text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60
values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Documenta Art Fair Turned Ugly by Antisemitism and Agitprop
KASSEL, GERMANY - JUNE 18: Detail of the mural called “People’s Justice” by the Indonesian artists group Taring Padi hangs behind cardboard figures at the Documenta 15 modern art fair on June 18, 2022 in Kassel, Germany. The mural has caused an uproar as Germany’s Central Council of Jews as well as a number of leading politicians have levelled outspoken criticism at the Documenta for showing the piece, claiming it depicts elements that are anti-semitic, including the depiction of an orthodox Jew wearing hat with the symbol of the Nazi-era Waffen SS as well as a pig wearing a helmet with “Mossad” written on it. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images) (Photographer: Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images Europe)
By the time my wife and I got to Kassel to see the latest edition of the Documenta — the once-in-five-years event that, in the contemporary art world, rivals the Venice Biennale for direction-setting importance — its centerpiece had been removed from public view, its director had resigned in disgrace and the German government was promising to step up its supervision of the exhibitions to follow.
The scandal that engulfed what the German Jewish newspaper, Juedische Allgemeine, dubbed “Documenta of Shame” has implications that reach beyond the borders of Germany and the contemporary art milieu. The Western world, with its surfeit of money and its growing shortage of creativity, has been settling into the role of benevolent funder of whatever the creative energy of the downtrodden can produce. That energy, however, is anything but benevolent. The feeding hand may get bitten off — and that’s a scary prospect for Western bureaucrats and politicians, both in and outside the arts.
Documenta, set up in 1955 by artist, architect and designer Arnold Bode to breathe new life into his bombed-out home city of Kassel, began as a large modern art exhibition and went through a number of permutations to arrive at its current format: Although a non-profit foundation partly funded by the German federal government, the state of Hesse and the city of Kassel runs the business side of things, the curator, chosen by an advisory board, has a free hand to pick the artists and organize the exhibition spaces. For artists from countries burdened with various forms of censorship, the curator’s freedom of action is a Western gift almost as valuable as the considerable money that sustains the effort: This year, the budget is 42.2 million euros, but that limit may be exceeded, as it was in 2017, when the city and state had to assume Documenta’s debts to save it.
Thanks to both the curatorial freedom and the generous funding, visitor numbers have steadily increased, with close to a million people making the pilgrimage to Kassel, population 200,000, over Documenta’s June-to-September run. It’s a wonder to behold: The entire city, from central museums to bridges, lawns and pedestrian underpasses, turns into a backdrop for all kinds of artistic experiments. In 1972, Joseph Beuys famously heaped 7,000 large stones on the city’s central square as part of a plan to plant as many oaks throughout Kassel. A stone was to be taken away with each tree planted; the project took five years to complete.
This year, the Documenta, taking place a year late because of the Covid pandemic, has been curated by an Indonesian collective called ruangrupa. Its approach has been to invite other artistic groupings, mostly from Asia and Africa, to fill up the diverse exhibition spaces however they chose. They, in turn, could invite other collaborators. It is, in effect, a communist utopia played out at the expense of the German taxpayer and the relatively well-to-do visitors who can afford the trip, the hotels — one day is not enough to see everything worth seeing — and the tickets. As the traditional main square centerpiece — think Beuys’ stones or 2017’s giant replica of the Parthenon built from books forbidden in different countries — ruangrupa chose an enormous banner called “People’s Justice” created by another Indonesian collective, Taring Padi.
Some of the Documenta’s first visitors immediately noticed among the many characters a pig-faced creature wearing a helmet marked “Mossad” and a depiction of a vampire-like individual with Jewish sidelocks with the lettering “SS” on his bowler hat. Jewish organizations and the media were understandably up in arms. “People’s Justice” was removed, leaving the central square bare, and both ruangrupa and Taring Padi apologized. Further accusations followed: Palestinian artists’ work is very much in evidence at Documenta 15, while Israeli artists are not visibly represented, amounting to a silent boycott of Israel. Ruangrupa has denied imposing it, but it hasn’t helped: The scandal built until Documenta’s supervisory board, headed by the mayor of Kassel, fired the nonprofit’s director, Sabine Schormann.
In a speech to the German parliament earlier this month, ruangrupa’s director and curator Ade Darmawan referred, by way of explanation, to Indonesia’s turbulent history:
This history also includes centuries of colonialist exploitation by European empires, like the Dutch, and by the Japanese during World War II. Part of this colonialist violence entailed pitching different non-white people against each other. You undoubtedly know that in the case of Indonesia this involved playing Indonesians against Chinese minorities, and to do this, as you also may know, Dutch colonial officers introduced originally European antisemitic ideas and images to portray Chinese in the way Europeans have portrayed Jews, and to draw a connection. This in a shocking and shameful way has come full circle in the artwork. The image is of European origin, then transformed and appropriated within our own cultural context in an unacceptable way. This is certainly something we need to process and reflect upon.
This is not so much an apology as an accusation: anti-Semitism is, according to this view, a colonialist import from Europe that has now washed up on Kassel’s placid shores on a wave of subversive post-colonial creativity. One could argue that everything ruangrupa did in Kassel this year follows the same logic — throwing back at the West the misery it can be accused of wreaking upon the rest of the world. A visitor cannot escape being educated about the plight of Australia’s Indigenous people, the Palestinians of Gaza (where artists have to smuggle in paint), the Sinti and the Roma, the Kurds, dissidents everywhere from the Philippines to Hungary — the list is as endless as human suffering. The works of art shown during this educational process are, by and large, props that serve an overriding purpose: To make the wealthy Western viewer feel shame as an oppressor, or at least an oppressor’s accomplice.
I don’t know if my wife and I can be forgiven for not feeling personally responsible for the plight of Ugandan moviemakers forced to shoot on a $200 budget or for the “imported” anti-Semitism of an Indonesian mural painter. We’d come for the art — but after two days of being harangued with every national flavor of far-left rhetoric, we struggled to remember even a dozen truly impressive works we’d seen, ones that would stand on their own feet as art, not as part of a plaintive or aggressive narrative. The ones we could recall told subtler stories, ones that didn’t require a video or an explanatory text — like Kenyan artist Ngugi Waweru’s huge installation made entirely from kitchen knives found in a Nairobi slum, most of them whetted down to a needle before they were thrown away.
On the other hand, the uncomfortable feeling of being shouted at, talked at, whispered at, sometimes openly mocked was likely the curators’ objective. That a distinctly non-Western brand of Jew-hatred was part of it wasn’t really an accident, much as the German management under Schormann might have tried to present it as such. When you turn the keys over to the non-Western world, with parlous art collectives distributing an enormous government grant among themselves in a kind of collective farm process, you get that and more; what you don’t get is awe before Western culture, or even respect for Western creativity, such as it is these days. You’re simply told that it’s no longer your turn to talk.
The German government’s frightened response — ostensibly just to the antisemitic images, but, more likely, to the whole event as it has shaped up — is to step in and demand more control. Culture Minister Claudia Roth has declared the federal government’s 2018 decision to leave Documenta’s supervisory board “a grave mistake” and demanded a “structural reform” that would rule out “any form of hatred” from the exhibits. What this likely means is the end of the unlimited curatorial freedom and a degree of what can only be described as censorship — the good kind, Roth would have us believe.
Documenta, however, isn’t just a show — it’s both a trendsetter and a weathervane. If, as one can also sense from other major events like the most recent Berlin Biennale, the trend has turned toward the so-called Global South, letting the more sterile, timid and repetitive western output fall by the wayside, it’s pointless to try to impose rules on what this tide pulls in. That would be an effort akin to Western attempts to limit immigration — something you cannot do with art without diminishing its power.
My only complaint about the trend as documented in Kassel this year is that the rhetorical points being made are stronger than the artistic ones. Perhaps it’s only natural when so many new languages are being shouted in, but a new, coherent language may yet emerge from the clamor. My disappointment is part anticipation.
• The Scam of Authenticity: Adrian Wooldridge
• Art Is an Investment to Appreciate: Tyler Cowen
• Rich Millennials Are Splashing Millions on Crypto Art: Andrea Felsted | 2022-07-21T10:17:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Documenta Art Fair Turned Ugly by Antisemitism and Agitprop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/documenta-art-fair-turned-ugly-by-antisemitism-and-agitprop/2022/07/21/b7e0058e-08dc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/documenta-art-fair-turned-ugly-by-antisemitism-and-agitprop/2022/07/21/b7e0058e-08dc-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Buckled roads, warped train tracks and expanded bridges are a stark reminder, experts say, of the need to adapt quickly to a warming planet
Water is sprayed on the taxiways at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to prevent the deformation of the asphalt, due to a heat wave in July 2019. (Robin van Lonkhuijsen/AFP/Getty Images)
Roads and airport runways buckling. Train tracks warping. Bridges swelling.
These are just some of the damaging effects extreme heat has had on critical infrastructure in recent years, as heat waves have become more frequent and intense — a stark reminder, experts say, of the need to adjust quickly to a warming planet.
“Most of our physical infrastructure was built using the temperature records of the mid-20th century,” Costa Samaras, principal assistant director for energy with the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in an email. “That is not the climate we have now.”
Samaras added: “Melting roads and runways are no longer a hypothetical — and we know with increased emissions it’s only going to get hotter.”
The latest scramble to adapt came this week as heat waves smothered parts of the United States and Europe, sending temperatures in many historically temperate areas skyrocketing. In London, for instance, parts of a Victorian-era bridge were wrapped in silver insulation foil to protect the metal from cracking. Meanwhile, steel train tracks warped and buckled, and airport runways were damaged by the heat, causing widespread travel disruptions.
“When reality and future conditions start shifting away from what was used in the design, our infrastructure becomes more prone to failure and may also suffer from a reduced service life,” Amit Bhasin, a professor and director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in an email.
But experts stressed that solutions should not focus solely on improving infrastructure. “The bottom line is: we are not going to only build our way out of this,” Samaras said. “We must decarbonize our energy uses and learn how to remove carbon we’ve already added to the atmosphere.”
As concrete buckles and roads flood, states are responding slowly to the new climate reality
What infrastructure is at risk?
Heat can impact all types of physical infrastructure, but roads, runways and railways may be among the most vulnerable, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning and chair of sustainable built environments at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.
Paved surfaces, such as roads and runways, are typically made of asphalt or concrete, materials that can be affected, in some cases dramatically and quickly, by heat.
“Asphalt is a temperature-sensitive material, so when it gets hot, it gets really soft,” said Jo Sias, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire.
While many descriptions of extreme heat’s effect on asphalt include the word “melting,” that isn’t entirely accurate, said Steve Muench, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington. Instead, he said, the effect is more similar to what you could do to Play-Doh or clay.
Asphalt also tends to age faster at higher temperatures, which can reduce its life span, Bhasin said.
For roadways that use concrete, expansion caused by unusually hot weather can be a major problem. These thoroughfares are paved with slabs and designed with space in between to account for expansion (when it’s hot) or contraction (when it’s cold), Muench said. But when temperatures are much higher than usual and if improper maintenance has lead to debris getting into the spaces, the slabs can run out of room to expand, eventually causing “concrete pavement blowups or buckling,” he said.
Expanding is also an issue for the steel used to construct train tracks, Sias said. “All of a sudden, the individual rails, they don’t have enough room to expand, so they’ll just buckle. Then, you get those curves in the railway lines, which obviously are not good.”
What is the tipping point?
The answer often depends on location and design. “There may not always be a magic number at which the infrastructure will go from ‘working’ to ‘failed,’” Bhasin said.
Physical infrastructure is traditionally designed based on the historical conditions of a particular location, Keith said. That means the point at which extreme heat starts to affect surfaces varies depending on the past climate of that location.
“Any kind of prolonged extreme heat outside of that past climate will push the physical infrastructure into dangerous territory,” he said.
It’s important to be prepared to make immediate repairs, Sias said. Public agencies should know that extreme weather can cause damage and have the supplies on hand to react promptly.
“In terms of predicting where things like buckling are going to happen, it’s very, very difficult to do,” she said. “There’s no real models or anything that will tell you, ‘Okay, this joint is going to buckle, but this one’s not.’ ”
Still, there are some “relatively mundane engineering things” that can be done to lower the chances of negative impacts, Muench said.
For example, concrete slabs used for road pavement can be made smaller. “The shorter the slab is, the less length change it undergoes during heating and cooling,” he said. “If you can reduce that length change, then the likelihood of something like a blowup would be less.”
Modifications can also be made to an asphalt mixture that makes it stiffer in higher temperatures and more resistant to cracking at lower temperatures, he said.
It may also be helpful to plant trees along roadways to create shade, or to use “cool pavement,” which is in lighter colors and slightly more reflective than what is traditionally used, Keith said.
But he and other experts emphasized that broader changes and, in particular, efforts to adjust infrastructure design, are critical for adapting to future extreme weather.
A 2017 study that assessed extreme climate impacts on infrastructure in Europe noted that heat waves would account for about 92 percent of total hazard damage in the transport sector by the 2080s, with much of the effects expected on roads and railways.
“We need to think longer term and more holistically about heat,” Keith said. “We need to make sure that every time that we have a roadway project or a railway project of the future, that we’re making sure to design it for the climate that we’re pushing ourselves into and not the one that we’re currently in or the one that we’ve had been in the past.”
A holistic approach, Bhasin added, should also include taking steps to understand and mitigate the causes for these extreme temperature events.
“If not, we may continue in a downward spiral,” he said. | 2022-07-21T10:18:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happens to roads, bridges and railways in extreme heat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/20/heat-wave-road-railway-buckling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/20/heat-wave-road-railway-buckling/ |
The heat wave could force Europeans to rethink flawed, centuries-old ideas
Effectively addressing climate change requires Europeans to abandon ideas that long justified colonialism
Perspective by Deborah R. Coen
Deborah R. Coen is professor of history and chair of the program in History of Science & Medicine at Yale University.
Firefighters contain a wildfire that encroached on nearby homes in the Shiregreen area of Sheffield on July 20 in England. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
As Britain and France grapple with sweltering temperatures — possibly even record temperatures — for which their countries are ill-equipped, their privileged residents are at a crossroads. Will they respond by installing central air and stronger locks on their doors, pretending that they can secure their futures by walling themselves off from those who work — and sweat — to provide for them? Or could this devastating heat wave prompt a sense of solidarity with those around the world for whom climate change has already made 100-degree-plus temperatures an everyday hazard?
Ever since Western Europeans began to hatch schemes to exploit the Americas, they have used their “temperate” climate to define themselves against those they colonized or enslaved. Throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, European scientists attributed their society’s successes — intellectual, commercial and military — in part to an even-keeled climate that proved friendly to industry and agriculture as well as conducive to mental labor.
Now, with climate change mocking the very notion of a “temperate” region, might Western Europeans finally give up the myth that there is anything natural about their history of global dominance?
“Temperate” was meant to be a technical term, derived from antiquity and defined in contrast to the “frigid” and “torrid” or “tropical” zones of the earth. But it resisted precise definition. When British colonists began to settle what is now the Canadian Maritimes in the early 1600s, they labeled the region’s climate “temperate” to stake their claim on the territory. It was a maneuver that helped make it seem that the land they had stolen was a natural extension of home. In their stubbornness, they did their best to ignore the stark evidence that the icy winters in Nova Scotia and northern Maine were very little like winters in England.
“Temperate” was also a war cry, a justification for the subjugation of those living in these other realms, according to the argument that it was Western Europe’s duty to bring civilization to populations who were condemned to barbarism by the unpredictable “extremes” of their own climates.
By the late 19th century, the term “tropical” had come to designate entire new fields of scientific research, naming branches of medicine, meteorology and entomology that served Europeans’ efforts to extract resources and labor on an unprecedented scale. And yet “tropical” was as hard to pin down as “temperate.” It applied to deserts and rainforests, swamps and grasslands — areas that had little in common with one another except for the fact that Western Europeans were keen to exploit them yet wary of the surprises they might hold for new arrivals.
The opposition between temperate and tropical climates remained a key justification for colonial regimes into the mid-20th century. Tropical regions were supposedly incapable of civilizing themselves, while temperate regions were assumed to be divinely ordained for European settlement.
These colonial-era theories of climate and governance persisted beyond the formal demise of European empires after World War II. In the 1970s, for instance, a severe drought in the Sahel region of Africa prompted international scientific experts to decry the failure of post-colonial governments to manage their lands properly. This was a direct echo of accusations made by 19th-century French colonial officers to justify their own incursions into the region.
Yet by the mid-1980s, more critically minded scientists determined that drier conditions in the Sahel had been an effect of large-scale climatic shifts — namely, changes in ocean surface temperatures — not of local human actions.
Despite such evidence, the use of climate theories to justify neocolonial interventions has persisted in new forms. The privileged residents of London and Paris today might no longer use the word temperate to explain their advantages over the rest of the world, but this way of thinking has not disappeared. Instead, since 1994, when the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change committed wealthy nations to aiding the most “vulnerable” to adapt to climate change, “vulnerable” has at times become a new spin on “tropical.” When investors discuss the relative climate risks of development projects, they talk about “vulnerable nations” in much the way that colonial powers once talked of “the tropics” — often pointing to the same places on the map.
Just as the 19th-century British historian Henry Buckle claimed that civilization could never develop in the disaster-prone climate of the tropics, so do today’s development experts weigh the likelihood of a return on investment in regions deemed “most vulnerable” to climate change. The metrics they use draw a line between the active members of society who have the capacity to manage risk — assumed to be from Western, industrialized nations — and those who are passively “at risk.”
More basically, talk of climate vulnerability drives a wedge between those applying the metrics and those to whom they are applied. Most vulnerability indexes factor in only economic loss and loss of life, ignoring the value of local and Indigenous cultures and forms of knowledge. What’s more, labeling a population “at risk” or “vulnerable” without offering any historical context suggests that greater vulnerability is an inherent characteristic of that population, although this vulnerability often stems from centuries of exploitation by Europeans.
These indexes also imply that the ultimate goal is invulnerability. But no one is invulnerable. Wealthy nations like the U.K. and France can maintain a fantasy of invulnerability only by exploiting the resources, labor and environments of “vulnerable” nations.
What happens, then, when a heat wave like the one Europeans are experiencing proves that no one is invulnerable to climate change? It’s possible that some will dig in deeper to the delusion of invulnerability, breaking ground on private bunkers or spending public money on fortifications for only the wealthiest neighborhoods.
But this moment could be an opening to a very different politics of climate vulnerability. This direct experience of a hotter earth could inspire new forms of political alliance. Privileged residents of Western Europe might come to see climate change as an event that links their fate to that of “vulnerable” people around the world.
For legal theorist Angela Harris, vulnerability describes not just interdependence among humans but also human interdependence with the natural world. It could therefore produce a politics that reconciles social justice and environmental sustainability, making clear that human well-being is tied to the welfare of other living things. Given that our treaties, scientific theories and funding institutions all depend on comparing populations in terms of their degrees of climate vulnerability, we cannot immediately dispense with this way of thinking. Yet we can use these same scientific tools to make apparent the webs of interdependence — physical, organic and social — that make every one of us both alive and vulnerable. | 2022-07-21T10:18:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The heat wave could force Europeans to rethink flawed, centuries-old ideas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/21/heat-wave-could-force-europeans-rethink-flawed-centuries-old-ideas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/21/heat-wave-could-force-europeans-rethink-flawed-centuries-old-ideas/ |
What the perpetrators of mob violence get wrong — and why it’s dangerous
Mob violence undermines the core principles of American government
Perspective by Stefan Lund
Stefan Lund is a postdoctoral fellow at the Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) listen as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing on July 12. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The House committee hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have made the dangers of mob rule clear. Indeed, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) last week asked Americans to recall the 19th century and remember that mob violence is a “very old problem [that] has returned with new ferocity.” Raskin even paraphrased a speech by Abraham Lincoln who in 1838 declared mob violence to be the greatest danger to the “perpetuation of our political institutions.”
Before the Civil War, Americans frequently confronted the specter of mob violence, which perpetrators justified as necessary to prevent or remove perceived threats to their communities. But then, as now, mob violence was about subverting democracy and the rule of law to violently enforce one group’s idea of justice.
During Lincoln’s young adulthood in the 1830s, mob violence in the United States was common. Historian David Grimsted identified nearly 150 recorded incidents of mob violence in the United States in 1835 alone, with most targeting individuals and groups who threatened the White, Protestant status quo. In Northern cities, these were often Catholic immigrants. In the South, White mobs targeted free and enslaved Black men who they perceived as challenging the racial caste system. Mobs also made victims of those who advocated for causes, such as abolition, that threatened swift and radical change.
Contrary to the common stereotype of mobs as a sort of peasant rabble, American mobs of the 19th century included people from all walks of life, including tradesmen, professionals and elected officials. In fact, many of the participants in mob violence enjoyed respected positions in their town or county. Lead by pillars of the local community, mobs believed they represented the popular will and that their crowd violence was justified in the name of preserving civic order.
Mobs ranged in size from a few to hundreds, and the violence they committed consisted of everything from intimidation and destruction of property to torture. Arrests were uncommon, and prosecution was rarer still. In part because mobs often included influential members of the community, outnumbered local law enforcement rarely sought punishment.
In fact, some mobs anxiously worked to portray their violence as reasonable and legally justifiable. In 1845 Lexington, Ky., a group of White men wanted to prevent an anti-slavery paper from being published in their town. They held multiple public meetings in which they denounced the editor of the newspaper as incendiary and demanded he cease publication. When the editor refused, they removed the printing press by force and solicited lawyer Thomas Marshall to publicly defend their actions. Marshall agreed and delivered a speech arguing that the offended citizens were no mob but a “general assembly of the people” who had gathered to remove a public nuisance. The group of Lexingtonians followed suit, defending their actions against those who might “misrepresent [their] motives and conduct,” worrying not about legal prosecution but judgment.
But despite such claims, these activities were antithetical to democratic government and the rules that undergirded it. That’s why in 1838, at age 28, Lincoln directly addressed this issue.
His speech followed the murder of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist preacher and editor. It was not new, as Lincoln understood, for mobs to threaten and harass anti-slavery activists, but Lovejoy was the first to die at the hands of his attackers.
In the 1830s, Lovejoy had moved from New England to the slave state of Missouri and established an anti-slavery newspaper. His denunciations of slavery made him many enemies and Lovejoy decided to move again. He relocated to Illinois, where locals were just as hostile, confiscating and then destroying his printing press. When Lovejoy ordered a new press to continue his publishing, he and friends stood guard inside the Alton, Ill., warehouse where it was housed. When a mob arrived, shots were fired and Lovejoy was killed.
To the men of Missouri and Illinois who made up the mob, Lovejoy was an outsider who had come into their communities to bring unwanted change. These men, like many White Americans of the time, equated anti-slavery advocacy with support for rebellion by enslaved people and viewed their violence as a legitimate means for restoring order.
At the core of mob violence was the assertion that a group of citizens can know what is best for their town, their community, their country, and are justified in using violence to enforce their will and bring about their vision of a correct society.
In his speech Lincoln identified this assertion of legitimacy by mobs — that they could lawfully act without the sanction of the government — as the fatal threat of mob violence. If the government allowed mobs to go unchallenged, public confidence in the republic would collapse, he argued. Even good people “who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws,” would wonder why they should support a government that cannot or will not prevent violent groups from attacking their fellow citizens.
It was this erosion of trust in democratic civil authority Lincoln lamented when he predicted that “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author.” When mobs ran rampant and the government did nothing, Lincoln argued, Americans would wonder why they should bother with such a government at all.
His observations remain important today. Like 19th-century mobs, the attackers of Jan. 6 believed that their country was threatened and that a bout of righteous violence by upstanding citizens was necessary to restore order. In this context incidents from the riot that seem disturbing and incongruous — such as rioters chanting “USA! USA!” as they broke into the Capitol, or a rioter telling a police officer that “We’re doing this for you, buddy” — can be identified as mob behavior consistent with this longer history of violence against men like Lovejoy.
Almost two centuries ago, Lincoln declared: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” He was right. Mob violence undermines the principle that government be based on the participation of all the people — not just those that feel aggrieved. This was as true in Lincoln’s day as it is in ours. | 2022-07-21T10:18:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the perpetrators of mob violence get wrong — and why it’s dangerous - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/21/what-perpetrators-mob-violence-get-wrong-why-its-dangerous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/21/what-perpetrators-mob-violence-get-wrong-why-its-dangerous/ |
Former Minneapolis officer Thomas K. Lane was convicted in February of violating George Floyd's federal civil rights. Lane has also pleaded guilty to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's 2020 death. (AP)
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A former Minneapolis police officer who held George Floyd’s legs as he begged for breath beneath Derek Chauvin’s knee faces sentencing Thursday for violating the Black man’s federal civil rights.
Thomas K. Lane is the first of three former officers at the scene with Chauvin to be sentenced for his role in Floyd’s fatal May 2020 arrest.
Lane and two other former officers — J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao — were convicted in February in federal court of violating Floyd’s civil rights. A jury found they failed to render medical aid to Floyd as he complained of struggling to breathe and lost consciousness while being restrained facedown on a South Minneapolis street.
Kueng and Thao were also convicted of failing to intervene with Chauvin as he pressed his knees into Floyd’s neck and back for nearly 9½ minutes.
Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to federal charges related to Floyd’s death and was sentenced this month to 20 years in federal prison. Chauvin was already serving a 22½-year state sentence for Floyd’s murder, which he will serve concurrently.
Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson, who presided over the case, to sentence Lane to between 5¼ and 6½ years in prison for his role in the restraint that killed Floyd.
Earl Gray, Lane’s attorney, said he asked for a sentence of 27 months — slightly shorter than the three-year sentence Lane is facing after he pleaded guilty in May to a separate state charge of aiding and abetting manslaughter in Floyd’s death, avoiding another trial.
As part of the state plea deal, prosecutors agreed to allow Lane to serve his state sentence concurrent with his federal sentence. They will also allow Lane to serve that time in a federal prison. But it is ultimately up to Hennepin County District Judge Peter A. Cahill, who has scheduled Lane’s state sentencing for Sept. 21.
In the state case, Lane signed an affidavit admitting his culpability in Floyd’s killing, which was captured on a viral video that sparked worldwide protests and a reckoning on race and policing. “I now make no claim that I am innocent,” the plea agreement, signed by Lane, reads.
In an interview, Gray said his client, whose wife recently gave birth to their first child, pleaded guilty to avoid a potentially longer sentence because he “wanted to be a part of his child’s life.” He said he had asked Magnuson to recommend Lane serve time in a federal prison in Minnesota, so that he can be close to his family, but acknowledged that the Bureau of Prisons will ultimately determine his fate.
Lane will be given a chance to speak at Thursday’s hearing, but Gray said it was unclear whether his client would. “He wants to get on with his life,” Gray said.
Lane, 39, had been a full-time police officer for less than a week when he and his partner, Kueng, 28, another rookie, responded to a 911 call at a market about the alleged passing of a counterfeit $20 bill.
At the scene, store employees pointed out Floyd sitting in a nearby car, and the officers approached. Lane pulled a gun on Floyd within 15 seconds of encountering him, without telling the man what he was investigating, prompting Floyd to panic and beg the officer not to shoot him.
Lane testified during the federal trial that he was worried Floyd had a weapon or would try to flee the scene. Later, Kueng and Lane struggled with Floyd as they tried to place him inside a squad car.
Chauvin, 46, arrived during the struggle and helped place Floyd on the ground, where he pressed his knees into Floyd’s neck and back. Kueng restrained Floyd’s back, and Lane held the man’s legs. Thao, 36, who was Chauvin’s partner, held back increasingly concerned bystanders who begged the officers to get off Floyd and render aid as the man went limp.
Body-camera video of the incident captured Lane twice asking Chauvin if they should reposition Floyd as the man complained about breathing, but Chauvin rebuffed him. When Floyd went limp, Kueng and Lane checked Floyd for a pulse but could not find one. Kueng relayed that information to Chauvin, who did not move, and all three continued to restrain the man.
Kueng, Lane and Thao all testified they were deferring to Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene who had been Kueng’s field training officer and had advised Lane. But prosecutors argued all three had been trained to immediately move a handcuffed person onto their side when they were no longer resisting and to render medical aid to someone who is unconscious. They also presented testimony showing the officers had been trained to intervene with another officer, no matter his rank, if they observed that person violating use of force or other department policies.
Lane testified that he did not fully realize that Floyd was in trouble until a paramedic rolled the man over to place him on a gurney. His attorney sought to win sympathy from the jury by pointing out that Lane jumped into an ambulance and performed chest compressions on Floyd in an attempt to revive him.
But prosecutors argued that was too little, too late — a sentiment they repeated in their sentencing request. They stated that Lane “did not intend for Mr. Floyd to die” but he didn’t do anything to help him when it could have “made a difference.” His “inaction” not only had “serious consequences” for Floyd and Lane but also Floyd’s family, other police officers and the broader American public, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors have asked for a “substantially higher” sentence than Lane’s for Kueng and Thao, but less than what Chauvin received. Attorneys for the former officers have objected to the exact sentencing guidelines Magnuson is considering — specific details of which remain under court seal.
Thao’s attorney Robert Paule has suggested his client should serve no more than two years in prison; Thomas Plunkett, Kueng’s attorney, has not publicly said how much prison time he is seeking for his client. Magnuson has scheduled a Friday hearing for Kueng and Thao on the sentencing dispute.
At Chauvin’s July 7 sentencing, Magnuson admonished the former officer, not only for his “unconscionable” treatment of Floyd but also for how his actions had affected the lives of Kueng, Lane and Thao. “In addition to taking the life of another human being, you absolutely destroyed the lives of three other young officers,” Magnuson told Chauvin, who displayed no reaction.
Kueng and Thao face another trial this fall on state charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in that case on Oct. 24. | 2022-07-21T10:18:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thomas K. Lane faces sentencing for violating Floyd’s civil rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/thomas-lane-george-floyd-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/thomas-lane-george-floyd-sentencing/ |
Arab citizens know democracy’s not perfect. They want it anyway.
That’s what Arab Barometer finds in its latest wave of surveys across 10 countries in the Middle East and North Africa
Analysis by Michael Robbins
Supporters of Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda party, protest at Tunisia’s anti-terrorism unit in Tunis on July 19. (Hassene Dridi/AP)
A decade after the Arab Spring, what do the citizens of Arab nations think about democracy? In its 2021-2022 public opinion survey across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Arab Barometer finds that they’re worried that democracy can’t deliver either good politics or stable and healthy economies. At the same time, democracy remains the form of government they would prefer.
The Arab Barometer is the premier academic public opinion survey in MENA, comparable to other regional counterparts such as Afrobarometer and the AmericasBarometer in its scope and methods. A decade ago, at the start of the Arab Spring, we found the that citizens across the region overwhelmingly favored democracy. At the same time, fewer than half in all 10 countries surveyed in the project’s second wave worried that democracy might bring economic weakness, indecisiveness and instability.
In the decade that followed, these views began to change, including in countries that experienced democratic openings. In Tunisia, for example, citizens began to change their minds about democracy. Shortly after the Jasmine Revolution, fewer than 1 in 5 citizens believed that instability (17 percent), indecision (19 percent) and weak economic performance (17 percent) were linked with democracy.
After two years of weak democratic governments, the percentage of Tunisians who held this view had more than doubled for all three measures: instability, 41 percent; indecision, 50 percent; and weak economy, 36 percent. Over the next decade, this perception grew, with at least two-thirds of Tunisians linking each problem with democratic governance.
How much popular support does Tunisia's president really have?
A regional shift
Arab Barometer has conducted nearly 23,000 face-to-face interviews of citizens age 18 and above across 10 countries to date as part of its seventh wave. Each of these personal interviews are conducted in the respondent’s residence on a variety of topics, including economic, political, religious and political issues. Each country survey has a margin of error of approximately plus or minus two percentage points. Full details are available on our website.
Tunisia was not alone in its opinion shift. In seven of nine countries where we asked these questions, half or more now agree that democracy is linked with some of these shortcomings. That’s increased significantly in many countries since our last wave of interviews in 2018-2019. This shift in the region is consistent with the global trend of growing discontent with democracy.
At the same time, as our new report details, in all 10 countries we surveyed, majorities still agree that despite its problems, democracy remains the best system of governance. Moreover, in all but two of the 10, majorities go even further to say that not only is democracy the best system but the only viable system of governance.
In other words, MENA citizens have become clear-eyed about democracy’s shortcomings — seeing it as the best system, or even the only viable system — while understanding that it is not perfect. That’s true for citizens living in countries that previously experienced democratic openings and those that have been authoritarian over the past decade.
Overall, these findings offer some hope for democracy’s future in the region. Research finds that democracy takes hold only when all key pillars of society, including the public at large, believe there to be no better option. Citizens across MENA no longer harbor unrealistic expectations that a political transition to democracy will solve all problems in their societies — a major shift from just a decade ago. And yet they remain committed to it as their goal.
Michael Robbins (@mdhrobbins) is the director and co-principal investigator of Arab Barometer. | 2022-07-21T10:18:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What kinds of government do MENA citizens want? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/arab-citizens-know-democracys-not-perfect-they-want-it-anyway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/arab-citizens-know-democracys-not-perfect-they-want-it-anyway/ |
Will Biden’s age keep him from being reelected?
Young people are the most critical of older politicians, our research finds
Analysis by Damon C. Roberts
Jennifer Wolak
President Biden speaks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on July 11, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Most Americans say they do not want to see Joe Biden run for reelection in 2024. Even among Democrats, only a third say they want the president to seek a second term.
It is tempting to assume that’s because Americans are dissatisfied with Biden’s leadership. Amid inflation worries and economic pessimism, Biden remains unpopular with the public. But when asked why they want a different Democratic nominee in 2024, Democrats are as likely to cite the president’s age as they are his job performance.
At 79, Biden is the oldest person to serve as president, and some people wonder whether he has the energy to handle the job’s demands. Others worry that Biden’s age makes it difficult for him to connect with younger voters.
But even as Democrats lament Biden’s age now, they nonetheless chose him as the party’s nominee in 2020 from a field of other candidates who were largely younger than he. And while most voters may say they think there should be age limits for elective office, they still reelect many older candidates to office. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 82; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 80; and the current Senate has the oldest average age in its history.
Do people really care about the age of those who represent them?
In a recent paper, we examined how Americans evaluate younger and older politicians. We find that people are happy to support older candidates in elections — but are less likely to approve of their performance in office.
Biden's low poll numbers are exactly what we should expect
We start by considering how politician age affects public job approval of members of Congress, drawing on data from the 2006-2020 Cooperative Election Studies. The surveys were administered online by YouGov using sample matching and were weighted to be nationally representative, taking into account region, voter registration status, age, race/ethnicity, gender and education.
People were asked whether they approve or disapprove of the job performance of the person who represents them in Congress. After accounting for factors including partisan similarity and length of service, we find people rate the job performance of older members of Congress lower than they do younger members’ job performance.
Young people are the most critical of older politicians
Some people have argued that Biden’s age is particularly a problem for winning over young voters. We tested for age differences in our congressional approval data. Indeed, the CCES data suggests that young people are the most likely to penalize members of Congress for their advanced age. The youngest respondents give an approval rating six points higher to a 30-year-old representative than to an 80-year-old one, all else equal. Among older respondents, the penalties for politician age are smaller.
Why don’t we see more young people in office?
Young people are more likely to be happy with their member of Congress when that person is younger. Why, then, aren’t more young people in office? We wondered whether older voters are unwilling to support younger candidates in elections, fearing that they lack the experience needed to succeed.
We explored this in a second study with a sample of 1,000 Americans who participated online in the Cooperative Election Study, in a survey fielded in September and October 2020. Respondents were selected to be nationally representative of the U.S. population via sample matching.
So that we could see whether people rate younger candidates more favorably than older candidates, we randomly assigned respondents to read a short vignette about a candidate for state legislature described as either 23, 50, or 77 years old. As you can see in the figure below, people rated the candidate similarly regardless of his age.
And that was true for both younger and older people. During a campaign, our respondents didn’t prefer candidates whose age is closest to theirs — as often happens with many other subcategories, such as race, ethnicity and gender, research finds. This helps explain why, in 2020, Biden was chosen as the Democratic Party nominee from a field of candidates mostly younger than he, and why young people tended to back Bernie Sanders over younger alternatives such as Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg.
Apparently, age isn’t as important to voters as those other categories. Instead of wanting candidates who are close to them in age, young people may prefer politicians who campaign to solve their generation’s concerns.
That still doesn’t answer our question: If Americans are willing to support candidates regardless of age, why aren’t more younger politicians in office? We find greater evidence of bias against younger candidates when we consider the traits people associate with younger and older politicians. At the end of the study, respondents were given a list of nine traits and asked which described the candidate they had read about, as shown in the figure below. Our respondents reported that they saw younger candidates as less experienced and less well-qualified. What’s more, they see younger candidates as less likely to be conservative. All this may undercut a general belief that they are viable candidates for office. Of course, there are also practical barriers to young people’s political careers; the Constitution sets minimum age requirements to serve in Congress, and most state legislatures set age-of-candidacy requirements as well. Younger people are less likely to have the connections and funds needed to run for office and many are uninterested in a career in politics.
Of course, Biden’s age (and that of Trump, his potential opponent) isn’t the only thing that will be on voters’ minds in 2024. In the midterms this fall, inflation, gas prices, reproductive rights and other practical concerns loom large. It’s hard to predict what will be uppermost by 2024. While our research suggests that Biden’s age is likely to hurt his public approval, particularly among younger voters, many other things will also matter if he decides to run again in 2024.
Damon C. Roberts (@damoncroberts) is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Jennifer Wolak (@j_wolak_) is a professor of political science at Michigan State University. | 2022-07-21T10:18:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Do voters think Biden's too old to stay president in 2024? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/biden-trump-president-age-2024-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/biden-trump-president-age-2024-election/ |
High jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh won the silver medal at the world championships. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
EUGENE, Ore. — When the war started, Anna Ryzhykova could not eat. She worried about her friends living with their children in basements, without food and water. She helped some of them move west, away from the invading Russian soldiers and the worst danger. She stopped training and rarely contemplated her career as an elite 400-meter hurdler.
“At that moment, I couldn’t think anything about sport,” Ryzhykova said. “Then I understood the war won’t end tomorrow or next week. I started thinking about what I could do. Some of my teammates, some of my friends told me I should continue my sports career. I understood we could speak and do interviews. We could talk about war, and people should know they can help us and support us. People should know the truth about the situation in Ukraine.”
On Tuesday, Ryzhykova ran once around the Hayward Field oval and cleared 10 hurdles at the track and field world championships, wearing a yellow-and-blue ribbon in her hair and yellow-and-blue makeup on her eyes. She is one of 22 Ukrainian athletes who are competing in Eugene after five months of worrying for loved ones, moving around the world to continue training and overcoming unthinkable circumstances.
On consecutive nights, two Ukrainian high jumpers captured medals. Andriy Protsenko won bronze Monday, just months after he moved from the besieged city of Kherson to a rural village without training equipment. He scrounged for supplies, turning an iron bar and two tires into a barbell for squatting.
“There was no high jumping, but I found the possibility to run,” he said. “It was not so difficult to find something to create the equipment. The main thing was to find the motivation to train — but fortunately I could do it.”
“After that, I understand that anything is possible,” Ryzhykova said. “Andriy trained for one month in an occupied city. To go out there with the risk of his life and his family and win a bronze medal, it was so amazing. I was almost crying.”
