday the Pulitzer board made “the right decision and the only logical one. Anyone who researched this Pulitzer submission knew these stories stood up, were correct and accurate and well reported. There was no reason for a reversal.”
The Times had no comment.
In a letter to the Pulitzer board last fall, Trump pointed to the indictment of an attorney who worked on Clinton’s campaign by special counsel John Durham as evidence for stripping the prizes from the Times and Post.
Durham has alleged that attorney Michael Sussmann lied to the FBI when he told the agency in September 2016 about a possible link between the Trump campaign and Alfa Bank, a Russian financial institution with ties to the Kremlin. Trump said the Sussmann indictment “serves as a damning repudiation of the media’s obsession with the collusion story.”
Sussman was acquitted of a single count of lying to the FBI in May.
The former president also complained about the unnamed sources featured in the Times and Post stories, specifically pointing to articles that credited “people with knowledge,” “current and former officials,” and others he described as “vaguely defined individuals.”
Trump noted that the Pulitzer board had praised the newspapers for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nations’ understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team, and his eventual administration.”
He wrote to the board in protest, “I would expect that you will take the necessary steps to rectify the situation, including stripping the recipients of their prize and retracting the false statements which remain on the Pulitzer website. Without holding the recipients to such a high standard of accountability, the integrity of the Pulitzer Prize namesake stands to be wholly compromised.”
In a brief interview, Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller declined to discuss details of the board’s review, including the identity of the individuals involved in reviewing the articles.
One of Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, wrote to the Pulitzer’s interim administrator in November to demand that the board preserve “evidence” involved with the 2018 prize — language that often precedes a lawsuit. Thus far, however, Trump hasn’t sued over the prize decision. | 2022-07-18T21:23:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pulitzer board rejects Trump’s challenge to Post, Times Russia stories - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/18/pulitzer-reject-trump-russia-stories-challenge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/18/pulitzer-reject-trump-russia-stories-challenge/ |
Bennifer is now Benniforever. The romance between superstars Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck — nearly two decades in the making, replete with a breakup, a canceled wedding and a mountain of tabloid fodder — became official on Saturday, as the two wed in Las Vegas. “We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” the newly minted Jennifer Affleck wrote Sunday in her On the JLo newsletter. Here’s a look back at the long and storied journey the couple took to that Nevada chapel.
The couple met in the early 2000s on the set of “Gigli.” While the movie would earn a reputation as one of the worst ever made, it launched an epic romance — the “War and Peace” of celebrity love stories.
Scott Alfieri/Getty Images
By the time Lopez opened Madre's, her short-lived Pasadena, Calif.-based Cuban restaurant, she and Affleck were one of the most famous couples in America — hanging with the likes of Nicole Kidman on opening night in 2002. By the time the restaurant closed in 2008, however, it seemed their tale was one of to-have-loved-and-lost.
Wintersteller/BEI/Shutterstock
Paparazzi flocked to the couple, such as here at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2003 — the very year they planned, scheduled, postponed and ultimately canceled their wedding.
At the time, Affleck was making a play to be one of Hollywood's top leading men — though his turn as the superhero “Daredevil” missed the comic-book movie boom by a few years. That didn't stop reporters from mobbing the couple at the L.A. premiere on Feb. 9, 2003.
Though they postponed — and eventually canceled — the wedding planned for September 2003, the two remained a couple for a few more months. They continued making public appearances, such as at this Yankees/Red Sox game in October of that year. Affleck also grew this goatee thing, now a relic of early aughts male facial fashion.
C Wenzelberg/Shutterstock
Though the couple's actual romantic connection had fizzled by March 2004, they had a fictional relationship on-screen in Kevin Smith's rom-com “Jersey Girl.” At the time, Bennifer — that goofy portmanteau we were all subjected to — felt as dead as Lopez's character finds herself 10 or so minutes into the film.
Peter Sorel/Miramax/Kobal/Shutterstock
To the shock of everyone who cares enough to be shocked by such things, the couple rekindled their long-deceased romance in 2021, now as divorced parents. They began to be frequently seen in public, such as on the red carpet for Affleck's “The Last Duel” at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 10.
Some 17 years after the couple were last known, groaningly, as Bennifer, they regained the title — though this time, they seemed to be controlling the narrative. Here, they're leaving the Palazzo del Casino building in Venice after Affleck attended a photo session for the film “The Last Duel” in September.
Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
By December 2021, there was no denying it: Bennifer was back, baby. National outlets — including The Washington Post — had taken notice and declared it so. More and more, the couple appeared together, such as canoodling courtside at this Lakers/Celtics game in what was then called the Staples Center.
Lopez and Affleck attended a screening of “Marry Me” on Feb. 8, which — let's be honest here — feels more than a little on the nose. They would be married themselves some five months later.
Production by Stephen Cook, Text edited by Travis Andrews | 2022-07-18T21:24:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck together through the years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-together-through-years/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-together-through-years/ |
An image from a video released by a Texas House committee shows law enforcement inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., during the attack that killed 21 people in May. (Uvalde Consolidated School District/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
On Sunday, a special committee from the Texas House of Representatives released the most exhaustive report yet on the May 24 mass shooting inside a Uvalde, Tex., elementary school.
The mass shooting left 19 children and two teachers dead. The report spread blame on every law enforcement agency responding to the attack, faulting local police for mistakes and more experienced agencies for failing to take charge.