Two Norwegian stars stunned on wild night
Shortly before she qualified for the world championships, high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh saw two rockets destroy a building in the city center near where she lives. People she knew survived but suffered wounds. On Tuesday, after she leaped 2.02 meters (6 feet 7½ inches), Mahuchikh looked at the silver medal hanging around her neck.
“For me,” she said, “it’s gold.”
Over the past five months, Ukrainian athletes have spread out across the world to continue training, moving to Portugal, Turkey, Poland and elsewhere. Hurdler Viktoriya Tkachuk helped her parents move from a particularly dangerous area just north of Kyiv but had to leave them behind when she relocated to Portugal and Turkey.
“It was so hard for me,” Tkachuk said. “I’m so happy now they’re [in] a safe place.” She paused. “Almost a safe place.”
The forced movement led the Athletics Integrity Unit, the drug testing arm of global track and field, to provide a waiver for one portion of its program. Athletes typically are under strict obligation to share their location and be prepared for random tests. The AIU granted exemptions to seven Ukrainians, it announced last week.
World Athletics, track and field’s governing body, became one of the first sports organizations to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes in February. President Sebastian Coe said it would be “inconceivable” to allow “two aggressor nations who walked into an independent state” to compete while Ukrainians confronted “extremely challenging” circumstances to qualify, a sentiment Ukrainian athletes agreed with.
Devon Allen suffers heartbreak on night of U.S. medals
“Every sportsman from Russia has a chance to say something,” Tkachuk said. “No one said anything, even in a personal message. They are not supporting us. They are not supporting Ukraine. So it means they support [President Vladimir] Putin and everything that Russia is doing with Ukraine now.”
Crowds at Hayward Field have embraced Ukrainian athletes. Fans roared Tuesday night each time Mahuchikh and Iryna Gerashchenko cleared a bar. “I realized it’s not only because I am the best,” Gerashchenko, who set a personal best as she finished fourth, said through an interpreter. “It’s because I am from Ukraine. It means these people support our really strong nation.”
Ukrainian athletes have embraced not only the chance to compete but also the opportunity to communicate with a global audience. They have unfailingly stopped in the mixed zone, the mazelike area where athletes speak with reporters, to share their experiences and opinions.
“It’s important people see us, that we are from Ukraine,” Ryzhykova said. “I want to tell that we are highly motivated here, not just because we are representing our country. Recently, the president from our federation came from the front. He is in the army. He came here and told us our army boys and girls who are there, they’re checking the news and reading the sports news. And they are waiting for good news from us.”
The world championships provide a respite for Ukrainian athletes. The war rages near their friends and families. Some will travel to other international competitions. Some will return home, and others will return to countries they have temporarily adopted. The war is never far from their minds — except in the fleeting moments when they are running around the track or leaping over the bar.
“I feel normal just when I run,” Ryzhykova said. “I’m not thinking about anything. I’m just concentrating on my hurdles and my lane. And I’m fighting with time, with myself.
“In this moment, I feel free. I feel free in my mind. I’m just doing my job.” | 2022-07-21T10:19:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainian athletes savor track and field world championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/21/ukraine-track-world-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/21/ukraine-track-world-championships/ |
D.C.-area campuses team up to combat gun violence
Experts at more than a dozen colleges and universities will research solutions aimed at reducing gun violence
Memorials are seen outside Greenwood Park Mall the day after a mass shooting in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood, Ind., on July 18. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Leaders at Washington-area colleges and universities say they will spend the next several months researching solutions to reduce gun violence — an effort that comes as gun-related crimes rise throughout the region, mass shooters claim lives across the country and campus leaders contend with a mental health crisis.
Fifteen members of a consortium of local schools will pool their resources, researchers and faculty experts in areas including maternal and child health, public policy, mental health, criminology and technology, officials said. The goal is to provide lawmakers and the public with steps they can take to drive down gun violence.
“We have people who think all day and generate new knowledge, new ways of doing things. And, we graduate students,” said Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University, a consortium member. “We feel that it’s our responsibility to do whatever we can.”
Washington said the idea for the initiative started to take shape this spring, after three students on his campus in Fairfax died by suicide with firearms. He contacted Darryll Pines, who leads the University of Maryland in College Park, to discuss what could be done to prevent gun-related deaths.
“We’re both engineers,” Pines said, “and the background of engineers is that we’re interested in solutions to problems, however complex they are.”
The men decided to include other campuses in the region, which lead to the creation of The 120 Initiative. The name is a somber nod to the more than 120 people who die on average daily from gun violence, leaders said.
At George Mason and U-Md., new presidents arrive amid national crises
Pines said he wants to “take the politics out” of the gun debate and get to solutions — quickly. Over the next six to 12 months, he said officials will start having actionable items to present to the public.
He compared the potential outcomes of the partnership with popular Smokey Bear and crash dummies public health campaigns that encouraged people to prevent wildfires and to wear seat belts. “Now, we can do something similar to change human behavior” around guns, Pines said.
Among the experts who will join the initiative is Adnan Hyder, a George Washington University professor and director of the school’s Center on Commercial Determinants of Health. Hyder said anything that can be done to limit people’s access to weapons will be important.
“The issue of gun violence has been extremely complicated,” Hyder said in a statement, “because, unlike other diseases, it has become integrally linked to an issue of constitutional rights granted by the Second Amendment. I think that the conversation has to be shifted to the domain of public health.”
D.C. gun seizures are soaring — but charges aren’t sticking
Gun violence is a constant threat for large, crowded places like universities. Washington referred to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 students and faculty members on the Blacksburg, Va., campus in 2007. The university is an affiliate member of the new gun initiative.
And following a recent string of mass shootings — at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y, an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., a concrete molding company in Smithsburg, Md., and, most recently, a shopping mall in Greenwood, Ind. — “the reality of the situation is that it’s highly likely that a campus somewhere is going to experience some type of mass shooting event in the near future,” Washington said.
“You don’t want to wait for that kind of attack before we begin to act as institutions,” Washington continued.
The other partners in The 120 Initiative include: American, Catholic, Gallaudet, Georgetown, George Washington, Howard, Marymount and Trinity Washington universities; as well as Montgomery College, Northern Virginia Community College, Prince George’s Community College, University of the District of Columbia and University of Maryland Global Campus.
Johns Hopkins University also is an affiliate member. | 2022-07-21T11:44:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C.-area colleges to research gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/gun-violence-research-dc-maryland-virginia-colleges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/gun-violence-research-dc-maryland-virginia-colleges/ |
The surest indication that we live in a decadent age is the surfeit of repeats. Hollywood is a franchise machine for producing new iterations of Star Wars and Spider Man. Publishers are more interested in stretching brands than nurturing fresh talent. Pop music is stuck on perpetual repeat. This is Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence” gone digital and global. At 4 p.m. Wednesday, it reached the Conservative leadership race when Liz Truss made it to the final two in the race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister.
It is not unusual for Conservative politicians to admire Margaret Thatcher — after all, the Iron Lady won three elections in a row, restored national pride, and shifted her party (and, indeed, the rival Labour party) in a much more free-market direction. Rishi Sunak, who made it to the final two with 137 votes, also regards himself as a Thatcherite.
Still, Truss takes Thatcher-worship to extremes — not just embracing her ideology but also imitating her sartorial style and personal mannerisms. In the Channel 4 TV debate for the leadership, she copied Thatcher’s big-white bow dress from one of her 1979 TV appearances. During a visit to Estonia she donned military gear and perched on a tank, echoing an image of Thatcher in a tank in West Germany in 1986. Truss’s choice of a Russian hat during a trip to Moscow was modeled on Thatcher three decades earlier. It is as if she were auditioning for a role in a Hollywood sequel — look like the star of the first movie and you will get the part.
How does Truss stand up to the Thatcher comparison that she so willingly invites?
There are certainly some similarities. Truss shares Thatcher’s instinctive belief in individual freedom amplified by educational opportunity. For her, life is what you make it provided that you are given a fair chance. She has no time for whingers who complain that they are oppressed by society while they lie in bed all day, but she’s equally fierce about knocking down unfair barriers to talent. When asked in an interview for her vision of Britain, she gave a rousingly Thatcherite answer: “Free — that means doing what you want, having control over life, not being told what to do. And it’s got to be just. People have got to feel that barriers aren’t being put in their way because they are a woman or because they’re from a low-income background.”
The big difference between her and her idol is that she’s much more of a libertarian. Thatcher was shaped by her father’s Methodism. Truss is a child of the Swinging Sixties — she has consistently voted in favor of same sex marriage and gay rights and against gambling restrictions. She once aroused the ire of members of her constituency party in South West Norfolk because she had had an extramarital affair with a married Tory MP, Mark Field. (Her marriage to Hugh O’Leary, an accountant, survived the controversy.)
Like her role model, Truss has positioned herself as the champion of the right of the party. Thatcher won the Tory leadership in 1975 as the champion of those who were sick of the party’s left-ward drift under Edward Heath. However, Truss has become her ideological successor by a more circuitous route: She campaigned vigorously for Remain, while Sunak was a Brexiteer from the very first. Still, she made it to the final two this week as the right’s favorite: the one who would cut taxes as quickly as possible and bargain with the EU on the Northern Ireland protocol as hard as possible. Given the roundabout path of her ambitions, perhaps “prisoner” of the right would be a more apt description than champion.
The other great similarity with Thatcher is Truss’s indomitability: She seems to be capable of overcoming every obstacle and recovering from every setback to reach the top of politics. In his great essay “Politics as a Vocation” the German sociologist Max Weber reflected: “The only man who has a ‘vocation’ for politics is one who is certain that his spirit will not be broken if the world, when looked at from his point of view, proves too stupid or base to accept what he wishes to offer it, and who, when faced with all that obduracy, can still say ‘nevertheless’ despite everything.” The sentiment describes Truss at her best.
But the more you look at the similarities, the more contrived they seem.
Take style: However hard Truss tries to behave like Thatcher, there is one overwhelming difference between the two of them. Truss is simply much odder than Thatcher — or indeed than any politician I have ever met. Her public-speaking is wooden: Recitations enlivened only by her habit of putting inexplicable emphases on certain words. In person, she invades your personal space. She speaks over you. She takes photographs of your food to post on her hyperactive Instagram account.
Or take ideology. For all their similarities, Truss breaks with her idol on the most important issue facing the country. On coming to power, Thatcher prioritized two things: getting inflation under control (even if it meant soaring unemployment) and balancing the budget (the subject of endless homilies about good housewives balancing the household budget). Only then did she unleash the tax cuts that defined the middle period of her premiership.
Truss, by contrast, is throwing good housekeeping out of the window in a rush to cut taxes and, as she sees it, reignite growth. At best, this is Reaganism rather than Thatcherism (although Reagan had the twin advantages of the world’s reserve currency and biggest economy). At worst, it is a cynical ploy to appeal to the 200,000 Conservative Party members who now decide who wins. On taxing and spending, Sunak is closer to the real Thatcher than her self-appointed heir.
The biggest difference between the two, however, is the difference between the original artist and the tribute act. The latter is by definition a second-rater who feeds off other people’s creativity because they have little creativity of their own.
Thatcher’s policies were innovative responses to the most pressing problems of her time: raging inflation, industrial strife, the three-day work week, plummeting national confidence and an over-regulated economy. She repeatedly wrong-footed her more ideological supporters by throwing in fresh ideas such as tackling climate change and working with Mikhail Gorbachev.
Truss’s policies are attempts to echo those greatest hits regardless of their relevance: continue to bash Europe even though Britain’s best interests lie in forming a constructive relationship with its biggest trading partner; and cut taxes even though the country’s most pressing economic problem is 9%-plus inflation.
The malign combination of awkward personal style and a mummified ideology should rule Truss out of serious consideration for the most powerful job in the country. But her chances of coming out on top are better than even. Sunak has singularly failed to turn himself into the overwhelming choice of the parliamentary party in the way that Theresa May once did. He also has two forces arraigned against him: Boris Johnson loyalists who accuse him of betrayal, and Tory radicals who blame him for rising taxes and the cost-of-living crisis.
To her advantage, Truss reminds the party membership of their glory years. There is a good reason why our culture industries produce sequels and remakes in such profusion: The public likes them.
Boris Johnson’s Fall Is Populism’s Latest Act of Self-Destruction: Adrian Wooldridge
Tories Must Decide Between Thatcher and Reagan Leadership: Martin Ivens
The Cruelest Cut in the Tory Leadership Race: Therese Raphael | 2022-07-21T11:48:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, Liz... - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/are-you-there-margaret-its-me-liz/2022/07/21/1687b70c-08de-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/are-you-there-margaret-its-me-liz/2022/07/21/1687b70c-08de-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
ROME, ITALY - JULY 21: Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi delivers his speech to the Chamber of Deputies, on July 21, 2022 in Rome, Italy. Yesterday, the prime minister asked for a new vote of confidence from the Italian senate, but three parties in his governing coalition refused to give their support, prompting him to again offer his resignation. (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images) (Photographer: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images Europe)
Mario Draghi’s government in Italy is over. But Europe has a new political figure on its stage. The latest Italian political crisis, which has brought to an abrupt close 16 months of serious government, has also forced Draghi, known best as the consummate central banker, to come out as the politician he always was. In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, the technocrat brought in to lead a cross-party unity government and Italy out of the pandemic, presented himself as a man of the Italian people. The response of the populist-nativist parties was to bring down the government.
A single week has again proved a long time in politics. On July 14, the former European Central Bank president set off the tumult by handing in his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella after the largest party in the coalition refused to back him in a confidence vote. Last week’s Draghi seemed set in his conviction to quit, according to people close to him. But the Draghi who took the floor this week came out to fight.
In a combative speech, he addressed the central defect of his current role: He wasn’t elected but appointed. As the responsibility of the Draghi government moved from clear-cut pandemic management that weakness has made it increasingly difficult for him to govern. Corralling the far right and populist left-wing elements in his unruly coalition as Italy faces rising energy prices, rampant inflation, war in Europe, and the possibility of social unrest in the autumn was increasingly a hopeless task.
So in his crucial pivot on Wednesday, Draghi said he’d been moved to rescind his resignation — depending on getting support from political parties – because of the “unprecedented” calls for him to stay: specifically, the more than 2,000 mayors who reportedly signed a petition to that end. For Draghi, the mayors were particularly influential because they were “in touch daily with their communities.” In effect, it was a proxy people’s vote.
It’s high time Italians went to vote. Technocratic government was already stretched beyond its limits given mounting global challenges. In the context of the realpolitik of Italy’s gladiatorial politics it’s also no wonder Italy’s populist-nativist politicians wanted Draghi out of power: He presents the biggest threat to their existence.
Draghi’s new politicized persona suits him far better than the “grandfather at the service of the institutions” he presented himself to be in his failed bid for the Italian presidency in January. (It was a role he openly hankered for but was denied by parliamentarians who feared his keeping long-term influence over government.) Four times during his Wednesday speech, he called on his fellow politicians, “Are you ready?” exhorting them to back his call for unity and a continuation of his reform program to increase economic competitiveness and the country’s influence until the end of its mandate in the spring. But it may well have been that it was the Italian people who were the bigger audience he was addressing.
It was always the case that Draghi the politician was waiting in the wings just behind Draghi the economist and Draghi the technocrat. The man who said he’d do “whatever it takes” to save the eurozone in 2012 clearly has an acute political sense. But it poses a big question.
Draghi has always said he will not stand for elected office when this government ended. There’s a precedent that makes his reticence understandable. Mario Monti, who led a technocratic government during the eurozone crisis, failed dismally when he ran for political office. Still, Draghi’s offer to U-turn on his resignation inevitably raises expectations that he could, perhaps, do another U-turn if he felt there were popular demand for him to run for office. Centrist politicians, and Italy’s traditional center-left Democrat Party, already plan to channel the “spirit” of Draghi to gain support in the upcoming vote but that’s unlikely to have the same pull as the man himself.
It would be naïve too to believe it’s just the outpouring from the mayors that brought out the politician in Draghi this week. Global leaders, from the US to the Europe, publicly asked him to stay. The 16 months under his steady hand have turned him from a nice-to-have to a must-have among western leaders.
There had been glee in Moscow that Draghi, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, could be on his way out — and just days after the exit of Boris Johnson in the UK, another ally of Ukrainian President Volodymdyr Zelenskiy. Draghi turned that into a veritable campaign position. In one his more thunderous passages, he condemned Russian interference in Italy and reiterated his country’s support for Ukraine.
Draghi is also an assuring figure for the other proxy for a popular vote: the markets. There were jitters at the potential for pressure on Italian bond yields because of Draghi’s exit. Ratings agencies Fitch and others have warned of the effect on Italian sovereign debt at a time when the ECB is already grappling with inflation. That nervousness was gone by the time he made his speech, but ramped up again when it was clear his government was imperiled again. Spreads on Italian 10-year BTPs over Germany’s benchmark bunds extended to more than 240 basis points on Thursday, a level traditionally seen as putting refinancing for Italian banks and businesses under severe strain. That spread went to as low as about 100 basis point at the start of Draghi’s government.
The most violent attack against Draghi this week came from Giorgia Meloni, the opposition leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy. Polls have long predicted that her party will emerge the biggest winner if elections were called today, with around 22% of votes, slightly ahead of the center-left Democrat Party. That’s no surprise. He is surely the biggest electoral threat to Meloni and her ambitions should he ever decide to run.
That outcome is, at this stage, very unlikely. But what is certain from the civic outpouring at Draghi’s departure is there is a significant slice of Italy that believes in his vision. That’s some consolation as Italians head to vote this autumn, almost 100 years to the month when Benito Mussolini got parliament’s backing to get full power over government, a crucial event in the build-up to World War II. That uncanny coincidence should give everyone pause too.
• Draghi’s Left His Mark Even If Coalition Falls: Rachel Sanderson
• The ECB Needs a Bazooka to Close Bond Spreads: Marcus Ashworth | 2022-07-21T11:49:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Mario Draghi Emerge From the Political Rubble? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-mario-draghi-emerge-from-the-political-rubble/2022/07/21/2ccb25ae-08e7-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-mario-draghi-emerge-from-the-political-rubble/2022/07/21/2ccb25ae-08e7-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
(Alla Dreyvitser/Washington Post illustration)
There are no winners in a pandemic. That said, if you’ve made it to the summer of 2022 without yet testing positive for the coronavirus, you might feel entitled to some bragging rights. Who’s still in the game at this point? Not Anthony S. Fauci. Not Denzel Washington, Camila Cabello or Lionel Messi. Not your friend who’s even more cautious than you but who finally caught it last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that nearly 60 percent of Americans had contracted the virus at some point — and that was as of the end of February, before the extremely contagious BA.4 and BA.5 variants became rampant.
Health: The lucky few to never get coronavirus could teach us more about it
Scientists have found no conclusive evidence of innate genetic immunity. “It would be extremely unlikely that any innate immune system properties could protect against all infections,” said Eleanor Murray, an epidemiologist and professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. But Moss’s ability to duck the virus — to her knowledge, we should add; a disclaimer that applies to all these folks, since in theory they could have had asymptomatic cases at some point — does cry out for an explanation. Consider that she’s a pediatric nurse who has been staring covid in the face (while fully masked) for 2½ years now. And that she rode in a car with her ex-husband, with the widows up, three days before he tested positive. And that a woman at the camp where she works every summer gave Moss a henna tattoo one day and reported a positive coronavirus result the next.
S.F. said her household has avoided covid because she feels uniquely vulnerable, not invulnerable. The 40-year-old mother of two, who lives outside Boston, asked to be identified only by her initials because she thinks continuing to practice conservative mitigation strategies could make her a target for online abuse. She has been especially worried about her 4½-year-old daughter, who was born prematurely. And now that everyone seems to have let their guard down, protecting that child feels harder than ever. No one else is masking at the playground. It’s tricky to explain to friends that they are only comfortable gathering outdoors and still prefer to practice social distancing. “I feel like I’m forced to choose between my kids’ socialization and their safety,” S.F. said.
Pessimism is one way of protecting yourself. Everybody is in the game until they’re not. And bragging that you’ve dodged covid for 2½ years seems akin to chanting “Bloody Mary” three times while looking in a mirror. You don’t really want to tempt fate. Though maybe you can’t help yourself — whatever the consequences. | 2022-07-21T11:49:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | People who haven't gotten covid yet are in an exclusive club - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/21/no-covid-yet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/21/no-covid-yet/ |
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand poses with the relic of the "Precious Blood of Christ" in Amsterdam on July 6. A mysterious late-night ring of a doorbell has led to the recovery of what is believed to be one of the most sacred artifacts recently stolen from the Catholic Church. (Jeremy Audouard/AFP/Getty Images)
When he answered the door on the night of June 21, the street was dark and utterly empty — except for a cardboard box holding an artifact that had inspired legends, pilgrimages and prayers for over a millennium. Carefully, Brand carried inside the stolen reliquary of the “Précieux Sang,” or “Precious Blood” in French — an ornate, jewel-encrusted container that protects two lead vials with pieces of linen believed to be doused with the blood of Jesus.
Brazen heist caught on video amid major global arts fair
How an item dating back to Jesus’s crucifixion wound up in Brand’s Amsterdam home is a tale enmeshed with miracles, attacks, kings, saints and a mysterious robbery police haven’t yet been able to crack. But it starts near the coast of Normandy more than 1,300 years ago, when a fig tree trunk used to hide the relic from Roman invaders washed up on the beach of Fécamp, according to lore.
It took some centuries for the lead vials to be discovered, but an abbey was erected at that site in the year 658 A.D. However, it was later destroyed in Viking attacks. Subsequent structures faced fires and wars, until the Holy Trinity Abbey that still stands was built around 1175. Since then, the church has guarded the “Precious Blood” relic — until a group of unidentified thieves snatched it along with metallic liturgical dishes, artwork and chalices on June 2.
French authorities believe the thieves locked themselves inside the church — which doesn’t have a security system — at night and then broke out through a door the next morning, Le Parisien reported. Le Havre Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin deemed it “an unbearable attack on the faith of all people who remember the Salvation obtained by the sacrifice of [Jesus],” according to the outlet.
But about two weeks after the heist, Brand — who dabbles with art consultancy but works closely with police when he takes up investigations — received an encrypted email from someone who claimed to be a friend of the thieves. The person said they had the artifact at their home after the thieves unloaded it.
“They gave me the option, ‘Either we throw it away, or you make sure that it goes back to the abbey,’” Brand said. “Of course I said yes. So then they tell me that they were going to bring it to my home sometime the next week.”
A stolen Picasso vanished for 20 years. Then the art world’s ‘Indiana Jones’ took the case.
Brand pointed out that it’s rare for stolen art to be recovered — most estimates put the figure below 10 percent. “And that’s because stealing art is not that difficult, but selling it is. Nobody wants to touch illegal art, and then the thieves think the police [are] on them, so they end up destroying it, throwing it in the sea or melting it down.”
After it showed up at his doorstep, the copper-gilded reliquary with images of Jesus painted in cerulean-blue accents sat in Brand’s house for about a week while the detective verified its authenticity. In a moment of closeness to the holy item, which is usually reserved to clerics, Brand said he took a peek inside the shrine and saw the lead vials containing the blood — “I hope God can forgive me for that one, but I had to make sure everything was in there,” said Brand, a devout Catholic.
Dutch and French authorities have not yet made any arrests or publicly identified any suspects. But they are now coordinating the item’s return to the abbey — which brought elation to Brunin, who told Le Parisien “we feared it was gone forever.” Yet, before turning the relic over to the police, Brand said he was on his saintliest behavior.
“I didn’t curse for a week, and I put a towel around my waist if I went into the shower and had to go to my bedroom — you know, to not be naked in front of this relic,” he said. “If anyone came over, I warned them that they had to behave like saints.”
Despite the pressure, those moments alone with the relic brought a sense of immense reverence. There he was, a self-described “ordinary guy who sometimes has these great adventures” in the presence of something so sacred to many. For Brand, those are the instances he’s cherished the most throughout his career.
“Harrison Ford is a real good-looking guy,” Brand said. “I’m more like Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau — I follow the wrong suspects and make stupid mistakes. But having said that, some of the adventures we get into, like the horses and even this one, have a bit of Robert Langdon, Indiana Jones things to it.”
Last week, Dan Brown — “The Da Vinci Code” author whose novels follow the adventures of protagonist Langdon — shared a story about Brand and the “Précieux Sang” with his 5.9 million Facebook followers. | 2022-07-21T11:49:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Art detective Arthur Brand finds stolen 'Blood of Christ' relic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/blood-christ-relic-art-detective/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/blood-christ-relic-art-detective/ |
A U.K. meteorologist warned of deadly heat. He was told to cheer up.
After hearing that thousands could die, a GB News anchor said she wanted ‘to be happy about the weather’
A closed sign hangs in a London shop's window on Tuesday, when the country's hottest temperature on record was recorded. (Sebastian Gollnow/Picture Alliance/DPA/AP)
Meteorologist John Hammond conceded last week that the weather was lovely in Britain but warned GB News anchors that temperatures were about to spike, something he predicted would kill hundreds — even thousands.
Clips of the nearly three-minute segment on the right-wing news network — sometimes referred to as the Fox News of Britain — have gone viral. By Thursday morning, one had racked up more than 18 million views on Twitter by juxtaposing Hammond’s interview with a scene from the movie “Don’t Look Up,” in which an astronomer played by Jennifer Lawrence yells during a news segment that a meteor is about to hit and destroy Earth, only to have a TV anchor tell her that they’re trying to “keep the bad news light.”
Hammond’s prediction of brutal heat came true. Since he appeared on GB News, the United Kingdom and much of Europe have broiled. On Tuesday, Britain broke its record for highest temperature, and officials there described the heat wave as a “national emergency.” A large swath of England, including London, was subject to the country’s first “red” warning, meaning that the heat posed a danger even to healthy people, the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, wildfires have plagued countries across the European continent.
Neither GB News nor Turner immediately responded to requests for comment from The Washington Post early Thursday. Although Turner conceded Wednesday on Twitter that Hammond was right in saying the country was not “geared up to cope” with the heat, she said it has not suffered an abnormal spate of deaths because of it. Hammond told The Post in an online message that it’s too early to tally such figures.
After Turner implored him to be happy about the weather, Hammond pushed back. Again, he reminded her that he was predicting it would kill people. “I don’t think we should be too … lighthearted about the fact that many are going to die early next week because of the heat.”
Turner also likened the heat wave to one that happened 46 years ago: “Haven’t we always had hot weather, John? Wasn’t the ’76 — the summer of ’76 — that was as hot as this, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, no,” Hammond replied. He’s right — the peak temperature that year was about 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit (35.9 degrees Celsius) compared with 104.5 (40.3) so far this year, according to the BBC. Although people bring up 1976 as a way to dismiss climate change, it was a “freak event,” Hammond said. Unlike that outlier, Britain is now “seeing more and more records, more and more frequently, and more and more severely,” he said during the GB News segment.
This week, Turner has repeatedly downplayed the heat wave on Twitter. On Wednesday, she griped about “all this heat hyperbole.” On Monday, Turner said she was enjoying “a lovely breeze.”
“If everyone wasn’t telling me to be afraid … I would not even notice,” she wrote.
For many people, there’s still a disconnect between what they’ve always known as “nice weather” — clear skies, sunshine — and the reality that hot days are happening because of climate change and that they are only going to get more extreme and harmful, Hammond told The Post.
“The notion of thousands of excess deaths is clearly not fathomable to many,” he said. “Similarly, until floodwaters are lapping at our front door or the food runs out through drought, we don’t really ‘get’ the threat of climate change until it impacts us personally.”
“It’s certainly started a conversation about the language we use and how we communicate the threat of extreme weather in our forecasts,” he told The Post. “That has to be a good thing.” | 2022-07-21T11:49:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meteorologist's warning of deadly heat compared to 'Don't Look Up' clip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/heat-wave-britain-news-segment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/heat-wave-britain-news-segment/ |
Surveillance videos shows a police officer shoot Robert Adams, 23, as he runs away in a San Bernardino, Calif., parking lot. (San Bernardino Police Department)
The video spread widely on social media this week, prompting questions about whether the shooting was justified. At a news conference Wednesday, attorneys representing Adams’s family said the unmarked car may have given Adams the impression that he was getting robbed or attacked and that police should not have shot him as he fled.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the lawyers representing Adams’s family, called it a “horrific execution” and said it was an example of “shoot first and ask questions later.” Adams’s mother, Tamika Deavila King, called for the firing of the officers involved in the incident.
“I want them off our force because I don’t want this to ever happen to another mother,” she said Wednesday, adding that she had been on the phone with Adams before the shooting.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman said in a video statement Tuesday that the surveillance video “fails to provide critical details or context” about the shooting. The officers are not on leave, a police spokesperson told the Guardian newspaper.
“We ask that the public and the media allow us to complete our investigation and obtain all of the facts available before rendering opinions,” Goodman said.
On Saturday just after 8 p.m., two uniformed officers in an unmarked car were surveilling a parking lot after “receiving information from a citizen informant that a Black male adult armed with a handgun” was present, Goodman said.
When the officers arrived, police saw two men, Goodman said. One of them, wearing a white shirt and later identified as Adams, was “clearly displaying a gun in his waistband,” Goodman said, highlighting a portion of the video in which Adams appears to pull out an object and take several steps toward the unmarked car before the officers emerge. Goodman said Adams pulled out a gun.
That’s when officers got out of the car and gave Adams “verbal commands,” Goodman said. The surveillance video, which does not include audio, shows officers suddenly emerge from the vehicle with their guns drawn, at which point Adams turns around and runs toward several parked cars.
As Adams ran, an officer shot him, according to Goodman. The surveillance footage shows the officer fire within 25 seconds of entering the parking lot. Adams falls behind the parked cars near a wall. Goodman said officers believed Adams “intended to use the vehicle as cover to shoot at them.”
The department released roughly 10 seconds of body-camera footage belonging to the officer who shot Adams. That video, initially without sound, shows the officer exit the driver’s side of the vehicle and run toward Adams with a gun pointed at him. He then shoots at Adams multiple times as Adams runs away. As Adams falls onto his back, the sound turns on, and the officers can be heard yelling.
On Wednesday, Adams’s attorneys disputed the police department’s account, saying the shooting was unjustified. Bradley Gage, an attorney representing Adams’s family, said the unmarked police car rolled into the parking lot as though it were about to perform a “drive-by shooting.”
Adams had been an honor student and had aspirations to attend business school, Gage said. “Rob was a son,” he said. “Rob had a family.”
King, Adams’s mother, said her son was in the parking lot with his friend, who had just gotten a new car. “They were so excited about his friend getting his car, and that’s what we were talking about on the phone,” King said.
“He never told me goodbye,” she said. | 2022-07-21T11:49:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Videos show shooting of Robert Adams by San Bernardino police - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/robert-adams-police-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/robert-adams-police-shooting/ |
During the covid-19 pandemic, Americans asked children to make tremendous sacrifices. And while the coronavirus took something from everyone, the thefts have been particularly stark for children. As the magnitude of what we asked them to surrender becomes clearer, it’s time to ask: What does this country owe kids for everything they gave up — and had taken away?
Let’s start with school and the decisions to keep students learning remotely for weeks or months. These policies were motivated by a mix of well-intentioned caution and local politics. But researchers are now quantifying the impact of remote education — and the results are damning.
A typical school year includes 36 weeks of instruction. Students at high-poverty schools in the most cautious states spent almost 25 weeks in 2020-2021 learning remotely, according to a May report from researchers at Harvard University, the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) and the student assessment organization NWEA. Low-poverty students in those states spent 16 weeks learning remotely. Contrast that with one week remote for students in low-poverty schools in states that reopened quickly, and three weeks for students in high-poverty schools in those states.
The impact on students who were kept out of the classroom longest is catastrophic. Students in high-poverty districts in cautious states lost the equivalent of 40 percent of a year’s worth of learning. Students in wealthier districts in those states lost the equivalent of 27 percent of a year’s learning.
And that’s for children who stayed in school to be evaluated at all. As many as 1.2 million students left the public school system between 2020 and 2022. Many now attend private or parochial schools, or are home-schooled. But Bellwether Education Partners estimates that 600,000 children, 30 percent of them kindergartners, didn’t enroll in any form of school in the 2020-2021 year.
The implications of closed schools go far beyond education. The Food Research & Action Center surveyed 54 large school districts and found that, in April 2020, those systems served 65.1 million fewer breakfasts and lunches to students than they had in October 2019. By October 2020, the districts were still providing 61.6 million fewer meals than in the previous year.
As parents avoided doctors’ offices and school enrollments dropped, fewer children got vaccinations for measles, HPV and other diseases. There’s much we still don’t know about covid-19 and its long-term outcomes. But in the process of protecting children and their families from the coronavirus, we clearly subjected them to other health risks.
At least public schools and doctors’ offices are still standing.
Between 2019 and 2021, almost 9,000 child care centers and nearly 7,000 home-based day cares closed, some permanently, according to an estimate by the trade association and referral network Child Care Aware. That’s a 9 percent decrease in the number of centers, when the system was already under strain. Every lost slot in those facilities stands for a child whose family had to scramble to find care, whether that meant paying more, deciding that a parent (usually a mother) had to leave the workforce, or asking an older child or relative to step in.
Research on the pandemic’s impact on young children’s development and behavior is still in the early stages, but reports so far suggest that these children are slower to walk and talk, more prone to acting out and struggling to socialize with peers.
And this is just a tally of the most measurable impacts. How are we to weigh the effects of a missed prom or an underwhelming virtual graduation, the first dates that never were, the early steps toward independence now delayed?
Too often, debates about school closures and other pandemic interventions that fell heavily on children and their parents dissolve into backward-looking recriminations.
“There was considerable uncertainty, so those arguments about what should have been aren’t that useful,” Dan Goldhaber, director of CALDER and an author of the May learning-loss study, told me. Children need adults to look ahead on their behalf, rather than smugly rehashing who was right or wrong in summer 2020.
The policy solutions aren’t simple — even if we leave out expensive, politically contentious ideas such as huge investments in hiring and training teachers and grief counselors; subsidized child care; extra years of primary school; or universal basic incomes to prevent families from being plunged into poverty.
Intense tutoring, for example, might provide the equivalent of 19 weeks of class time for students who receive it. But for those who don’t, schools might have to try doubling the amount of time students spend studying math and reading, whether at the expense of electives or gym or during a longer school day. That effort might bring a gain of 10 weeks. Then, there’s summer school. But good luck finding instructors to facilitate all this in a white-hot labor market.
Instead, it might make more sense to simply extend the next two school years by six weeks each, according to Thomas Kane, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of Goldhaber’s co-authors. “We already have the schools, we already have the teachers, we already have the bus routes, parents already have their pickup and drop-off procedures worked out,” Kane said in an interview. Such a plan would also give parents back 12 weeks of missed child care, a small down payment on money and time lost trying to find alternate arrangements when schools and day cares closed.
When we spoke in June, Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s covid-19 response coordinator, said a critical aspect of any response to children’s learning loss and other sacrifices would be a long-term commitment rather than a short-term infusion of cash.
And given the magnitude of the challenge, Goldhaber said, educators, parents and politicians will need to be modest: Some initiatives won’t work. But that’s no reason to stop looking for solutions.
Sadly, some children will never receive proper recompense. Students who graduated from high school during the pandemic won’t get to make up for those lost weeks. Young children who might have been evaluated for developmental and speech delays have missed a crucial, unrecoverable window for early intervention.
Then there are the most wrenching losses: A calculator from Imperial College London estimates that, as of this writing, 205,200 young people have lost one or both parents to covid-19.
Given what we have asked children to endure, we have an obligation to be ambitious on their behalf.
“Children have suffered enormously and, in many ways, disproportionately,” Jha said. “The thing I would not be okay with is saying, okay, let’s go back to normal.” | 2022-07-21T11:50:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What do we owe kids for all they gave up during covid? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/children-covid-learning-loss-health-sacrifice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/children-covid-learning-loss-health-sacrifice/ |
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speak to reporters during a news conference outside the Capitol in November 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Progressive Democrats have lost substantial ground over the past year, weakened by a combination of real-world events and smart tactics by their centrist rivals for the upper hand in intra-party disputes. In fact, the ascendance of more left-wing politicians and policies within the Democratic Party may have peaked — with real potential that some progressive advances will be reversed.
In the months after the 2020 election, it looked as though progressive Democrats had advanced on four fronts. On economic policy, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats adopted a huge stimulus with little regard for its effect on the budget deficit. On domestic policy, the administration was pushing a sweeping bill that would have moved the United States closer to a European-style social safety net. On racial issues, President Biden and other Democrats were embracing a sustained effort to address disparities and discrimination, particularly around policing. And on electoral politics, fresh off the Democrats’ victories in Georgia, the party seemed open to electoral strategies beyond its usual focus on winning White swing voters.
But big problems emerged last year in all four of these areas — and more centrist Democrats leapt to blame the left and its ideas.
There was a big surge in the murder rate, and centrist Democrats such as New York City Mayor Eric Adams have suggested that the increase was in part because Democrats had gone too far in embracing police reform.
Inflation surged, which Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and other moderate Democrats blamed on big increases in federal spending and other economic policies pushed by progressives.
On domestic policy, the Build Back Better Act (BBB) stalled, with centrist Democrats such as Rep. Stephanie Murphy (Fla.) arguing the party’s left pushed too hard to get their preferred policies into the legislation.
And in electoral politics, Biden’s approval rating sank, and Democrats performed dismally in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, losing the latter and almost the former. More centrist figures in the party such as prominent political consultant James Carville attributed the party’s political weaknesses to progressives damaging the Democratic brand.
All these arguments were oversimplifications, and in some cases they were outright wrong. Yes, the stimulus and other big spending policies urged by progressives contributed to inflation, but supply-chain disruptions and other issues related to the covid-19 pandemic were also a major factor. It is ludicrous to blame the party’s left wing for the loss in Virginia when the moderate Biden-aligned Terry McAuliffe was the candidate. The main barriers to passing BBB were centrists such as Murphy and Manchin; progressives kept dropping their demands, desperate for anything to pass. Murder rates rose across the country, not just in places that adopted more progressive criminal justice policies.
More than that, real-world events were, in fact, validating the left’s arguments. Child poverty plummeted when the federal government simply gave families money directly through the tax credits in the stimulus, the kind of big-government policy the left has long urged. The political struggles of Biden and McAuliffe showed, as the left has argued, that voters won’t be satisfied with a do-little Democratic Party even if it is fairly moderate ideologically and focused on wooing White swing voters. The murder rate surged even as police spending either stayed the same or increased, bolstering the progressive argument that reducing crime will take more comprehensive strategies than just relying on law enforcement.
But despite all that, the centrist arguments gained traction. That’s partly because the mainstream media, the wealthy and Biden himself are skeptical of progressives and inclined to take the side of centrist Democrats in intra-party fights. One telling example: Presidents don’t usually comment on local elections, but Biden joined much of the media in casting last month’s recall of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin as a sign that voters across the country want more police spending.
And because these anti-left arguments have become conventional wisdom in Democratic circles, they are resulting in policy and electoral defeats for the party’s left wing. Biden started downplaying police reform while he and other Democrats leaned into pro-police rhetoric and funding increases. Most of BBB has been shelved. The Federal Reserve, with the encouragement of many centrist Democrats, is taking aggressive steps to rein in inflation that are likely to reduce wages and increase unemployment.