Surveillance video was also released along with the report that showed the gunman entering the school. The video also shows law enforcement outside of the hallway where the shooter is; they appear to be waiting in the hallway for more than an hour.
Texas correspondent Arelis Hernandez has been following the story and explains how the report found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by the nearly 400 members of law enforcement on the scene and why agencies across the board are to blame. | 2022-07-18T21:25:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Multiple systemic failures’ in Uvalde - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/multiple-systemic-failures-in-uvalde/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/multiple-systemic-failures-in-uvalde/ |
Capitol Police remove abortion rights activists as they protest outside the Supreme Court on the last day of the court's term on June 30 in Washington. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
The House is poised to vote this week on legislation that would enshrine marriage equality and access to contraception into federal law, as Democrats try to preemptively protect other rights that could be at risk after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years had guaranteed the right to an abortion in the United States.
The House is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would require that someone be considered married in any state as long as the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed. The bill would also repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allowed states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That law has remained on the books despite being declared unconstitutional by the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
On Wednesday, the House is scheduled to vote on the Right to Contraception Act, which would “protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.”
The two bills — and Democrats’ urgency in moving them — are the direct result of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month. In his concurrence with that decision, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the high court should also examine previous rulings that legalized the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction (Griswold v. Connecticut), same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas) and marriage equality (Obergefell v. Hodges).
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
“After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” he added.
With Roe v. Wade overturned, the legality of abortion has been left to the states. Some worry that access to certain types of contraception could be next. (Video: Julie Yoon, Hadley Green, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
Rep. Kathy E. Manning (D-N.C.), who introduced the contraception bill last week, called Thomas’s concurring opinion “alarming” and “a rallying call to escalate attacks on access to contraceptives.”
“I will not stand idly by and watch extreme politicians obstruct women’s private health care choices and diminish reproductive freedom,” Manning said then.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) also criticized Thomas’s concurrence, calling it “draconian” and emphasizing that it was an impetus to act quickly on the Respect for Marriage Act, lest marriage equality be threatened by Republican-controlled state legislatures down the road.
“We can’t take anything for granted,” Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), the state’s first openly gay member of Congress, said in a statement Monday supporting the marriage equality bill. “I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will listen to their constituents and defend every individuals’ freedom to be themselves, love whom they want to love, and marry the person of their choosing.”
The Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections on June 24. Now, where abortions can be legally performed is limited to mostly Democratic states. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post)
Both bills are almost certain to pass the House but will probably run into opposition in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans have the votes to filibuster both pieces of legislation. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Monday said she would support the bill enshrining marriage equality into law, but several other GOP senators have recently said they believe the issue of same-sex marriage should be returned to the states as well.
The Biden administration has signaled that it strongly supports the passage of both bills. Asked Monday about recent comments from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in which he said the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” about its 2015 Obergefell ruling, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said they should raise concerns.
“As we know from the Dobbs decision, one of the things that we saw from [Thomas] is that they are looking to go further, whether it’s privacy, contraception or marriage equality,” Jean-Pierre said. “You all know that this president has supported marriage equality for some time. This is something that he believes in. And this is something that he will continue to fight.” | 2022-07-18T21:25:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House Democrats tee up votes to codify same-sex marriage, contraception rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/house-democrats-gay-marriage-contraception/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/house-democrats-gay-marriage-contraception/ |
Mets draft Gonzaga’s Nick Morabito, who plans to skip Virginia Tech
Nick Morabito hit .545 with 12 home runs and 52 stolen bases as a senior. The Mets envision him as a center fielder. (Tommy Gilligan/For the Washington Post)
Nick Morabito had to wait longer than he expected to hear his name called during the MLB draft.
Almost 20 minutes after midnight, barely into Monday morning, former professional outfielder Rajai Davis announced on MLB Network’s telecast that the New York Mets selected the Gonzaga College High outfielder with the 75th overall pick.
“It was just hard to even think at that moment with everything happening,” Morabito said. “It was pretty surreal.”
For as long as he had to wait — into Round 2C, a compensatory round just before the third full round — Morabito was surrounded by friends and family. His family knows the world of baseball well and was key to Morabito becoming a Day 1 selection.
His father, Brian, played for James Madison in college. His uncle John — also Morabito’s hitting coach — competed at Wake Forest before being drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 1987. And his brother, Chris, put the finishing touches on his junior season with their hometown McLean High.
“Those guys are my backbone. They’re who I rely on, not just baseball-wise but mentally,” Morabito said. “They’ve been with me this whole journey.”
Morabito said having his family so involved in his baseball career showed him what it’s like to love the game.
It all came to fruition this week. According to Morabito, the Mets sent his agent an initial offer that he turned down, but a new offer a few picks later had Morabito ready to go.
Morabito told The Post he plans to sign, and in doing so, he will forgo his commitment to Virginia Tech. The slot value for the 75th overall pick is $873,300.
Morabito, at 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds, shot up draft boards this past spring after a big senior year with Gonzaga, where he led the team to Washington Catholic Athletic Conference and D.C. State Athletic Association titles. After the DCSAA victory, Morabito rushed to the airport; he had a workout with the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field the next day.
Scouts also came to the D.C. area see him, including the Mets’ Joe Raccuia, with whom Morabito said he had a strong relationship. Morabito knew the team just up Interstate-95 was high on his ability as a plus runner with the potential to hit for power.
After batting .545 with 12 home runs and 52 stolen bases, Morabito was named D.C. Gatorade Player of the Year and earned First Team All-Met honors. An invite to the combine in San Diego and workouts in a handful of major league parks had Morabito thinking “there’s a chance this might be able to happen.”
Going into the draft, his defensive position was up for question, as he played most of his senior season in the outfield but had plenty of reps in the middle infield. In a Zoom call Sunday night, the Mets said they want Morabito to play center field.
At the end of the week, Morabito will head to the Mets’ rookie facilities in St. Lucie, Fla. He said he’s excited to get the next stage of his baseball career going. | 2022-07-18T21:25:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mets draft Gonzaga’s Nick Morabito, who plans to skip Virginia Tech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/mets-draft-gonzagas-nick-morabito-who-plans-skip-virginia-tech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/mets-draft-gonzagas-nick-morabito-who-plans-skip-virginia-tech/ |
The history of primary meddling — and how risky Dems’ attempts in 2022 are
Arizona Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake at a rally at The Maverick in Tucson last month. (Rebecca Noble/Reuters)
The Democratic Party is undertaking some wholly understandable and worthwhile soul-searching when it comes to its growing efforts to meddle in Republican primaries.
Democrats are in one breath arguing that Trump-supporting election deniers are extremely dangerous to democracy — and in the next breath, trying to get them on the November ballot. The idea is to get weaker opponents in the general election; the practical effect could be helping these supposedly very dangerous Republicans win powerful offices if things don’t go exactly according to plan.
In two of the most high-stakes races, Democrats helped Doug Mastriano win the Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial primary, and now they’re attempting to do the same with Kari Lake in Arizona’s Aug. 2 primary. Both have been among the most extreme supporters of Donald Trump’s bogus voter-fraud claims, but polls also show both would have a real shot of winning office — given that these are swing states and 2022 is looking like a good GOP year. Wave elections, should this turn out to be one, have a way of pushing extremists into office.
In recent weeks, a bevy of headlines have talked about how the Democrats’ ploy is “risky” and how they’re “playing with fire.” Some have even wagered that this strategy has “backfired” enough that it should give the party pause.
There’s no question that this could go sideways. And there’s no question it undercuts Democrats’ argument that these candidates are truly dangerous. But as for how much it has backfired in the past, that’s less clear. Let’s review some of the history.
Before we jump into it, we should note that all meddling is not created equal. Generally speaking, “meddling” is understood to mean a party inserting itself in the other party’s primary. Sometimes, this merely takes the shape of standard-issue attacks on the likely nominee — the kind of ads you’d expect to see in a general election, just earlier. For the purposes of this analysis, we’ll focus more on the more underhanded and risky version: trying to elevate a more extreme, presumably less broadly appealing, candidate.
That’s what Democrats have done, not just with Mastriano and Lake, but also with the GOP nominee for Illinois governor, Darren Bailey, who won his primary last month after Democrats spent a staggering $35 million to help him. A similar effort will be on the ballot Tuesday in Maryland, where Democrats have elevated pro-Trump Dan Cox over the more-moderate Kelly Schulz. Democrats failed to push through more extreme candidates in the races for Senate and governor in Colorado, and in a key House race in California.
Perhaps the most storied example of this strategy paying off came in the 2012 Senate race in Missouri. Back then, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and her fellow Democrats successfully helped Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) win the GOP nomination by “attacking” him for being too conservative — one of the most familiar tactics. They then trounced him by 16 points in the general election after he quickly registered his “legitimate rape” gaffe. Democrats also successfully attacked more electable candidates in the Senate primaries for Nevada in 2010 and Indiana in 2012, before defeating the eventual tea party nominees in the general election.
In each case, the play was indeed risky. Both Missouri and Indiana were red states, and Nevada was a swing state, meaning the candidates they elevated could have won in November. But they didn’t.
More often than not, attempts to elevate more extreme candidates do fail — but they do so long before the general election. The more extreme candidates simply fail to win the primary. That was the case in the 2009 New Jersey governor’s race (featuring Chris Christie’s opponent, Steve Lonegan), the 2014 North Carolina Senate race (now-Sen. Thom Tillis’s opponent), the 2014 Colorado governor’s race (Tom Tancredo), the 2014 Alaska Senate race (now-Sen. Dan Sullivan’s opponents) and the 2020 Kansas Senate race (Kris Kobach), among others. Republicans in 2020 even tried their hand in elevating someone viewed as a more beatable opponent for Tillis.
As for candidates like Mastriano and Lake ultimately actually winning? Precedent for that is more difficult to find.
In a recent piece, the Washington Examiner offered one example — from the California governor’s race, all the way back in 1966. It was a big one, in that it paved the way for a novice politician by the name of Ronald Reagan. But that was a more subtle form of meddling, in the form of digging up dirt on Reagan’s primary opponent.
Another example others often invoke is another GOP icon whose name you might have heard: Trump. But again, that “meddling” wasn’t really like what we’ve been talking about in 2022. It’s true that Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 viewed Trump and other more extreme GOP hopefuls as more beatable “Pied Piper” candidates whom they wanted to elevate. But that posture wasn’t nearly as overt, and was viewed more as a ploy to draw the other candidates to the right. (It also seems pretty unlikely that anything the Clinton campaign did would have truly mattered, given the size of Trump’s win.)