Give the centrists their due: They have many advantages (like the backing of wealthy Democrats and Biden), but they also have been smart, strategic and focused. For example, they have spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat left-wing candidates in primaries in heavily Democratic areas, closing off one path to power for the left. And, in many cases over the past year, the progressives have not been as savvy. The emphatic insistence last year from many prominent left-wing figures that inflation was “transitory” and overstated cost them credibility as prices stayed up. In New York City, progressives didn’t mobilize behind a single candidate early on, easing Adams’s path to victory.
Overall, while there are a lot of progressive activists, groups and prominent politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), left-wing Democrats are struggling in part because they don’t have a formal leadership structure or political strategy.
Now, they face a troubling future — a Biden-led Democratic Party that is likely to lose in November and then argue that the defeat is a further repudiation of left-wing ideas. The 2024 election cycle could feature the party adopting conservative ideas, abandoning liberal ones and potentially even trying to defeat prominent progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez in primaries.
But all is not lost for progressives. While more centrist Democrats have greater power and money, many of the party’s most compelling ideas and figures come from its left wing. The left’s arguments that the party’s political strategy is outdated have been validated by Biden’s struggles. And real-world events over the past few months, particularly the spate of mass shootings and the upending of abortion rights, not only make it hard for the party to move to the right, but are pushing it left.
So the triangulating Democratic Party of 1995 isn’t coming back. The big question is whether the deficits-don’t-matter, firmly antiracist party of March 2021 is permanently gone, too. | 2022-07-21T11:50:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why progressive Democrats are losing ground - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/progressive-democrats-losing-ground-biden-centrists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/progressive-democrats-losing-ground-biden-centrists/ |
Tech giants want to squelch a bill that could give consumers more choice
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) in 2020. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that would begin to put brakes on the largest and most powerful tech juggernauts, once seemed as though it would offer a rare bit of cooperative progress in gridlocked Washington.
Instead, it is bogged down as tech giants and their allies on Capitol Hill push dubious claims about the bill’s impact. If it fails to make it to the Senate floor before the August recess, advocates believe it’s likely dead for the session. And instead of getting new legislation that would restore a measure of balance to American economic life, we will receive yet another demonstration of the hold big corporations and their money have over Washington pols. The legislation, which would begin the process of revamping antitrust law for the 21st century, is written so that it would apply only to the hugest, most powerful firms — think Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon (which was founded by The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos).
It aims to reduce monopolies, increase competition and favor consumer choice. It would hamper megacompanies’ ability to favor their own products on their own platforms at the expense of competitors. It also would ban tech giants from using sales data of smaller companies operating on their platform to boost their own branded, rival offerings. Furthermore, it would forbid tech giants from making it impossible for consumers to change their default settings. And it would require them to be more interoperable with other platforms.
Not surprisingly, the industry giants are doing their best to kibosh it.
If it becomes law, the companies and their lobbyists say, “It would substantially degrade the value and quality” of Amazon Prime, for example. They argue the bill’s language would make it all but impossible to moderate content such as disinformation and hate speech.
It’s all so much fake news, but that’s not stopping these sorts of claims from getting echoed by politicians, including a number of Democratic senators.
Yes, Amazon would likely need to adjust Prime. As Wired notes, the bill’s language would stop the tech giant from charging merchants to use its storage and shipping services — without which it will not grant the coveted Prime designation. But that’s hardly a fatal blow.
The content moderation charge is also exaggerated. The Center for American Progress points out it is hardly in the tech giants’ financial interest to cease policing their platforms out of fear of federal- or state-sponsored litigation that needs to meet a very high standard of proof to succeed. Content moderation is increasingly a part of their pitch to advertisers — few businesses, after all, want to see their ad accompanied by conspiracy theories or hate speech.
What the bill would do is level the playing field between the dominant platforms and the entrepreneurs and consumers who use them, likely jump-starting increased innovation and competition. It would improve search functions, resulting in a better experience for consumers. This is why even as the largest tech firms furiously oppose the bill, stakeholders such as start-up incubator Y Combinator, Spotify and Yelp have all endorsed it. The Justice Department is on board, too. Similarly, multiple polls show most Americans, when asked, support the bill’s goals and provisions.
So why hasn’t it moved yet?
In late May, a source told Axios that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had guaranteed Klobuchar that the legislation would receive a vote from the full Senate by early summer. But then word got out that, per Politico, a number of Democratic moderates expressed fear the bill was too “controversial” a vote prior to the midterm elections.
It’s hard not to suspect that big bucks are once again getting results in Washington. Big Tech has spent untold millions campaigning against Capitol Hill’s attempts to rein in its power, contributing to campaign funds and running ads on television and social media.
All this pushback for legislation that’s weak tea compared with what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed during her presidential campaign: regulating the largest tech companies as platform utilities and banning them from offering products that compete with those of other companies using their platform.
Still, something is better than nothing at all. This bill is far from insubstantial, and it could still pass. When I reached out to Schumer’s office to ask where things stand, a spokesperson told me, “Sen. Schumer supports the legislation and is working with Sen. Klobuchar and others to get the necessary support to pass it.” Meanwhile, Grassley says he can guarantee enough Republicans would support the bill to make it filibuster-proof.
In any case, the threat of legislation itself is already having an effect. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Amazon is scaling back its less profitable in-house product lines and considering doing away with them altogether. (Amazon, for its part, denies it’s shutting down these lines.)
The lesson here is obvious: political pressure works. Democrats, in particular, should remember that if they want to be seen by voters as the party that protects people and small businesses from Big Business, they need to actually do just that. | 2022-07-21T11:50:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Tech giants are fighting a bill that could finally give consumers more choice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/tech-companies-fighting-antitrust-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/tech-companies-fighting-antitrust-bill/ |
☕ The Early 202: Corporate America under pressure to lobby for same-sex marriage bill
with research by Tobi Raji and Emily Guskin
Good morning, Early Birds. Poor Rep. Jake Auchincloss. Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today’s edition … The 187-minute Jan. 6 hearing tonight … Democratic senators are introducing a marijuana legalization bill … Poll Watch: Most Americans now say the Supreme Court should consider public opinion … K Street keeps raking it in … but first …
Same-sex marriage bill barrels ahead, with or without corporate America
The bill to protect same-sex marriage is moving so fast that it's taken leaders in both parties by surprise. Senate Democrats are looking for a way to quickly hold a vote on the House-passed bill, with several Senate Republicans saying they support the measure.
As Matt Viser, Marianna Sotomayor, Paul Kane and Leigh Ann write, the development marks a shift for a Republican Party “that has gone from staunch opponents to same-sex marriage in the early 2000s to indifference by the time” the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry “to now outright supporters.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) put the bill on the legislative calendar Wednesday, signaling he could move on it soon.
But the Respect for Marriage Act hasn't passed yet, and advocates of LGBTQ rights are urging corporate America — a powerful ally in past battles over gay rights — to help convince Republican senators to support it.
For now, most companies and trade groups appear to be sitting on the sidelines.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, corporate America's flagship representatives in Washington, told the Early they’re remaining neutral in the fight. And some companies that have denounced state-level efforts to restrict LGBTQ rights in the past — including General Electric, Salesforce and Walmart — have remained silent.
“I’m not saying that every corporation needs to go out and pay for a full-page ad in The Washington Post or the New York Times, but all of them have relationships with legislators,” Justin Nelson, the president of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, told the Early.
“Let’s find the votes that are in play and let’s get to 60,” Nelson added. “Corporate America can help with that.”
Corporate America has been a strong supporter of LGBTQ rights as public support for gay marriage grew stronger and stronger. Hundreds of companies signed onto a 2015 amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. More than 500 companies and trade groups have pressed Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would bar companies from discriminating against LGBTQ employees.
Jay Brown, a senior vice president at the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, urged “companies to do what’s right for their LGBTQ+ employees and customers and continue to show strong support for pro-equality measures, including the Respect for Marriage Act and the Equality Act.”
Companies have come under increasing pressure to take stands on social and political issues in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which led hundreds of companies and trade groups to suspend campaign contributions to the 147 House and Senate Republicans who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory.
Speaking out can carry risks. When the Walt Disney Company denounced a Florida law restricting what teachers can say about gender and sexual orientation, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis took revenge on the company by repealing its special tax status in the state.
Companies need to know what their customers want and avoid reversing their positions when an issue is in the spotlight, said Jill Jackson, a communications consultant for Monument Advocacy who advises companies on how to navigate issues such as race and equality, abortion, LGBTQ and corporate sustainability.
“Companies must ask themselves: Is this the one that we fight for? Is it not our issues?” Jackson said. “If it's not important to our customers or our workforce, the risk might not be worth it.”
It’s not clear whether Republicans’ votes against the marriage bill will lead any corporate PACs to stop giving to them.
Many corporate PACs updated their guidelines for which lawmakers they’ll support after Jan. 6, according to Doug Pinkham, the president of the Public Affairs Council. Some corporate PAC now consider whether lawmakers have made discriminatory comments or voted for legislation they consider intolerant.
“I think a lot of them have been warned,” Pinkham said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of PACs stopped contributions for that reason or other reasons.”
‘I’m confident there's going to be 60'
Corporate America’s reluctance to get involved might not matter in the end. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rob Portman have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, and Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have indicated they're likely to vote for it.
“I’m confident there’s going to be 60,” said Charles Moran, the president of Log Cabin Republicans, the party’s leading LGBTQ rights group, who’s been lobbying Republican senators to support it.
What's next: House to vote on contraception bill
The House is set to vote today on another bill that Democrats are working to pass in response to the Supreme Court's decision striking down Roe: the Right to Contraception Act. It 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,” as Matt, Marianna, Paul and Leigh Ann report.
“House Republicans expect fewer from their caucus to support that legislation, with party leadership arguing that Democrats have crafted a bill that is too broad and rushed it to the floor.” But Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who voted for the marriage bill on Tuesday, said she hopes to vote in support of the contraception bill if it doesn’t have “poison pills in it.”
The ‘187-minute hearing’
The Jan. 6 committee will return to prime time tonight with “a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Donald Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it,” our colleagues Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey and Paul Kane report.
The committee is expected to show outtakes from remarks Trump delivered Jan. 7, where, over the course of an hour, he struggled to tape a message condemning the rioters.
Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) will also “detail what Trump did and didn’t do over 187 minutes as the U.S. Capitol was under attack,” per our colleagues Meagan Flynn and Jacqueline Alemany.
The witness list:
Sarah Matthews, former White House deputy press secretary: “Matthews is expected to provide details of what she saw in the West Wing that day, including whether Trump knew the violence had broken out when he attacked his vice president, Mike Pence, in a 2:24 p.m. tweet,” per Gardner, Dawsey and Kane.
Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser: Pottinger — as well as Matthews — is expected to explain why he resigned following the events of Jan. 6.
Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel: Cipollone, who will appear in recorded testimony, is expected to be shown “describing his thoughts about Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 as well as his dismay over Trump’s taped statement after the violence had begun to subside.”
Far from over: Today’s hearing has been billed as the grand finale, but “with new evidence continuing to surface — and fresh investigation targets — committee members said this week that there are likely to be more hearings later this year.”
One likely target could be the U.S. Secret Service’s deleted text messages, which may include the revelation that the department’s watchdog knew of the deleted messages in February, but chose not to alert Congress.
Next steps: Committee members are discussing recommendations to prevent another Jan. 6. from happening, including changing the Electoral Count Act.
A bipartisan group of 16 senators led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) released legislation Wednesday that would clarify the vague 1887 law Trump and his allies exploited by more clearly defining “the role of states, presidential electors and the vice president in a presidential election,” Leigh Ann reports.
Senate Democrats to unveil marijuana legalization bill
(FYI: We are going provide the following information without the use of any pot puns. You're welcome in advance.)
Schumer is unveiling his marijuana legalization bill today. It's legislation he and Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have been working on, which they also call a criminal justice bill, for more than a year.
The core of the bill would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances, regulate and tax it, expunge all federal criminal convictions, and prohibit discrimination in banking of people and businesses with ties to the cannabis industry.
“For far too long, the federal prohibition on marijuana and the War on Drugs has been a war on people, and particularly people of color,” Schumer said in a statement.
The measure has no path to overcoming a likely Republican filibuster. Instead, it's an opening bid in an attempt to eventually — likely months or years down the road — settle on compromise legalization legislation.
Also, the midterms are less than four months away and polling has shown a steady increase in the public's support for legal weed. The federal government is lagging behind the states. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized access to marijuana, and 19 states and D.C. allow recreational use.
Schumer has already begun early discussions with Republicans, including the leading pro-legalization Republican in the House, Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, an aide to Schumer said. The House passed their version of a legalization bill earlier this year with the support of three Republicans and all but two Democrats.
Most Americans now say SCOTUS should consider public opinion, as ratings of court plummet
From Post polling analyst Emily Guskin: In 2021, 59 percent of Americans said the Supreme Court should ignore public opinion when deciding cases. But after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and its protection of abortion rights, a 54 percent majority says that the Supreme Court should consider public opinion when making decisions, according to polling from Marquette University’s Law School.
The shift comes as ratings of the Supreme Court are plummeting, with 38 percent who approved of the way the court was doing its job in July, down from 44 percent in May and 54 percent in March. In July 2021, 6 in 10 approved of the court’s performance, now a similar share disapprove.
Both shifts appear to be driven by the court’s decision to overturn Roe. Among Americans who opposed overturning “the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states,” approval of the court fell from 41 percent last fall to 11 percent today, while support for the court considering public opinion in its rulings rose from 42 percent to 70 percent. Among those who wanted the court to strike down Roe, approval of the court increased from 68 percent in September to 83 percent today.
The Marquette poll also found that perceptions of the Supreme Court have shifted, with more calling it conservative today. In the July poll, 67 percent of Americans said the court was either “very” or “somewhat” conservative in ideology, up from 51 percent last September and from 35 percent in 2020. About a third of Americans (34 percent) describe the court as “very conservative” today up from 5 percent in 2020. By contrast, 14 percent of adults in the poll described themselves as “very conservative.”
The shifts may not be that surprising, given that polls consistently found most Americans opposed overturning Roe before and after the court’s June ruling. Democrats’ and Republicans’ ratings of the court have gone up and down in response to high-profile rulings as well as changes in the White House, though the overall trendline has been downward. The Marquette poll found 15 percent of Democrats approved of the court in July, down from 37 percent in September; at the same time the share of Republicans approving of the court ticked up.
President Biden heads to Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — only a few miles from his hometown of Scranton — to talk about his efforts to help communities hire 100,000 more police officers, clear court backlogs and fund community violence intervention programs, among other steps to reduce crime. He'll head to Philadelphia later for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser.
No slowdown on K Street: As Congress struggles to pass legislation to reduce drug prices and subsidize microchip manufacturing, lobbyists keep raking it in. Here's what a dozen leading Washington firms earned in lobbying revenue in the second quarter, according to figures shared with the Early ahead of the quarterly filing deadline:
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: $12.8 million (versus $13.5 million in the first quarter)
Ballard Partners: $4.9 million (versus $4.5 million in the first quarter)
BGR Group: $9.6 million (versus $9.6 million in the first quarter)
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: $15.2 million (versus $15.2 million in the first quarter)
Cassidy & Associates: $5.5 million (versus $5.5 million in the first quarter)
Holland & Knight: $10.7 million (versus $10.1 million in the first quarter)
Invariant: $9.4 million (versus $9.2 million in the first quarter)
K&L Gates: $5.4 million (versus $5.2 million in the first quarter)
Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas: $6.5 million (versus $6.4 million in the first quarter)
Squire Patton Boggs: $6.8 million (versus $7.2 million in the first quarter)
Subject Matter: $4.9 million (versus $4.9 million in the first quarter)
Thorn Run Partners: $6.7 million (versus $6.4 million in the first quarter)
Who said what during the Jan. 6 hearings? Take our quiz. By The Post’s Hannah Knowles.
Where does Larry Hogan go from here? By The Post’s Erin Cox.
Stablecoins would get federal rules under emerging House deal. By The Post’s Tory Newmyer.
Biden vows to act on climate if Congress won’t. By The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb, Tony Romm and Anna Phillips.
Pence campaigns for House Republicans, papering over party rift. By the New York Times’s Annie Karni.
Pelosi to Blinken: Label Russia as terrorist state, or else Congress will. By Politico’s Alexander Ward and Betsy Woodruff Swan.
17 arrested as Senate dining workers protest at the Capitol. By Roll Call’s Chris Cioffi.
On this day in 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 became the first humans to set foot on the moon. I was a kindergartener back then, and I’d like to say watching it on TV inspired me to become an astronaut, but I actually fell asleep on the floor and missed it. pic.twitter.com/UqwXK1TB3D
— Captain Mark Kelly (@CaptMarkKelly) July 20, 2022 | 2022-07-21T11:50:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ☕ The Early 202: Corporate America under pressure to lobby for same-sex marriage bill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/early-202-corporate-america-under-pressure-lobby-same-sex-marriage-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/early-202-corporate-america-under-pressure-lobby-same-sex-marriage-bill/ |
Post Politics Now House to pass bill ensuring access to contraception; Biden to talk guns
Our on radar: Bannon trial to resume with defense motion to dismiss case
The latest: Assault weapons ban cleared by House panel
The latest: Even a day after Jan. 6, Trump balked at condemning the violence
Noted: Biden says U.S. military does not support Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan
The latest: Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during an event Wednesday on Capitol Hill in Washington ahead of Thursday's planned vote on the Right to Contraception Act. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Today, the House is poised to pass legislation ensuring access to contraception in its latest bid during a midterm election year to protect rights that Democrats argue are at risk because of a conservative Supreme Court. President Biden is heading to Pennsylvania to talk about efforts to combat gun violence, another issue that has come to the fore in recent months.
Meanwhile, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is scheduled to hold a prime-time hearing focused on what President Donald Trump did — and didn’t do — on that deadly day. And the contempt trial of former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 panel, continues at a federal courthouse in Washington.
10:45 a.m. Eastern: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds her weekly news conference. Watch live here.
12:35 p.m. Eastern: Biden departs the White House en route to Pennsylvania. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will gaggle with reporters on Air Force One. Listen live here.
3:15 p.m. Eastern: Biden delivers remarks in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Watch live here.
8 p.m. Eastern: The House Jan. 6 committee holds its eighth hearing this summer.
During his trip Thursday to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., President Biden is expected to tout the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he signed into law last month after a spate of high-profile mass shootings, as well as detail how $37 billion in previously proposed spending could be used to bolster law enforcement.
The new law is less sweeping that Biden has sought but includes several significant provisions. It expands background checks on people between the ages of 18 and 21 seeking to buy a gun and closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by expanding an existing law that prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun to include dating partners rather than just spouses and former spouses.
According to a fact sheet released early Thursday the White House, Biden is also touting spending included in his budget proposal to Congress that is being billed as the Safer America Plan.
That includes funding to help communities hire more police officers, clear court backlogs and help formerly incarcerated people reenter society, among other things.
Biden is also expected to repeat his calls for Congress to take additional gun-control actions, including universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.
The House is poised Thursday to pass legislation ensuring access to contraception in its latest bid during a midterm election year to protect rights that Democrats argue are at risk because of a conservative Supreme Court.
The Right to Contraception Act, sponsored by Rep. Kathy E. Manning (D-N.C.), explicitly allows the use of contraceptives — including oral birth control, injections, implants and morning-after pills — and authorizes the medical community to provide them. Patients and health-care providers can bring civil suits against states that violate the legislation’s provisions.
While the bill is expected to clear the House, its fate in the evenly divided Senate is unclear. Republicans have argued such a law is unnecessary.
House Democrats are acting in response to an opinion on abortion written by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last month in which he openly questioned whether the court “should reconsider” rulings that guaranteed access to birth control and same-sex couples’ right to marriage — two issues many Americans have viewed as settled law. On Tuesday, the House approved a bill that would federally protect same-sex marriages.
At a news conference Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Republicans in some states are already moving to ban contraception and argue such lawmakers have extreme views and are out of touch even with their own families.
“It is clear that their attempts to roll back the clock on contraception is another plank of their extreme agenda for America’s women,” Pelosi said. “In Idaho and Louisiana, Republicans are putting this plan in action, moving to ban or criminalize birth control. Criminalize birth control? Do you wonder if they even know what’s going on in their homes?”
The federal contempt trial of former White House counselor Stephen K. Bannon is scheduled to resume at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time Thursday with a defense motion to dismiss the case. If the motion is unsuccessful, Bannon’s lawyers will then present his defense.
The Post’s Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu and Tom Jackman report that the government rested its case Wednesday after calling just two witnesses — a congressional staffer and an FBI agent — to describe Bannon’s alleged refusal to provide documents or testimony to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would impose the first assault weapons ban in the United States in nearly two decades, following a rancorous day of debate that began some 12 hours earlier.
The outcome was predictable: Twenty-five Democrats voted in support of the bill while 18 Republicans opposed it.
The full House could take up the measure, sponsored by Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), next week. It’s all but certain to fail in the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are required to advance most bills. But Democrats argued that House passage will send an important message.
“As we have learned all too well in recent years, assault weapons — especially when combined with high-capacity magazines — are the weapon of choice for mass shootings,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a late-night statement. “These military-style weapons are designed to kill the most people in the shortest amount of time. Quite simply, there is no place for them on our streets.”
One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump’s advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election decided.
He struggled to do it, The Post’s Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey and Paul Kane report in a story that previews the prime-time hearing scheduled Thursday of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Our colleagues write:
Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the committee.
The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing this summer: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it.
He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
RELATEDElaine Luria prepares to lead Jan. 6 hearing, connect Trump to violence
The U.S. military does not support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan this summer, President Biden said late Wednesday.
The Post’s Adela Suliman reports that stepping off Air Force One, Biden was asked about the possibility of a Pelosi trip, which has been the subject of media reports but has not been confirmed by the State Department or her office. Per Adela:
Pelosi’s office told The Washington Post on Thursday that it stood by comments earlier this week: “We do not confirm or deny international travel in advance due to long-standing security protocols.” The Financial Times first reported news of Pelosi’s trip, stating that she would visit Singapore, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Maria Sacchetti report that the watchdog agency, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also prepared in October 2021 to issue a public alert that the Secret Service and other department divisions were stonewalling it on requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol, but it did not do so, the people briefed on the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal investigations. | 2022-07-21T11:50:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House to pass bill ensuring access to contraception; Biden to talk guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/house-contraception-biden-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/house-contraception-biden-guns/ |
A row of terraced houses in Guilford, England, taken with a heat-sensing camera in December. Brighter areas show where higher amounts of heat are emitted. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg News)
The United Kingdom declared a national emergency this week amid a historic heat wave that’s melted runways, snarled train travel and shattered temperature records. The devastation has been particularly acute in a country like England, where 95 percent of the population lacks air conditioning.
In light of that, the British government has provided grant money to a little-known solution: heat pumps.
Bearing a misleading name, heat pumps are two-way air conditioners that move warm air from inside a home to the outside, keeping dwellings cool in hot months. In winter months, they do the reverse, taking heat energy from outside and pushing warm air in.
Energy officials, lawmakers and scientists tout the devices as inexpensive, energy-efficient systems that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions over traditional heating and cooling devices.
Estimates show that 90 percent of Japanese households use heat pumps to heat and cool homes, contributing to a 40 percent drop in Japan’s electricity consumption over the past decade. In Italy, the government effectively pays citizens to use the technology; homeowners can get 110 percent of their heat pump cost reimbursed.
But the devices lack popularity in parts of the United States and Europe because of low public awareness and high installation costs. The United Kingdom fell far short of its yearly heat pump installation goals in 2021.
Energy experts point to a couple of reasons heat pumps haven’t entered the mainstream. First is the name, which makes it difficult for people to recognize that it heats and cools. “It is confusing,” said Corinne Schneider, the chief communications officer for CLASP, an energy nonprofit organization.
The high price of installation — systems can cost upward of $10,000 to buy and install — is also a hurdle for many users.
But with a heat wave forcing people to find ways to cool their homes, as Russia’s war in Ukraine sends energy prices soaring, experts say heat pumps are a natural solution: an all-in-one system to cool that cools during heat waves and reduces reliance on gas in the winter.
“It’s a home comfort issue. It’s a climate issue. It’s a security issue,” said Alexander Gard-Murray, a climate change researcher and economist at Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab. “Any one of them would be enough to move aggressively on heat pumps, but taken together I think the evidence is insurmountable.”
The technology that undergirds heat pumps can be traced to the 1940s, when American inventor Robert C. Webber created a prototype copper-tubed heating unit in his basement. Over the years, Webber’s creation inspired the core technology that allowed modern refrigerators to transfer heat out the back of a refrigerator, keeping the inside cool.
There are two main types of heat pumps. In warm months, air-source heat pumps suck out hot air from a room and blow it over a coil and cycle it through a refrigerant so cold air comes back inside. In cold months, the pump captures heat energy from air outside and cycles it through the machine to warm it and blow it inside. These pumps are similar in size to central air conditioning units.
Ground source heat pumps transfer heat stored in the earth into a building during the winter and transferring it out of a building during the summer. These are less common and more costly than air-source options.
One of the most common complaints about heat pumps, experts said, was that they would stop providing heat on very cold days. But advances to heat pump compressors have made them more efficient, cost effective and successful at providing heat in colder temperatures.
As heat pumps have improved, lawmakers and policy experts have tried to make the devices more mainstream. In the United States, a tax credit program provides about a $300 rebate for people transitioning their homes to heat pump technology. Amid Congress’s stalled climate agenda, one proposal increases the incentive to $600. States and local utilities also have their own rebate programs.
The benefits to pocketbooks and the climate are reportedly significant, climate experts said.
In the United States, about 16,000 air conditioning units are installed daily on average. Researchers from CLASP and Harvard University predicted that if over the remaining decade, all houses installing central air conditioners bought a subsidized heat pump instead, consumers would save approximately $27 billion on heating and cooling bills, while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 49 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2032.
Researchers note much of the savings is due to a heat pump’s ability to heat homes up to 50 percent more efficiently than furnaces and water boilers. Schneider of CLASP said Europe’s heat wave is an opportune time for heat pump technology to become more mainstream, since many are buying air conditioners for the first time.
Other researchers note the stakes are high. “Every day that [people] fail to install as many heat pumps as physically possible, it means they’re locking in more dependence on [Russian President Vladimir Putin] and Russian gas this winter,” said Gard-Murray of Brown University.
Sam Calisch, a heat pump expert at Rewiring America, added that because climate change is making heat waves more prevalent, cooling devices should be low emissions.
“More and more places that didn’t used to have air conditioning more broadly are getting it,” he said. “So every time this happens, we need to be thinking about heat pumps because that allows us … to delete some of the fossil fuel demand that we currently have.”
Because heat pumps cost a lot, spending the money might seem difficult. And because most people purchase air conditioners and heating units when they’re forced to, they often have little time to decide what to buy, Schneider said. They end up with what’s common in stores or recommended by maintenance professionals.
“If you are in a heating or cooling emergency … you are going to take whatever’s in stock,” she said. “There needs to be a way for HVAC installers to increase their stock of this technology and to know about it.” | 2022-07-21T11:51:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europe is overheating. This climate-friendly AC could help. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/21/europe-heat-wave-heat-pump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/21/europe-heat-wave-heat-pump/ |
Thursday briefing: What to expect at the eighth Jan. 6 hearing; Electoral Count Act; U.S. heat wave; school lunch program; and more
The eighth and final (for now) Jan. 6 hearing is tonight.
What to expect: An account of what President Donald Trump did and didn’t do as his supporters attacked the Capitol last year. Two former White House aides are expected to testify.
What we’ve learned so far: The House committee holds Trump responsible for Jan. 6 violence; he was told repeatedly that he lost the election; and the committee has raised at least four crimes it thinks Trump may have committed.
How to watch: It starts at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Watch it here.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to change election laws.
Why? They hope to prevent another Jan. 6 by updating the Electoral Count Act, a law that Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election.
The details: The bill would make it more difficult for Congress to challenge a state’s presidential results and make it clear that the vice president’s role is ceremonial.
What are its chances? Nine Republicans support the bill; it needs at least 10 to pass the Senate.
Another wave of extreme heat is hitting the U.S.
What to know: At least 28 states across the central and northeast U.S. issued alerts, and 200 million people will see highs in the 90s or higher in the coming days.
The forecast: Temperatures have risen to 115 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma, with no immediate end in sight. The heat will bleed over to the East Coast this weekend.
Prosecutors finished laying out their case against Steve Bannon.
What’s happening? The former Trump strategist is facing contempt of Congress charges after he refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee.
The latest: The prosecution rested its case yesterday after two days, a sign of the simple factual and legal issues at play. The trial continues today.
The nation’s universal school lunch program is about to expire.
How it worked: Congress made lunches free for all children in 2020 because of a growing hunger crisis. The expanded program ends when school starts this year.
What happens now? Schools are racing to make sure kids who need free lunches still qualify and have the right paperwork.
Coming soon: Democrats in Congress are working on permanent changes to child nutrition programs, with new legislation coming this week.
Marines are about to get their first Black four-star general.
What’s happening? Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley has been nominated to lead all U.S. forces in Africa. His Senate confirmation hearing is today.
Why this matters: In its 246-year history, the Marine Corps has never had a Black person reach its highest ranks.
Quidditch leagues are rebranding themselves.
Isn’t quidditch from Harry Potter? Yes. The fictional game invented by J.K. Rowling has become a real-life sport played around the world.
What’s happening now? The sport is changing its name to quadball, it said this week. It’s trying to distance the game from Rowling, who has sparked controversy for her views on transgender issues.
And now … for a change of pace: Meet Emmanuel, an emu that’s gone viral on TikTok. | 2022-07-21T11:51:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Thursday, July 21 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/07/21/what-to-know-for-july-21/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/07/21/what-to-know-for-july-21/ |
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol held a hearing in Washington on July 12. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, revealed on his Telegram page that he appeared Tuesday before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed,” Ziegler said.The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League also noted that Ziegler’s words are also “often used as a code for Jews.”
“They see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right? And so, today was just a lot of saying that I invoke my right to silence,” Ziegler said, while insisting he is “the least-racist person that many of you have ever met, by the way. I have no bigotry.”
This is the kind of offensive language we typically associate with right-wing extremists, not former officials who had access to the Oval Office. | 2022-07-21T12:14:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler's sexist audio rant calls Jan. 6 committee racist - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/garrett-ziegler-rant-trump-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/garrett-ziegler-rant-trump-jan-6/ |
Magnus Carlsen plays against Adam Tukhaev in the 2018 World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in Saint Petersburg, Russia. (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)
Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world chess champion, has announced he will not defend his title next year because he is just “not motivated to play another match” at the World Chess Championships.
“I simply feel that I don’t have a lot to gain,” Carlsen said Wednesday.
The Norwegian wunderkind made the announcement — a monumental one for the industry he has dominated for a decade — on International Chess Day on his new podcast, the Magnus Effect.
Carlsen has held the title since 2013, when, at 22, he wrestled it from Indian chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen has won every World Chess Championship since then, but had already expressed frustration with the format of the competition.
Carlsen, now 31, said on Wednesday that winning the championship for the fourth and fifth time “meant nothing” to him. “I was satisfied with the job I had done. I was happy I had not lost the match. But that was it,” he explained.
While fans and chess officials have lamented Carlsen’s decision, it is not unprecedented. Carlsen joins several other chess champions who quit the competition at the top of their game, including Garry Kasparov.
Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation FIDE, said that staying motivated can be difficult for those at the very top.
“Many other great champions, in other sports, have experienced something similar: with the passing of the years, it is more difficult to find the motivation to train and compete at the highest level, while the reward for the victory never feels as intense as the first day,” he said in a statement.
Chess officials said they offered to tweak the championship format in discussions with Carlsen in Madrid last month. But the player couldn’t be swayed — leaving two other chess grandmasters, Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia and Ding Liren of China, to battle for the title in 2023.
Carlsen may also have been affected by a lack of enthusiasm for his opponents. He had previously said he was not interested in the next world championship match unless his opponent was Alireza Firouzja, the current world No. 3, because the 19-year-old’s fast rise impressed him. However, Firouzja was knocked out by Nepomniachtchi, who Carlsen previously defeated, at the Candidates Tournament in Madrid in June.
Every dominant Champion quit at some stage: Morphy, Lasker (he resigned the title in 1920 and insisted on playing 1921 Match as a challenger), Fischer, Kasparov. No FIDE, weak FIDE, strong FIDE. Does not matter. As sad as it is, Carlsen is in line with his great predecessors.
— Emilchess (@EmilSutovsky) July 21, 2022
FIDE said in a statement that Carlsen had not officially withdrawn yet, since preparations for the championship match — including deadlines and Carlsen’s contract — had not been finalized. Still, the world chess body said it knew that the player’s decision was final.
Dvorkovich said Carlsen’s departure would leave a “big void” and be “a disappointment for the fans, and bad news for the spectacle,” although he emphasized that the sport remained “stronger than ever” and that the World Champion Match would go on.
Fans however may be glad to know that Carlsen is not retiring from the sport “any time soon” — in fact, he said Wednesday he was headed to Croatia to compete in the Grand Chess Tour and that he enjoyed playing chess tournaments “a lot more” than championships.
He also left open the possibility that he might one day return to World Chess Championships — although he did not sound particularly enthusiastic. “I don’t rule out a return in the future, but I wouldn’t particularly count on it,” he said on the podcast. | 2022-07-21T12:19:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Magnus Carlsen to give up world chess title because he's not motivated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/magnus-carlsen-gives-up-world-chess-title/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/magnus-carlsen-gives-up-world-chess-title/ |
Democratic members of Congress carry a banner during a march for abortion rights outside the Capitol on July 19. (Kevin Wolf/AP)
The horror stories from state abortion bans are piling up: Women facing dangerous delays in care for miscarriages. Doctors violating their training and waiting until their patient is at death’s door before performing an abortion. Pharmacists struggling to understand whether filling prescriptions for drugs that are used both for abortions and for post-miscarriage treatment opens them up to criminal charges.
Episodes in which women are needlessly denied treatment will become commonplace. The Advocate reports this disturbing account from Louisiana:
A woman who was 16 weeks pregnant had her water break, and her doctor wanted to perform a dilation and evacuation, a type of abortion procedure, to take out the fetus, which was not viable. But the doctor consulted with an attorney, who advised against it. … [T]he woman preferred the abortion, but instead “was forced to go through a painful, hours-long labor to deliver a nonviable fetus, despite her wishes and best medical advice.”
Hospitals and their lawyers are being forced to interpret statutory terms that don’t correspond to medical practice and language. These laws often demand a degree of certainty doctors can’t provide. Katie McHugh, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indiana, tells me doctors must now tell patients that a given procedure is “what she would medically recommend,” but then inform the patient she can’t receive that treatment in her state. In other words, doctors in some states are becoming travel agents for abortion services.
In many states, the substantial risk to mental health (e.g., depression, suicidal ideation) might not “count” as a valid exception to abortion bans. And are the risks associated with traveling long distances for women determined to seek an abortion factored into the calculation? Definitive answers are nonexistent.
Most egregiously, McHugh adds, these laws do not envision chronic conditions. A pregnant woman at risk of liver failure, for example, may face debilitating conditions or even death down the road if she gives birth. But if state law requires imminent risk of death to perform the procedure, she may have to carry the pregnancy to term against her wishes and doctor’s advice. This is barbaric.
Katie Watson, a lawyer and ethicist at Northwestern University, tells me that without an abortion ban, a doctor telling a patient to wait for treatment until she becomes really sick would qualify as malpractice. She also warns that state laws may be “criminalizing” miscarriages since medications used to clear the uterus after a miscarriage, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, are also used for an abortion. Miscarrying women — and their doctors — could face intense scrutiny.
One thing is certain, Watson says: “More babies will be born, and more women will die.” That’s just reality in a country with high maternal death rates. And that will fall disproportionately on Black women, who are more than twice as likely to die from pregnancy than White women.
Meanwhile, pregnant minors face larger risks to physical health (e.g., an increased need for a Caesarean section) and moral trauma above and beyond what an adult victim would face. This is especially true for rape victims.
In short, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has thrown out the basic premise of medicine: to minimize health risks. The ruling generated chaos among doctors, lawyers and patients, who must now wrestle with incoherent restrictions or bans.
As Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday, the court’s disastrous jurisprudence creates “a kind of uncertainty that makes it difficult to advise people on what their rights are and to advise institutions on what they can do to secure those rights when courts take them away.”
The resulting uncertainty is already having devastating consequences, as we hear from those who are unable to travel for care, the struggles of those trying to manage their care at home, and the nightmares faced by those who do travel for care, including the 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to obtain an abortion from an out-of-state provider. That is the world we are now living in. …
People are rightfully unsure about what their rights are on any given day; politicians and advocates are claiming broader and broader authority over individuals, and broadcasting plans to restrict other rights related to autonomy, personhood, family, and home that so many people rely on.
Decades of litigation have only just begun. Dobbs abolished federal constitutional protection for abortion, but state laws and constitutions may offer relief. The Post reports that multiple states will have measures on their ballots in November that could extend or protect abortion rights. This includes Michigan, where more than enough signatures were submitted to add a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would protect abortion rights.
Meanwhile, litigation in state courts in Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia will test various legal theories to overturn abortion bans, including:
Claiming that the laws are unconstitutionally vague, as is the basis for suits in Arizona, Louisiana and Oklahoma, where doctors or patients are unable to determine what’s legal and what’s not.
Arguing that abortion bans would infringe upon a doctor’s religious beliefs if their religious views prioritize preventing harm to people’s health.
Claiming that bans would deprive Black women’s equal protection, since forced-birth policies will burden them.
Making the case that bans amount to a denial of all women’s equal protection, since they are uniquely being denied proper reproductive care, unlike any other patient category.
Focusing on the arbitrary loss of life or liberty, in violation of due process.
Doctors, courts, patients and prosecutors are in uncharted waters. Indeed, mass confusion might be a feature, not a bug, for forced-birth advocates since uncertainty chills abortion care.
It’s no wonder the Supreme Court doesn’t leave any other fundamental rights to be decided at the state level. Imagine if, for example, protections from unreasonable search and seizure were in the hands of state lawmakers. Now, women must fend for themselves without constitutional armor to shield their cherished rights. That’s the essence of what it means to be a second-class citizen. | 2022-07-21T12:23:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This is what it looks like when women become second-class citizens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/chaos-abortion-dobbs-women-have-become-second-class-citizens/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/chaos-abortion-dobbs-women-have-become-second-class-citizens/ |
Md. man sentenced for viewing child porn on Library of Congress WiFi
Gary Lee Peksa, who worked for the Architect of the Capitol at the Library of Congress, was arrested in 2019
A 56-year-old former federal employee was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison for repeatedly connecting his cellphone to the Library of Congress’s wireless network to view and download child porn, authorities said.
Between October 2018 and July 2019, Gary Lee Peksa, a sheet metal mechanic working for the Architect of the Capitol at the Library of Congress, used his cellphone and the public wireless network at the library to access websites that contained images and videos of child pornography, the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. said in a news release.
He did this from a bathroom, his office and a break room, authorities said in the release, and used his personal laptop, cellphone and wireless service to access similar materials at home.
His conduct came to light after the Library of Congress network security operations center notified investigators of web traffic on the library’s public wireless network of browsing associated with child pornography, they said.
In July 2019, Capitol Police seized Peksa’s laptop and cellphone, authorities said. His laptop had 215 files depicting young girls being sexually abused and assaulted, while his cellphone had 199 images showing minor boys and girls exposing their genitals or engaging in sexual activity.
Peksa, of Mechanicsville, Md., was arrested Oct. 21, 2019, and pleaded guilty in December in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of receipt of child pornography, authorities said.
After his prison term, Peksa will be placed on 20 years of supervised release, they said. He will also be required to pay $47,000 in restitution to victims depicted in the child pornography he possessed and must register as a sex offender for at least 15 years. | 2022-07-21T13:15:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Md. man sentenced for viewing child porn on Library of Congress network - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/employee-library-of-congress-child-porn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/employee-library-of-congress-child-porn/ |
Sahaj Kaur Kohli, creator of Brown Girl Therapy and an MA.Ed, is answering questions about identity, relationships, mental health, work-life balance, family dynamics and more. If you have a question for her, please submit it here.
Dear Sahaj: My partner and I have very recently decided to break up. We’ve been friends for more than seven years, shared a romantic relationship for five of those years and have lived together for the last four. We both still deeply love and care for one another but have realized that we’re no longer a good match for this kind of relationship, largely due fundamental differences in values — a major one being our beliefs and practices in regards to covid-19.
We both enjoy living together but have different ideas of what physical safety in a pandemic means and looks like, which has made it more challenging to share space as my ex-partner — like so many others in the world — is feeling more emboldened to “return to normal” while I’m still practicing what feel like necessary precautions. In addition to living together, we also care for our two cats and share additional financial investments, like our car.
In weighing the logistical and economical conveniences and comfort of being able to support each other in a shared space with what could become an emotional burden to continue living together, I’m wondering: Can a healthy roommate-and-friend relationship be possible at this point?
— Weighing my options
Weighing my options: First off, I want to note a discrepancy in your question: On the one hand, you say you’re already living in an environment that doesn’t feel good because of a difference in values. And on the other, you want to explore staying in that same environment because of convenience and comfort.
With the pandemic ongoing, I wonder how you imagine this difference in your values won’t continue to be an issue?
It’s important not to mistake the fizzling out of a romantic relationship as a friendship. And it’s important not to mistake having lived together as partners as an ability to have a healthy roommate relationship.
I’m not saying it’s not possible to move from romantic partners to roommates or friends, but there are many layers of your relationship you’ll have to uncover to get back to the initial friendship — before it was skewed with romantic expectations and behaviors. And in this process, you have to be honest with yourself.
Learning how to be in a different type of relationship with another person often requires space: both to figure out how this person fits into a different role in your life, and coming to a mutual understanding of the new roles you each play in the other’s life.
Here are a few questions for you to consider: Are you both on the same page about why you broke up? Do you have clear agreements on whether there’s a chance for reconciliation? Was the breakup completely mutual? How does it feel to be in the same space? Is there any lingering resentment or hostility?
If it feels like you are both amicable and truly ready to move on (and to watch each other move on), then it will still be important to consider and manage expectations around what your roles, relational boundaries and house rules are.
For example, roommates often have a shared understanding on visitors, dishes, cleaning and so on. Will these be different (or the same) as when you lived together as romantic partners? More importantly, how will you set clearer guidelines to distinguish between these activities as partners versus roommates?
In shifting your roles, setting boundaries, and potentially adding third parties to the mix, the access and expectations around the car and the shared living space will also change. How do you foresee yourself handling or feeling about this?
Then consider hypotheticals even further. What do sleeping arrangements look like? How will rent be split up? How will car accessibility, gas or cat-related expenses be divided and separated? It will be important to reflect on how these will be separated to honor your new autonomy as single individuals.
It can be difficult to divide your shared investments, but if you are really broken up with your partner, it may be a matter of delaying the inevitable. I know there is financial privilege that comes with being able to physically separate; however, if fear is what is mainly keeping you in the same physical space as your ex-partner, even though you don’t share the same values, then I encourage you to start making an exit plan.
No matter how you proceed in the immediate future, you will have to find a way to emotionally separate from your ex-partner. If you delay this because of convenience or comfort, it only delays the healing and moving on process, too. | 2022-07-21T13:20:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Sahaj: Can I say roommates with an ex? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/21/ask-sahaj-ex-roommates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/21/ask-sahaj-ex-roommates/ |
D.C. family peels away older renovations and unveils dream home
Plans for a cosmetic remodel ballooned into a full gut renovation
The house had been added onto at least twice. The front porch was mostly closed-in, and a front-facing dormer had been added to the third floor. It was opened up and simplified during the renovation. (EL Studio; Anice Hoachlander)
Eric Carter and Lauren Herrington were living in a farmhouse they loved in the Palisades-Kent neighborhood in Northwest Washington but were running out of room as the family expanded to five — plus a dog.
“It was a cute little farmhouse that we bought in 2002,” says Herrington, 47, a veterinarian who is currently taking a break from practicing. Eric, 48, is an executive with a legal staffing firm.
“We got engaged on the front steps and originally wanted to keep the house,” says Herrington. “It was built in 1888, a bit higgledy-piggledy with weird-shaped rooms and a backyard.”
They wanted to keep the house, but a slope outside made it nearly impossible to adapt for a renovation.
With the arrival of their third child, things were coming to a head. Then the family got wind of a house for sale a few blocks away.
The prospective place had four bedrooms, five baths and an in-ground pool in the backyard.
“We walked in, and the backyard was stunning,” Herrington says. “It had the indoor-outdoor living we wanted, and we thought it just needed cosmetic repairs.”
The family paid $2.45 million for the new place and decided to stay put until repairs were finished. The design team switched gears and huddled for a year while the family continued living in the farmhouse.
Peeling back older renovations
The new house began life as a bungalow but had been added onto at least twice. “It almost looked Victorian,” Herrington says. “There were stained-glass windows, Victorian-style light fixtures and a tile backsplash in the kitchen with fish on it.”
In one of the renovations, a third-story dormer had been added to create a bedroom suite. The front porch had been closed in and a rear porch had been added. Moving the dormer and reversing the functions of both porches figured into the new design scheme.
With a plan in place, demolition began in August 2020 with the pandemic playing an active role. Added Dimensions, based in Takoma Park, Md., signed on as the builder. As the layers were peeled back, the demo became more invasive.
The floors on the second story were bowing because there weren’t enough joists. The covered front porch had been barely closed in. The stairway was hanging on drywall, Herrington says.
What was supposed to be a cosmetic fixer-upper quickly ballooned into a full-blown gut job. “There were multiple times after we demoed and started rebuilding that we thought we should have just torn it down,” Herrington says. “But I think it was still advantageous to do as a renovation.”
With the pandemic in full swing, the new house and its swimming pool did offer some solace. “It was our covid treat,” Herrington says. “The crews would finish up for the day and we would come down with cocktails, put lawn chairs up, envision what it would be like to live here and what it would feel like to finally be in.”
In November 2021, they finally made the move. The home’s front facade was drastically changed as the existing third-floor dormer was removed. The front porch was uncovered to resume its role as a simple, coffee- and cocktail-sipping porch. The immediate effect led many of the neighbors to ask the family why they made the house smaller, but the living space was expanded by about 800 square feet. The exterior of the house is painted black.
The front door opens to reveal stairs bordered by a clear glass railing that leads to the upper floors and down to the basement. The expansive living room is off to the left. An entrance walkway leading from the front door is clad in gray Mutina tile patterned to look like hardwood. The living room floor is European white oak imported from Portugal.
The interior walls separating the living and dining room were removed, with headers now carrying the load of the upper floors. The original plans called for two separate rooms divided by pocket doors, but the homeowners changed their minds and went with a no-walls approach.
Heading straight past the living room leads to a wet bar on the way to the kitchen. There’s a souped-up butler’s pantry tucked behind the wet bar, which was the original location of the kitchen. The galley-style pantry is illuminated by existing skylights shining down on a mix of Henrybuilt walnut cabinetry in an iron-colored stain mixed in with open shelving.
The pantry is directly linked to the main kitchen, which is defined by a large island that helps hide the base cabinetry, also from Henrybuilt, and a Mercury range from Aga. The island offers seating for four, contains a sink and is topped with PaperStone. Other appliances include a Thermador refrigerator and a wine fridge from Sub-Zero.
“The pandemic changed some of our appliance choices because you couldn’t get them,” Herrington says.
‘We do love this house’
What used to be the home’s back porch was captured and brought inside, which helped expand the dining room and kitchen. The move also connected the family room, which is tucked into the rear corner and used to be anchored by a massive, stacked-stone fireplace.
Herrington wanted to keep a fireplace in the space but wanted something more contemporary. The team explored ways to add built-in furniture around the existing hearth to make it more inviting, but nothing worked, so it fell via the sledgehammer. A new, suspended fireplace was sourced from Focus Fireplaces based in France. Some of the models can be rotated but some building codes require that they remain locked in place.
There is a mudroom adjacent to the basement stairs, which lead down to a family hangout space, storage and a full bath. To make up for the space lost from removing the dormer on the front of the house, the new design bumped up and over what used to be the back porch.
The second level has a laundry room, kids’ rooms with full baths, and the primary suite. The main bath has a stand-alone soaking tub from Duravit and a separate water closet. The vanity was also sourced from Henrybuilt with a Corian top. The shower is curbless and doorless. The tile also came from Mutina. The third floor holds a home office and full bath.
When the family bought the new place, the old farmhouse still held a place in their hearts and because they had moved in the past for work opportunities, the possibility of another exit was on their minds.
“We’re always one foot out the door if an opportunity presents itself, but we do love this house,” Herrington says.
Because of unforeseen construction issues, the budget for the renovation became fluid and resale was always on the family’s mind. Renovation costs remain private, and the biggest challenge of the project was the uncertainty.
“You’re handing over a lot of money for a long time before you see results and even then, you’re a little nervous about — is this going to pay off?” Herrington says. “Will it actually look like what’s on paper?”
But, comfortable in their new place, the family has no doubts about their investment.© | 2022-07-21T13:20:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. family peels away older renovations and unveils dream home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/dc-family-peels-away-older-renovations-unveils-dream-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/dc-family-peels-away-older-renovations-unveils-dream-home/ |
And … it’s a bill. A bipartisan Senate group working on revising the poorly written and badly outdated 19th century rules for how the Electoral College functions in presidential elections has reached agreement on legislative language. Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of the Washington Post have an excellent summary of what the new bill would do. A group of election law experts are already giving it high marks.
This is a big deal.
What former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election revealed was something that experts had already been aware of: The law governing how presidents are chosen, the Electoral Count Act of 1887, is a terrible law. It contains all sorts of ambiguities, loopholes and other opportunities for mischief between the counting of votes in the states all the way up to the final presentation of the electoral votes to a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
It’s true that Trump and his allies also pushed beyond plausible interpretations of the law. As every legitimate expert explained at the time, there isn’t any open question about whether the vice president, who presides over that joint session, can just toss out votes he or she doesn’t like. But other provisions are cloudy enough to give plenty of cover to those who want to cause trouble. A poorly drafted election statute puts unnecessary and destructive pressure on partisan officials, in the states and in Congress, who want to respect the law but also want to do whatever they can legally to give advantages to their own side.
Well constructed laws are not going to stop a party that is bent on subverting the law, even to the extent of fomenting violence. If such a party wins control of the government, good laws aren’t going to dislodge it. But for those who are not comfortable going that far but consider constitutional hardball — efforts to fully exploit ambiguity — fair game? Better laws can deter them.
I’ve noted before that while we do know how many Republicans voted in the House of Representatives against accepting the legitimate electors in 2020, we don’t know how many would have voted the same way had their votes really mattered.
It’s possible that some of the votes against those electors were basically protest votes — similar to the protests that small numbers of Democrats made in 2000, 2004 and 2016; efforts meant to signal they were upset with what they perceived as unfairness, rather than serious efforts to overturn the election. (In all three cases, the Democratic nominee had rapidly conceded the election once it was decided and made no effort to overturn it, so efforts to challenge electors were nothing beyond protest).
It’s also possible, however, that some of those who voted against the challenges might have been tempted to do so if their votes might have actually reversed the election; after all, with a Democratic majority in the House, Republicans knew that they didn’t have the votes even if they were united.
Good laws can’t guarantee good results, but it should never be easy to overturn legitimate elections. The proposed reforms of the Electoral Count Act would make it a lot harder.
There’s no guarantee that it will pass. There will be a Senate filibuster — all bills are filibustered nowadays — and so it will need at least 10 Republicans to beat that filibuster, more than were involved in the working group that drafted the measure, which was led by Maine Republican Susan Collins and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. Still, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has supported the effort, in principle at least, and while strong opposition from Trump allies would be no surprise, there’s an excellent chance of passage.
If so, it will add to the surprisingly large group of bipartisan laws passed by the current Congress. Or at least laws that Democrats strongly supported along with a significant minority of Republicans. Just this week, along with the rollout of a new Electoral Count Act, the Senate has moved ahead on a bill to support the US semiconductor industry and fund scientific research, while the House passed a bill to protect same-sex marriage rights, in both cases with a fair amount of Republican support.
Practically no one expected the current Congress to be marked by cooperation between the parties. But if all three of these bills do pass, it will be hard to escape that conclusion. | 2022-07-21T13:20:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election Law Reform Just Took a Big Step Forward - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/election-law-reform-just-took-a-big-step-forward/2022/07/21/a9234f00-08f1-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/election-law-reform-just-took-a-big-step-forward/2022/07/21/a9234f00-08f1-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Michael Andor Brodeur
Belgium's National Day brings deals at Belgian bars and restaurants, including 15 drafts for $5 each at the Sovereign in Georgetown. (Dixie D. Vereen for The Washington Post)
Belgian National Day: You don’t have to know the history of the Belgian Revolution to enjoy drinking Belgian beer and eating moules on the country’s independence day. The Sovereign is D.C.’s premiere Belgian bar, and it’s pouring 15 Belgian beers for $5 each from 5 p.m. until close, including De La Senne’s Taras Boulba, Dupont’s Saison Dupont and De Ranke’s XX Bitter. Specials rotate every two to three hours throughout the day at Brasserie Beck, beginning at 11 a.m.: Think half-price pours of 3 Fonteinen lambics from 1 to 4 p.m. or half-price De La Senne drafts from 8 p.m. until close, plus glassware giveaways. At Granville Moore’s, the in-house beer expert has curated flights of Belgian beers, offered for $12, beginning at 5 p.m. Belga Cafe is extending happy hour at the bar and on the patio from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., no reservations needed. Et Voila has a three-course menu, including asparagus gratin and mussels in endive sauce, for $55.95, with an optional beer pairing, as well as a la carte options.
Julien Baker at Wolf Trap: Julien Baker, born and raised in Memphis, is on her third album, and her commitment to blistering honesty isn’t going anywhere. On her 2021 project “Little Oblivions,” the singer’s truth-telling has more support from a fuller band of live instruments. Baker’s struggles with addiction have been a steady theme for her music and are the whole story on the opening song and album standout, “Hardline.” She sings the devastating line, “I’m telling my own fortune / Something I cannot escape,” just as robust drumming breaks through the background before a rousing chorus. On “Ringside,” listeners may wish she weren’t so hard on herself. “So you could either watch me drown / Or try to save me while I drag you down,” she sings, contemplating what her self-destruction is doing to those in her life with the help of a slightly chaotic guitar. However, her intense candor is what makes her music resonate. Baker, and her listeners, can’t deny the truth. 7:30 p.m. $32.
Capital Book Fest at Ronald Reagan Building: Spend your lunch break browsing thousands of used books, records, CDs and DVDs on the Ronald Reagan Building’s Wilson Plaza during the Capital Book Fest. Sales at this outdoor pop-up bookstore, organized with local bookseller Carpe Librum, benefit childhood literacy organization Turning the Page. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
Don’t Mute D.C. at the Kennedy Center: The second installment of the Kennedy Center’s summer festival series is dedicated to preserving D.C.’s official music. Don’t Mute D.C., which has its roots in the protests that erupted after a store at the corner of Florida Avenue and Seventh Street NW was told to stop playing go-go music in the spring of 2019, curates this weekend’s edition. Highlights on Friday include a discussion about the role of drums in liberation movements, DJ Supa Dan, and a performance by the Experience Band and Show. Saturday brings a go-go dance and fitness session; an interactive class about the healing power of drums; a seminar on “the healing power of go-go music”; and a Millennium Stage concert with the legendary Junkyard Band, best known for the hits “Sardines” and “The Word.” Tickets for most events are available on a first-come, first-served basis; tickets for Millennium Stage events are available at the box office on the day of the performance. Friday from 5 to 8:30 p.m., Saturday from 2 to 8:30 p.m. Free.
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at Olney Theatre Center: Free Summer Shakespeare returns to Olney Theatre Center’s Root Family Stage this weekend, with a pair of evening performances of “Much Ado About Nothing.” Tickets are pay-what-you-can, with seating on a first-come, first-served basis beginning 30 minutes before the performance. Bring picnic blankets and chairs, though the theater has bleachers and seats available. The production moves inside in case of rain. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Free.
NMAAHC Hip-Hop Block Party tickets: The National Museum of African American History and Culture will mark the first anniversary of its Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap with a day-long block party at the museum on Aug. 13. Want to see D. Smoke, the Halluci Nation, DJ Spinderella or a showcase featuring DMV talent? Tickets will be available on the museum’s website on Friday. Free.
Warpaint at Capitol Turnaround: Warpaint returned earlier this year with the band’s first album in six years, a delay elongated — like so many others — by the pandemic. In the interim, the members of the LA-born quartet have stayed busy, variously working on solo albums, collaborating with the likes of Courtney Barnett and Suzanne Ciani, scoring films, and having a baby. But don’t call it a hiatus or a comeback. “It’s just four humans living in this world that are lucky enough to express themselves and make music with each other and hone their individual creativity and individual skills, in a weird time,” said drummer Stella Mozgawa. The result, “Radiate Like This,” is as dreamy and moody as its predecessors, taking a foray into Stevie Wonder-inspired soulshine before closing with the decidedly sensual “Send Nudes.” 8 p.m. $27.50.
Evil at Songbyrd: Sometimes a song seems prophetic when it’s really just timeless. That’s the case with “Young American,” a gentle strummer of a country tune by DMV native Evil. In a dreamy croon, Evil sings of being “desensitized” and “ready to die,” and the chorus isn’t a rousing call to action but an appeal for resignation: “Young American / Put down your fists / ’Cuz you can’t win.” Written around 2017 and released in 2019, “Young American” seems to foretell the wave of protests that would wash over the United States in 2020, crystallized by the police murder of George Floyd. In the two years since, there have been plenty more protests, whether after acts of violence committed by firearm or those done by judicial decree. But after two long, contentious years, the energy of 2020 has turned into exhaustion. “Young American” feels like the anti-protest anthem of the day. In the years since the release of “Young American,” Evil has stayed busy, building on the stripped-down country of their self-titled debut with songs that glisten with orchestral flourishes, Auto-Tuned vocals and gurgling electronic beats. Born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, Evil is a country artist on their own terms at a time when many artists are challenging the stereotypes and expectations of what country artists look and sound like. 7 p.m. $17-$20.
Interview: Evil is a country artist on their own terms
Black Greek Festival and Brunch Olympics: The two-day Black Greek Festival returns to D.C. after a 2021 debut that organizers say attracted more than 5,000 attendees. (Don’t worry if you’re not a member of one of the Divine Nine Black Greek organizations: Organizers of this party say it’s open to everyone.) The main event, held at Gateway D.C. on Saturday, includes a concert with Juvenile and a slew of DJs from the Divine Nine, plus outdoor games and dancing, multiple bars, vendors, art installations, food trucks and more. (11 a.m. to 7 p.m. $30, $100 VIP.) On Sunday, the festivities move to the Bullpen for the Brunch Olympics, where $25 bottomless mimosas from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., food trucks, and a lineup of DJs including Quicksilva and Sam I Am create a vibe. WHUR-FM’s Autumn Joi and Young Toon are the hosts. Warning: Unless you purchase VIP tickets, which require deposits ranging from $225 to $550 for a group of up to six, seating is not guaranteed, so early arrival is strongly suggested. (11 a.m. to 7 p.m., $40-$50.)
International Colombian Festival at Catholic University: Mauro Castillo — salsa musician, actor and, oh yes, the voice of Félix in “Encanto” and its inescapable smash “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — is among the headliners at the annual International Colombian Festival, which celebrates Colombia’s independence. The day mixes music, including Colombian group San Miguelito and musician Iván Zuleta; cultural dance performances; food trucks; and vendors. It’s not just Colombians who will be celebrating: Each year, organizers invite another country to join in the festivities, and this time is the Dominican Republic’s turn. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. $20; free for children younger than 12.
Sugar Bear Birthday Bash featuring E.U. at Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club: “I’m going to use this platform that God has given me to address violence in any way I can,” says Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott, the lead vocalist and guitarist of legendary go-go band Experience Unlimited, who is celebrating his birthday with shows at Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club and the Birchmere. “I’m known as a go-go artist and throw a good party, but people can also hear the message at the same time. Love your brothers, because peace has gone away. We need to bring it back.” Celebrating 50 years as a group, Experience Unlimited, also known as just E.U., has rereleased one of its first singles: “Peace Gone Away” was written more than 40 years ago but sounds just as relevant today. “While we would all like to think that violence has gotten better since that time [when the song came out], it hasn’t — in fact, it’s gotten worse,” Elliott says. “So somebody’s got to step up to the plate and say, ‘Hey, we got to fix this.’ And hopefully the song will reach a new generation of people in 2022 and help people change their course for good.” Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. $30-$40.
Interview: E.U. puts a fresh spin on an old cut for a new generation of fans
Africa on the Avenue at Bruce Monroe Park: Georgia Avenue has long been home to a community of African immigrants, and this gathering in Bruce Monroe Park celebrates their culture. Nigerian guitarist Dòkun and Afro-Cuban drum ensemble DMV Rumberos provide the soundtrack for art, hair braiding demonstrations, food and more. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
Alethia Tanner Day at Alethia Tanner Park: The NoMa neighborhood’s largest park is named after Alethia Tanner, a woman born enslaved in Maryland who eventually purchased her freedom, as well as freedom for family members, by selling produce in Lafayette Square. (You can read more about her on the White House Historical Association’s website.) Tanner’s legacy, which includes supporting schools for Black children, is honored at this community festival. Activities include a pop-up market with Black female makers, gardening crafts for children, double Dutch lessons, an REI bike tuneup station, food trucks, and music from DJ Mathias Broohm and Too Much Talent Band. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free.
Frut at Hi-Lawn: The rooftop bar above Union Market is a fun place to spread out on the (fake) grass with a group of friends, but it’s also a great destination for a sunset DJ party. DJs Lemz of DC9’s Sleaze and 9:30 Club’s Bent queer dance parties is joined by DJ Wess for what Lemz described on Instagram as a “chaotic outside pop party.” 5 to 10 p.m. $10.
Virginia Coalition at the Bullpen: Virginia Coalition’s good-time sound incorporated jam band grooves, Dave Matthews folk-rock and just a smidgen of go-go, making it easy to see why the Alexandria-rooted band was a fixture on local stages throughout the 2000s. The band even recorded an album at 9:30 Club, called, unsurprisingly, “Live at 9:30 Club.” Twenty-one years after VaCo first sold out the 9:30, the band headlines the Bullpen’s nostalgia-drenched Summer Concert Series. Gates open at 4 p.m. 7 p.m. $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
Bonbon at Songbyrd: Bonbon is a “mini-festival” that brings together several of the city’s most vital DJs and performers to benefit SMYAL, a D.C. nonprofit that supports LGBTQ youth through leadership and mentorship. Dvonne, a founding member of the Noxeema Jackson collective, brings together influences that range from Luther Vandross and Notorious B.I.G. to goth industrial and raver club. Tommy C and Kristy La Rat are veterans of D.C. dance floors, expertly mixing tracks from across the disco-house-techno continuum and pan-Latin, diasporic dance music, respectively. The lineup is rounded out by Pwrpuff, Aphroditus, FRANXX and Gabberbitch69 — a purveyor of punishing, high-tempo tracks — and features a performance by Bambi, who produces “genderless and gendermore fantasies” as the mother of Haus of Bambi. 5 p.m. $20.
Silkroad Ensemble at Wolf Trap: The MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”-winning, multitalented Rhiannon Giddens embarks on her first tour with the venerable and versatile Silkroad Ensemble (founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 1998) since her appointment as its artistic director in 2020. On this tour, the ensemble is debuting “Phoenix Rising,” described as a “musical rebirth” for the group. Giddens and 13 Silkroad musicians will perform new commissions by Sandeep Das, Maeve Gilchrist and Kaoru Watanabe, as well as new arrangements by Giddens, Colin Jacobsen, Edward Pérez and Mazz Swift. 8 p.m. $32-$127.
Punk Rock Movie Night at Black Cat: Black Cat may be trading cinema for concerts on Sunday night, but the focus is still on music. The Red Room doubleheader includes “Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC,” a documentary about the influence of the venue Max’s Kansas City, a regular haunt for the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls and other underground musicians in the 1970s, and “Sid: The Final Curtain,” a short documentary about Sid Vicious’s final concert at Max’s in September 1978. 7 p.m. $20.
‘The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical’ Live in Concert at the Kennedy Center: For Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the road to the Grammys began with a question Barlow posted on TikTok: “Okay, but what if ‘Bridgerton’ was a musical?” Starting in January 2021, the duo workshopped songs for what became “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a cycle of 15 songs inspired by Netflix’s racy period drama and posted straight to TikTok. Earlier this year, Barlow and Bear became the youngest winners of the Grammy for best musical theater album. But now the music is coming off TikTok and into the real world: This world premiere performance in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall features the National Symphony Orchestra, Tony-winning singer Kelli O’Hara, and Ephraim Sykes of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “Hamilton.” 8 p.m. $39-$169.
Logan Ury at Sixth and I: Behavioral scientist Logan Ury is the “director of relationship science” at Hinge, the dating app famous for getting more mentions in the New York Times than any other. So when her latest book promises to teach singles “How to Not Die Alone,” recognizing and changing behaviors to remove “dating blind spots,” they listen. Ury visits Sixth and I for a doubleheader on Tuesday: The main event finds Ury in conversation with Rabbi Aaron Potek, discussing dating in all its forms. Show up early for a seminar on “How to Design Your Best Online Dating Profile,” and learn why you probably shouldn’t be using that photo. The conversation is offered in person as well as virtually; the workshop is in-person only. Dating profile workshop 6 to 7 p.m., conversation 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Talk $10-$26, workshop $30-$40.
Laura Veirs at Union Stage: For much of Laura Veirs’s career as a solo artist, her music was inextricably linked to Tucker Martine, an indie super-producer who helped helm her albums and is also Veirs’s ex-husband. While 2020’s “My Echo” was released after their divorce, the just-released “Found Light” is the first that sees the singer-songwriter processing, preparing and pushing through to a new phase of life and music. As she told NPR, “The whole process of making records was intertwined with my ex — who’s a great record producer, but I wanted to do it my own way.” On “Found Light,” Veirs’s lyrics are vivid poetry, full of sense-stimulating images like “vermilion suns” and “pomegranate fingertips,” and the songs grapple with how she has learned from pain, freed herself from burdens and returned to nature — and herself. 8 p.m. $20. | 2022-07-21T13:21:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Outdoor concerts, festivals and events in Washington, D.C., area. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/best-things-do-dc-area-week-july-21-27/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/best-things-do-dc-area-week-july-21-27/ |
A makeshift gallows with a noose is displayed on a screen as the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on June 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The House Jan. 6 select committee is expected to present evidence Thursday that President Donald Trump enjoyed the sight of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol and that he knew violence had broken out when he sent a tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence.
This was back before presidents and vice presidents ran on a single ticket, so Calhoun started off as John Quincy Adams’s vice president and then continued in the role after Andrew Jackson defeated Adams in 1828.
At first, Calhoun might have seemed a good fit for Jackson — both were Southerners and wealthy enslavers who supported the removal of Indigenous Americans to the West.
But the self-educated Jackson found the Yale-educated Calhoun’s intellectualism annoying and Calhoun’s wife dangerously snobbish (see: Petticoat Affair). Plus, in 1830, Jackson found out that 12 years earlier, Calhoun, as secretary of war, had wanted to censure Jackson, then a general in Florida, for starting a war with the Seminoles against direct orders.
But their biggest conflict by far was the Nullification Crisis. Toward the end of Adams’s term, Congress passed and Adams signed into a law a tariff on imported goods that Southerners said hurt them more than it hurt Northern states. Calhoun, still vice president, wrote an anonymous screed from his South Carolina plantation claiming that states could reject, or “nullify,” federal laws they did not like.
When Jackson came in, Calhoun expected him to get rid of the tariff, but he didn’t. In fact, Jackson dug in his heels, enraged that a state would question (his) federal authority, claiming it was treason. So, for the next four years, as the crisis calcified and South Carolinians threatened to secede, the president and the vice president hated each other’s guts.
At a party in 1830, Jackson toasted: “Our Union. It must be preserved!” Calhoun got up and toasted back: “The Union. Next to our liberty, the most dear.” A few days later, Jackson warned a South Carolina congressman to tell his “friends” that “if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.”
In 1831, Calhoun, in his role as president of the Senate, broke a tie vote on a controversial nomination by voting against Jackson’s nominee. The next year, Jackson ran for a second term and picked the failed nominee, Martin Van Buren, as his running mate.
A few months before the end of his term, Calhoun resigned — the first of only two vice presidents to do so — and became a senator in a special election. In the Senate, he was a forceful proponent of slavery as a “positive good” and the principal architect of the South’s future secession.
The bad blood between the two men continued in Jackson’s second term. In 1835, Calhoun reportedly called Jackson “a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus,” and when someone actually tried to assassinate Jackson soon afterward, rumors abounded that Calhoun was involved. (He wasn’t.)
The day after Jackson left the White House in 1837, a reporter friend asked him whether he had any regrets. Yes, he said, “I regret I was unable to shoot [House Speaker] Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun.” | 2022-07-21T13:21:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump wasn't the first to decry his vice president. Jackson wanted to hang his. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/21/trump-pence-jackson-calhoun-hang/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/21/trump-pence-jackson-calhoun-hang/ |
Young talent like Juan Soto are key to Nationals’ return to winning
Catcher Keibert Ruiz looks like a keeper, but Bell, Gray and Garcia are tougher calls. And can the team afford Soto?
The Washington Nationals have the worst record in the major leagues. If they can afford to keep Juan Soto, above, he would be an important part of getting the team back in full swing. (Nick Wass/AP)
When a pro team is not very good, the most important question it must ask is: Which players on its roster will still be on the team when it starts winning again?
The Washington Nationals are not very good. Their record is 31-63 (31 wins, 63 losses), the worst in the major leagues. So the Nats have to ask that important question. Especially as the trade deadline (August 2) approaches.
First, the team has to realize it can’t count on older players such as Yadiel Hernandez and Nelson Cruz. In a few seasons when (hopefully) the Nats are better, these veterans may be too old to help.
The Nats have to develop young players with talent. Luckily, they have some.
Juan Soto (23 years old) is a rare combination of hitting skills. Soto has power, but he also gets on base a lot. Soto is looking to earn a lot of money when he becomes a free agent at the end of the 2024 season. He recently turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract that the Nationals offered, according to The Washington Post and other baseball reporters. If the Nationals can afford to keep him, he is exactly the kind of young talented player a team has to have to get better.
Keibert Ruiz (23) shows potential at catcher in his first full year in the majors. Ruiz is hitting about the league average but has thrown out 16 runners trying to steal bases and picked off four more. He looks like a long-term solution behind the plate and definitely a keeper.
It may be too early to tell if Luis García (22) is another keeper. García has looked shaky at shortstop making too many errors for a big leaguer. While he has only 500 or so at-bats in the majors, he seems to be getting more comfortable at the plate.
Starting pitcher Josiah Gray (24) has had an up-and-down 2022 season. The young right-hander has had some rough starts but at other times looked unhittable. His 7-6 record and 4.4o ERA is a bit worse than the league average, but he is improving. If Gray stays healthy (always a question with pitchers), he could become a valuable piece of the Nats puzzle.
I’m not as sure about center fielder Victor Robles (25). He has had more than 1,300 at-bats over several seasons and is still a below-average hitter. Robles is an exciting fielder with a strong arm, but if he doesn’t improve at the plate, he won’t have a future with the team.
Josh Bell (30 in August) is a tough call. I love Bell’s solid hitting, and he seems to be a terrific teammate. Still, he will be 32 or 33 when the Nats start getting better. I hope the team keeps him, but I can see why the team may trade him for younger players.
The Nats are struggling. To become a winner again, the team has to answer the important question of which players to keep and which to let go.
Bowen writes the sports opinion column for KidsPost. He is the author of 27 kids sports books, including 10 about baseball. | 2022-07-21T13:21:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Young talent like Juan Soto are key to Nationals’ return to winning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/21/nationals-young-talent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/21/nationals-young-talent/ |
A Date Lab announcement: What we’re doing to protect our daters
(Hailey Haymond/The Washington Post)
“People love disasters, and they also love love stories,” says Sandy Fernández, the original Date Lab editor. For more than 15 years, The Washington Post Magazine’s column has captured those two extremes — and some areas in between. It’s not one of the most popular and long-standing features at The Post for nothing.
Today, we’re announcing a change to the column’s format: We are going to allow participants to be identified by only their first names. To understand the reasons for this shift, it helps to know some of the history behind the column.
Date Lab has always been an exceedingly personal window into people’s lives — and the more people have been willing to share with us, the better the column. For many people, a romantic partner is a core part of how they find meaning and joy in life. And their journey to find that special someone lays bare their backgrounds, beliefs and preferences. To be in Date Lab is to open up your life not just to the person across the table, but to a whole lot of interested strangers. The orchestration of blind dates and the dates themselves can offer glimpses into politics, religion, education, race, sexuality and gender, and how people see themselves and the world around them. It is and has been endlessly fascinating.
When the column launched in 2006, it was a bit of a gamble. Fernández intended Date Lab to be a Washington spin on the New York Post’s Meet Market column — which sent readers on blind dates in the Big Apple — but there were concerns from other editors that Washingtonians were more cautious and aware of their public personas. Would daters share enough for us to write an engaging weekly column? Would people even sign up? For the first few dates, Fernández strong-armed friends of friends to be guinea pigs. But soon after, the applications started coming in.
We knew we were on to something when one of the initial matches resulted in an elopement six months later. A total of four marriages happened in the first five years of Date Lab. Most recently, Willie Gray and Renee Coley, who were set up on Valentine’s Day 2019, are still going strong. Yet our goal is not to produce a love match, exactly. We are, after all, journalists, not a professional matchmaking service. Our goal is to create a date that we think, in good faith, will work — “I just wanted them to have a good experience,” says Annys Shin, who was the Date Lab editor from 2015 through 2020 — and then, in our role as journalists, to learn enough about the date to be able to describe it to readers in a way that illuminates something about the human condition.
Over the years, Date Lab has undergone some key changes. Its biggest overhaul was when the format went from the daters narrating their evening in transcript form to participants relaying their experience to writers, who brought their own perspectives to the column. At the time, the editors “were trying to fight the issue of the sameness,” says Shin of the 2017 change. We wanted an injection of strong voices. A few years later, the pandemic hit, and readers watched in real time as the column navigated another — temporary, as it turned out — change: replacing in-person dinners with Zoom dates and takeout food.
Starting next week, Date Lab will evolve once more, as we allow people who only agree to be identified by their first names to participate with that degree of anonymity. This wasn’t a simple or obvious decision: In nearly all stories, The Post identifies sources and subjects by their full names — and from the beginning, Date Lab has followed this practice. But The Post sometimes agrees to withhold names in circumstances where full identification can cause harm. And we’ve concluded that Date Lab — which asks participants to share so much that is so personal with their fellow dater, with our reporters and ultimately with the reader — now meets that test.
When Date Lab started in 2006, people’s digital footprints were less extensive and less consequential in their lives. At the time, Facebook was just starting to allow non-college students onto the platform; Twitter and Reddit were germinations of what they are today; Instagram didn’t exist. Online dating websites and apps weren’t yet monopolies on the dating scene. But in the past two decades, online culture has radically changed, and our digital footprints now have real power in our lives. More and more people are declining to participate in Date Lab because they are worried about the career implications of publicly sharing their private life. Others, particularly women, are concerned for their safety. In a few cases, participants have received mail to their home addresses, and others have received unwelcome messages on their social media accounts. In the end, we felt we had no choice but to offer our participants a degree of protection. We hope this change allows them to tell their story without worrying about being vilified and harassed, online or in the real world.
We can’t promise there won’t be other adaptations for Date Lab in the future. What we can say is that we hope our new approach to identifying participants will allow this column to thrive for many years — that it will be there for you, the reader, every week, full of dating debacles, uplifting love stories and everything in between. | 2022-07-21T13:21:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Date Lab announcement: What we’re doing to protect our daters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/21/date-lab-announcement-what-were-doing-protect-our-daters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/21/date-lab-announcement-what-were-doing-protect-our-daters/ |
Carbon removal is moving full steam ahead. So is climate change.
Good morning! Climate 202 researcher Vanessa Montalbano is back again writing today’s newsletter.
👀 What we're watching: A package of six spending bills that passed 220-207 in the House on Wednesday. The funding targets issues such as decarbonization of the power grid and cleaning up water and air pollution. But first:
On Wednesday, the Department of Energy hosted the Carbon Negative Shot Summit, where the agency explored low-cost, clean and innovative ways to store huge amounts of carbon as the nation tries to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Energy has roughly $6 billion to use from the bipartisan infrastructure law to invest in carbon removal technology. But with the clock ticking on global warming, there's a lot of research and development the agency must do before it can bring the newborn industry to scale in an equitable way.
Officials attending the summit — which included Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Programs Office at Energy, and Ko Barrett, the senior adviser for climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association — said that such efforts would require collaboration between the federal and state governments as well as with environmental justice community members, international partners and the private sector.
“Carbon dioxide removal is key to restoring our climate,” Granholm said during her opening remarks. “So these extreme weather events don't just keep getting worse and so our communities can be safer and healthier.”
According to Granholm, the Biden administration’s priority continues to be to prevent emissions from entering the atmosphere in the first place, emphasizing that new investments in the technology are no excuse to maintain reliance on fossil fuels or to slow down the nation's transition to renewable energy.
Wednesday’s summit marked the third in the agency’s Energy Earthshots Initiative, a program meant to accelerate affordable and reliable clean energy technologies within the next decade that was introduced at COP26 last year. (A second one focused on carbon removal is expected to take place later this year.)
And although some environmentalists have criticized carbon capture as being ineffective, the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear that simply reaching net-zero emissions would not be enough to avert the catastrophic warming that the planet is hurtling toward. Instead, the authors wrote that carbon removal technology is crucial for pulling legacy pollution out of the air and reversing some of the effects of climate change.
As for the current state of carbon removal infrastructure, bipartisan leaders can agree that the space is burgeoning — it just needs to be tapped into quickly and responsibly.
“These polluting technologies of today don’t go away overnight,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) told The Climate 202 ahead of his remarks at the summit. “We should do everything we can to make those processes cleaner and less climate polluting while those technologies are still in use, even as we try to replace them.”
What about reconciliation?
The Energy Department is also set on boosting approaches that would remove gigatons of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for less than $100 per net metric ton of carbon. (According to Energy, 1 gigaton of carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions produced by about 250 million vehicles.) Without bringing down the cost, the agency said that not only would the industry remain inaccessible, but it would also be difficult for it to go to scale.
But as it stands, there is no market price on carbon. “The fact that it’s free to pollute makes it very hard to award innovations that reduce that pollution,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told The Climate 202, arguing that without a proper price, companies would not be incentivized to capture the carbon unless they are paid for it — or the federal government sets out to regulate emissions.