All of which brings us to the “but.” Yes, we’ve yet to see such meddling result in Govs. Mastriano or Lake. When the strategy was most dicey — in Missouri, Indiana and Nevada a decade ago — it panned out quite nicely for Democrats. But the sample size is small because the extreme candidates often don’t make it past the primary.
We also live in an age in which voters are more polarized. It seems pretty unlikely that a Todd Akin would be stuck at 39 percent of the vote in Missouri in 2022, even after “legitimate rape.” Arizona and Pennsylvania today aren’t red like Missouri and Indiana were back then, but they are highly competitive. The most recent polling shows Lake neck-and-neck with Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), and Mastriano with the margin of error with state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D).
Perhaps that changes once swing voters become more familiar with Mastriano and Lake — and Republicans clearly worry about both of them for good reason — but for now, it’s not that difficult to see this blowing up in Democrats’ faces. It’s surely on the table.
And Pennsylvania and Arizona being swing states rather than red states in a way makes this even dicier. And it’s because of precisely the same thing that Democrats say candidates like Mastriano and Lake are so dangerous: the fact that they’re election deniers. Republicans in positions of power in such swing states generally stood up to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but both Mastriano and Lake have assured voters they would’ve handled things quite differently.
We’re a few steps away from that actually coming into play, but imagine if it ever came to pass. Then we’d really see some soul-searching. | 2022-07-18T21:45:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How risky Democrats' meddling in GOP primaries really is - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/democrats-primary-mastriano-lake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/18/democrats-primary-mastriano-lake/ |
Ravel Morrison, shown playing for West Ham in 2013, is joining D.C. United on a contract through 2023 with an option for 2024. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)
New coach Wayne Rooney put his biggest stamp yet on D.C. United’s roster overhaul Monday when the club finalized the signing of playmaker Ravel Morrison, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
Morrison, a 29-year-old midfielder, signed with United through 2023 with an option for 2024, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the move had not been announced.
The Manchester native, who represents the Jamaican national team, most recently played under Rooney for Derby County in English soccer’s second tier. D.C. will be his 13th club in a career that has included stints with English clubs Manchester United, West Ham and Queens Park Rangers; Italian power Lazio; and teams in the Netherlands, Sweden and Mexico.
D.C. used targeted allocation money to complete the signing, putting Morrison in the bracket just below the three designated player slots reserved for the team’s highest-paid players. The Post reported last week that Morrison would be arriving in Washington to finalize a deal, and MLSSoccer.com confirmed Monday that the signing was complete.
Forward Taxi Fountas remains United’s only designated player. The club is in the market to fill one or both of its remaining spots ahead of the Aug. 4 transfer deadline.
Morrison had four goals and four assists in 36 appearances last season for Derby, which went 14-19-13 and was relegated to the third tier because of penalties related to the club’s financial struggles. On the international level, he appeared in nine matches as Jamaica failed to qualify for the World Cup and scored last month in a 3-1 win over Suriname in the Concacaf Nations League.
He is poised to join Fountas and fellow summer signing Martín Rodríguez in the attacking midfield trio of Rooney’s 4-2-3-1 formation, which interim coach Chad Ashton has implemented in the past two matches.
Although Rooney won’t be allowed to be on the sideline until his work visa is finalized, the English legend — who starred for D.C. in 2018 and 2019 — has notably altered United’s roster since being introduced as the club’s coach last week.
D.C. traded Julian Gressel, a wing back whose position was being phased out under Rooney, to the Vancouver Whitecaps on Friday for up to $900,000 in allocation money. Earlier Monday, United agreed to acquire forward Miguel Berry from the Columbus Crew for $225,000 in general allocation money, plus potential performance-based incentives.
With the MLS season just past its midpoint, United has the league’s worst record at 5-11-3. | 2022-07-18T21:53:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ravel Morrison signs with D.C. United - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/ravel-morrison-dc-united/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/18/ravel-morrison-dc-united/ |
Sara Hall, Emma Bates and Keira D’Amato finish in top 10 at the world championships
Keira D'Amato celebrates with her U.S. teammates after the women's marathon at the world championships. (Gregory Bull/AP)
EUGENE, Ore. — At a finish line she was not certain she would reach a few hours earlier, at the end of a race she didn’t know she would be running a few weeks ago, Keira D’Amato saw two teammates waiting for her. Sara Hall and Emma Bates raised their hands over their heads and smiled. D’Amato smiled back, stretched her arms and ran into their embrace.
The American women, two of them mothers in their late 30s, embraced at the world championship marathon as three of the 10 fastest marathoners in the world. Over about 2 hours 20 minutes, Hall, Bates and D’Amato ran alongside one another, basked in cheers and smiled with greater frequency than most anyone running 26.2 miles would sanely dare.
Hall, a 39-year-old Californian, finished fifth in 2 hours 22 minutes 10 seconds — 3:59 behind champion Gotytom Gebreslase of Ethiopia (2:18:11). Bates, a 30-year-old who idolized Hall while growing up in Minnesota, set a personal best as she finished seventh in 2:23:18. D’Amato was eighth in 2:23:34, a gargantuan accomplishment given her preparation.
Two weeks ago, Olympic bronze medalist Molly Seidel pulled out with an injury. D’Amato, who set the American record in January following a seven-year hiatus that included the birth of her two children, had been training for a 10,000 meters — about 20 miles shorter than a marathon — but accepted instantly when offered Seidel’s place. She had never raced wearing a Team USA uniform. Thomas and Quin, her son and daughter, held signs and watched their mother fulfill an improbable dream.
“I was so proud of us,” D’Amato said. “Being the caboose of Team USA and finishing eighth, that’s, like, freakin’ awesome. That was a really cool hug.”
D’Amato had defied convention her entire career. An Oakton High alum, D’Amato turned professional as a miler after four all-American seasons at American. Injuries pushed into her retirement and a Realtor job in 2009. She tried her first marathon in 2013, and it went so poorly that she figured she wouldn’t try another. She had Thomas the next year, then Quin two years later.
She returned to distance running as a break from motherhood and gave marathons another shot. In 2017, she ran one in 2:47, rarefied air for distance runners. D’Amato called her old coach and pushed her way into the elite distance circuit. In January, in a performance that stunned running circles, D’Amato broke the American record, resetting it to 2:19:12. She refuses a training schedule that takes her away from her kids. She still works as a Realtor.
Why, then, would making her first national team come the normal way? On July 1, D’Amato received a call asking if she would replace Seidel. As a kid, she would watch the Olympics and envision herself wearing “USA” across her chest. Her husband, Tony, served in the military for 16 years and remains a member of the Air National Guard. Now she could represent the United States in a different way.
“How can I say no?” D’Amato said. “This has been a dream of mine since I was in the fourth grade — to wear red, white and blue.”
“I was crying,” Tony D’Amato said. “I know how much this means to her, how much it means her family. When she got the call, I knew what her answer would be right away. She would never turn this down. Never. It’s a dream come true. It’s a gift.”
It was a gift that presented challenges. Normally, she would take two or three months to train for a marathon. If she took the normal runs she would in the weeks before a marathon, she would risk fatigue and injury.
Three days after she joined the team, D’Amato took a 22-mile run. She knew she had retained some of the fitness from setting the American record six months ago. She ran between 60 and 70 miles during each week she had.
Meanwhile, Tony engaged in his own preparation. He had a National Guard drill the weekend after D’Amato joined the team, followed by a work trip to Denver. As Tony and Quin stayed with his parents and D’Amato trained, Tony scrounged for last-minute airfare and hotels for eight family members.
“They’re like, ‘You know, you’re not giving us a lot of time to plan this trip,’ ” D’Amato said. “I’m like: ‘I have to run a marathon! I do not feel bad for you trying to get plane tickets, okay?’ ”
“Probably overspent in some areas,” Tony said. “But we didn’t care.”
D’Amato’s mother, Liane MacDowell, found a rental so close to the course that they could almost see it from the front yard. They used it as a base shuttling between viewing points along the loop. “There was an angel that got us that Airbnb,” MacDowell said.
As dawn broke Monday, D’Amato walked with her teammates to the start area. Hall turned to Bates and D’Amato. “Hey,” she said, “we want to work together, right?”
D’Amato and Bates eagerly agreed. For the first half of the race, the trio ran next to one another, helping set one another’s pace. Their bond went beyond the course.
In 2015, Hall and her husband, Ryan, adopted four sisters from Ethiopia, now ages 11, 14, 18 and 22. She had never trained for a marathon in the summer, which meant she had never trained when her kids weren’t in school. When she returned from training runs, rather than enjoying the quiet, she had to be present as a parent.
“It’s hard,” Hall said. “We might make it look easy sometimes, but that’s a constant, trying to do both really well and be present as a parent and also just want to give everything to the sport. It’s impossible to do both sometimes.”
“She didn’t take the elaborate halftime show that I had,” D’Amato said. “But we’re both mothers. We’re both in our late 30s. We’re both really proud to be able represent the U.S., represent mothers, represent women.”
About a mile before the end of the second lap, Hall decided to try for a medal and broke away. She ran one mile in 4:57, a faster pace than she wanted, so energized by the crowd. At one point, she ran past her daughters on the rail and high-fived them.
“This is the most fun I’ve ever had in a marathon,” Hall said. “I wanted to smile as much as I could early on, because you know it’s going to turn into a grimace eventually. But I was even smiling that last lap.”
Bates views Hall and D’Amato as inspiration. She wants to have children someday, and she plans on asking them for advice on how to balance motherhood and running. “Just the fact they can come back not only running well, but doing even better, is something I admired them for,” Bates said. “I want to be more than a runner. They’re doing it.”
In the third and final loop through the neighborhoods around Autzen Stadium, Bates passed D’Amato and sensed a personal best. At the finish line of her first world championships, Bates saw her idol waiting for her and the clock reading 2:23:18, her fastest time ever. It felt surreal.
D’Amato had a harder journey to the finish. She had taken to laughing whenever she thought about running a marathon on two weeks’ notice. When the day arrived, she wondered if she would finish for “kind of the whole thing,” she said. At times, her body rejected fluids. At the end of the second lap, the crowd gathered around the eventual finish line exhorted runners.
“I was like: ‘Maybe this is it? Maybe?’ ” D’Amato said. “I started getting a little delusional, like: ‘Maybe they’ll just cut us off. We don’t need another loop.’ I was afraid to look down at my watch and see.”
D’Amato slowed her pace but kept grinding. Her family shuffled around the course. They watched and screamed for her at the five-kilometer mark, then rushed toward the finish line.
“We thought we were going to have to pick up the kids,” MacDowell said. “As soon as Keira went by, we hauled, and we couldn’t even keep up with the kids. We made it here before the first-place finisher. It’s good DNA.”