Whitehouse explained that one route could be an expansion of 45Q, or a tax credit originally under the 2008 Energy Improvement and Extension Act that provides a subsidy for capturing carbon and storing it underground.
When asked about the prospects of new funding opportunities for carbon removal in light of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) torpedoing Senate Democrats’ climate deal, Peters said that “everything’s harder.”
“Right now we have to fund basic research, that’s what the government has always done when there’s not a market for something.” Peters said. “I hope that some of that would have been made possible by the reconciliation package, and I don't want to give up on that, but if it's not, we'll have to do that through appropriations.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is taking executive action to address extreme heat and accelerate offshore wind without Congress (more on that below).
“The good news on climate is that the executive branch is now unbound from all of the cautions it felt were necessary to support the reconciliation process,” Whitehouse said. “We have yet to see anything that looks like real robust executive action in America, and what President Biden could begin to accomplish I think would be pretty exciting for people.”
Biden announces executive actions on climate, with more to come
President Biden on Wednesday announced new steps to tackle global warming, saying “this is an emergency and I will look at it that way” while delivering remarks on a visit to Somerset, Mass., Yasmeen Abutaleb, Tony Romm and Anna Phillips report for The Washington Post.
But Biden stopped short of issuing a formal climate emergency, which Democrats and environmental groups have been calling for since Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) stalled negotiations on a major climate spending package.
Instead, he promised a more robust response, pledging to use his executive power “to turn these words into formal, official government actions,” if Congress failed to act. He announced a limited set of new policies, including plans to direct funds to communities facing extreme heat and to open more than 700,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the wind industry.
Still, many climate activists made clear that they feel Biden is not doing enough of what is needed in the face of an increasingly dire threat to the planet, and that the pledges have a far narrower scope than the $500 billion that Democrats initially sought as part of their broader Build Back Better social spending plan.
“We cannot afford any more delay on meaningful climate action. The climate crisis isn’t on our doorstep, it’s blown the door clear off,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club. “President Biden must exercise his authority by using the full power of the federal government to take swift, specific and significant actions that treat climate change as the crisis it is.”
As an unprecedented heat wave expands across Europe and parts of the United States, critical infrastructure is falling apart, Allyson Chiu reports for The Washington Post.
The melted roads and warped train tracks are yet another reminder of the need to adjust quickly to a warming planet, experts say, warning that with increased emissions this is only going to get worse.
“When reality and future conditions start shifting away from what was used in the design, our infrastructure becomes more prone to failure and may also suffer from a reduced service life,” Amit Bhasin, a professor and director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin wrote in an email.
Roads, runways and railways are among the most vulnerable to heat. In particular, asphalt is at risk of a reduced life span when it is hot because it prompts the compound to soften and age faster.
While small modifications can be made to reduce the chances of negative effects from the heat, experts say that broader changes to infrastructure design are necessary to adapt to more frequent and extreme weather events.
The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday signaled that it is willing to electrify at least 40 percent of its new delivery trucks set to hit the streets in 2023, bringing the agency closer to conforming with President Biden’s ambitious climate goal of making the entire federal fleet battery-powered by 2035, Jacob Bogage reports for The Post.
The agency had originally planned to purchase up to 165,000 vehicles from Oshkosh Defense, of which 10 percent would have been electric. But now, it will acquire 50,000 delivery trucks from Oshkosh, half of which will be zero emissions. It will also buy 34,500 commercially available vehicles, with enough electric models to make 4 in 10 trucks in its delivery fleet electric.
The announcement, hailed by climate activists as a major step toward reducing the federal environmental footprint, comes after 16 states, the District of Columbia and four of the nation’s top climate groups sued the Postal Service to prevent the original purchase plan that included mostly gas-guzzling trucks, locking in planet warming emissions for decades.
“The Postal Service anticipates evaluating and procuring vehicles over shorter time periods to be more responsive to its evolving operational strategy, technology improvements, and changing market conditions, including the expected increased availability of [electric vehicle] options in the future,” the agency said in a statement announcing the plan.
Friends of the Earth Action announces last of 2022 endorsements
Friends of the Earth Action, an organization that pushes for climate-friendly policy, on Tuesday released its final round of endorsements for the 2022 primary election cycle.
“With control of Congress in the balance, now is the time to elect bold leaders who will fight for people, communities and the environment,” said Ariel Moger, FOE’s government and political affairs manager. “We’re proud to endorse these ambitious progressives who will challenge the status quo and prioritize people and the planet over corporate interests.”
The organization threw support behind the following nine candidates:
Maxwell Frost for Florida’s 10th District
Huwaida Arraf for Michigan’s 10th District
Amane Badhasso for Minnesota’s 4th District
Melanie D’Arrigo for New York’s 3rd District
Mondaire Jones for New York’s 10th District
Alessandra Biaggi for New York’s 17th District
David Segal for Rhode Island’s 2nd District
Jason Call for Washington’s 2nd District
Stephanie Gallardo for Washington’s 9th District
Extreme heat prompts alerts in 28 states as Texas, Oklahoma hit 115 — Matthew Cappucci and Meryl Kornfield for The Post
Why European homes don’t (usually) have air conditioning — Adam Taylor for The Post
Russia resumes gas flows to Germany after Nord Stream maintenance — Loveday Morris for The Post
Biden to pursue wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico — Rachel Frazin for the Hill
Europe is overheating. This climate-friendly AC could help. — Pranshu Verma for The Post
Just a reminder (again) https://t.co/KQXV35pjCG | 2022-07-21T13:21:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carbon removal is moving full steam ahead. So is climate change. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/carbon-removal-is-moving-full-steam-ahead-so-is-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/carbon-removal-is-moving-full-steam-ahead-so-is-climate-change/ |
The 45th annual celebration of the performing arts will also salute Amy Grant and Tania León on Dec. 4 at the national arts center in Washington
The Kennedy Center has released its 2022 honorees. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The Irish rock group U2, actor-filmmaker George Clooney, singers Gladys Knight and Amy Grant, and composer-conductor Tania León will be saluted for their achievements in the arts at the 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors Dec. 4 at the national arts center.
Inside the making of the covid Kennedy Center Honors
Watch highlights of the 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors
“We had big dreams then, fueled in part by the commonly held belief at home that America smiles on Ireland,” the band members said in a statement released by the arts center. “But even in the wilder thoughts, we never imagined that 40 years on, we would be invited back to receive one of the nation’s greatest honours … It has been a four-decade love affair with the country and its people, its artists, and culture. We consider America to be a home away from home and we are very grateful to the Kennedy Center Honors for welcoming us into this great clan of extraordinary artists.”
“He is the most gifted musician I have ever known. I felt so humbled to be given this honor because the man I lie down next to and sleep with every night, he is … wow,” she said. “I need to tell you something, and this is so him, when I told him [about the honor] he opened up his arms and I crawled onto his lap and wept, and he said ‘I’m so proud of you.’ ” | 2022-07-21T13:22:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Clooney, U2, Gladys Knight among next Kennedy Center Honorees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/21/kennedy-center-honors-u2-clooney/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/21/kennedy-center-honors-u2-clooney/ |
Differences in state cannabis laws can create confusion, but the legal answer is clear
(Cynthia Kittler/for The Washington Post)
If I’m flying between two states where recreational cannabis is legal (i.e., California to Colorado), can I travel with edibles? — Anonymous
As more of the country legalizes recreational and medical marijuana, it gets more and more confusing where you’re allowed to have it and where it’s still off limits.
You have states where marijuana offenses can land you heavy fines and jail time close to states with dispensaries that look like Apple stores. You can buy cannabis at music festivals in California, or go to a weed-friendly campsite in New Mexico with a “Cannabis Minister” to officiate weddings.
But no matter where you are in the United States, you still can’t legally fly with edibles.
That’s because on a federal level, marijuana is illegal to use or possess under the Controlled Substances Act. Or technically speaking, as the Transportation Security Administration has on its website:
“Marijuana and certain cannabis infused products, including some Cannabidiol (CBD) oil, remain illegal under federal law except for products that contain no more than 0.3 percent THC on a dry weight basis or that are approved by FDA.”
It is illegal to fly with edibles even if you’re in a state where cannabis is legal and the edibles were manufactured and sold in accordance with state law, says Seth A. Goldberg, a partner at Duane Morris and a team lead of its cannabis industry group.
Beyond the Controlled Substances Act, it is illegal to take marijuana across state lines, says Craig Small, a Denver attorney for the law firm Clark Hill who has more than 12 years experience in the field of cannabis law and litigation.
“There is the Interstate Commerce Clause that gives federal jurisdiction over transportation of goods and services across state lines,” Small says. “And so certainly marijuana would be implicated in that as well.”
If a TSA officer sees you’re breaking federal law, they are supposed to report it to the authorities.
However, that is not their primary concern when you’re going through security. TSA screening procedures are focused on threats to aviation safety, trying to spot things in your bag that could be a potential threat to flights, not finding your edibles. The agency website even says “ … TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs.”
“THC gummies are not really a threat that the TSA is concerned with,” Goldberg says.
Traveling soon? Pot and certain cannabis infused products, including some Cannabidiol (CBD) oil, remain illegal under federal law. More here: https://t.co/mpDMAVe7lq pic.twitter.com/vavKaL5tGw
— TSA (@TSA) April 20, 2022
Same goes for those dogs patrolling the airport. “TSA Canines are trained to detect explosives and explosive materials in a busy transportation environment,” agency spokesperson Daniel D. Velez said in an email.
While people can and do get in trouble if they have large amounts of marijuana in their bags or travel internationally with cannabis, Small says he hasn’t seen any serious enforcement actions from TSA coming across recreational amounts of marijuana. He’s heard stories of TSA turning to local law enforcement to deal with the issue, but in Denver, “which is where I hear the most stories … local law enforcement just tells you to get rid of it," he says.
Goldberg says he has heard of people getting stopped at the airport for having cannabis and being asked to throw it away, or they have the issue reported to local police.
It’s ultimately up to the TSA officer to decide what to do if they find your edible.
“Law enforcement could simply do nothing, [or] law enforcement could potentially try to bring some kind of charges for violating a law, potentially the Controlled Substances Act,” Goldberg says.
But even with TSA not going out of their way to look for edibles, Small says it’s never worth it to try to travel with cannabis.
“If you’re flying from one marijuana state to another marijuana state, then leave what you have at home,” he says. “Fly stress-free without ever having to worry about any of these things — even though it may be unlikely to happen.”
“When you’re going to the beach, you don’t bring your own saltwater taffy,” he added. “Just go to the beach, enjoy their saltwater taffy.” | 2022-07-21T13:23:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can I bring edibles on flights? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/cannabis-edibles-flying-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/cannabis-edibles-flying-law/ |
In Susan Fleming Marx’s memoir, Harpo is an angel. Groucho not so much.
Review by Donald Liebenson
Susan Fleming Marx (Courtesy of Applause Books)
For Marx Brothers fans, the posthumous publication of Susan Fleming Marx’s memoir, “Speaking of Harpo,” raises a glimmer of hope that other holy grails in the comedy team’s mythology — their long-lost silent film, “Humor Risk,” for example — will surface someday. But for now, we have Harpo’s wife’s account, and it is a delight.
Full disclosure: The memoir rekindles a teenage crush I had on Susan Marx. As a budding Marx Brothers obsessive in the 1970s, I was introduced to her in her husband’s autobiography, “Harpo Speaks.” He wrote so lovingly about how they met that I, like confirmed bachelor Harpo, was swept off my feet. And then she thoroughly charmed me when I saw her in the 1932 W.C. Fields comedy, “Million Dollar Legs.”
Marx, who died in 2002 at the age of 94, began her memoir as part of a writing course that she and Groucho Marx’s third wife, Eden, took in the early 1980s. But she abandoned it for years at a time, according to collaborator Robert Bader, author of “Four of the Three Musketeers” and director of the upcoming “American Masters” presentation, “Groucho and Cavett.”
The movie Salvador Dali wanted to make with the Marx Brothers didn’t happen – until now (sort of)
Bader, a friend of Harpo and Susan’s eldest son, Bill, made Susan’s acquaintance after he sent her a collection of Groucho’s lost writings that he edited, and which contained stories about Harpo. “I liked your Groucho book more than I liked Groucho,” she said.
She invited him to look at her in-progress memoir. They began to collaborate in earnest in the mid-1990s. He writes in the book’s Afterword that he had to convince Marx that people would be interested in her stories about life as a low-level contract player in 1930s Hollywood. “No one cares about that junk,” she would insist.
Months turned into years, and the unpublished manuscript, along with Bader’s taped interviews with her, were boxed up and mostly forgotten, he writes. But when he cited the memoir in the bibliography for “Four of the Three Musketeers,” it stirred interest, which was fueled in 2020, when Bill mentioned the project while promoting the restoration and release of Harpo’s screen debut in the 1925 silent film, “Too Many Kisses.” He encouraged Bader to finish his mother’s autobiography.
Brooklyn-born Marx was encouraged in show business by her mother — “a beautiful, talented and witty woman, who was born to sing Wagner at the Met, but whose dreams would remain dreams,” Marx writes.
Marx’s tap-dancing prowess would land her a job in a private Florida club owned by famed showman Florenz Ziegfeld. This led to New York, where she became a Ziegfeld girl on Broadway. Plucked from the chorus by actor Adolphe Menjou, she got a part in the film “The Ace of Cads,” which, poorly reviewed, is lost to history. “Well, thank heaven for small miracles!” she writes. “I’d shudder to think of anyone actually seeing me in this thing.”
She did appear in several films with iconic co-stars, including John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, just not in the films that made them iconic. She also fended off the sexual advances of Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures.
At a dinner party honoring Cohn, who had recently fired her, she was seated next to Harpo, who with his brothers had already conquered Broadway and Hollywood. “Prettiness had never attracted Harpo,” she writes, “but whatever I said made him laugh. It should have been etched in stone, but neither of us could ever recall exactly what I said to him. It must have been good. We became inseparable.”
Marx, by her own account, had an undistinguished stage and screen career, and she abandoned acting after marrying Harpo. “If I had the talent and desire, Harpo probably could have helped elevate my status in the movies,” she writes. “And of course, there was also the ever-present problem of me not being much of an actress.”
Marx offers unvarnished takes on her husband’s legendary brothers. Chico, she writes, “womanized and gambled his way through life without even a thought about [his wife] and their daughter, Maxine.” She shares one story “that made my blood boil” in which Maxine told her how humiliated she was because her father had hit on one of her high school classmates.
She calls Zeppo “a strange man who even his brothers never completely understood.” Zeppo was very funny in his own right, she writes: “He had style, taste, and good looks, but there simply hadn’t been room for a fourth comic Marx Brother, and Zep had to settle for the humiliation of straight roles ... He left the team to become a highly successful agent, representing some of the biggest names in Hollywood, but his lack of success as a member of the Marx team was a psychological problem he struggled with to the end.”
Groucho, she writes, could be witty company (at a ballgame, when a light-hitting shortstop hit a rare double, he commented, “That’s the first time I’ve seen him at second base without his glove”), but he could be casually cruel to his wives.
Marx also shares memorable encounters with towering figures of the day, including critic Alexander Woollcott, the wits of the Algonquin Round Table, Howard Hughes and pianist and neurotic wit Oscar Levant.
As for her husband, Marx writes lovingly about the joy Harpo took in their life together and their four adopted children, including Bill, who became a respected musician, composer and cabaret performer. (Harpo played his son’s arrangement of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during his classic appearance on “I Love Lucy”).
For Marx, making the transition from actress to wife of a great movie star was duck soup. “Harpo was a simple, gentle man who avoided sham, chose his own friends, and didn’t care whether his socks matched,” she says. “When I finally decided that I’d had it with the movies, Harpo simply shrugged and said, ‘Whatever you say.’ ”
While some hilarious anecdotes here can also be found in “Harpo Speaks,” Marx goes further than her husband in sharing his more serious work with Ben Hecht on the writer’s controversial push for a Palestine free from British rule. “Harpo was greatly moved by Ben’s passion and told him of the anti-Semitism he witnessed in Europe and Russia in 1933,” she writes.
This anti-Semitism also hit closer to home. Marx writes that in 1956, Harpo overheard her mother tell someone: “Susan could have married into royalty or been married to a member of the Nobel family of Nobel Prize fame, but instead wound up marrying a [Jew].” Harpo, characteristically did not say anything to her about it. “Harpo was never one to hold a grudge,” she writes, “but I’m sure he never felt any sort of closeness to Mother again.”
“Speaking of Harpo” disabuses that old saw about never meeting one’s heroes. “Interviewers have come to me for the inside story because there must be something mysterious or controversial about Harpo,” she writes. “I disappoint them with the plain truth that he was exactly what you would hope he was. A simple, uncomplicated, beautiful, funny soul, who loved and cherished his friends and family.”
Donald Liebenson is an entertainment writer. His work has been published by the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, VanityFair.com and Vulture.
Speaking of Harpo
By Susan Fleming Marx with Robert S. Bader
Applause. 256 pp. $29.95 | 2022-07-21T14:08:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A memoir by Harpo Marx's late widow, Susan Fleming Marx - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/21/harpo-marx-widow-susan-fleming-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/21/harpo-marx-widow-susan-fleming-memoir/ |
Man killed, another wounded in shooting in Woodbridge, police say
A man was fatally shot Wednesday night in Woodbridge, Va., and another was wounded, police said.
Just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, officers sent to the 16600 block of Georgetown Rd. in Woodbridge found 21-year-old Brian Darnell Marshall II, of Woodbridge, on the sidewalk with gunshot wounds, and a 26-year-old man who was shot in one hand.
Police said they provided first aid to Marshall until rescue personnel arrived and took him to a hospital, where he died. The other man also was taken to a hospital, where his injury was treated.
Police said an early investigation revealed that the two men and a third man were standing on the sidewalk when two unknown men appeared from a nearby alley, fired on them and ran away.
Police described the suspects as Black males wearing dark-colored clothing and said homicide detectives are investigating the shooting. | 2022-07-21T14:47:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man killed, another wounded in shooting in Woodbridge, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/woodbridge-fatal-shooting-prince-william-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/woodbridge-fatal-shooting-prince-william-county/ |
When a parent’s mental health struggle affects their kids
By Caitlin Gibson
Eileen Grimes, right, helps her daughter climb a tree at Grant Park in Spokane, Wash. (Young Kwak/For The Washington Post)
Eileen Grimes was sitting on the examination table, already feeling rather exposed in a thin paper gown as she waited to begin a routine appointment with her OB/GYN last August. Then the doctor walked in, looked Grimes in the eyes and gently asked with genuine concern: “How are you doing?”
Grimes, a married mother of two in Spokane, Wash., had spent the previous months caring for her husband through a recent addiction relapse, working a full-time job in IT and attempting to launch a new career as an author and entrepreneur, all while trying to keep her young children safe in the pandemic. Her 4-year-old daughter had grown increasingly clingy recently, often wanting to be held and comforted. Grimes’s 7-year-old son had started asking her what was wrong — are you mad at me? — and she knew that even though she’d been trying to shield her children from her own stress and anxiety, it wasn’t working.
All of this flooded her mind as she sat in the exam room, and Grimes suddenly found herself sobbing. “The floodgates just opened,” she recalls. “There was the stress of the pandemic, and not knowing the right thing to do with my kids, and my husband was struggling with his own mental health, and I felt like I was supposed to hold everything together.”
For the first time in her life, Grimes, 38, left her doctor’s office with a prescription for Prozac — a choice she made not only for herself, she says, but also for the sake of her kids.
The pandemic’s profound toll on the mental wellbeing of children has been well documented — especially by parents, teachers, pediatricians, counselors and psychologists who have witnessed the impact firsthand. Suicide has become a leading cause of death for children ages 10 and up, and mental health problems were responsible for a surge of children’s visits to hospital emergency rooms during the first months of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But many kids are not grappling in a vacuum with life-altering changes to school, community and routine wrought by the coronavirus. Their families, too, have struggled — sometimes limiting the children’s ability to cope, or even amplifying the emotional impact on all members of a household. Meanwhile, demand for mental health resources has soared since 2020 even as the availability of therapy and other support, especially for families who are most vulnerable and in need, has plummeted.
Researchers like Jessica Borelli, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychological science at the University of California at Irvine, are trying to decipher exactly what all of this means for parents and children who are carrying the trauma of the past two years. In her work so far, which has included a national survey of parents conducted in the first few months of the pandemic, she has found that parents who reported higher levels of mental health symptoms often had children who were experiencing the same: “The more covid impacted parents’ lives, the more a parent’s mental health was adversely affected,” she says, “which in turn impacted their children’s mental health.”
Grimes had seen this pattern taking shape in her own household. In the weeks before her doctor’s appointment, she had noticed her son assuming a protective posture around her — if his little sister started throwing a tantrum, he would step in and try to intervene, behaving almost as a surrogate parent.
“That broke my heart and triggered something in me. I don’t want him to feel like he has to be another parent," Grimes says. "It was a red flag. I knew I had to do something.”
“Parents are not meant to meet all of a child’s needs, and when we are all of a sudden in a situation where parents need to meet all of their children’s needs — their social-emotional needs, their educational needs, their physical health and exercise needs, their nutritional needs, everything — the system cannot survive,” she says.
Her study was conducted in the early days of the pandemic, and much has changed since then. Schools, camps and day cares are largely available again, she notes. But parents are still facing extraordinary instability — unpredictable schedules, unexpected quarantines, shifting rules about masking and testing, children who are struggling to re-adjust to in-person schooling — and these constant fluctuations are mentally and emotionally taxing.
“We are asking so much of our kids, and we’re asking so much of our parents,” Borelli says. “The number of routines that children have had to transition between is just staggering, and parents are the ones who have to do that transitioning. It’s just a tremendous cognitive and emotional load."
“Five days later, I was in front of my computer virtually teaching my students again,” she says. She felt she had to be there for them — she was a trusted presence in their lives amid so much upheaval, and her students were still reeling from the murder of George Floyd, and she wanted to support them, she says. “So in the middle of me losing the baby, and talking about what’s going on in the country and George Floyd — we’re talking about this virtually, with parents in the background, who are really engaged and wanting to contribute — I’m sitting here in my own trauma, with my daughter on my lap, and that was the start of the pandemic for me.”
When she became pregnant again a few months later, the doctor expressed concern about protecting Samantha’s mental health during another pregnancy — and wrote her an antidepressant prescription. Throughout the pregnancy, Samantha says she was dogged by constant fear of the worst happening again, until their son, Gus, arrived safely in March 2021.
How much of this experience did Mabel absorb? Her parents aren’t certain. “She’s just transitioned into the next age group at school, she’s changed classrooms, she’s left some of her friends behind. Sam’s grandmother recently passed away, and Mabel was very close to her,” Eben says. So when Mabel, now 4 years old, has a tantrum or struggles to listen or behave, there are many possible explanations, he says — “or it could be that she’s picking something up from our own issues and anxieties related to the pandemic.”
For Kim Alexander, 44, serving as director of an assisted living facility in Houston put her on the pandemic’s front lines, and she became fixated on making sure that she did not bring the virus home, where two of her adult children, her teenage son and her then-5-year-old granddaughter lived.
Teen suicides are increasing at an alarming pace
“One day I realized that I was no longer hugging my kids," she said. "I was keeping myself away from them, which then made them feel more isolated, separate and apart from everybody else. The hurt for me was seeing their hurt, seeing how frustrated they were.”
The toll of isolation, virtual learning and the difficult return to in-person high school exacerbated her son’s anxiety and anger, Alexander says — and when he started running away from home several months ago, she was terrified. “It got to the point for us where I was scared to leave the house, because I didn’t know if when I got home he would still be here.”
Now 16, A. Jay longs to be seen as a “typical” kid, she says, which creates tension between them when she advocates on his behalf and pursues the accommodations he requires. “I’m doing what he needs and not what he wants,” she says. “I’ve become the parent who has put all of these things in place to try to safety-net him from a world that doesn’t want him. And now I’ve made him feel special, I’ve made him feel like he is the center of attention, and his anger with me is ‘I just want to be left alone.’”
All of this weighs on her heavily, she adds: “I’m mentally exhausted. I really am.”
When parents turn to her for help, Jessica Borelli says, she tries to emphasize one thing above all: That a strong parent-child relationship can help shield children from the damaging impact of a parent’s mental health issues. It is a pattern she has consistently observed in her own research, across a range of cultural and socio-economic groups. The strongest predictor of a child’s mental health, she says, is “attachment security” — the feeling of having an open relationship between parent and child, even if one party is battling depression or anxiety or post-traumatic stress.
“Do your kids feel safe? Do they feel loved? Do they feel accepted by you?” If the answers are yes, then that’s what matters, she says. “This isn’t necessarily a time to excel, it’s a time to survive. Focus on the connection that you have with your child.”
Hidden by isolation, schoolchildren struggled with mental health
“I told them, ‘This is what Mommy’s taking, and there’s nothing wrong with it, it helps me to do what I need to do and be the mom I need to be for you,’” she says. “I want to normalize talking about this stuff. I don’t want mental health stigma to exist for them. And I want my kids to know they can come to me when life gets hard.”
Since April, Kim Alexander’s son A. Jay has lived with his father, Alexander’s ex-husband, in a nearby neighborhood. Alexander’s relationship with her youngest child has been strained by all they’ve endured, she says, but she hopes this distance might create a reset of sorts, and she has faith in the strength of their bond. “I’ve been a parent for 28 years, and I know there are ebbs and flows of parenting,” she says. “I’m not concerned about our relationship not being repaired. He will get there. I just want him to find his joy.”
For now, the temporary separation has helped her own anxiety level come down, and she knows that much is essential for both of them. “Honestly, I am relieved,” she says. “As a parent, you’ve got to put your own oxygen mask on first.” | 2022-07-21T14:47:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When a parent’s mental health struggle affects their kids - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/when-parents-mental-health-struggle-affects-their-kids/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/when-parents-mental-health-struggle-affects-their-kids/ |
Kylie Jenner gets roasted for flaunting private jet in climate crisis
Kylie Jenner attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
That was the question posed by Kylie Jenner, the 24-year-old millionaire businesswoman, on her Instagram — accompanying a photo of two private jets: one for the reality TV star and one apparently for her partner, rapper Travis Scott.
The backlash was swift, and it was harsh — as social media users denounced the environmental impact of using a luxury private aircraft as parts of Europe faced dangerous wildfires and record temperatures sparked by human-caused climate change.
“The lack of awareness is honestly astonishing,” read one of 45,000 comments on Jenner’s Instagram post, shared Friday.
Another suggested this flaunting of wealth was tone-deaf given the wake-up call the extreme weather in Europe has been for many. “I could recycle everything, buy all my clothes second hand, compost and grow my own food for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t even begin to offset the footprint from one of her flights,” they tweeted.
Others suggested the pair “take neither” aircraft and instead use their wealth and fame to help save the planet.
A representative for Jenner declined to comment early Thursday.
Jenner is far from the only one using private jets, but activists and environmental experts are increasingly concerned about the habits of the ultra-rich.
The European Federation for Transport and Environment, a nongovernmental organization campaigning for cleaner transport, says the super-rich play an “outsized role” in the climate crisis and that private jet CO2 emissions have risen dramatically in recent years.
The group, in a report shared last year, said that in one hour, a single private jet can emit two tons of carbon dioxide. The study noted that private jets are between five and 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, and 50 times more harmful to the environment than trains.
Authors of the report called on the aviation sector to work with the wealthy to come up with more sustainable efforts to decarbonize, including using alternative fuels and technologies.
Jenner purchased the private jet in 2020 for more than $70 million, according to British tabloid the Sun. Photos posted to the star’s social media channels show plush leather seats with the star’s initials embroidered on the headrest and a TV area with “Kylie” written in pink neon lights.
The star’s older sister, Kim Kardashian, has also been accused of polluting the planet by taking short flights and flaunting her new private plane branded “Air Kim,” which features cashmere upholstery and a king-size bed.
The plane, which the Daily Mail identified as a Gulfstream G65OER, was showcased on a recent episode of “The Kardashians,” which saw the 41-year-old giving cameras a tour of the custom-designed aircraft, which has a cream-and-gray color scheme to match her home.
A growing number of wealthy individuals are coming under criticism for traveling by jet amid the climate crisis, including musicians such as Drake, actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and sports stars like Floyd Mayweather.
Britain’s royal family has also faced backlash for its frequent use of private aircraft.
While Prince Harry and wife Meghan have been vocal about climate change concerns in recent years, the pair have been slammed by the media tabloids for their use of private airplanes.
Britain’s media slams Meghan and Harry’s jet set lifestyle
Their fans and friends, including Elton John, have defended the royal couple’s travel habits, arguing that they need to avoid commercial planes and airports for security and privacy reasons. | 2022-07-21T14:47:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kylie Jenner called ‘climate criminal’ for using private jet during heat wave - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/21/kylie-jenner-private-jet-climate-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/21/kylie-jenner-private-jet-climate-crisis/ |
Amazon will acquire primary health care provider One Medical in an all-cash transaction as part of a major expansion into health care. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
Amazon will acquire the primary care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion, the companies announced Thursday, in a major expansion of the tech giant’s move into health care.
“We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention,” said Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services. He framed the deal as a way to improve the quality of service for customers, listing the mundane and sometimes cumbersome hurdles of receiving care, from booking appointments to taking time off work to trips to the pharmacy.
The Amazon’s $18 a share offer represents a significant premium for the subscription-based provider. Shares of 1life Healthcare Inc, One Medical’s parent company, soared more than 68 percent, t0 just above $17, following the announcement.
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.
This is a developing story and will update. | 2022-07-21T14:51:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon to buy One Medical for $3.9 billion in major expansion into health care - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/amazon-health-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/amazon-health-care/ |
Are crowded airports and hotels ruining your summer vacation plans? A cruise to the North Pole on the world’s first and only luxury icebreaker might be just the antidote.
The custom-built tourist ship Le Commandant Charcot plowed through sea ice on July 13 to make its first successful passenger voyage to the top of the Earth. More sailings are scheduled through the end of summer, with tickets starting around $40,000 per passenger and topping out at $126,000.
There’s no shortage of takers for the 245 slots aboard. This summer, at least 57,000 cruise passengers will arrive at Longyearbyen, the Norwegian archipelago from which Le Commandant Charcot and many other Arctic cruises sail. The environmental risks of polar adventure tourism are substantial, including the possibility of pollution. But if managed sustainably, tourist cruises can help build support for Arctic conservation and climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The Arctic has long drawn tourists. Decades before the first successful expedition to the North Pole, they were exploring the Scandinavian Arctic, enjoying the fjords and the mountaineering, hunting and fishing expeditions enabled by indigenous guides in the early 19th century. Steamships created the market for Arctic cruises, including, eventually, visits to Alaskan destinations, Iceland and Greenland. By the early 1900s, Arctic tours were a thriving business, boosted by guidebooks and breathless media coverage.
Technology made Arctic exploration progressively easier, and 52 icebreakers made it to the North Pole between 1977 and 2004. Thirteen of those voyages were devoted to scientific research; the remaining 39 were for tourists.
Over the last decade, the retreat of the Arctic Ocean and a lengthening summer have further boosted Arctic cruising. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of unique tourist ships entering the Arctic increased from 77 to 104. The capacity of those ships, on an annual basis, grew from 74,177 to 91,166. Those are modest numbers — more people visited Venice over Easter weekend, after all — but the steady growth is drawing concern about tourism and overtourism.
There are good reasons to worry. In the event of a fuel spill, sewage leak or other accident, there’s little infrastructure available to clean up a mess. Larger cruise ships mean more human impact on wildlife hotspots, altering animal behavior and potentially trampling flora and scarce habitats.
Finally, Arctic tourists and operators can’t ignore their climate impact. In 2016, carbon emissions associated with tourism transportation (planes, ships, cars and other conveyances) represented about 5% of total global emissions. Emissions contribute to global warming and the melting of sea, creating more opportunities to cruise in the Arctic. It’s a wicked feedback loop that serves to encourage even more tourism, especially from affluent tourists in search of vanishing landscapes.
But the potential for harm should be seen as a reason to manage Arctic cruises wisely, not to shame and halt them. For over a century, conservation of wild places and the environment has entailed ensuring a steady supply of visitors. Those visitors not only create economic incentives for preserving the shrinking wilderness, they also create constituencies that want to protect them. Sir David Attenborough, the famed British naturalist and TV personality, put it best when he famously noted, “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.”
The Arctic needs people to care about it. Sea ice will continue melting, perhaps at a quickening rate, well into the future. The Arctic Council — the non-binding organization of eight Arctic nations that could advance reasonable tourist regulations — is faltering because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Tourists, even those who can afford $126,000 tickets on luxury icebreakers, can’t by themselves stop climate change and habitat deterioration. But they are not powerless, either. Over the past century, affluent tourists committed to wild places have played a crucial role in preservation, from the forests of Nepal to the early years of the now wildly popular US national park system. The Arctic and its supporters could do worse than to befriend luxury-loving elites wowed by the sea ice on the way to the North Pole.
That doesn’t mean cruise companies should get a free pass on how they conduct themselves at the top of the world. A trade association, the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators, has developed sustainability guidelines for Arctic cruises, and represents and certifies most Arctic cruise operators.
Among other requirements, tourist cruises are expected to contribute to science and research while running clean, sustainable ships. Le Commandant Charcot, owned by the French cruise operator Compagnie du Ponant, is equipped with two science laboratories and several scientists (who also provide lectures to the passengers) and can serve as an example to other Arctic shipbuilders and tour operators.
As the world warms, a trip to the Arctic will be an expensive luxury. But it’s a ticket that might lead humanity toward a cooler future.
• Tourism Is Eating the World: Noah Smith
• America Is Losing the Battle of the Arctic: Hal Brands
• The Arctic Should Be a Catalyst for Climate Action: Bloomberg Editorial Board | 2022-07-21T14:51:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rich Tourists Can Actually Preserve the Arctic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/rich-tourists-can-actually-preserve-the-arctic/2022/07/21/3a4d1e32-08fe-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/rich-tourists-can-actually-preserve-the-arctic/2022/07/21/3a4d1e32-08fe-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Sian Beilock to become first woman to lead Dartmouth College
Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College, will become Dartmouth College's president in July 2023. (Tim Ryan Smith)
Beilock acknowledged the significance of her barrier-breaking appointment.
“I’m especially excited to be the first woman” in the position, she said in a telephone interview. Her multiple identities, she said, are “front and center” in her work. “President, mother, researcher — they all contribute to one’s ability to lead. I really embrace them all.”
Dartmouth, founded in 1769, enrolled 6,300 students in fall 2020, including 4,200 undergraduates. Princeton University, the second-smallest of the eight Ivy League schools, had 7,900 students that fall, including 5,400 undergraduates.
Beilock was executive vice provost at the University of Chicago before becoming Barnard’s president in 2017. Her research has focused on the brain science behind “choking under pressure,” with applications for performance in test taking, public speaking and athletics.
Women have served as president at most of the Ivy League schools. Yale University was led by a pioneering female acting president, Hanna Holborn Gray, in 1977-1978, but it has not had a woman hold the job in a permanent capacity. Like Dartmouth, Columbia University has not yet had a female president. | 2022-07-21T14:51:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sian Beilock named Dartmouth College’s first female president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/dartmouth-college-sian-beilock-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/21/dartmouth-college-sian-beilock-president/ |
Do the justices regret blowing up the Supreme Court’s reputation yet?
A U.S. flag hangs on fencing outside the Supreme Court building in Washington on July 4. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg News)
The Supreme Court’s transparent right-wing bent and disregard for precedent, facts and history (not to mention the justices’ increasingly nasty and injudicious tone) have had two predictable results. Neither is good news for the right-wing activists who fought for decades to pack the court with unbridled partisans.
The most immediate impact is on the court’s standing with the public. And I’m not referring to the justices who have to suffer fellow citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. (They don’t get a moat and drawbridge to go with their robes.)
More important, the court has suffered a serious drop in voter confidence. A new Marquette University Law School national poll, for example, shows “approval of the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen to 38%, while 61% disapprove of how the Court is handling its job.” Specifically, “The percentage saying they have little or no confidence in the Court has more than doubled since 2019.”
The plunge has been dramatic and swift. In May, the court’s approval stood at 44 percent. In March, it was 54 percent, and in September 2020, it was 66 percent. Voters have figured out that the court is exercising raw power. The Marquette poll reports, “In this most recent poll, less than half as many see the Court as ‘moderate’ compared to perceptions in September 2019, and almost seven times as many say it is ‘very conservative’ as was the case in September 2019.”
This should matter to the justices. If Democrats in the near future hold the White House, the House majority and a Senate majority sufficient to break the filibuster, they might seriously consider proposals to limit the court’s jurisdiction and imposing term limits. They might also consider expanding the court, though public opinion on that runs negative. In any event, the right-wing majority is tempting the political branches to curtail its power.
The perception of the court as a partisan body might also encourage other branches, lower courts and state governments to resist its edicts. Some local prosecutors have already announced they won’t enforce abortion bans that went into effect when the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Juries hearing cases might indulge in jury nullification. When it comes to funding of religious institutions, school districts and local governments might continue to deny money to religious schools, forcing them to litigate the particulars of every case.
The other unexpected consequence of the court’s sprint to the right is a resurgence in support for abortion rights. Multiple states will include referendums on their November ballots to protect abortion rights. There has also been a more general surge in support for Democrats in the midterms. The great “decoupling” continues — that is, a sizable number of voters who disapprove of President Biden’s performance nevertheless plans vote Democratic in November. A Politico-Morning Consult poll found that 18 percent of Biden disapprovers plan to vote for Democrats in the midterms. Polls from CNN and The New York Times-Siena put that figure at 19 percent.
We’ll see whether this lasts until November. If so, it might be labeled the “Dobbs backlash.”
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have been teeing up bills to codify protection for same-sex marriage, access to contraception and the right to interstate travel for abortions. Not all will get past the filibuster in the Senate, but Republicans will be forced to cast votes that will not be popular in some congressional districts. (Two freshman Republicans from competitive California districts, Michelle Park Steel and Young Kim, both voted against protections for same-sex marriage.)
In the end, the court’s turn toward aggressive partisanship will likely come with a heavy price — both for the court and the right. That’s small comfort to the victims of the court’s decisions, but it is proof that a court that strays far from Americans’ deeply held values invites political blowback. | 2022-07-21T14:51:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Do the justices regret blowing up the Supreme Court’s reputation yet? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/do-justices-regret-blowing-up-supreme-court-reputation-yet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/do-justices-regret-blowing-up-supreme-court-reputation-yet/ |
The most important element of Jan. 6 was in place before the election
New research shows an existing willingness among Trump supporters to reject any election loss
In October, a sign on a shuttered building in Bancroft, W.Va., proclaims that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Attorney General Merrick Garland reiterated at a news conference on Wednesday that the Justice Department was both investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and leaving open the possibility of high-profile indictments.
“We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election,” Garland said, “and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism.”
“No one is above the law,” he insisted — even as reporters pressed him to explain whether former president Donald Trump might be indicted.
Americans are skeptical he will be. New polling from NPR and PBS NewsHour conducted by Marist shows that only about a quarter of the country expects Trump to be charged with a crime. Half of Democrats think it will happen; three-quarters of Republicans think it won’t.