As D’Amato crossed, she saw the signs Quin and Thomas held — “Go Mommy!” — and embraced Bates and Hall.
“It’s a life experience they’ll never forget,” Tony said. “It’s also important for them to see the hard work it takes get to this elite level. Those are life lessons you never forget.”
About a half-hour later, her family lingered at the finish. Quin, 5, sat on a family member’s shoulders. Thomas, 7, sucked on a big, star-shaped red lollipop and considered how he felt when he watched his mom.
“She’s the eighth-best runner in the whole world,” Thomas said. “She’s amazing. She’s awesome.” | 2022-07-18T21:53:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sara Hall, Emma Bates, Keira D'Amato in top 10 in women's marathon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/18/keira-damato-marathon-world-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/18/keira-damato-marathon-world-championships/ |
She was a combative defender of Mandela’s African National Congress
Jessie Duarte in 2017. (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg)
An ANC statement announced the death and said Ms. Duarte had been on medical leave undergoing cancer treatment.
Ms. Duarte began her career in accounting in the 1970s and became involved in organizing women’s groups that served as a grass-roots network for the ANC and the United Democratic Front, both of which were outlawed by South African authorities during the apartheid era.
Nelson Mandela, ex-president of South Africa, dies at 95
In a rare moment of contrition, Ms. Duarte in 2018 said her son-in-law Ian Whitley “made a mistake” by being fast-tracked for a position with South Africa’s Finance Ministry in 2015 during the four-day tenure of then-finance minister Des van Rooyen, who also has been under investigation for possible ties to the Gupta business empire.
At the same time, however, Ms. Duarte’s reputation grew among supporters, championing Mandela’s ideal of the ANC as a big-tent movement open to all. Ms. Duarte came from a family of Indian and Muslim lineage, and in 2019, she broke ranks with ANC leadership to denounce the party as “tribalistic and racist” for, in her view, snubbing those not from full Black heritage.
Many South African women also took pride in Ms. Duarte’s past as a coordinator of women’s resistance during the apartheid era and her continued ability to slug it out in the boys’ club of South African politics. Over the decades, she used her influence in the ANC to press for changes such as paid maternity leave and government child-support aid.
After Mandela was freed from the notorious Robben Island prison, Ms. Duarte served as special adviser to him and to prominent anti-apartheid activist Walter Sisulu until the 1994 election. She stepped down from a post overseeing security in 1998 after acknowledging that she drove a state car without a driver’s license.
She later held top ANC positions and was South Africa’s ambassador to Mozambique from 1999 to 2003. She returned to take on various ANC roles, including spokeswoman. Until she left for medical reasons late last year, Ms. Duarte was the ANC’s acting secretary general.
As an ANC insider, Ms. Duarte was often asked for her perspective on Mandela, whom she called by his clan name, Madiba. She recounted his disappointment at sharing the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa’s last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, and she marveled at his decision two years later to use a rugby victory to help unite the country.
In a 2015 interview with the PBS show “Frontline,” Ms. Duarte recounted watching the finals of the Rugby World Cup in 1995, won by South Africa over New Zealand in what became a critical moment of national unity for Mandela’s government.
“Madiba saw symbols as an important issue, and sport is such a symbol,” Ms. Duarte said. “Madiba understood that if you were going to get people to build a nation, you didn’t leave any element of that nation unattended. … The one time I did feel emotional is when I saw him in that [jersey]. I thought wow, this is what patriotic symbolism is about. It’s giving people that sense of … you can have a difference politically, but we come together as a nation when we win things. We don’t win it as a single individual. We win it as a group, as a collective.”
Lesley Wroughton in Cape Town contributed to this report. | 2022-07-18T22:02:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jessie Duarte, former aide to South Africa's Nelson Mandela, dies at 68 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/18/duarte-mandela-south-africa-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/18/duarte-mandela-south-africa-dies/ |
Uber to settle Justice Dept. case alleging discrimination against disabled
Uber will compensate disabled passengers
Uber Technologies will pay millions of dollars to settle claims by the Department of Justice that the ride-hailing giant discriminates against disabled passengers who need additional time to get into a car.
Uber will compensate more than 65,000 passengers who were levied a “wait-time” fee for taking too long to board a vehicle, the DOJ said in a statement. Accounts of eligible riders who signed up for the waiver program will be credited double the amount of wait-time fees they were charged, which could amount to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in compensation, the DOJ estimates.
The San Francisco-based company will also pay $1,738,500 to more than 1,000 riders who complained to Uber about being charged wait-time fees because of disability, and $500,000 to other affected passengers.
In November, the DOJ sued Uber, saying its failure to “make reasonable modifications” to its wait-time policy and ensure “equitable fares” for passengers with disabilities who need additional time to board a car is discriminatory under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The complaint was filed in a San Francisco federal court.
“We’re pleased to have reached this agreement with the Department of Justice, and look forward to continuing to help everyone move easily around their communities,” an Uber spokesman said in a statement.
Delta orders Boeing narrow-body jets
Boeing announced a firm order for 100 of its 737 Max 10 jetliners from Delta Air Lines, its opening salvo at the Farnborough air show that the U.S. plane maker hopes will provide a boost after it fell behind archrival Airbus.
The purchase includes an option for 30 additional jets, the companies announced at the event Monday. Should Delta convert the options into firm orders, the deal has a value of about $17.6 billion, though customers typically get steep discounts on large purchases.