That this is the state of play isn’t surprising, given the longstanding partisan divide in views of the Capitol attack. The ongoing hearings held by the House select committee appear to have helped make people (particularly independents) less likely to describe the day as a constitutionally protected day of protest. But views of Trump’s culpability have not moved much, despite the new evidence presented during those hearings.
And despite the other ways in which our understanding of how the day unfolded has expanded. This month has brought two new pieces of research showing how Trump supporters were primed to reject the results prior to Election Day and what motivated participants in the riot itself.
Trump supporters were ready to reject the results
The clearest distillation of research on the pre-election period published this week is this: “support for Trump’s resistance was independent of the election itself.”
Researchers Brendan Hartnett of Tufts University and Alexandra Haver of New York University School of Law conducted a national poll in late October 2020 to evaluate the extent to which supporters of the then-president were primed to view any result as unacceptable. Their thesis was that willingness to reject the results should be dependent on margin: a 1-point loss should yield more people indicating a willingness to resist than a 10-point one.
It didn’t. Presented with a range of possible losses ranging from 1 to 12 points, somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of respondents believed that the results should be contested. Only past a 12-point win for Joe Biden did support drop off.
“Even when respondents were given a hypothetical scenario in which Biden’s large margin of victory would make voter-fraud concerns especially irrelevant, there still was widespread support for Trump to resist the outcome,” Hartnett and Haver write.
Importantly, they also asked respondents why they thought the election should be contested. More than a third of those who said it should be simply cited that they were Trump supporters. “For those respondents,” the researchers write, “their support of Trump resisting the election results was not inspired by concerns of electoral malpractice; instead, they simply did not care for the election itself and wanted Trump in power no matter what.”
But, of course, a lot of respondents also pointed specifically to purported concerns about the election (37 percent of respondents) and about the possibility of fraud (17 percent). That more than half pointed to worries about fraud before the election is a reflection of Trump’s endless effort (aided by right-wing media) to elevate such concerns.
So the stage was set.
Riot participants pointed to the same rationales
Then there’s research from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, first reported by NBC News, considering the reasons rioters themselves allegedly offered for participating in the day’s violence. I write “allegedly” because the research came from an analysis of documents filed in legal proceedings against the rioters and, therefore, are the government’s presentation of evidence, often culled from suspects’ social-media accounts.
What did the riot participants cite as their reason for being there on that day? The two most common reasons were familiar ones: Trump’s exhortations and a belief that the election was rigged.
Those who pointed to Trump as the trigger for participating usually did so in one of two contexts, the authors write: “an expression of Pro-Trump sentiment or a specific belief that Donald Trump personally requested their presence at the Capitol.”
The belief that the election was tainted was itself often downstream from Trump. “[M]any defendants were quoted in the documents as expressing that they specifically became concerned about the integrity of the 2020 Election after hearing Donald Trump claim that the presidency had been stolen from him,” the report reads.
After Trump and concerns about the election, the third most-commonly cited rationale for participating was “a desire for armed revolution or civil war," cited by about 1 in 12 of those whose documents were reviewed.
None of this is surprising, of course. That Trump was the primary trigger for what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, has been obvious since the violence erupted — as has been the effort to distance Trump from culpability.
The House committee hearings have unveiled a surfeit of evidence fleshing out details about Trump’s effort to overturn the election in the weeks after Nov. 3, 2020. The research released this week adds additional context: the (alleged) rationales of the rioters themselves and the extent to which Trump supporters were primed to fight against his loss no matter how bad it might have been.
Information that Merrick Garland assures Americans he is considering. | 2022-07-21T14:52:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The most important element of Jan. 6 was in place before the election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/most-important-element-jan-6-was-place-before-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/most-important-element-jan-6-was-place-before-election/ |
J.J. Watt on Wednesday offered to do a good deed for a fan. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
A sad situation was made a bit more bearable on Wednesday, thanks to Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt.
Texas native Jennifer D. Simpson took to Twitter that evening with an announcement. She was looking to sell her XL-sized Watt Houston Texans jersey, along with a pair of shoes from Watt’s Reebok line. Simpson’s reasoning for wanting to sell the items, was unfortunate. She hoped to use the money, $90 in total, to help pay for her grandfather’s funeral.
Then, about 20 minutes after she posted her tweet, Watt himself responded. The former Texans superstar, who played in Houston for 10 seasons before joining the Cardinals, told Simpson to keep the gear and that he’d help finance the service himself.
Simpson, an English teacher at Brazosport High School in Freeport, Texas, later commented on Watt’s response, saying “I hope I never have to part ways with 99!”
He’s the greatest! I’m just doing what I can on my end to help my grandpa have the funeral he deserves. I didn’t expect @JJWatt to respond. ❤️❤️
Even after his move from the Texans to the Cardinals before last season, the three-time defensive player of the year has maintained his charitable links to his former home.
Watt’s most notable act in that community came in 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. That category-4 storm, which dropped more than 50 inches of rain on some areas of the coastal metropolis, caused the deaths of over 100 people and resulted in over $125 billion worth of damage. In response, the J.J. Watt Foundation raised $41.6 million for relief efforts, the largest crowdsourced fundraiser in history.
For his efforts, Watt was awarded the 2017 NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.
“The connection I have with the people of Houston is special, and I will never take that for granted because I know how rare it is,” Watt said in a video in February 2021, following his release from the Texans. “I just want you to know that I love you and I appreciate you.”
Watt’s foundation has also raised more than $6.5 million for after-school athletic programs in 39 states and D.C. since Watt’s rookie year in 2011, per his foundation’s website. The future Hall of Famer also been hands-on with his charity work, from visiting and befriending child victims of a car crash in 2011 to fulfilling the Christmas wish lists of over 100 women and children at the Mission of Yahweh shelter in Houston in 2019.
When his release from the Texans was announced, grateful fans responded with a torrent of $99 donations, in honor of his number.
“Kids all over the country will benefit from your generosity,” he said in a tweet. “I’m truly thankful.”
Waking up this morning to a flood of $99 donations to @WattFoundation from Houston and cities all over the country (presumably attempts at bribes, judging by the messages attached with some 😂)
Kids all over the country will benefit from your generosity.
I’m truly thankful.
🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/FEayOgrh9n | 2022-07-21T14:52:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | J.J. Watt offers to help fan pay for her grandfather’s funeral - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/jj-watt-helps-fan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/jj-watt-helps-fan/ |
Ukraine’s first lady says her son, once into arts, now wants to be a soldier
Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, addresses members of Congress on Capitol Hill on July 20. (Michael Reynolds/AP)
Before the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s son liked to dance, and play sports and music — activities a typical 9-year-old would enjoy.
But when missiles began to rain down on Ukraine, he started dreaming of picking up a rifle, his mother, Olena Zelenska, says.
Now, Kyrylo, a boy who previously enjoyed folk dance, sports club, learning English and playing the piano, wants to be a soldier, like many young Ukrainian boys, the first lady told NBC News in an emotional interview Wednesday.
“The only thing he wants to do is martial arts and how to use a rifle,” Zelenska said, her voice breaking as she spoke in Ukrainian through an interpreter.
Zelenska, who was in the United States this week to address Congress and lobby for more U.S. weapons for Ukraine, said she hopes to end the war and restore her son’s childhood. “That’s what I really want to ensure, is that … he enjoys his life to the fullest,” she said.
In her address to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, Zelenska focused heavily on the cost of the war on children in Ukraine, and she appealed to politicians as parents to give Ukraine more weapons to combat Russia’s advance.
“Today, I want to address you as politicians and party representatives as well as mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, daughters and sons,” she said. “I want to address you not as first lady, but as a daughter and as a mother.”
During her speech, Ukraine’s first lady pulled up slides that showed photos of children she said have been killed or maimed by Russian strikes.
“I am asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers … and kill entire families,” Zelenska said.
Nearly two-thirds of Ukraine’s children have been displaced by the war, and more than 5 million of them are in need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations said about two months ago.
It’s impossible to verify how many have been killed or injured on the ground, as the fighting is ongoing and many places are inaccessible to observers. But the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed that at least 346 have died and 547 have been injured as of July 17 — though it believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.
Children have been killed in strikes on residential buildings and hospitals, in evacuation cars and buses, and outside on the street. Many have seen violence and destruction, or have lost family members. Sick children have had to be transferred to other countries for treatment, and millions have fled their home.
In an interview with Vogue published in April, Zelenska said Russia’s invasion had spurred every Ukrainian into action — including her son, Kyrylo, and daughter, Oleksandra, 18. “I’ve seen this raise the deepest patriotic feelings in our children,” she said at the time. “Not only my children but all the children of Ukraine. They will grow up to be patriots and defenders of their homeland.” | 2022-07-21T14:52:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Olena Zelenska, Ukraine's first lady: War made my son want to be a soldier - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/olena-zelenska-ukraine-first-lady-war-son-soldier/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/olena-zelenska-ukraine-first-lady-war-son-soldier/ |
The National Weather Service's forecast for heat today. (Pivotal Weather) (Pivotal Weather)
More than 100 million people in the Lower 48 states are under heat alerts on Thursday amid a relentless spell of sweltering temperatures that have soared as high as 115 degrees in recent days.
About 60 million Americans in at least 16 states are set to experience triple-digit highs on Thursday; an additional half-dozen states could see the mercury reach the upper 90s.
Excessive-heat warnings or heat advisories cover several regions, including California’s Central Valley; Las Vegas to Phoenix in the Southwest; San Antonio to Birmingham, Ala., in the South; and Myrtle Beach, S.C., to Boston along the East Coast.
In Texas and Oklahoma, where many places are enduring one of their hottest summers on record, highs well above 100 degrees are expected for the foreseeable future. Both the states made it to 115 degrees on Tuesday, and while temperatures are comparatively lower Thursday, they will still be dangerous for vulnerable groups.
Major cities in the Northeast are set to see highs near 95 degrees on Thursday and will feel 5 to 10 degrees hotter with suffocating humidity levels. Even more intense heat is forecast this weekend: Washington could reach the century mark for the first time since 2016.
The U.S. heat wave peaked this week as a historic bout of exceptional temperatures killed more than 1,000 people in Europe. The United Kingdom set a record-high temperature on Tuesday as several stations exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time ever.
While summertime is bound to be hot, the trend toward increasingly severe and long-duration heat events bears the fingerprint of human-induced climate chang.
Heat in the Southwest
The nation’s most intense heat on Thursday is focused in the Southwest. The National Weather Service warned of a “high risk of heat related illness” in Las Vegas, where highs are forecast to top 110 degrees through Friday.
⚠️ It's going to be a hot next couple days for Las Vegas but much of southern Nevada and northwest Arizona.
Take extra precaution so you don't succumb to heat illness! 🥵️ pic.twitter.com/rvMgHaSxqY
Heat in Texas and Oklahoma
At least 24 Mesonet sites set their all-time record highs yesterday according to preliminary data. There are a few newer stations in there, but plenty to show this day matches up heat-wise with any in the Mesonet temperature era, dating back to 1997! #okwx #okmesonet pic.twitter.com/uVSPIyqYVx
Oklahoma City spiked to 100 degrees on Wednesday and has reached the century mark for five straight days. When it hit 110 on Tuesday, it was only the second such instance since 2012. High temperatures there are forecast to remain in the high 90s or low 100s for the next week, at least.
About a dozen small wildfires cropped up in Oklahoma’s Red River Valley and north-central Texas, the largest of which is in Somervell County just southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The Chalk Mountain Fire has torched 6,339 acres since its ignition around 2:30 p.m. on Monday. It’s only 10 percent contained.
Attempted calculation showing departure from average of number of hours with at least 100°F heat index so far this year. All heat index reports are considered (ie when less than air temp). X's denote stations with max values this year vs 1973-2021. pic.twitter.com/SlFabOUm31
— daryl herzmann (@akrherz) July 21, 2022
Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Tulsa will remain at or above 100 degrees for at least the next week while areas farther to the south and east — Houston, Little Rock or Shreveport, La. — will be in the upper 90s. Those subtly cooler air temperatures will be offset by greater humidity wafting in from the Gulf of Mexico, contributing toward heat index values in the 105-to-110-degree range.
Heat in the South
Much of the zone from Louisiana and Arkansas to Georgia is experiencing one of its top 10 hottest summers, and temperatures will remain sweltering there through early next week. Highs are forecast to range from 90 to 100, but oppressive humidity levels will make it feel like 100 to 110.
Birmingham is under a heat advisory Thursday, with temperatures projected to peak around 95 degrees. Western Alabama may see highs in the upper 90s. While daytime highs haven’t been particularly impressive there from a records standpoint, the overnight lows have been.
“We had a low temperature of 79 degrees yesterday [Wednesday] morning,” said Jason Holmes, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Birmingham. “Having the nighttime low temperatures like that, it’s hard for your body since you don’t cool down.”
Heat in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast
Temperatures are forecast to reach the 90s from Richmond to Boston on Thursday, with heat index values in the triple digits.
Highs in New York will flirt with 90 degrees through Saturday, then spike into the mid- or upper 90s on Sunday. Washington, Philadelphia and Philadelphia will be in the mid- to upper 90s through Saturday, approaching 100 degrees on Sunday. Heat index values could reach 105 to 110.
What’s driving the heat
Instigating the heat is a ridge of high pressure known as a “heat dome,” which is currently centered over the Southwest but is flexing at times as far east as the Mid-Atlantic.
Underneath these heat domes, the air sinks, clearing out cloud cover while allowing the sun to beat down relentlessly. Atop the heat dome is the jet stream, marking the southern periphery of cooler weather.
Over the weekend, the jet stream will take a dip toward the north-central United States and Great Lakes, ushering in cooler air in those areas. However, as that cooler air arrives, strong to severe thunderstorms may erupt Saturday. | 2022-07-21T15:39:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blistering U.S. heat wave shifts east with highs above 100 degrees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/heatwave-heat-texas-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/heatwave-heat-texas-us/ |
This month, the Nationals will listen to trade offers for Kyle Finnegan, who has been their best reliever this season. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Heading into the all-star break, the Nationals lost 15 of 17 games. They are 31-63, 27½ back of the first-place New York Mets, and prepping to gut their roster some more. Almost a year ago, when it seemed as if the first teardown was finished, when the clocks struck 3 p.m. on deadline day, they slipped in a one-for-one trade with the St. Louis Cardinals. This is important to remember as Aug. 2 nears. | 2022-07-21T15:48:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Nationals near another active trade deadline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/nationals-trade-deadline-needs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/nationals-trade-deadline-needs/ |
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra names Jonathon Heyward music director
The 29-year-old rising star becomes the first person of color to lead the 106-year-old orchestra
Jonathon Heyward was named musical director of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Thursday. (Laura Thiesbrummel)
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced on Thursday its appointment of 29-year-old Jonathon Heyward as the orchestra’s music director, concluding an extensive search that commenced following the exit last August of its longtime director, Marin Alsop. (In an email, Alsop wrote that she is “Thrilled for Jonathon — thrilled for Baltimore!”)
If conductor Marin Alsop’s done it, it’s probably because someone told her she couldn’t
Heyward, a 29-year-old Charleston, S.C., native who currently serves as chief conductor for the Herford, Germany-based Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, will be the BSO’s 13th music director, and the first person of color to lead the 106-year-old orchestra. His five-year tenure will commence with the 2023-2024 season, though he will serve as music director designate for the forthcoming season, leading two weeks of programming in May of 2023.
Mark Hanson, named CEO of the orchestra in April after tenures leading the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony Orchestra, heralded the selection of Heyward — unanimous among a search committee made up of BSO musicians, staff and community members — as “incredibly inspirational and aspirational” in a statement.
“We are inspired by his artistry, passion, and vision for the BSO, as well as for what his appointment means for budding musicians who will see themselves better reflected in such a position of artistic prominence,” Hanson wrote. “At the same time, he is a star on the rise, and his vibrant talent, bold programming, and fervent commitment to community engagement will continue to grow our relationship with the many communities across Maryland.”
The BSO has made its search for a new conductor something of a public affair, with a string of guest conductors stepping in to lead the orchestra over the course of its past two seasons, a presumable short list that included Heyward, Rune Bergmann, Robert Trevino, Kevin John Edusei, Peter Oundjian, Kwamé Ryan, Matthias Pintscher and Christian Reif.
Conductor Christian Reif makes a good guest at Strathmore with BSO
Heyward made his debut in March of this year, leading a program that included Hannah Kendall’s “The Spark Catchers,” a run through Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, and the BSO premiere of Shostakovich’s 15th symphony — a performance described by percussionist and Players’ Committee Chair Brian Prechtl as “magic.”
“Jonathon’s unique programming, strong communication skills, and ability to push the orchestra with new ideas demonstrated some of the most important musical traits we’ve been looking for in a music director,” Prechtl wrote in a statement.
Heyward has also previously been featured in the BSO’s ongoing digital series “BSO Sessions.”
Originally trained as a cellist starting at the age of 10, Heyward embarked shortly thereafter on his conducting life, when a substitute teacher pulled his name from a hat to lead his school’s orchestra. He has previously served as assistant conductor of the Manchester, England-based Hallé Orchestra, and has made well-received appearances Stateside with the Atlanta, Detroit and San Diego symphony orchestras, with forthcoming debuts in Houston and St. Louis. Heyward made his Wolf Trap debut this month leading the National Symphony Orchestra in a program of Beethoven, Bologne and NSO composer-in-residence, Carlos Simon.
22 for ’22: Composers and performers to watch this year
“The Baltimore Symphony’s irresistible artistry, energy, and optimism were clear to me from the first moment we rehearsed together earlier this year,” Heyward wrote in his own statement. “We shared a special chemistry then and in the concerts we have given since. I look forward to seeing where that can take us in the years ahead.” | 2022-07-21T16:22:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore Symphony Orchestra names Jonathon Heyward music director - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/21/baltimore-symphony-jonathon-heyward/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/21/baltimore-symphony-jonathon-heyward/ |
FILE - Rover alone, looking north, on the west edge of Mount Hadley is at upper right edge of picture, the most distant lunar feature visible is about 25 kilometers away, Aug. 1971. Goodyear is teaming with Lockheed Martin on the development of a vehicle planned for use on the moon, providing airless tires for the project. This isn’t Goodyear’s first venture into space, as it supplied essential products for NASA’s Apollo program, including the Apollo 11 mission. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/ap) | 2022-07-21T16:23:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New lunar rover in the works as NASA moon mission advances - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-lunar-rover-in-the-works-as-nasa-moon-mission-advances/2022/07/21/ec659884-090c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-lunar-rover-in-the-works-as-nasa-moon-mission-advances/2022/07/21/ec659884-090c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
The International Union for Conservation of Nature placed the migratory insect on its endangered species list Thursday
Monarch butterflies cluster together at the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Calif. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The species’ numbers have dropped between 22 and 72 percent over the past decade, according to the new assessment. Monarchs in the Western United States are in particular danger: The population declined by an estimated 99.9 percent, from as many as 10 million butterflies in the 1980s to fewer than 2,000 in 2021.
Butterflies are vanishing out West. Scientists say climate change is to blame. | 2022-07-21T16:23:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monarch butterflies are now endangered, moving closer to extinction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/monarch-butterfly-endangered-iucn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/monarch-butterfly-endangered-iucn/ |
The National Building Museum is hosting a wide range of programming to go along with the Folger’s pop-up residency
John and Magdalena Glenn perform lines from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” onstage inside the National Building Museum. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
“The play’s the thing,” to quote a different work by Shakespeare, but there’s more to the Folger’s pop-up residency at the National Building Museum than actual performances of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Much like the museum’s previous Summer Block Party installations, there’s a wide-ranging web of programming with “The Playhouse” at its center, including daily family activities, free outdoor concerts, and even a chance to step into Puck’s shoes and speak a few lines from the stage.
Cathy Frankel, the Building Museum’s vice president for exhibitions and collections, describes the schedule as “very interactive.”
“That was always the plan: How can we keep people engaged?” she said.
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ becomes reality, at last, at National Building Museum
Start with the twice-daily “Insider’s Tour.” While the Playhouse itself is billed as the star, participants are put front and center right from the start. Groups are led into “A Midsummer Forest,” an installation filled with oversize illustrations from “A Knavish Lad,” a pop-up book based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” There, surrounded by imagery from the play, with colorful translucent leaves overhead, docents ask volunteers to read and discuss lines from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (You might have forgotten that, in the play’s first scene, Hermia is told that if she doesn’t marry her father’s preferred suitor, she faces a stark choice between a nunnery and death.)
After wandering through a tunnel, visitors enter the Playhouse. There are interesting facts to be learned about its construction — the set covers the museum’s central fountain, for instance, and after the final performances here, it is heading to the University of South Carolina, where it will go on tour — but let’s be honest: Everyone wants to get onstage and see what it feels like in front of all those (admittedly empty) seats. Guides encourage those on the tour to pair up and play “Shakespeare in a Can,” a game that involves drawing random lines from Shakespeare plays and performing them together, or improvising a short scene.
The 45-minute tour winds up “Backstage.” Visitors can dive into racks of costumes, including brocade jackets and floppy hats to try on, or just marvel at costumes worn in previous Folger productions; a ruffled, pearl-covered dress worn in “Elizabeth the Queen” is captivating, until you read that it weighs 20 pounds.
Some aspects of the tour might go over the littlest visitors’ heads, but there’s still plenty for them to do. Right next to the Playhouse’s entrance is a crafting area where children can create lion masks and fairy wands. There’s also a daily story time and face painting on Saturdays and Sundays. A scavenger hunt seeks out “Midsummer” characters placed in exhibits throughout the building. The museum’s hands-on “City by Design” exhibit, which introduces the idea of urban planning to grade-school visitors, has been adapted with an Elizabethan theme: Kids build model castles, churches and pubs out of cardboard boxes and construction paper and place them on a floor-sized map of Shakespeare’s London, or color and tape together a version of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
Throughout the run, the calendar is full of special events: Lunchtime poetry readings (July 21 and 28), four Thursday evening concerts on the museum’s west lawn (July 28-Aug. 18), a weekend of “Hip-Hop Shakespeare” workshops (Aug. 5-7), and a “Brews and Banter” pre-show happy hour with members of the “Midsummer” cast (Aug. 12).
The hope, says the Building Museum’s Frankel, is that no matter their age, people will make a day out of “The Playhouse”: Come in at lunch for a poetry reading or to take a tour. Make crafts with the kids, then get a bite to eat in the neighborhood. After dinner, come back for live music or a workshop, then see “Midsummer.” It’s a day that sounds rather like a dream.
National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. A full schedule of events is available at nbm.org.
Tickets: Most events and activities are free with admission to the museum, which is $10 for adults and $7 for youths, students and seniors. | 2022-07-21T16:23:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to expect at the Playhouse at the National Building Museum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/playhouse-national-building-museum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/playhouse-national-building-museum/ |
Let’s look at trust in the news media and ‘equal’ coverage
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1925, John T. Scopes was found guilty of violating a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, bringing the “Monkey Trial” to an end. His conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
🚨 President Biden has tested positive for covid-19. Follow all the latest from the Post here.
A pair of surveys about the mainstream news media over the past week or so delivered bracing news about Americans’ trust (or mistrust) in reporters, as well as a curious gap between the public and the press on the question of whether all sides of an issue deserve “equal coverage.”
Both are worth exploring because they raise a lot of questions about the health of America’s news and its republic, as well as the difficult relationship between the people who consume information, notably about politics, and the troubled industry that has traditionally delivered it.
Let’s start with the “trust” question.
Trust in mainstream news — television and newspapers, specifically — has fallen again, Gallup told us this week. At this point, there are probably exotic diseases that poll higher than we do, though we can take (extremely) modest comfort that Congress is even less highly regarded.
Just 16 percent of U.S. adults have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers. Things are worse for TV news, at 11 percent. Congress? Eek, 7 percent, according to Gallup polling that found faith in key American institutions has been eroding for years.
Things get a little less bleak if you add “some” confidence — 37 percent say they feel that way toward newspapers, 35 percent about TV. But they get considerably grimmer if you take past Gallup polls showing record-low numbers of Americans trust mainstream media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly while large numbers deem us to be of low ethical character.
The latest Gallup’s polling doesn’t get at the “why” of this erosion, (though Everyone Online Is Sure It Proves Them Right). That makes it harder to have serious conversations about how to win back that trust, which was never all that high to begin with. That’s if it’s even possible to restore it.
In my quarter-century as a reporter, traditional news media have been losing ground in two ways: Medium (the technological means by which information is obtained) and source (the identity of the person or institution from whom the information is obtained).
TV news still commands vast audiences, but go ahead and ask a 20-something “where do you get your news?” And the growth of partisan media, particularly on the right, means “getting news” in 2022 might be synonymous with “get confirmation of prior beliefs.”
The news media can do a lot of things wrong — we sometimes trust the wrong sources, make basic factual errors, disregard important stories and perspectives, focus too much on incremental politics, stay stubbornly out of touch with our audience’s daily lives, the list is long.
Q-Anon prophecies have come and gone, unfulfilled, but millions still believe. President Donald Trump generated an unprecedented whirlwind of falsehoods during his four years in office, and his debunked claims of being cheated out of a second term now appear to be an article of faith for millions of Republicans. So “getting it wrong” seems like an incomplete explanation for our predicament.
That comes with a big caveat. Congress has no competition. Traditional news outlets do.
Equal coverage
Which gets us to the equal coverage question, explored in this survey by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.
More than three-quarters of Americans (76 percent) say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage. But 55 percent of the journalists Pew surveyed said every side does not always deserve equal coverage, a position shared by just 22 percent of Americans.
Younger journalists and those with less time in the industry are more likely to reject the “equal coverage” principle. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more likely to say journalists should provide equal coverage (87 percent) than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (68 percent).
Americans with low levels of trust in the media are more likely to favor the “equal coverage” aspiration (84 percent) than those with higher levels of faith (66 percent). But both are still solid majorities, and that leaves a chasm between reporters and their audiences.
Where Gallup didn’t give us the “why” of the erosion, Pew didn’t give us a definition for “equal coverage,” so it’s hard to tell whether it’s an exhortation to be fair or an embrace of what has come to be known as “bothsides” coverage that equates things that aren’t close to the same.
That matters quite a bit. Does a performance artist running for president (Vermin Supreme) deserve the same amount of time on a nightly broadcast as the front-runners for the major party nominations? Do climate-change deniers deserve the same column space as scientists? Those are pretty easy “nos.”
There are harder ones.
“President Biden tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday morning and is experiencing ‘very mild symptoms,’ White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement,” John Wagner, Tyler Pager and Ashley Parker report.
House poised to vote on ensuring access to contraception
“The Right to Contraception Act, sponsored by Rep. Kathy E. Manning (D-N.C.), explicitly allows the use of contraceptives — including oral birth control, injections, implants and morning-after pills — and authorizes the medical community to provide them. Patients and health-care providers can bring civil suits against states that violate the legislation’s provisions,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
“Ahead of a prime-time January 6th Committee hearing Thursday, a majority of Americans are paying attention and blame former President Donald Trump for what happened that day in 2021, but don't think he will be prosecuted, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll,” NPR's Domenico Montanaro reports.
Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged — but didn't tell Congress
“That watchdog agency, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, also prepared in October 2021 to issue a public alert that the Secret Service and other department divisions were stonewalling it on requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol, but did not do so, the people briefed on the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal investigations,” Carol D. Leonnig and Maria Sacchetti report.
“As I witnessed Japan grapple with the decidedly un-Japanese horror of a gunman’s attack, I realized how much my exposure to gun violence had colored my expectations of a country’s response to a shooting. The muscle memories from U.S. shootings kicked in, but I quickly learned they don’t quite apply on the other end of the spectrum of gun violence — the side where it almost never happens,” Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes.
“Luria is preparing for her most defining moment on the committee yet: At the committee’s finale of this summer’s series of hearings, she and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) will detail what former president Donald Trump did and didn’t do over 187 minutes as the U.S. Capitol was under attack, and as Luria and hundreds of colleagues took cover,” Meagan Flynn and Jacqueline Alemany report.
“The U.S. is still struggling to complete the break up with Chinese telecom companies that Donald Trump started four years ago,” Politico's John Hendel reports.
“Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and France are among the most popular destinations. Sotheby’s International Realty said requests from Americans looking to move to Greece rose 40% in the April-to-June period compared to a year earlier. In France and Italy, US demand is the highest it’s been in at least three years, according to Knight Frank real estate specialist Jack Harris. And Americans made up 12% of Sotheby’s Italian revenue in the first quarter, compared to just 5% in the same period a year ago,” Bloomberg News's Alice Kantor reports.
“The top symptoms of the Omicron COVID-19 variant may differ from symptoms that were common at the start of the pandemic. Omicron may also be less severe than the Delta variant, a study out of the U.K. found,” CBS News's Caitlin O'Kane reports.
“People with Omicron often report sore throat and a hoarse voice, which were not as prevalent in Delta cases, a Zoe Health Study found.”
“Biden had been scheduled to visit Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to lay out a ‘Safer America Plan’ that included expanded law enforcement funding to allow the hiring and training of 100,000 police officers for what the administration calls ‘accountable community policing,’ according to a White House statement and senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement,” Meryl Kornfield reports.
“The Biden administration is reorganizing the federal health department to create an independent division that would lead the nation’s pandemic response, amid frustrations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Dan Diamond reports.
“President Joe Biden, in his first year in office, created an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the Health and Human Services Department, to prepare the nation’s health care system to deal with the growing and inevitable health effects of extreme heat, dangerous storms and worsening air pollution. The Biden administration asked Congress for $3 million to staff the office with eight employees, a paltry sum compared to the federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar budget,” NBC News's Josh Lederman reports.
The latest on state abortion laws, visualized
Yesterday, a federal court ruled that the Georgia's six-week ban is allowed to go into effect immediately, Caroline Kitchener, Kevin Schaul, N. Kirkpatrick, Daniela Santamariña and Lauren Tierney report.
“Four Republican senators, so far, have either said they will support or will likely support the House-passed same-sex marriage bill, and that includes: Rob Portman of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (likely) and Thom Tillis of North Carolina (likely),” CNN's Ali Zaslav, Manu Raju, Ted Barrett, Morgan Rimmer, Jessica Dean and Kristin Wilson report.
“Eight Republican senators, so far, have indicated they would vote ‘no,’ and oppose the same-sex marriage bill. Sixteen Republican senators, so far, are undecided or did not indicate support for the House-passed bill. Twenty-two Republican senators have yet to respond to CNN’s inquiries.”
“Wednesday morning was grim in Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s orbit,” Erin Cox reports.
“As he travels the country to test his chances as a presidential contender who could lead the Republican Party in a more inclusive direction, voters in his home state repudiated the pragmatic conservatism Hogan is trying to sell. Instead of electing his handpicked protege, who espoused the themes he cherishes, they handed victory to Del. Dan Cox, a far-right candidate backed by former president Donald Trump whom Hogan labeled 'a QAnon whack job.'”
All of the president's travel has been canceled for at least five days after this morning's news that he has tested positive for covid-19. The White House has not yet sent a new schedule for today but said the president will isolate and join planned meetings virtually.
Biden was scheduled to speak about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and then head to a DNC fundraiser in Philadelphia today.
At 2 p.m., Jean-Pierre will hold a briefing with White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha.
“We don’t blame you if you can’t remember who said what over the past six weeks of live testimony and filmed depositions presented by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Hannah Knowles writes.
Noted: Jill Biden tested negative on Thursday, her office says | 2022-07-21T16:24:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Let’s look at trust in the news media and ‘equal’ coverage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/lets-look-trust-news-media-equal-coverage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/lets-look-trust-news-media-equal-coverage/ |
FILE - Andrew Whitworth arrives at the ESPY Awards on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. With less than two months before its first regular season game, Prime Video’s crew for “Thursday Night Football” is nearly set. Kaylee Hartung has been hired by Amazon as the sideline reporter while Andrew Whitworth and Aqib Talib have signed on as contributors for pregame, halftime and postgame coverage.(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) | 2022-07-21T16:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hartung, Whitworth, Talib join 'Thursday Night Football' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/hartong-whitworth-talib-join-thursday-night-football/2022/07/21/8b681426-090c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/hartong-whitworth-talib-join-thursday-night-football/2022/07/21/8b681426-090c-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
FILE - Carolina Hurricanes’ Nino Niederreiter (21) waits for a face-off against the New York Rangers during the second period of Game 5 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, May 26, 2022. The Nashville Predators have signed forward Nino Niederreiter to a two-year, $8 million contract in their biggest free agency move since keeping forward Filip Forsberg off the market. General manager David Poile announced the signing Thursday, July 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker, File) | 2022-07-21T16:25:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Preds sign Nino Niederreiter to 2-year, $8 million deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/preds-sign-nino-niederreiter-to-2-year-8-million-deal/2022/07/21/8c3fe06c-090d-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/preds-sign-nino-niederreiter-to-2-year-8-million-deal/2022/07/21/8c3fe06c-090d-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
By Gerry Shih
Indian presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu greets supporters in Odisha state on June 22. (AP)
NEW DELHI — About 5,000 Indian lawmakers on Thursday elected Draupadi Murmu, an indigenous tribal woman with humble roots, to be the country’s next president, marking a breakthrough for one of India’s marginalized minority groups.
The 64-year-old former governor of Jharkhand state was nominated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controlled enough seats in federal and state legislatures to install its preferred nominee to the presidency. Murmu will be the first indigenous person and second woman to serve as India’s head of state, a role that holds limited powers compared to the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
But in a democracy often driven by caste, religion and regional identities, Murmu’s elevation could reverberate far beyond her largely ceremonial office, particularly among the 100 million tribal people in India who have long sat at the foot of the country’s socioeconomic ladder — and who have been assiduously wooed, critics note, by a BJP that has been trying to expand its appeal beyond its traditional base of upper-caste Hindus.
On Thursday, as Murmu triumphed in a landslide, clinching votes from tribal lawmakers from opposition parties, BJP party offices in remote villages distributed portraits of their candidate and doled out sweets to tribal voters. Party leaders hailed the ascent of the former schoolteacher as a testament to an “aspirational” India under their leadership. And on Twitter, the party’s official account posted photos of its tribal supporters holding mass prayers in forest clearings for Murmu, a member of the Santhal tribe.
Murmu will “be an outstanding President who will lead from the front and strengthen India’s development journey,” Modi said on Twitter
Nalin Mehta, a political scientist and author of the book “The New BJP,” said the party in recent decades has expanded its outreach to Hindus traditionally considered lower in the caste hierarchy and the indigenous tribal population. Tribal groups make up nearly 9 percent of India’s population.
That strategy has reaped dividends. Hindus from “backward castes” and Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, have voted for the ruling party in growing numbers in every election since 2014, when Modi — a candidate who hailed from a humble caste himself — rose to power.
In 2017, the BJP chose Ram Nath Kovind, a Dalit born into poverty, to run for president. By installing Murmu as president, the BJP was looking to further strengthen its hold over Indian politics by cementing the indigenous vote, Mehta said.
“A tribal woman in Raisina Hill is hugely significant,” Mehta said, referring to the lush estate in central Delhi that houses the presidential mansion. “The BJP is greatly focused on the tribal as well as women vote, which are key new support bases. Murmu combines both in her persona.”
In November, Modi led celebrations for India’s first-ever national tribal pride day. The prime minister has also appointed eight members of tribal communities to his council of ministers.
Those in India’s indigenous population, also known as the Adivasi, or “original inhabitants,” have long lagged behind the rest of the country in literacy rates. Nearly half live below the poverty line, and tribal communities that dot India’s eastern forests have for decades battled land grabs by developers backed by the state.
As the vote neared this week, Murmu’s supporters pointed to her record of blocking legislation that would have made it easier to build on tribal land. But Dayamani Barla, a tribal activist in Jharkhand state, where Murmu served as governor from 2015 to 2021, was skeptical. Barla said she wanted to congratulate the new president but noted that villagers around Barla who protested against land seizures during Murmu’s term faced sedition charges, which were dropped only after the BJP lost power in the state.
“It is one thing to be appointed to a position, another to use it to serve the people of your community,” Barla said. “Tribals are dancing and singing today. Let’s see for how long this dancing and singing goes on.”
Anant Gupta contributed to this report. | 2022-07-21T16:25:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | India elects a president backed by the BJP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/india-president-tribal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/india-president-tribal/ |
Russia and Syria carried out dozens of illegal ‘double tap’ strikes, report finds
Members of the Syrian Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets use an excavator to search for victims under the rubble following a reported Russian airstrike on Maaret al-Numan in Syria's northwestern Idlib province on July 22, 2019. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)
The Russia and Syrian governments have carried out dozens of “double-tap” airstrikes on civilians and humanitarian workers in Syria since 2013, according to findings by a Syria-focused rights group, pointing to a pattern of illegal attacks that appears to have continued into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The report, published Thursday by the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), a U.S.-based human rights group, identifies 58 double-tap attacks targeting residential areas outside of government-held territory in Syria between 2013 and 2021. In such attacks, Russia and Syria shell or launch an airstrike targeting a spot where paramedics and civilians are gathered to help the victims of an initial strike.
Syrian and Russian forces conducted the strikes “as part of a larger strategy to punish and regain control of opposition-held areas” during Syria’s more than decade-long civil war, the report alleges.
“Double-tap airstrikes represent the ‘shock and awe’ policy of the Syrian government meant to ruthlessly suppress opposition sentiment and terrorize civilians,” Mohammad Al Abdallah, SJAC’s executive director, said in a news release. The attacks amount to war crimes, he said.
Researchers used open-source intelligence, including videos and satellite imagery, to verify each strike. Many of the documented double-taps occurred in Idlib, a rebel-held province in northwestern Syria, and Rif Damashq, a region encompassing the capital, Damascus, that saw fierce fighting for years.
In Syria’s ravaged Idlib, Russian airstrikes underscore wider strategies in region
The attacks represent a “pattern of the Syrian government violating international humanitarian law,” said Nessma Bashi, the report’s lead author. In addition to prohibiting deliberate attacks on civilians, international law forbids attacks on medical personnel, hospitals and humanitarian workers — as well as violence that aims to “spread terror among the civilian population.”
The report reconstructs five incidents that highlight the double-tap strikes’ civilian toll.
In 2013, civilians working to rescue survivors and unearth bodies from a destroyed housing complex in a suburb of Damascus were hit by another strike. “The civilians rescuing survivors had no time to run,” the report says. “A headless body was carried out from a bombed-out structure.”
Syrian and Russian aircraft targeted the Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, repeatedly in double-tap attacks in the Damascus suburb of Douma in March 2018, the report alleges. The volunteer group, which operates in opposition-held areas, became famous for providing emergency medical care in the aftermath of attacks, digging through rubble to rescue people.
In some cases cited in the report, Bashi said, double-tap attacks killed White Helmets responders as their cameras rolled, capturing evidence of a second strike.
Ismail Alabdullah, an Idlib-based media coordinator for the White Helmets, said he witnessed “tens of double strikes” in Aleppo. Two of his colleagues were killed by a double-tap strike as they responded to an attack in central Aleppo during the brutal siege of that city in 2016, he said.
“I was lucky — I’m still alive now,” he told The Washington Post.
Watchdog groups and journalists havedocumented double-tap strikes allegedly carried out by Syrian and Russian forces, including one that partially destroyed a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders in Homs in 2015. U.N. investigators accused Russia in 2020 of carrying out a double-tap attack on a market in Syria in July 2019 that killed at least 43 civilians. But SJAC says its report provides “the most comprehensive study of double tap incidents” in the conflict to date.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces began carrying out double-tap strikes in the early years of the war, according to the report. The attacks intensified after Russia entered the conflict officially in 2015. Laser-guided weapons, such as the Russian-made Krasnopol, wreaked more widespread destruction.
Russia has deployed this same tactic, honed in Syria, in its war in Ukraine, according to reports from international investigators and journalists on the ground. In one attack in March in Kharkiv a Russian missile allegedly hit a regional administration building. A second strike hit a few minutes later, after rescuers had arrived, according to an April report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Five civilians were killed in another double-tap strike in Kharkiv the following month, as a Red Cross team tried to administer first aid, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reported.
“Syria was kind of the testing ground for this approach,” Bashi said. “What Ukraine has shown is that double taps are being conducted on a regular basis.”
Russia’s Ukraine war builds on tactics it used in Syria, experts say
It’s one of several examples of Moscow pulling from its Syria playbook in Ukraine. In April, Russia tapped Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, a veteran of Moscow’s military operations in Syria, to oversee its operations in Ukraine.
The report’s authors hope their findings will help efforts to hold Syria and Russia accountable. SJAC, which collects and analyzes documentation of violations committed by all parties in the Syria conflict, plans to release additional reports in the coming months on rights abuses allegedly carried out by other actors in the war, Bashi said.
Accountability has so far proved largely elusive. Syria is not party to the Rome Statute, the governing treaty of the International Criminal Court — meaning the court has limited jurisdiction in Syria. Russia, which withdrew from the ICC treaty in 2016, has obstructed efforts by the U.N. Security Council to refer the conflict in Syria to the court.
Still, human rights lawyers have launched a fresh effort to bring war crimes cases involving Syrian officials to the ICC. European courts, meanwhile, are using national courts to pursue justice for crimes committed by Assad’s government, through the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Syrians seeking justice see the war in Ukraine as a double-edged sword, Bashi said. “A lot of Syrians were concerned that the media attention and the money was going to be flooded to Ukraine and everyone else was going to be neglected because of this,” she said.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also breathed new life into the field of international law and efforts to investigate and prosecute war crimes.
“I would hope this would pull more attention to the importance of accountability efforts across the board,” Bashi said. “Certainly we know there are specific members of the Russian military who were involved in Syria and are now key players in Ukraine. If it is the case that those people are held accountable for crimes they commit in Ukraine, we will consider that a win for Syrians.” | 2022-07-21T16:25:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia and Syria carried out dozens of illegal ‘double tap’ strikes, report finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/syria-russia-double-tap-airstrikes-report-war-crimes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/syria-russia-double-tap-airstrikes-report-war-crimes/ |
The employee, his brother, and a friend are accused of running a scheme to buy digital assets before they listed on the exchange.
Coinbase signage during the company's initial public offering on April 14, 2021. Coinbase touts itself as the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)
Federal agents arrested a former Coinbase product manager and his brother Thursday on charges they used the cryptocurrency exchange to orchestrate a year-long insider trading scheme that netted $1.5 million in illegal profits.
Ishan Wahi is alleged to have used his position helping coordinate Coinbase’s listings of new tokens to tip off his brother, Nikhil Wahi, and a friend, who bought the digital assets before their debut on the platform caused their price to rise.
Coinbase is not implicated in any wrongdoing, and Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement it cooperated with the probe. A Coinbase spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Wahi brothers were arrested Thursday morning in Seattle, the New York prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Their friend who is alleged to have participated in the scheme, Sameer Ramani, remains at large.
“Our message with these charges is clear: fraud is fraud is fraud, whether it occurs on the blockchain or on Wall Street,” Williams said in a statement. “And the Southern District of New York will continue to be relentless in bringing fraudsters to justice, wherever we may find them.”
The case is the second in as many months in which an employee at a prominent digital asset exchange is accused of abusing insider information. In June, federal prosecutors in New York charged a former executive at OpenSea, the largest platform for trading non-fungible tokens, with buying NFTs based on his knowledge they would soon be listed on the online marketplace’s homepage. | 2022-07-21T16:44:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Coinbase manager arrested on crypto insider-trading charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/coinbase-insider-trading-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/21/coinbase-insider-trading-arrest/ |
William ‘Poogie’ Hart, Delfonics lead singer, dies at 77
He was also a founder of the Grammy-winning trio that helped define the Philadelphia sound in the 1960s and ’70s
The Delfonics, from left, Randy Cain, William "Poogie" Hart, and brother Wilbert Hart, perform in 2006 at the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Awards in Philadelphia. (George Widman/AP)
William “Poogie” Hart, a founder of the Grammy-winning trio the Delfonics who helped write and sang a soft lead tenor on such popular “Sound of Philadelphia” ballads as “La-La (Means I Love You)” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)," died July 14 at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 77.
His son Hadi told the New York Times the cause was complications from surgery.
From the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, the Delfonics had six top 40 pop hits and more than a dozen top 20 R&B hits. With Thom Bell serving as producer and co-writer, their sound was defined by the rich orchestral arrangements and layered harmonies — Mr. Hart at times rising to a falsetto — that made Philadelphia soul as essential to the ’70s as Detroit’s Motown label had been in the previous decade.
The Delfonics, whose other songs included “Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide from Love)” and “Break Your Promise,” were among the first successes in a wave of Philadelphia vocal groups that included the Spinners, the O’Jays and the Stylistics.
Their songs remained known well after they stopped having hits. The Delfonics were heard on soundtracks for movies by Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee and were covered by Prince, Aretha Franklin and other artists. Nicki Minaj, the Fugees and many other performers sampled them.
William Alexander Hart was born in Washington on Jan. 17, 1945, and grew up in Philadelphia. He began singing in groups as a teenager, and with younger brother Wilbert Hart and Randy Cain (later replaced by Major Harris) formed the precursor to the Delfonics, the Orthonics, in 1965. They soon learned of a local writer-arranger, Bell, who eventually worked not just with the Delfonics but with the Spinners and Stylistics.
The Delfonics initially broke up in the 1970s, but later toured in various combinations. Mr. Hart’s outside projects included the 2007 album “Three Tenors of Soul” with two other stars from the ’70s: Russell Thompkins Jr. of the Stylistics and Ted Mills from Blue Magic. | 2022-07-21T16:53:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | William ‘Poogie’ Hart, Delfonics lead singer, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/21/william-poogie-hart-delfonics-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/21/william-poogie-hart-delfonics-dead/ |
(Washington Post illustration; Activision Blizzard; iStock)
Hundreds of Activision Blizzard employees are walking out Thursday in Texas, California, Minnesota and New York to protest the overturn of Roe v. Wade and demand protections. The current count, as of this writing, is 450 employees, in-person and online.
The demands include a request for all workers to have the right to work remotely, and for workers living in “locations passing discriminatory legislation,” such as antiabortion laws, to be offered relocation assistance to a different state or country. Employees are also demanding the company sign a labor-neutrality agreement to respect the rights of workers to join a union; on Twitter, the workers’ group A Better ABK said the demand was necessitated by union-busting efforts on the part of Activision Blizzard.
Some of the protests will take place in Texas, specifically, where Activision has offices and remote workers and where abortion was already heavily restricted. Several dozen workers gathered on Thursday in Austin, Texas to hold up signs that read, “Gender Equity Now,” and “Honk if you support workers’ rights!”
“This walkout is the right thing to do. ABK should be ashamed that they are pushing their employees to walk out instead of accepting the demands and creating a safer workplace,” said Fabby Garza, a Texas-based Activision quality assurance tester who helped organize the walkout. “Living in Texas as a person of a marginalized gender is to live in fear that at any point more rights will be taken away from you.”
“We support the right of our employees to express their views and values in a safe, responsible way, without fear of retaliation. There are numerous ways they can do so publicly or confidentially,” Rich George, a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard told The Washington Post. “Our leadership team remains focused on ensuring we are the very best place to work. This includes ensuring gender equity throughout the company and comprehensive access to reproductive and other health care services for every employee.”
“I’m non binary,” said Logan La Coss, a longtime Blizzard customer support employee in Texas who helped organize the walkout. “People like myself are not exactly in the greatest spot if various protected categories just had their rights rolled back. So we’re looking into ways that we could get people to safety effectively. That was the biggest thrust of putting this whole thing together.”
Workers in Minnesota are also walking out, with the largest expected turnout compared to other parts of the company across the country. Activision Blizzard employees have walked out five times over the course of a year, in protest of a vaccine mandate being lifted, in response to layoffs and to demand their CEO step down.
The protests around layoffs ultimately resulted in a union drive at Activision-owned Raven Software; 28 quality assurance testers won their bid for a union in May. On Tuesday, workers at Blizzard Albany — which is participating in today’s walkouts — announced that they had filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board.
“The remote work demand is very close to my heart. As someone who lives with chronic pain and fatigue as well as anxiety, it’s much easier to manage these things in a controlled remote work environment,” said Kate Anderson, a Minnesota-based quality assurance tester. “We have tried to rally around remote work demands in the past, particularly with the vaccine mandate walkout [in April]. In Minnesota, we have seen several covid breakouts when they have tried return to office pushes in the past.”
Activision Blizzard isn’t the only company with workers protesting the loss of abortion rights. Several employees at Google and the broader Alphabet company in Texas and across the country attended protests in June against the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back Roe v. Wade.
“As the world’s largest search engine, Google has a responsibility to do more to protect the privacy of its users, end its financial support of antiabortion politicians, and ensure greater abortion access benefits for all workers,” said Alejandra Beatty, member of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA and Technical Program Manager at Verily, an Alphabet company. “We stand with workers at Google, Alphabet, Activision Blizzard and across all industries, fighting for reproductive justice and gender equity.” | 2022-07-21T17:02:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Activision Blizzard workers walk out, protesting loss of abortion rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/21/activision-blizzard-roe-walkout/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/21/activision-blizzard-roe-walkout/ |
An abortion rights advocate demonstrates outside the 19th Judicial District Courthouse in Baton Rouge on July 18. (Stephen Smith/AP)
Clinics in Louisiana will continue to perform abortions as a legal challenge to the state’s trigger laws wends its way through the courts, after a state district court judge on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the near-total abortion ban.
“Today’s ruling is critical in ensuring that women in Louisiana continue to have access to comprehensive — and sometimes life-saving — healthcare services,” Joanna Wright, a lawyer for the plaintiffs challenging the state’s abortion ban, said in a statement shared with The Washington Post.
Abortion access in Louisiana has been sporadic in the weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade. The state’s trigger laws briefly shut down clinics until a judge granted a temporary restraining order that blocked enforcement of the ban. Abortions resumed but stopped again when that restraining order dissolved as the case was moved to a new jurisdiction, in Baton Rouge.
Days later, another judge granted a second temporary restraining order, allowing abortions to resume once more, until the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction could be considered.
Judge Donald R. Johnson granted the preliminary injunction Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion ban until the case has been concluded. The case now proceeds to a trial, where the court will decide whether to grant the plaintiff’s request to permanently block the state’s abortion bans. The plaintiffs argue that the state’s laws are “constitutionally vague” because they do not clearly define what actions are considered illegal, as required by the state constitution.
“We are prepared to prove our case and hope to obtain a final ruling that the trigger bans are unconstitutional and cannot be enforced,” Wright said. “In the interim, providers are protected against vindictive prosecution from the state.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who represents the state in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to an inquiry Thursday about the judge’s decision.
But Landry has been vocal about his intention to enforce Louisiana’s abortion laws immediately if the court rules in the state’s favor.
Louisiana is one of the few states in the South where abortions can still be performed, at least for now, after the fall of Roe. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned a lower court’s pause on the state’s “heartbeat” ban — that ban blocks abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected — and made the unusual decision to allow the law to take effect immediately.
Abortion bans are now in place, with few exceptions, in a swath of neighboring states across the region including Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
Even as Louisiana battles to enforce its abortion ban in court, local officials in New Orleans have taken steps to put roadblocks in the way should the court allow the ban to take effect. In early July, the city council approved a resolution that instructed police not to pursue charges against abortion providers or patients. Landry responded to that effort by urging other state agencies to withhold funding from the city.
For now, Louisiana is an island of abortion access surrounded by states where the procedure is almost completely illegal. The state has three clinics that have been offering abortion services under the temporary restraining orders and may continue to do so under the preliminary injunction.
“Patients have been terrified that any day these bans might take effect again and they’ll be left with no options,” Jenny Ma, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights representing the plaintiffs said in a statement. “But this ruling means doctors can provide healthcare that is best for their patients, and not be subject to laws that are so ambiguous that they don’t know how they can do their jobs. While today’s decision is not the final ruling, it is a huge victory in preserving access to essential healthcare in Louisiana and for those in the region.” | 2022-07-21T17:41:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Louisiana abortion clinics stay open after judge temporarily blocks ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/louisiana-abortion-ban-preliminary-injunction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/louisiana-abortion-ban-preliminary-injunction/ |
Long-lost church in Williamsburg was once under a parking lot
Reginald F. Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, far left; Connie Matthews Harshaw, a member of First Baptist; and Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg's director of archaeology, stand at the foundation of one the country's oldest Black churches on Oct. 6, 2021, in Williamsburg, Va. (Ben Finley/AP)
Archaeologists, blessed by community prayers and a reading from scripture, began to excavate graves this week at the long-lost site of the original First Baptist Church in Colonial Williamsburg, one of the oldest Black churches in the country.
Forty-one grave shafts have now been discovered at the site of the church, which was torn down in 1955 and covered by a parking lot because it didn’t fit the town’s Colonial motif.
Three of the graves are slated for excavation, said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s director of archaeology.
They will be examined one at a time. There are no current plans to excavate more, although experts do want to determine how many people are buried there in all.
Gary said it is likely many more than 41.
Experts hope to find clues to the lives of the African Americans who worshiped and were buried at the church, which was on Nassau Street and traces its roots to the 1770s.
In recent years, an effort has been underway to uncover and recognize the history and importance of the site.
If bones are found, they could reveal information about a person’s height, age at death, illnesses, quality of life and place of origin, according to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. And the DNA could provide a link to living descendants.
Archaeological dig at site of vanished church in Williamsburg finds 200-year-old artifacts
“We started the excavation of the … soil that’s filling the grave shaft,” Gary said Monday of the work at the site. “That’s the first step in the process of getting down to the remains.”
One of the graves has an inverted wine bottle at one end of the shaft and is believed to be the oldest in the cemetery. It probably dates to the 1850s or before, he said.
The inverted bottle was an African burial custom and could indicate a person of high statues, said Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the church’s Let Freedom Ring Foundation. Other kinds of “grave goods” might also be found, she said.
“It is customary for the African American culture [to] also bury things with our dead,” she said.
Members of the church community, some of whom are elderly, have been eager for the project, to learn about possible predecessors in faith and, perhaps, their ancestry. “These people are very old, and they’re waiting,” she said.
Colonial Williamsburg digs for historic Black church
“We are praying that the ancestors are smiling on us,” Matthews Harshaw said. A modern First Baptist Church, built in 1956, stands about eight blocks from the old location.
The grave with the inverted bottle — burial 26 — will be examined last because it is partially underneath the brick foundation of a church that was built on the spot in 1856, Gary said.
The first grave to be studied was selected because it is well defined, he said.
“You can see it easily,” he said. It’s not mingled with other graves. In other parts of the site, the dead have been buried on top of or right beside one another, he said.
“We didn’t want to get into a situation where we’ve got more than one person in the burial,” he said.
If archaeologists find any bones, they will have to wear special body suits to prevent their DNA from contaminating the remains.
Those bone samples would be taken for possible DNA extraction, and any other skeletal elements will be taken to the Institute for Historical Biology at nearby William & Mary for cleaning and analysis.
The remains will eventually be returned to their graves. The dig site is not open to the public.
The congregation is believed to have started in the 1700s when worshipers began meeting in the forest.
By 1818 a “Baptist meeting house” of unknown design was on the Nassau Street site. In 1856, a new brick church was built with a steeple and Palladian windows, and stood for a century.
But in the mid-1900s, as Colonial Williamsburg was being made into an 18th-century historic site, a 19th-century Black church didn’t fit that narrative, even though more than half the town’s residents in 1775 were Black, most of them enslaved.
Colonial Williamsburg bought the old church and tore it down in 1955. The site was paved over in 1965. The current church was funded by the sale.
The project began in September of 2020 after Matthews Harshaw and Cliff Fleet, president of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, agreed that Williamsburg had little or no information on the historic church.
Preliminary archaeology has already discovered, among other things, human teeth, a 200-year-old coin, the tiny porcelain foot of a doll and a piece of an ink bottle.
Matthews Harshaw said the church community hopes to have a detailed report on the project’s findings by November. | 2022-07-21T17:54:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Excavation of graves begins at historic Black church in Williamsburg. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/21/graves-black-church-williamsburg-archaeology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/21/graves-black-church-williamsburg-archaeology/ |
The world’s oldest male panda, beloved in Hong Kong, dies at 35
An An, the world’s longest-living male giant panda in captivity, died on July 21 in Hong Kong after health complications. He was 35. (Video: Alexa Juliana Ard/TWP)
An An, the oldest known male giant panda, who brought “fond memories and heartwarming moments” to the people of Hong Kong, passed away Thursday following health complications. He was 35 — or 105 in panda years.
According to a statement released by Ocean Park, the theme park where An An lived for 23 years, the giant panda showed clear signs of deterioration over the past few weeks — barely touching his food and drinking only small amounts of fluid toward the end of his life. The park provided medical care to alleviate the panda’s discomfort, but his condition reached a dire state. He was euthanized Thursday morning.
“An An is an indispensable member of our family and has grown together with the Park. He has also built a strong bond of friendship with locals and tourists alike,” said Paulo Pong, the chairman of Ocean Park. “His cleverness and playfulness will be dearly missed.”
Ocean Park set up a condolence booth at the panda enclosure, where staff placed white flowers to bid farewell to their fuzzy friend. Guest books were also laid out in the conservatory for visitors to write tributes to An An.
“An An, you have brought so many good memories to everyone,” Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee wrote in a statement shared on social media. “You are still with us in our hearts, rest in peace.”
China, Malaysia and the weird world of panda diplomacy
An An, who was born in China’s Sichuan province, was a gift to Hong Kong from the Chinese central government in 1999 — a soft-power symbol of the city’s deepening ties with Beijing, two years after Hong Kong’s return to China following 156 years of colonial rule. China, where the giant panda originates and where it has become a national symbol, practices panda diplomacy, giving the beloved creatures as gifts throughout the world.
An An arrived in the city with Jia Jia, his female companion, who died in 2016 at age 38. One Washington Post editor recalls singing with a group of children at a welcome ceremony for the two. They would go on to become somewhat of an obsession in Hong Kong, their every act live-streamed.
Since the turn of the century, thousands of locals and tourists would visit the theme park’s panda conservatory to get a glimpse of An An and Jia Jia bathing in rock pools or chewing on loose shoots of bamboo. When temperatures rose, the two would bask in private air-conditioned enclosures.
The average life span of a wild panda is 14 to 20 years, but they can live much longer in captivity, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
In 2007, Beijing gave Hong Kong two more pandas, Ying Ying and Le Le, with the hope that they would produce offspring, as pandas grow increasingly vulnerable to extinction. There are about 1,800 pandas living in the wild.
For 13 years, Ying Ying and Le Le did not mate (pandas in captivity are notoriously disinterested in procreation unless conditions are right), until the coronavirus pandemic struck and the park temporarily shut to the public in spring 2020. Images of the two copulating made front-page news around the world. In September 2020, Ocean Park announced that although Ying Ying displayed signs of pregnancy, she was not pregnant.
“We hope Ying Ying and Le Le will mate naturally again in the next breeding season,” Michael Boos, executive director of zoological operations and conservation at Ocean Park said at the time. | 2022-07-21T17:56:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An An, the world’s oldest male panda, beloved in Hong Kong, dies at 35 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/hong-kong-oldest-panda-dies-an-an/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/21/hong-kong-oldest-panda-dies-an-an/ |
Electoral Count Act reform won’t save our republic. But it could help preserve it.
Staff members hold the certification of electoral college votes from Tennessee during a joint session of Congress to confirm the votes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
The Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot must never happen again. The recently released bipartisan proposal to reform the Electoral Count Act is a good step to make sure that’s the case.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 was the trigger for the tragic event that shocked the world. Jan. 6 was the day that Congress met to carry out its constitutional mandate to count electoral college votes. But the ECA allows members of Congress to challenge the legitimacy of a state’s votes and thereby delay or overturn the election result. Without the ECA, there would have been no Jan. 6 riot.
The ECA serves a real function. The Constitution’s failure to provide a mechanism to resolve disputes over a state’s electoral college votes resulted in Congress appointing an ad hoc commission to determine who won the contested 1876 election, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes or Democrat Samuel Tilden. Shortly after, Congress passed the ECA to provide a method to resolve any future election disputes.
But as President Donald Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election festered, the law also provided the basis for the specious claim that Vice President Mike Pence had the constitutional authority to set aside a state’s votes altogether on Jan. 6. Clearly, it needs to be updated.
The proposed reform would eliminate many of the loopholes and inconsistencies in the law that led to the violence that day. First, it would change the current law’s absurdly low threshold to file a challenge to a state’s electoral votes from one member in each chamber to 20 percent of both the House and Senate. Second, it would clearly state that the vice president’s role in opening the ballots and presiding over the process is purely ceremonial. No more calling for a vice president to go rogue and try to undo their own election defeat.
Perhaps the most important reform has nothing to do with what happened on Jan. 6. While all states allocate their state’s votes according to a popular vote on Election Day, the Constitution does not require that. The document vests the power to allocate electoral votes in each state’s legislature. Theoretically, then, a legislature could choose to appoint its own slate of electors even after Election Day. Indeed, some Trump partisans urged GOP-controlled legislatures to do precisely that.
The proposed reform would do away with that possibility. It prevents a state from changing the rules regarding the allocation of its electoral college votes after Election Day. A state may choose to appoint its electors, but only if its legislature does so by law before the people vote.
Together, these provisions would help prevent a sore loser from using temporary control over the political process to overturn an election. It would ensure that the people’s choice, as mediated by the electoral college, would prevail, and it would push any challenges to a state’s result into courts rather than political bodies.
That’s the right approach in both cases. One need only think about our national principles a little to see why. The Founders made clear that one of the biggest threats to republican government was the ability of a politically interested actor to seize power without popular consent. Their concern was an overly powerful executive, which they feared could turn into a monarch. But any entity with the motive and power to entrench an individual in office is a threat to our system of government.
Trump’s attempt to use the ECA for precisely that end shows that Congress had inadvertently given itself that power. The proposed reforms substantially remove that threat.
Our democracy is suffering from many problems, the greatest of which is our increasing tendency to view one another as enemies rather than adversaries. The longer such divisions fester, the more we will see election outcomes as an existential threat. Against that backdrop, anything that reduces the temptation to break our democracy under the pretext of saving it is a good thing.
Electoral Count Act reform won’t save our republic, but it will help to preserve it. Congress should pass the proposal rapidly and with a large, bipartisan majority. | 2022-07-21T18:02:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Electoral Count Act reform won’t save our republic. But it could help preserve it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/electoral-count-act-eca-reform-wont-save-our-republic-but-could-help-preserve-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/electoral-count-act-eca-reform-wont-save-our-republic-but-could-help-preserve-it/ |
Hockey Canada has come under increased scrutiny since its settlement with an alleged sexual assault survivor became public. (Mike Carlson/Getty Images)
As the fallout from Hockey Canada’s handling of an alleged sexual assault continues, the organization on Wednesday said it would stop using a fund built through youth registration fees to pay out settlements in cases involving allegations of sexual assault.
“Hockey Canada recognizes we have significant work to do to rebuild trust with Canadians,” it said in a statement. “We know we need to hold ourselves accountable. That is why we are beginning a full governance review of our organization that will be overseen by an independent third party. This will include the National Equity Fund.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday condemned Hockey Canada’s use of the multimillion- dollar fund to pay out such settlements. The existence of the fund was first reported by the Globe and Mail, which said it “raises new questions about how Hockey Canada handles allegations of sexual assault” at a moment when the organization is under a great deal of scrutiny for its handling of the alleged incident involving members of the country’s 2018 world junior team.
“I think right now it’s hard for anyone in Canada to have faith or trust in anyone at Hockey Canada,” Trudeau told reporters. “What we’re learning is absolutely unacceptable.”
Per the Globe and Mail report, the National Equity fund, which exceeded $15 million as recently as 2016, draws from registration fees paid by players across the country. The organization “regularly used these funds to settle sexual abuse claims made against Hockey Canada, its officers and directors, former coaches or volunteers,” and it did so “without its insurance company, and with minimal outside scrutiny.”
In comments to The Athletic, Canadian parliament member Chris Bittle called the fund “absolutely shocking, in terms of what most Canadians would consider the preeminent sports organization in the country to just have a slush fund built on kids’ registration fees to pay out sexual assault cases.”
“It’s troubling also that there was a greater concern to set this up than to truly tackle a culture that would lead to an organization throwing up their hands and saying this fund is needed,” Bittle added.
This latest revelation comes as Hockey Canada, the sport’s national governing body, grapples with the aftereffects of its handling of an incident in which a woman alleged she was sexually assaulted by eight members of the nation’s 2018 world junior team after a Hockey Canada Foundation golf event held in June of that year. That led to a criminal investigation by police that was closed in 2019. A separate investigation, conducted by a law firm hired by Hockey Canada, ended in 2020.
In April, the woman filed a lawsuit alleging the assault in a London, Ont. hotel room by the eight players . She sought $3.55 million in damages but settled with Hockey Canada for an undisclosed amount in May.
In recent days, some players from the 2018 world junior team have distanced themselves, releasing statements denying involvement in the incident. London, Ont. Police on Wednesday ordered an internal review of their initial investigation, leading later that day to Hockey Canada’s announcement that the fund will no longer be used to settle sexual assault claims.
Hockey Canada officials last month faced questions from lawmakers in Canadian Parliament about the organizations practices and procedures, including whether it had used taxpayer money in its out-of-court settlement, to which former CEO Tom Renney said no government funds were used. Canadian Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge said the government would freeze Hockey Canada’s federal funding, and several corporations with ties to Hockey Canada have paused their sponsorships of the organization, including Tim Hortons and Scotiabank.
In an open letter last Thursday, Hockey Canada outlined several planned organizational changes, including the reopening of its probe of the alleged assault.
“We know we have not done enough to address the actions of some members of the 2018 National Junior Team, or to end the culture of toxic behaviour within our game,” Hockey Canada said in a statement at the time. “For that we unreservedly apologize. We know we need to do more to address the behaviours, on and off the ice, that conflict with what Canadians want hockey to be, and which undermine the many good things that the game brings to our country.” | 2022-07-21T18:37:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hockey Canada to drop sexual assault reserve fund - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/hockey-canada-scandal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/hockey-canada-scandal/ |
Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico could affect the fate of a drug lord
By León Krauze
This image released by the FBI shows the wanted poster for Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985. (FBI/AP)
On July 15, Mexican forces finally captured Rafael Caro Quintero. As he was brought out from the bush in the northern state of Sinaloa, held by authorities after being spotted by a diligent dog from Mexico’s navy, the man known as the “narco of narcos” seemed resigned.
He must have seen it coming. For more than 40 years, Caro Quintero played a pivotal role in some of Mexico’s most notorious criminal organizations. In the late 1970s, he was key in establishing the hegemony of the Guadalajara cartel, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo’s infamous outfit, which ramped up drug production and opened illicit trafficking routes along Mexico.
Then, in 1985, he carried out the brutal torture and murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar, a DEA agent working in Mexico. That atrocity placed Caro Quintero in the crosshairs of the authorities on both sides of the border. Arrested in Costa Rica a few months after the killing, he began serving a 40-year sentence for the murder. But his story wouldn’t end there.
After being freed in 2013 on a legal technicality, Caro Quintero fled. In hiding, he proclaimed his innocence and insisted he had nothing to do with drug trafficking. Evidence suggested otherwise, and U.S. authorities renewed their quest to bring him to justice, offering a sizable reward.
Now, they may finally get a chance to put Caro Quintero in front of a jury and, perhaps, have him join his old colleague, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, in jail. On Friday, the Justice Department announced it would seek his “immediate extradition” to the United States to be tried for Camarena’s “torture and execution.”
The arrest comes at a rocky moment in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Mexico. Reports suggest that the Caro Quintero operation was a result of direct pressure from the Biden administration, which came during Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s recent visit to the White House. Soon after the capture, the U.S. government wasted no time in highlighting its role in the operation. “Today’s arrest is the culmination of tireless work by DEA and their Mexican partners to bring Caro-Quintero to justice for his alleged crimes,” wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland. DEA administrator Anne Milgram sent out a similar message.
But López Obrador quickly contradicted their version of events. “The DEA had no direct involvement. Information was requested so that they could collaborate, but it didn’t happen,” he said. Even U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar, who has has become close with López Obrador, stepped in. “For clarification, no United States personnel participated in the tactical operation that resulted in Caro Quintero’s arrest,” Salazar said in a statement. “The apprehension of Caro Quintero was exclusively conducted by the Mexican government.”
The friction has been building for quite some time. López Obrador boycotted the Summit of the Americas, hosted in Los Angeles, over the Biden administration’s decision to shun Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. This week, perhaps not coincidentally, the White House announced it would launch formal trade settlement consultations with Mexico and Canada over López Obrador’s energy policies. “We have serious concerns about changes in Mexico’s energy policies and their consistency with commitments under the USMCA,” tweeted U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai. López Obrador responded by dismissing the concerns. “There’s no problem at all,” he said during his daily news conference. He then proceeded to play a cumbia song. “Oh, I’m so afraid,” the song says.
In this troubled environment, will Mexico acquiesce to the drug lord’s extradition? In full knowledge of the fate that awaits him in the United States, Caro Quintero will probably fight it tooth-and-nail. The process could be long. A few hours after the arrest, a Mexican court granted him legal protection from immediate extradition. “In the end, once all the legal proceedings conclude, the decision will come down to the Mexican government,” security expert Alejandro Hope told me.
What would happen if the López Obrador administration once again chooses confrontation and drags its feet? “The pressure from Washington would really increase,” Hope told me. “Immensely.” | 2022-07-21T19:12:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | U.S.-Mexico tension could affect the fate of Rafael Caro Quintero - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/us-mexico-tensions-affect-fate-of-drug-lord-rafael-caro-quintero-dea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/us-mexico-tensions-affect-fate-of-drug-lord-rafael-caro-quintero-dea/ |
The District is in the midst of one of its longest 100-degree droughts.
Forecast highs Sunday from the National Weather Service. (PivotalWeather.com)
For the first time this summer, the Washington region is in the grips of a heat wave, one that probably won’t break until late Monday. And for the first time since 2016, the District could hit 100 degrees.
A heat advisory went into effect late Thursday morning as the combination of temperatures near 95 degrees and high humidity threatened to push the heat index — or how hot it feels — to at least 105.
The heat and humidity may modestly ease Friday before surging back over the weekend to the most extreme levels of the summer.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has declared a heat emergency until Monday, opening shelters and cooling centers.
Under such oppressively hot and humid conditions, people spending time outdoors are advised to hydrate and take frequent breaks. It’s also an important time to check on vulnerable groups.
People most prone to heat-related illness include older adults — especially those socially isolated or sick — outdoor workers, the very young and anyone without access to air-conditioning. Heat is the top weather-related killer in the United States.
Thursday marked Washington’s fourth consecutive day with highs of at least 90 degrees. Before then, the District had only strung together streaks of two consecutive 90-degree days this summer. Highs are predicted to reach at least the mid-90s through Sunday before edging downward.
Friday probably won’t be quite as steamy as Thursday. Still, high temperatures should near 95 with heat indexes close to 100.
The sweltering conditions peak over the weekend, with highs in the upper 90s to possibly 100 degrees. Computer models generally simulate the highest temperatures and the highest chance to hit 100 on Sunday.
The National Weather Service is likely to reissue heat advisories over the weekend. There’s an outside chance it posts an excessive heat warning Sunday, reserved for instances when the heat index is predicted to reach at least 110 degrees.
Low temperatures will also be abnormally warm — only dipping to near 80 in the city Saturday and Sunday nights, with 70s elsewhere.
Here are the predicted high temperatures and maximum heat index values Friday through Monday:
Friday: 95, max heat index 98
Saturday: 98, max heat index 105
Sunday: 99, max heat index 107
Monday: 93, max heat index 102
These temperatures — coinciding with some of historically hottest days of the summer — probably fall short of most records, but are still up to 10 degrees above normal.
Dulles Airport’s record high of 99 on Sunday has a chance to fall, but Reagan National’s and BWI Marshall’s records of 102 are probably safe.
The excessive heat is linked to a sprawling zone of high pressure, or heat dome, over the Southwestern U.S. which is flexing eastward. On Thursday, this heat dome prompted heat alerts for 100 million people from Phoenix to Boston.
A history of 100-degree heat in Washington
Washington hasn’t reached 100 degrees since Aug. 15, 2016. That year there were four days at or above 100, including three in a row in August.
The District did hit 99 once this year — which is right around the city’s average yearly maximum temperature in the historical record.
Since 1872, Washington has posted 121 days at or above 100 — hitting the mark a little less than once per year on average. The hottest of those days reached 106 in July 1930 and August 1918.
Of these 121 recorded 100-degree days, 66 have occurred in July, 33 in August, 18 in June and four in September.
These 100-degree days tend to come in bunches. 2016 had four, 2012 eight, 2011 five and 2010 four. 1930 produced 11, the most in a single year.
Interestingly, the nearly six years (or 2,165 days) which have elapsed since the last 100-degree day in Washington ranks among the longest streaks on record:
While National has seen this prolonged 100-degree day drought, other locations in the area have not. Dulles last reached 100 on July 21, 2019. BWI Marshall’s last 100-degree day came on July 20, 2020. It’s likely that National’s proximity to the relatively cooler water of the Potomac River have held temperatures back during recent heat waves.
The days when Washington hits 100 degrees share certain temperature markers over the course of the day. Typically, it reaches 95 degrees by noon and remains at least that hot until 6 p.m. — a dangerous interval of extreme temperatures. | 2022-07-21T19:12:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. heat wave: It could hit 100 for first time in six years Sunday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/dc-heat-wave-100-degrees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/21/dc-heat-wave-100-degrees/ |
Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Mario Draghi in Rome on July 21. (Paolo Giandotti/Italian Presidential Palace/Reuters)
Cue the laugh track: The government of Italy, the 69th in 77 years since World War II, has fallen. To outside observers, it’s tempting to chortle at the southern European country’s stereotypical instability. Yet the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Thursday, after 18 months in office, is no laughing matter. Mr. Draghi’s government was Italy’s most competent and promising one in many years. His ouster amid petty partisan squabbles — to be followed by a new election in the fall — presents Europe with a new crisis when it already has its hands full with securing energy supplies, stabilizing its currency and, above all, confronting Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin could exploit the situation.
A political independent whose previous performance as president of the European Central Bank many credited with saving the European single currency — the euro — the 74-year-old Mr. Draghi possesses unusual technical knowledge and personal credibility. This is why a critical mass of Italy’s fractious political parties united behind him in a national unity government in the first place. It is why the European Union trusted him to push through overdue economic reforms in return for 200 billion euros of pandemic recovery funding. And it is why Mr. Draghi had helped Italy regain influence in E.U. diplomacy — influence he used to help forge Europe’s united front of support for Ukraine, despite Italy’s dependence on Russian gas.
The proximate cause for Mr. Draghi’s downfall is the swift rise of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right opposition party. Hemorrhaging support to the Brothers, both in opinion polls and in the results of recent local elections, right-wing and left-wing populist parties that had supported Mr. Draghi’s national unity government defected, thinking they stood a better chance of clinging to power if national elections were moved up from their previously scheduled June 2023 date. The Brothers’ rise is troubling in itself. Party leader Giorgia Meloni spouts anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Even more troubling, though, is that her party could get the most votes in the fall and form a populist right-wing government in coalition with Mr. Draghi’s former conservative backers.
Despite some pro-Putin statements in the recent past, Ms. Meloni has more recently condemned his war and supported arming Ukraine — Mr. Draghi’s policy. Indeed, she has supported that policy more than some of the politicians who brought down Mr. Draghi’s government and might go into coalition with her after new elections.
The ultimate posture of the next Italian government — on Ukraine and other issues — is therefore not easy to predict. Even if the Italian right’s propensity for overt pro-Putin sentiment does not ultimately carry the day, uncertainty in the coming weeks — with crucial battles looming in Ukraine — still presents a problem. Mr. Putin prefers to confront a Europe that struggles to act collectively. With at least temporary leadership vacuums at hand in both Britain and Italy, and the parliamentary majority of French President Emmanuel Macron freshly diminished, the Russian leader surely senses opportunity. Through their votes this fall, Italians can and must deny it to him. | 2022-07-21T19:21:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s resignation is no laughing matter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/italian-prime-minister-mario-draghi-resignation-concerning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/italian-prime-minister-mario-draghi-resignation-concerning/ |
AT&T executives are no longer plagued by questions about the long-term prospects for the company’s entertainment business, thanks to their decision to sell Warner Media. Instead, they’re faced with the question that used to confront AT&T before it decided to jump into entertainment: the sustainability of the dividend, which is arguably the most important question for shareholders.
That was top of mind for investors coming out of second-quarter earnings on Thursday, when the telecom giant cut its outlook for free cash flow for 2022 — cash from operations less capital expenditures, plus money AT&T still gets from its stake in DirecTV — to $14 billion from the $16 billion estimated in March. It was little wonder that AT&T shares were down as much as 9.3% in mid-morning trading.
What makes this guidance cut worrisome is that the previous figure was lower than the $19 billion that AT&T produced in 2021 (that number is apples to apples with AT&T’s business portfolio, excluding Warner). And it contrasts with AT&T’s statement when it announced the Warner sale in May 2021 that it expected a payout ratio of 40% to 43% on “anticipated free cash flow of $20 billion plus.” That implies dividends of $8 billion to $8.6 billion, at least.
Remember, this number represents a dividend that had already been “right sized,” as AT&T likes to say, or in plain English, reduced from the $15 billion that the company had been paying before it divested Warner. What’s past is past. But in March, Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches slightly modified the previous projection to a payout ratio of about $8 billion, or 40% on next year’s expected free cash flow “in the $20 billion range.”
AT&T hasn’t cut that guidance for next year. But on Thursday’s investor call, CEO John Stankey didn’t sound too certain. Asked about 2023 free cash flow, he talked a lot about rising inflation, which is squeezing some of AT&T’s customers and causing them to pay their bills a little later than they had been. That’s one reason AT&T cut this year’s free cash flow guidance. Stankey said AT&T had a “little bit of a visibility issue” in assessing the situation for the next few quarters.
And its not just about tardy customers. AT&T’s projections had assumed a decline in its steadily shrinking “business wireline” operations — traditional business phone services — in the “low single digits” based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. On Thursday, Stankey revised that guidance to a decline in the “low double digits” this year and also pushed back the timing on when that business would stabilize to the second half of 2024 from late next year. That doesn’t augur well for business wireline’s contribution in 2023.
The good news is that AT&T’s wireless business, by far the biggest source of revenue, is doing fine — at least judging by the standards of the industry, where growth is a relative concept. Mobility revenue rose 5.2% to $19.9 billion in the quarter. There is a cost to that growth, however, including subsidies for new smartphones. That’s another factor that contributed to the 2022 free cash flow guidance cut. Then there’s the heavy capital expenditures that AT&T, like its rivals, has to routinely pour into its network, along with the need to buy new wireless spectrum. That all reduces cash available for shareholders.