Delta’s commitment to the final and largest member of Boeing’s narrow-body jet family provides a much-needed respite for the U.S. manufacturer. Airbus has grown its heft in the past decade to conquer close to 70 percent of the narrow-body segment, by far the most widely used aircraft category.
Boeing, meanwhile, is battling on multiple fronts: There are quality issues with its 787 Dreamliner, questions over the regulatory approval of its Max 10 aircraft, and the need to make sales of the 737 Max after a lengthy grounding following two fatal crashes. The giant successor to the 777 is years behind schedule.
With the deal announced Monday, Delta is endorsing the current cockpit design of the Max 10, at a time when Boeing has come under pressure for alterations that would give pilots an electronic system to monitor warning signals.
The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Monday it will not impose tariffs on Russian and Trinidadian imports of urea ammonium nitrate, which is used in liquid fertilizers. The decision came as a surprise because the Commerce Department said earlier this year that tariffs are needed as Russian and Trinidadian imports are sold at less than fair value in the United States. Fertilizer prices soared to all-time highs after supplies were thrown into chaos following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration has been making efforts to keep food inflation in check.
Virgin Atlantic Airways will carry out test flights using a flying taxi model from U.K. start-up Vertical Aerospace as the futuristic technology moves closer to becoming a reality. Virgin will operate one flight from the main airport in Bristol, England, where Vertical is based, to an airfield elsewhere in the southwest. A second will link the carrier's own London Heathrow hub and a "vertiport" to be built by infrastructure firm Skyports. | 2022-07-18T22:54:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uber to settle Justice Dept. case alleging discrimination against disabled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/uber-to-settle-justice-dept-case-alleging-discrimination-against-disabled/2022/07/18/670bd7ee-0686-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/uber-to-settle-justice-dept-case-alleging-discrimination-against-disabled/2022/07/18/670bd7ee-0686-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
(Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
A California man has sued Mars, the company that makes rainbow-hued Skittles, claiming that the use of titanium dioxide in the candy makes it “unfit for human consumption.”
The use of the additive — which is employed as a coloring agent — in foods isn’t illegal in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration permits its use in most foods, though it restricts it to 1 percent of a food’s weight. Mars contends it has done nothing wrong. “While we do not comment on pending litigation, our use of titanium dioxide complies with FDA regulations,” a Mars spokeswoman said in a statement given to The Washington Post.
But the class-action lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of San Leandro resident Jenile Thames and others who purchased the candy, argues that the company’s failure to warn consumers about the potential dangers of titanium dioxide amounts to a fraud of omission as well as other violations of California law.
Mars announced in 2016 that it planned to remove artificial coloring from its products over the following five years and later clarified that titanium dioxide was among the colorants it would phase out. “Defendant has flouted its own promise to consumers,” the lawsuit claims. “More than six years later, Defendant continues to sell the Products with [titanium dioxide] unbeknownst to reasonable consumers who purchase the Products.”
The European Commission’s ban on titanium dioxide as a food additive in the European Union goes into full effect in August. The European regulators cited fears that an accumulation of titanium dioxide particles in a person’s body could cause genotoxicity, the ability for a substance to damage DNA, potentially causing cancer. The U.K., however, did not come to the same conclusion and still permits it.
The California filing, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges that Mars did not inform consumers about the presence of the colorant, which it describes as “unfit for human consumption.”
“Defendant relies on the ingredient list which is provided in miniscule print on the back of the Products, the reading of which is made even more challenging by the lack of contrast in color between the font and packaging,” it claims.
The lawsuit notes that other candy brands, including Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish and Nerds, are vibrantly colored like Skittles — yet don’t rely on titanium dioxide. | 2022-07-18T22:54:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skittles lawsuit claims candy is 'unfit for human consumption' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/18/skittles-lawsuit-toxin-titanium-dioxide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/18/skittles-lawsuit-toxin-titanium-dioxide/ |
The Navy's Blue Angels perform a flyover of Houston on May 6, 2020, as part a tour of U.S. cities to honor first responders and essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. (Spec. 2nd Class Cody Hendrix via Reuters)
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’ll actually be a woman in a plane the next time you look up.
The Navy announced Monday that Lt. Amanda Lee of Mounds View, Minn., will be the first woman demonstration pilot for the Blue Angels, the world’s second-oldest aerobatic team.
“We had an overwhelming number of applicants from all over the globe this year,” said Capt. Brian Kesselring, commanding officer and flight leader of the Blue Angels, which flies Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets. “We look forward to training our fantastic new team members, passing on the torch, and watching the incredible things this team will accomplish in 2023.”
Hundreds of women have served with the Blue Angels over the years, but Lee, a 2013 Old Dominion University graduate, is the first to fly a twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole fighter aircraft for the delight of crowds. Marine Maj. Katie Cook became a Blue Angel pilot in 2015, flying an extended-range tanker known as “Fat Albert,” but she wasn’t part of the demonstration team, as Lee is.
Lee and Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Zimmerman of Baltimore are the two pilots of the six-person crew that will be part of the 2023 show season.
Lee is currently assigned to the “Gladiators” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106, which is stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.
She will join the 24 other highly talented women serving on the team today, Cmdr. Zach Harrell, spokesperson for the commander of Naval Air Forces, told The Washington Post.
Lee enlisted in the Navy in 2007 while attending the University of Minnesota and working at a UPS location, graduating from Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., according to the Navy.
As an enlistee, she served as an aviation electronics technician, a career path that led to her being selected into a program that paves the way for sailors to become commissioned officers.
Lee received a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at Old Dominion University, and earned her commission in August 2013. By April 2016, she had become a naval aviator.
Just three years later, she was one of eight all-women naval aviators to pay an air tribute at the funeral of one of the Navy’s first woman jet pilots, retired Capt. Rosemary Mariner.
Lee was unavailable for an interview.
To become a Blue Angel, aviators must be carrier-qualified with approximately 1,250 tactical jet flight hours by Sept. 30 of the year applying, Harrell said. They should also have completed an operational fleet tour along with advanced flight training with an average or greater composite score.
Blue Angels are scouted during each year’s Pensacola Beach Air Show, where the team showcases its flight skills, and then selected at the end of the week-long event.
Lee and other chosen members will report to the squadron in September for a two-month turnover period before embarking on an intensive five-month training program at NAS Pensacola and Naval Air Facility El Centro, Calif.
The Blue Angels have been around for more than 70 years. Adm. Chester Nimitz ordered a flight demonstration team be assembled toward the end of World War II. The aircrew was established to generate public interest in naval aviation and to boost the branch’s morale.
The team has performed for more than 450 million onlookers since its inception. | 2022-07-18T22:55:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blue Angels name first woman demonstration pilot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/blue-angels-name-first-woman-demonstration-pilot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/18/blue-angels-name-first-woman-demonstration-pilot/ |
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responds to lawmakers’ questions during a Senate subcommittee hearing May 4 on Capitol Hill. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Department of Homeland Security advisers urged the agency Monday to scrap the Disinformation Governance Board the Biden administration created this year only to watch it implode amid confusion and partisan quarreling over its role.
A Homeland Security Advisory Council subcommittee concluded in a one-sentence draft recommendation that there was “no need” for the disinformation board and the council endorsed the recommendation at its meeting.
Officials said they created the board in April to fight disinformation-fueled extremism that might endanger national security, but Republicans and conservative media portrayed it as an Orwellian tool that could infringe on privacy and free speech.
The board’s director resigned after a few weeks amid a wave of online criticism, and Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked the advisory council to study the issue.
“There is no room for a separate disinformation governance board,” Chertoff, who served in the George W. Bush administration, said at the meeting.
The 36-member advisory council is mostly handpicked by Mayorkas. He asked Chertoff and Jamie Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, to co-chair the subcommittee.
The public section of the meeting was held via audio only. Officials did not identify all the members on the call or respond to questions afterward. The council had a quorum and approved the recommendation in a voice vote.
Mayorkas has said that the Department of Homeland Security created the board to safeguard against disinformation-related security threats, which DHS defined as “false information that is deliberately spread with the intent to deceive or mislead.” Disinformation can take many forms, officials said, such as false reports “spread by foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran” as well as criminal organizations and human smugglers.
DHS later emphasized that the board was an internal working group that “does not have any operational authority or capability.”
How the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts
But Republicans worried that the board amounted to policing speech in the United States, and some cheered the decision Monday.
The Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee tweeted: “Hate to say we told you so … From its initially botched rollout, the ‘Ministry of Truth’ lacked a defined mission or even direction. It was clear it was a political tool to be wielded by the party in control.”
DHS has said that the agency is “deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy.” But the agency has acknowledged “confusion about the working group, its role, and its activities.”
The blowback against DHS and the board’s director, Nina Jankowicz, an author and disinformation expert, prompted DHS to “pause” the board’s activities in May.
The tempest over DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board
The council’s recommendation came two months after Jankowicz’s resignation. On Monday, she wrote on Twitter that harassment against her continues and called on some Republican lawmakers to “stop amplifying” false information against her.
She said some people wrongly believed that her role “involved law enforcement and censorship.”
“Nope,” she wrote.
“Far from the manufactured image of the power-hungry censor that many have amplified, my career has been dedicated to nonpartisan work *protecting* free expression,” she wrote.
“Disproportionate personalized attacks have become endemic to American political discourse. No one deserves to be subject to such vitriol, and it is those in positions of power who tacitly encourage it,” she added. “They can choose to set a different tone and example.”
Besides Chertoff and Gorelick, members of the council’s subcommittee on disinformation best practices and safeguards are venture capitalist Ted Schlein; Sonal Shah, executive vice president at United Way Worldwide; former FBI special agent Ali Soufan; and lawyer Matthew F. Ferraro. | 2022-07-18T22:55:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Homeland Security advisers say disinformation board unnecessary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/18/homeland-security-disinformation-board/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/18/homeland-security-disinformation-board/ |
FILE - Movie director Roman Polanski talks with reporters outside the courtroom where he was arraigned on March 30, 1977, in Los Angeles, on rape and sex perversion charges. The case involving Polanski, who fled the United States after he forced himself on a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot, has spanned 45 years. On Sunday, July 17, 2022, The Associated Press obtained an unsealed court transcript of the former prosecutor in the case testifying that the judge privately told lawyers he would renege on a promise and imprison the renowned director. (AP Photo/File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-07-18T22:56:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Timeline of Roman Polanski's 45-year-old teen sex abuse case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/timeline-of-roman-polanskis-45-year-old-teen-sex-abuse-case/2022/07/18/972bcbb2-06e2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/timeline-of-roman-polanskis-45-year-old-teen-sex-abuse-case/2022/07/18/972bcbb2-06e2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
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