Stankey correctly pointed out that “the importance of connectivity in everyone’s lives” makes AT&T’s wireless business highly resilient regardless of economic circumstances. If only investors felt the same way.
• AT&T Investors Need More Reassurance: David Wainer
• AT&T Looks Better, Except for Its Stock Price: Tara Lachapelle
• AT&T’s HBO Divorce Isn’t Its Last Hurdle: Tara Lachapelle | 2022-07-21T19:25:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | AT&T Jumps Out of the Media Pan and Into the Dividend Fire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/atandt-jumps-out-of-the-media-pan-and-into-the-dividend-fire/2022/07/21/23f800ca-0921-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/atandt-jumps-out-of-the-media-pan-and-into-the-dividend-fire/2022/07/21/23f800ca-0921-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Perhaps it’s human nature to put bad news out of mind. Still, one reason so many people have chosen to ignore Covid-19 may be that they are wary, and weary, of public health authorities. If people admit Covid is still a big problem, they are implicitly giving regulators permission to control their lives once again. But people are tired of lockdowns, mandatory testing, canceled school sessions and travel restrictions. And so they are fighting back with the ultimate form of non-violent resistance — forgetting about the issue altogether.
The lack of interest is not confined to the US. So far this year, I have traveled to England, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy and Colombia. With the possible exception of Italy, where I observed a fair amount of mask-wearing, most people in those countries seemed to be ignoring Covid-19. | 2022-07-21T19:25:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Covid Diagnosis Is a Wake-Up Call for America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-covid-diagnosis-is-a-wake-up-call-for-america/2022/07/21/a8c3bb4a-091d-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-covid-diagnosis-is-a-wake-up-call-for-america/2022/07/21/a8c3bb4a-091d-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
President Biden arrives July 20 at the White House, the day before he tested positive for the coronavirus. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The second U.S. president infected by the coronavirus is in a much more favorable position to fight covid-19 than the first.
When President Donald Trump was sickened in October 2020 — before the rollout of vaccines — he experienced covid symptoms severe enough to send him to the hospital as doctors scrambled to administer an array of medicines for a patient whose oxygen level had dropped to dangerous levels.
But President Biden, who tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday, has been fully vaccinated and twice-boosted, as recommended for people his age, and has an excellent chance of avoiding the most severe outcomes from covid, according to doctors interviewed Thursday.
The president’s physician, Kevin C. O’Connor, said in a statement released by the White House that Biden has fatigue, a runny nose and an “occasional dry cough,” which the doctor framed as “mild” symptoms.
O’Connor has recommended that Biden take the anti-viral drug Paxlovid — a powerful therapeutic that was not available when Trump became ill.
“The president is fully vaccinated and twice-boosted, so I anticipate that he will respond favorably, as most maximally protected patients do,” O’Connor said.
“Odds are very good that he’s going to do okay,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, director of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. “He’s a healthy elderly man. He’s fully boosted, he’s fully vaccinated and he got prompt treatment. I think all indications are positive.”
“Symptoms are mild,” Biden said. “I’m doing well, getting a lot of work done. Going to continue to get it done. And in the meantime, thanks for your concern. And keep the faith. It’s going to be okay.”
When Trump became sick nearly two years ago, it was the dominant news story for days, with the presidential election just a month away. Biden’s illness, though a thunderclap of news amid the swelter of summertime Washington, seems less likely to rattle the political world for the simple reason that the virus has become less deadly.
“We’re in a very different place in the pandemic right now, because we have the tools like the rapid tests, the vaccines, the antivirals,” Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said. But we have to stick with what works, he said: “We have to continue to use [the tools] effectively to minimize the severe impacts of covid-19.”
But he also has three things in his favor, said Albert Ko, an infectious-disease physician and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. He has had all his shots, he’s getting help from Paxlovid, and the omicron strain of the coronavirus now dominant in the United States is generally less virulent, meaning less likely to cause severe disease, compared with the strains that spread in 2020 and most of 2021, Ko said.
“The strain that we experienced back then had a higher infection-fatality rate,” Ko said. “Hopefully, the prognosis is good. No one can give 100 percent certainty, but he has three strong factors that mitigate against a severe outcome.”
Coronavirus vaccines — in Biden’s case, the Pfizer-BioNTech product — have helped drive down the rate of death and severe illness from the virus since they were first rolled out in December 2020, a couple of months after Trump became sick.
But the vaccines, while priming multiple layers of the immune system to recognize and respond to the pathogen, do not form an impermeable barrier to the virus — as countless people who are fully vaccinated and boosted and wind up sick with covid can attest. Virus-neutralizing antibodies produced by vaccines (or prior infection) wane over the course of a few months. Deeper layers of the immune system have to kick into gear and clear the virus once it gains an initial foothold.
Marrazzo said there is no downside to taking Paxlovid if a patient is symptomatic and potentially at increased risk — for example, because of age.
“Most people start to feel really better within 24 to 48 hours,” Marrazzo said.
Pekosz said of the president, “He’s doing everything the way you’re supposed to do it in order to minimize severe disease. He has a very good chance to recover without too many difficulties.”
Research shows Paxlovid reduces hospitalization and death substantially in unvaccinated patients, said Erin K. McCreary, director of infectious-disease improvement and clinical research innovation at UPMC medical center in Pittsburgh. The drug’s impact is less clear among vaccinated patients — Biden has received four shots — but it will have some effect for him, she said.
A common-sense approach to viral illness should also be part of the president’s treatment, said Richard A. Martinello, an infectious-disease specialist at the Yale School of Medicine.
“I think taking it easy, listening to our body, not overdoing it is probably good advice for anybody,” Martinello said. “As part of that, getting plenty of sleep, keeping hydrated, eating well but not too much.” Biden could even get some light exercise if he feels well enough, Martinello said.
He urged unvaccinated people to consider Biden’s illness a reason to get vaccinated — even though he has become infected — because the benefits have proven to be so substantial.
“This is probably the single-most studied vaccine that we have in use” for any disease, Martinello said. It is the “single-best thing” we have for covid, he added.
The most transmissible form of the coronavirus yet, the omicron subvariant BA.5 now accounts for almost 80 percent of new infections in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An almost identical subvariant named BA.4 accounts for 13 percent. Neither subvariant is known to cause more severe illness than previous versions of omicron.
It is fundamentally the same virus that has been rolling across the country in a succession of mutated strains since omicron appeared late last year, according to Anthony S. Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser on the pandemic.
On the family tree of omicron, BA.5 “is just a little bit of a sub-twig,” Fauci said Thursday just before the announcement of the president’s infection.
“What we’ve been experiencing is a progressive evolution of viruses that have a transmission advantage over the prior variant which they bumped off the table,” he said. | 2022-07-21T19:26:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | President Biden, double-boosted, is in a good position to fight covid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/21/biden-coronavirus-positive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/21/biden-coronavirus-positive/ |
Two men indicted in Texas tractor-trailer tragedy that left 53 dead
Photos of Jair Valencia, left, Misael Olivares and Yovani Valencia are displayed on an altar at their home in San Marcos Atexquilapan, Veracruz state, Mexico, on July 13. The three were among a group of migrants who died of heat and dehydration in a locked tractor-trailer abandoned by smugglers on the outskirts of San Antonio on June 27. (Felix Marquez/AP)
Two men were indicted Wednesday for their roles in the deaths of 53 migrants, including three children, found in the back of a sweltering, airless tractor-trailer in San Antonio last month in what was the deadliest smuggling incident of its kind in U.S. history.
A federal grand jury in San Antonio indicted Homero Zamorano Jr., 46, of Pasadena, Tex., and Christian Martinez, 28, of Palestine, Tex., on counts of transporting and conspiring to transport immigrants illegally resulting in death; and conspiring to transport immigrants resulting in serious injury, according to the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas.
If convicted, the two could face up to life in prison or the death penalty. The U.S. attorney general’s office will decide whether to seek the death penalty for Zamorano and Martinez, according to a statement.
Authorities in San Antonio previously said they were alerted to the scene June 27 after a worker in a nearby building heard a cry for help and went to investigate. When emergency personnel arrived, they found 64 migrants from Mexico and Central America in a tractor-trailer — many of them dead, some of them moaning and too weak to move. Those alive were suffering from heat exhaustion and were transferred to local hospitals on a day on which temperatures soared to 100 degrees.
Deaths of 53 migrants in Texas stoke grief, fears of a deadly summer
Federal officials said that Zamorano was found hiding in the brush trying to flee as authorities pulled the bodies of dozens of lifeless migrants from the trailer. Authorities later identified Zamorano as the driver of the vehicle, which had been on Interstate 35.
“A search warrant was executed on a cellphone belonging to Zamorano,” the U.S. attorney’s office said. “Through investigation, it was discovered that communications occurred between Zamorano and Martinez concerning the smuggling event.”
Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that specializes in human trafficking cases and led the investigation, reviewed surveillance footage of the tractor-trailer crossing through an immigration checkpoint, where the driver was seen wearing a black shirt with stripes and a hat.
HSI agents confirmed that Zamorano matched the person in the footage, officials said.
Attorneys for both men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The gruesome scene of the migrants cramped together in the trailer with no air conditioning, in sweltering heat, shocked not just veteran immigration officials and first responders in San Antonio but also the entire nation.
The discovery of at least 53 dead inside a sweltering tractor trailer in Texas is putting a new light on an old problem: human smuggling across borders. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post)
In the weeks since the horrific incident, there’s a better understanding of those who were inside the trailer. The migrants — 50 adults and three children — hailed from as far away as a remote Mayan village in the mountains of Guatemala. Some had been in the United States before. Others had plans to reunite with relatives. Most were young and pursuing simple dreams, such as earning enough to build a home. Two of the youngest were 13.
As medical examiners continued the painstaking process of identifying the bodies, families across Central America began receiving news that their loved ones had perished.
In northwestern Honduras, Karen Caballero learned that her two sons’ ID cards had been found in the trailer. The two men, Fernando Jose Redondo Caballero, 20, and Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero, 24, had left home in early June and paid a smuggler to make the journey north. They traveled with Margie Tamara Paz Grajeda, 25, Alejandro Miguel’s girlfriend.
Thirteen-year-old Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac left Sololá, Guatemala, to live with his dad in Houston.
His mother, Maria Sipac Coj, still has his last message: “Mom, today they are taking me in a trailer.”
The tragedy came amid a record influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, where authorities are on pace to record more than 2 million arrests during fiscal 2022, posing a significant challenge for both local authorities and the Biden administration.
In addition to Zamorano and Martinez, Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez, 23, and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, 48, both citizens of Mexico, have been arrested on charges of being undocumented immigrants in possession of several weapons and at least one rifle.
If convicted of the weapons charges, both defendants face up to 10 years in prison.
Authorities said they arrested the Mexican men on the weapons charges after tracing the tractor-trailer’s state registration to their address in San Antonio.
Immigration advocates say that however tragic, the event is not an isolated one, as authorities in Central America grapple with rising numbers of people fleeing poverty, violence and corruption for a life in the United States.
In May, Mexican migration officials found at least 137 migrants cramped together in the back of a trailer — dehydrated and abandoned on the side of a highway in northern Mexico. During that same week in May, authorities found two other overcrowded trucks carrying migrants in two other states.
In December, a cargo truck carrying more than 100 migrants crashed in southern Mexico, killing at least 53 people and injuring several others. | 2022-07-21T19:26:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two men indicted in San Antonio migrant truck tragedy that killed 53 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/texas-migrants-death-smuggling-trailer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/texas-migrants-death-smuggling-trailer/ |
President Biden on the South Lawn of the White House on July 20. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden has tested positive for covid-19. Given that his symptoms are mild, he was vaccinated and boosted, and he will receive the best treatment available, there’s every reason to think he will recover. But this is a reminder that while most of us would like to be done with the coronavirus, the coronavirus is most certainly not done with us.
It’s also a good opportunity to remember the extraordinary toll it has taken on our nation — and reflect on where we could go next.
You might think the pandemic is entirely behind us if you walk into a store or restaurant where no one is wearing a mask. But there are currently more than 125,000 new reported coronavirus infections every day. That number is a drastic understatement, since most people now test at home, and those who test positive tend to hunker down without reporting their status.
And more than 400 Americans a day are dying of covid-19. That’s significantly fewer than during the worst pandemic waves, when some days saw more than 4,000 deaths, but it’s still a very large number.
Most of us no longer keep track of the grim death totals; in case you’re wondering, the number for the United States now stands at more than 1,023,000, a figure impossible to wrap your mind around. We account for almost 1 in 6 coronavirus deaths worldwide, though we are only about 4 percent of the world’s population.
The economic consequences have been so sweeping and complex that they are almost immeasurable; economists will be writing dissertations and books about them for a generation. Millions lost their jobs, then got different jobs, then started working from home and found industries transformed. We suffered a supply chain catastrophe, followed by a global inflation shock. It will be years before we settle back to something like the economy we had before, if we ever do.
Children may have been affected most deeply, their educations and their social development interrupted. They will forever be the covid generation.
In addition to all the immediate suffering the pandemic brought, what has been almost as bad is that covid just made America meaner in ways we may never recover from. The disconnection, the politicization, the despair — all of it has taken a profound toll on our ability to tolerate one another.
You can see it in the jump in violent crime that began in 2020, and even in the increase in things such as pedestrian fatalities. We’re impatient and argumentative and angry, less willing to take a breath or give each other a break.
We all made mistakes — employers, public officials, ordinary people. Sometimes it was because of what we didn’t know at the time (remember when you were wiping down your groceries?), and sometimes it was out of cynicism or malice.
But will we learn from what went wrong and what went right?
Let’s think about that question through one small but meaningful policy change: As part of pandemic relief, Congress made breakfast and lunch free for all public school children. That removed the bureaucracy required to determine who was and wasn’t eligible for free meals, who had money in their account, and so on — all kids just got to eat in school, just as we give them all books and lockers. It was a huge success.
But now it’s slated to expire this summer, and it looks like Republicans are determined to make sure it does. Heaven forbid we should have a simple, effective system that honors what ought to be a basic human value.
But that’s not the end of the story. States and cities are moving to extend universal free lunch or make it permanent even if the federal government won’t, because they saw the good it did. Maybe one day, even the federal government will recognize that good, too. We haven’t achieved a fully humane and reasonable system, but we’re closer than we were. It’s a reminder that everywhere you look at mid-pandemic America, there are lessons to be found, in both our successes and our failures.
When Biden ran in 2020, he tried to embody the promise that we had it in ourselves to move past our acrimony and solve our myriad problems together. It proved harder than he thought, and he was not exactly overwhelmed with volunteers from the opposition looking to transcend our differences and calm the partisan waters.
We can’t bring back the people we lost or wipe away the mistakes we made. But we can commit to making ourselves — our government, our economy, the way we treat one another — better than they all were at their lowest moments. And now that covid-19 has found Biden as it did so many others, he should take this as an occasion to urge us down that path. | 2022-07-21T19:26:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden's positive covid test reminds us we can still make things better - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/biden-covid-positive-pandemic-cost/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/biden-covid-positive-pandemic-cost/ |
If our freedom to travel is impinged, what’s next?
Democratic at a July 19 abortion rights rally near Capitol Hill. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
As to whether there was a need for the Senate to pass the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022, one need look no further than American history and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that empowered enslavers to capture and return formerly enslaved, free people from Northern states to their “claimants” in the South [“House passes legislation to codify access to abortion,” news, July 16].
At the time, anyone aiding, abetting or interfering with the capture of previously enslaved people was subject to a fine or imprisonment. Today, legislators in states where abortions are illegal seek to make it a crime for women to travel outside of their states for the purpose of obtaining an abortion. These legislators also seek to enact laws that subject doctors and health-care practitioners who provide abortions in these other states to criminal charges, up to and including murder. Though it’s been slightly more than 158 years since the Fugitive Slave Act was repealed in June 1864, some state legislators and governors continue to believe that it should be illegal for women to travel to states where they can exercise free will and that anyone who aids and abets them should be charged with a crime.
Will any of us be safe from persecution or prosecution if the rights and freedoms fundamental to our nation’s founding are taken away from some?
Alan Guttman, Baltimore | 2022-07-21T19:26:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | If our freedom to travel is impinged, what’s next? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/if-our-freedom-travel-is-impinged-whats-next/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/if-our-freedom-travel-is-impinged-whats-next/ |
China’s ‘zero covid’ policy has been a nightmare for U.S. diplomats
A coronavirus-testing booth in Shanghai on July 9. (Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)
In its zealous effort to contain the coronavirus, the Chinese government has trampled on the rights of U.S. diplomats to an extent previously unknown, compelling the State Department to take drastic measures to protect them. Beijing’s heavy-handed pandemic practices have forced the United States’ representatives there to live in constant fear.
Plenty has been written about China’s draconian “zero covid” policy, which is marked by harsh, rolling lockdowns in Chinese cities and the forced quarantine of thousands of Chinese citizens in makeshift medical facilities knowns as “fever clinics.” In these facilities, which can resemble prisons, anonymous authorities determine whether and when patients can leave. U.S. diplomats and their family members living in China are supposed to be immune from being arbitrarily detained. But until recently, that was simply not the case.
For the past two years, U.S. diplomatic personnel in China have been forced to confront the risk of being detained or separated from their family members for either testing positive for the coronavirus or being deemed a “close contact” of someone who has. In fact, 16 U.S. diplomatic personnel or their family members have been sent, against their will, to Chinese government medical quarantine centers since the pandemic began, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing confirmed to me.
The State Department concluded this was a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Since he arrived in Beijing in late March, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns has been working nonstop to fix this ongoing problem, making significant progress.
“What has dominated my first few months at post is the essential mission of any American embassy since the 1780s, to take care of American citizens,” Burns told me in an interview. “We have legal rights here, and reclaiming those legal rights under the Vienna Convention was very important to us. And so, we’ve held the line.”
The Chinese government boasts about its handling of the pandemic, claiming suspiciously low numbers of deaths and infections since the virus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019. But whatever success the authorities have achieved in containing the spread has come at a steep cost for Chinese citizens, who have no right to object when the government orders them into quarantine centers.
What’s known about these secretive facilities inside China is troubling. Entire residential communities can be isolated because of one positive case. Once there, people are often packed into dormitories with zero privacy, for weeks, and can be separated from their children. Once inside these facilities, patients have no rights to appeal their detention or resist invasive testing procedures, including anal swabs.
U.S. diplomats in China were so afraid that they petitioned the State Department earlier this year to allow them to leave the country if the U.S. government couldn’t protect Americans from forced covid-related detention. After several meetings with senior Chinese foreign ministry officials, Burns secured a promise that U.S. diplomats and their family members would not be forced into fever clinics, but rather allowed to quarantine in their homes or at the embassy.
Because of the lack of confidence that Beijing could fully implement that promise nationwide, the State Department issued formal letters in Chinese to each U.S. diplomat and family member in China. The documents can be presented to any local official who might try to force them into a medical facility or separate children from their parents. Also, an embassy team was set up to engage the Chinese foreign ministry on this issue.
In another policy change, if any U.S. diplomat in China now tests positive and the Chinese government can’t be persuaded to exempt them from going to a fever clinic, the State Department will immediately evacuate them to another country. These measures seem to be working. Since Burns arrived March 28, no American diplomats have been forcibly quarantined, although several had to be evacuated already this year, he said.
Even while trying to protect their own families from China’s zero-covid measures, U.S. diplomats in China have been working overtime to help Americans cope with the restrictions. The State Department evacuated most of its diplomatic personnel from Shanghai during the city’s two-month lockdown this year but simultaneously stood up an 80-person consular team to help Americans leave or at least to provide them some support.
This was not the mission Burns anticipated when he got the job to represent the United States in Beijing. China’s zero-covid policy has made it excruciatingly difficult for U.S. diplomats to do the core work of diplomacy, Burns told me, which is to travel around the country and engage with regular Chinese citizens.
“It has brought me back to the realization that there are many aspects of diplomacy, from war and peace negotiations to commercial diplomacy, but the most essential is protecting people,” he said.
From Beijing’s perspective, stifling U.S. diplomacy in China might be a welcome if unexpected byproduct of its draconian health measures. But this worrying trend in China — where the government uses health concerns to exert control over everyone, including Americans — will likely outlast the current crisis. | 2022-07-21T19:26:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | China’s ‘zero covid’ policy has been a nightmare for U.S. diplomats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/us-diplomats-china-covid-fever-clinics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/us-diplomats-china-covid-fever-clinics/ |
What being angry with your party means
President Biden walks, outside the White House, to Marine One on July 20. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The July 17 front-page article “Many young Democrats are furious at their party” reported on college Democrats in North Carolina who are frustrated that President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had not anticipated and prevented the removal of abortion rights. I guess some people would rather be mad at their friends than vote for them.
Surely, anyone engaged in party politics, no matter how young, knows that overcoming the inevitable Republican filibuster in the Senate requires 60 Democratic votes. And overcoming the veto of a Republican president requires even more. The last time we had a Democrat in the White House and 60 or more Democrats in the Senate was 1977 to 1979 under Jimmy Carter. There were 61 Democratic senators. Roe v. Wade was only 4 years old, and there were still conservative Southern Democrats in the party, so why would liberal Democrats at that time even consider kicking the hornet’s nest of abortion?
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had 64 to 68 Democratic senators to work with, but the liberal concerns of the 1960s were civil rights and the Vietnam War. Abortion rights were a state issue at that time and not serious at the federal level.
Young Democrats need to focus on what is essential to abortion and other rights — and even the survival of democracy. That is electing Democratic majorities at the state and federal levels.
John Hansman, Bethesda
Frustration and fury are understandable reactions to the current political situation. I, too, delete fundraising texts and emails from streams of Democrats, most of whom probably detest sending them as much as we detest receiving them.
Consider, however, the principle of critical mass. If you assemble 98 percent of what is needed (people, money, tools, whatever) to accomplish a task, you will fail. If the problem is that there are not enough Democrats in Congress, particularly in the Senate, to do what Democrats promise and most Americans want, the solution is not to reject the Democratic Party or politics in general. This would only cede control of Congress to a party that supports none of what you want and would actively make matters worse. The solution is to ensure that there are enough Democrats — in fact, not just in name — to enact desperately needed legislation on a whole range of issues.
I ignore most campaign solicitations, but I make regular, albeit meager, donations to several candidates in races that I believe can be won. If the Democratic Party gains an actual working majority and then fails to deliver, rejection of it would be justified and entirely appropriate.
Mark Thomas, Berlin, Md.
Young people are not the only ones “furious at their party.” I’m a baby boomer, and I have no patience for President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), among others, declaring they’ll run again. They are too old. It’s time to let go. Groom some younger people to take the party leadership. Jeez.
Maida Schifter, Silver Spring | 2022-07-21T19:26:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What being angry with your party means - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/what-being-angry-with-your-party-means/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/what-being-angry-with-your-party-means/ |
From the World Series to AAA
Washington Nationals right fielder Juan Soto singles in the fourth inning against the Atlanta Braves at Nationals Park. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Regarding the July 17 Sports article “Trade of Soto may be on table”:
In recent years, the Washington Nationals have disposed of All Stars Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon. They have gone from a World Series team to a bad team to the worst team in baseball. If they aren’t willing to pay Juan Soto what the market indicates, perhaps they should try for AAA ball.
John Isaacs, Chevy Chase | 2022-07-21T19:26:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | From the World Series to AAA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/world-series-aaa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/world-series-aaa/ |
By John McDonnell | Jul 21, 2022
On July 4, I caught a 6 a.m. flight from D.C. to Omaha, then drove about six hours to Pierre, S.D. Why? Because I’d been to 49 state capitals and was determined to hit the 50th on Independence Day.
Photos by John McDonnell
A tour guide leads a small group through the Great Hall of the Nebraska Capitol on July 6 in Lincoln.
Lots of people have traveled to all 50 states, as I had done after I reached Alaska in 2001. But not many, I found, have been to all the state capitals, many of which are small cities. With a job as a photographer that takes me all over the country — it’s now been more than four decades — it seemed reasonable to make that my next quest. I arrived in Pierre just in time to take a picture of Fourth of July fireworks exploding over the Capitol building.
Fireworks launched from across the Missouri River in Fort Pierre explode several miles behind the South Dakota Capitol on the Fourth of July.
A tugboat chugs along in the Gastineau Channel, with the Alaska capital city of Juneau on the right. The photo was taken on Kodachrome film from a cruise ship in 2001.
A statue of Esther Hobart Morris, the first woman to serve as a justice of the peace, in front of the Wyoming Capitol on Oct. 26, 2013, in Cheyenne.
The Capitol in Santa Fe, N.M., nicknamed the Roundhouse, looks more like an art museum than a legislative building. It’s filled with works by New Mexico artists and artisans. Photo take on Aug. 14, 2014.
The Indiana Statehouse, right, in Indianapolis on March 10, 2021.
The official portrait of former California governor Jerry Brown hangs in a third-floor stairwell of the Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 17, 2016. When it was unveiled in 1984, the unconventional piece by artist Don Bachardy drew criticism and was never hung on the first floor.
The Virginia Capitol in Richmond was designed by Thomas Jefferson and French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who were inspired by an ancient Roman temple, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, France. Photo taken on Jan. 22.
The grave of governor and U.S. senator Huey Long is seen in front of the Louisiana Capitol on Sept. 7, 2007, in Baton Rouge. Long carried out his vision in the 1930s of building the tallest state capitol in the United States. The controversial politician was shot there on Sept. 8, 1935, and died Sept. 10.
Dawn breaks on the Tennessee Capitol on Dec. 21, 2018, in Nashville.
McDonnell is a staff photographer at The Washington Post. | 2022-07-21T19:26:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This photographer's goal was to visit all 50 state capitals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/travel-photo-state-capitals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/travel-photo-state-capitals/ |
FILE - North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein speaks during a news conference outside the Durham County Courthouse in Durham, N.C., June 28, 2021. North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general declined Thursday, July 21, 2022, to meet Republican legislative leaders’ demand that he ask a federal court to lift an injunction on a state law banning nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. (Julia Wall/The News & Observer via AP, File)
Closing arguments set for Friday | 2022-07-21T19:27:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | N. Carolina AG won't seek to renew 20-week abortion ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/n-carolina-ag-wont-seek-to-renew-20-week-abortion-ban/2022/07/21/e6406b20-0928-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/n-carolina-ag-wont-seek-to-renew-20-week-abortion-ban/2022/07/21/e6406b20-0928-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Here’s what to pack before you head to the airport — literally and figuratively
If you’re not prepared to face cancellations or delays on your next trip to the airport, you may not have heard the news: Summer travel is hell. Airlines continue to deal with staffing shortages, downsized routes and summer storms, which has upped the chances you may not get to your final destination on time — or at all.
If nothing else, the trials of this unpredictable travel landscape have taught travelers to expect the unexpected. But if you aren’t prepared to be stuck in limbo, consider this your one-stop shop for everything you need before you head out for your next flight.
Book and fly direct
You should prepare for cancellations and delays before you even arrive at the airport. In fact, do it as soon as you’re booking a flight. Phil Dengler, co-founder of travel blog the Vacationer, says start by booking directly with the airline rather than a third party.
“If your flight gets canceled, you’re going to want to talk to a customer service agent. Book directly with the airline so you have access to them in case something goes wrong,” Dengler says. And, if you can, while you’re booking your flight avoid flights with layovers. More stops only increases the likelihood of travel chaos, he says.
Booking one of the first flights of the day is also key. Cancellations and delays have a domino effect, and flying early will decrease your chances of issues — and give you more flight options later in the day if you do run into problems.
Dengler and Heather Poole, a flight attendant for American Airlines, both gave the same advice: Download the airline’s app, and be ready to get on Twitter if your flight is canceled. The airline apps can alert you to gate changes and cancellations before the information has made it to the gate agent. And once a flight is canceled, direct messaging an airline’s Twitter account can be the quickest way to speak to someone as companies continue to deal with hours-long hold times on the phone.
Airline apps can also help you avoid lines at the check-in counter by allowing you to download your boarding pass to your phone, pick your seat, upload documents and even now check your bag. Alaska Airlines announced this week that it will allow customers to register their checked luggage before they get to the airport and transfer their flight information to electronic bag tags through an app.
Plus, if your flight is canceled, the airline’s app will probably be the fastest way to see what other flights the airline has available.
For a flight arriving or departing from the United States, you are entitled to a refund if your flight is canceled or significantly delayed and you choose not to take another option, under Department of Transportation rules. It also applies if you are involuntarily downgraded to a lower-tier service than what you paid for. There are no laws requiring U.S. airlines to provide hotels, meal vouchers or other services beyond the cost of the flight, but you should always ask your airline what it can do. These services usually need to be requested in person at the airport, not on the phone or online.
You’re also entitled to compensation if you have been denied boarding because your flight was overbooked and you didn’t volunteer to give up your seat. Airlines are allowed to overbook flights, and there is no minimum they must offer when asking travelers if anyone is willing to take a later flight. Recently, passengers have reported that airlines have been offering thousands for people to volunteer to be bumped from flights.
How to get refunds if your flight is canceled
If you are involuntarily bumped, airlines should give you a form detailing your rights for compensation, which is often tied to when you get to your final destination. Keep in mind, most airlines require you to be checked in or at the gate by a certain time to be eligible for compensation beyond the cost of the flight.
Rules for compensation differ around the world. For flights within Europe, regulation E.U. 261 lays out compensation rules and assistance for passengers if their flight is canceled or delayed, or if they’re not able to board.
If your flight is arriving or departing from a European Union airport, you are entitled to up to 600 euros for long delays or cancellations. And if your flight is delayed for more than two hours, you are entitled to meals.
There is a checklist of requirements for the cause of the delay that has to be met to claim compensation — passengers need to be checked in on time, the airline must be responsible for the delay and the flight must have taken off or landed in the E.U., to name a few. Airlines don’t need to provide compensation under “extraordinary circumstances,” which include bad weather and security risks, among other things.
Bring costly essentials
If you are going to be stuck at the airport, you’ll want to be to use all your devices. An external battery might set you back $30 or more, but it will be worth it knowing you won’t have to fight for outlet space or be tethered to a wall if you need to rebook on your phone or use it to entertain yourself.
A special to-go meal can beat the end of vacation blues
Also, airport food is expensive. Even if you’re unphased by the price, there is no guarantee options will be open as airports deal with the staffing shortages. “A peanut butter and jelly is going to taste 1,000 times better than anything you’re going to get on the plane,” Poole said. As a flight attendant, she often carries oatmeal, tuna, crackers and almonds.
Lastly, having a book, magazine or other non-electronic form of entertainment can help occupy the time when you can’t use your phone.
A canceled flight doesn’t make anyone happy. Fellow travelers are frustrated, and airlines have fewer people on staff right now to deal with heightened emotions. Poole, noting her 25 years of experience, said, “Just a smile will go so far. Like a please and a thank you … . Now more than ever, you just want to do anything for the person that is nice.
“It’s just so rare to have somebody who is calm and patient and kind,” she said. “If I could do anything for someone like that, I will go out of my way.” | 2022-07-21T19:28:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A canceled-flight emergency kit: What to pack and know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/canceled-flight-rights-compensation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/canceled-flight-rights-compensation/ |
Officer fatally shot 15-foot snake that was strangling man, police say
Pennsylvania police shot and killed a 15-foot snake Wednesday as it was strangling a man in his home in an Allentown suburb.
Emergency personnel responded to a call Wednesday afternoon about a 28-year-old man who was in cardiac arrest with a snake wrapped tightly around his throat. When police arrived at the home in Fogelsville, they found the man, who was identified by police only as the pet snake’s owner, lying unresponsive on the floor, Lt. Peter Nickischer, with the Upper Macungie Township, told The Washington Post.
The “very large, very thick” snake had wrapped its midsection around his neck — and its eyes were on the officers, he said.
Nickischer said one of the officers fired a single shot, striking the snake in the head. The reptile then released its grip and slithered away, allowing the officers to pull its owner to safety, he said.
The snake died.
Nickischer said paramedics provided “lifesaving measures” on the man before rushing him to a hospital for treatment. He remained hospitalized on Thursday, though his condition was not known, Nickischer added.
Police did not say what type of snake it was, and it is still unclear why it turned on its owner. But it’s not the first time this has happened.
In 2015, a Florida teen was bitten on the lip by a cottonmouth water moccasin he had been keeping as a pet, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Two years later, an Ohio woman called 911, reporting a boa constrictor was wrapped around her waist and was holding onto her nose. As The Post previously reported, the snake was not venomous and was not strangling her, but she told the dispatcher there was “blood everywhere.”
And last year, a Florida woman and her boyfriend were released from prison 12 years after their malnourished pet Burmese python wrapped its 8-foot body around the woman’s 2-year-old daughter, killing her, according to ClickOrlando. Both had been convicted of aggravated manslaughter and child neglect, the outlet reported.
Following the recent snake attack in Pennsylvania, Nickischer commended the officers for saving a man’s life.
He said the officers did not know at the time where the snake was or how many there were in the home, but they acted without hesitation. “They went in, they saw an opportunity to save a man and they showed a lot of bravery as far as I’m concerned,” he said Thursday in a phone interview with The Post. | 2022-07-21T20:00:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pennsylvania officer fatally shot a 15-foot snake that was strangling its owner, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/police-fatally-shoot-snake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/police-fatally-shoot-snake/ |
Hobie Billingsley, celebrated diving coach, dies at 95
He rose from an impoverished upbringing to become 'one of the greatest, most beloved diving coaches in the world’
Hobie Billingsley on the diving board at Indiana University in 1963. (Indiana University Archives)
Hobie Billingsley, a national diving champion in college, built the Indiana University diving team into a powerhouse during his three decades as coach. He molded a legion of Olympic divers, trained a generation of instructors and became, in the description of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, “one of the greatest, most beloved diving coaches in the world.”
Mr. Billingsley, 95, died July 16 at a hospice center in Bloomington, Ind. His story, as he told it, was one of success beyond anything he could have imagined when he was growing up during the Depression in Erie, Pa., the son of a single mother who nearly placed him in an orphanage because she was too poor to provide for him.
“For the sake of my life,” Mr. Billingsley wrote in an autobiography, “Challenge: How to Succeed Beyond Your Dreams,” the downtown Erie Y.M.C.A. gave him a free one-year membership when he was 7 years old. It was a ticket off the streets and into a world of wholesome fun, of ping-pong with other boys, and cartwheels and handsprings on the tumbling team.
It was also his ticket to hours of practice in the pool, where Mr. Billingsley taught himself to swim at age 9 by flapping his arms and thrashing his legs to propel himself across the shallow end of the water. He was essentially an autodidact in diving as well, having used primitive diagrams on a bulletin board at the Y as his only early guides.
As a high school senior in 1943, Mr. Billingsley finished third in a national diving championship. He went on to Ohio State University, where he competed under the celebrated swimming and diving coach Mike Peppe. Only Peppe, according to the swimming hall of fame, would win more individual diving titles as coach than Mr. Billingsley did during his career at Indiana.
He joined IU as diving coach in 1959, working with James “Doc” Counsilman, who led the swimming team. By 1968, Sports Illustrated declared Mr. Billingsley “far and away the best collegiate coach in the country.” His divers claimed six NCAA and more than 20 Big Ten team championships, as well as 115 individual national titles, before his retirement in 1989. He was recognized as U.S. diving coach of the year seven consecutive times between 1964 and 1970.
Mr. Billingsley developed a methodical approach to diving, an athletic form that Sports Illustrated described in 1966 as “an ascetic, artistic pursuit that is ridden with classical precepts and fixed ideas.” Despite a failing grade on his college physics exam, Mr. Billingsley sought to replace those “classical precepts” with Newton’s laws of motion.
“Diving is no longer an art, it is now an art and a science,” he told the magazine. “Newton was the greatest diving coach who ever lived.”
Mr. Billingsley was the U.S. women’s diving coach at the 1968 Olympics and the U.S. men’s coach at the 1972 Games. He coached the Austrian team in 1976 and the Austrian and Danish teams in 1980. Among the Olympians who trained and competed under him were Jim Henry, Rick Gilbert, Cynthia Potter, and Lesley Bush and Ken Sitzberger, both gold medalists at the Tokyo Games in 1964. Mr. Billingsley also coached Mark Lenzi, an IU alumnus who won a gold medal at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.
Such was his enthusiasm for his athletes, Mr. Billingsley recalled, that he once “went to congratulate a diver on winning and ran smack into a wall.”
Hobart Sherwood Billingsley was born in Erie on Dec. 2, 1926. His father was not present in his life, leaving Mr. Billingsley’s mother to bring up their two children.
She placed her older son with grandparents, but the grandparents refused to take Mr. Billingsley, his daughter Elizabeth Bender said, because he was too “rambunctious.” In her desperation, the mother took Mr. Billingsley to a local orphanage, St. Joseph’s Home for Children, and got as far as the steps before deciding that she could not give up her son.
Mr. Billingsley spent part of his childhood living in an apartment behind a barber and adjacent to a bar. Noise from the ruckus next door easily passed through the thin wall, Mr. Billingsley wrote in his memoir, which was published in 2017. He once overheard a fatal shooting. During the frigid winters, when the wind whipped off Lake Erie and icicles extended down from rooftops like Roman columns, he and his brother scavenged for firewood for their wood stove. Mr. Billingsley recalled picking up public food handouts in his wagon or sled.
He was walking home from school one day in a blizzard when a driver, blinded by the snow, struck him. The accident easily could have be fatal but left Mr. Billingsley with only “a few stitches” and a headache, he wrote, as well as the conviction that “God had a purpose for me.”
Mr. Billingsley’s mother could not afford the Y.M.C.A.'s $6 annual dues after his introductory membership expired. For nine years thereafter, he sneaked into the club, where staff either did not know of his status or turned a blind eye to it.
For all the kindness he encountered at the Y, the place did not protect him entirely from the slights that sting long past childhood. Despite his skill on the diving board, the swimming coach declined to take him on a team trip to Buffalo, which was also to include a visit to Niagara Falls. The coach, Mr. Billingsley wrote in his memoir, “didn’t think I was cut out to be a diver.”
“That kind of rejection was very painful for a twelve-year-old boy,” he wrote, “and it really hurt when I went to the 'Y' the next morning and watched all my friends board the bus while carrying their lunches and swim gear and whooping it up. Broken hearted, I stood on the sidewalk crying my eyes out, and waved at them as the bus drove off. That was another painful lesson I would never forget, and I wanted to make sure I’d never do anything like that to anyone.”
He also decided that he would prove the coach wrong and began diving three or four hours a day, he wrote.
After service in the Army Air Forces in the Pacific, Mr. Billingsley received a bachelor’s degree in physical education from Ohio State in 1951. He won both the low and high NCAA springboard titles as a freshman in 1945, according to the hall of fame.
He received a master’s degree, also in physical education, from the University of Washington in 1953. After working as a high school gym teacher and swimming, diving and gymnastics coach, he coached briefly at Ohio University in Athens before being hired at IU in 1959.
In addition to his coaching, Mr. Billingsley traveled the country performing in comedic water shows with fellow divers Bruce Harlan, a gold medalist in diving at the 1948 London Olympics, and Dick Kimball.
Mr. Billingsley’s marriage to Mary Drake ended in divorce. They had three children. Besides Bender, of Bloomington, survivors include two other children, James Billingsley, also of Bloomington, and Nancy Farmer of Clermont, Fla.; nine grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Bender confirmed her father’s death and said the cause was complications from myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease.
Among his other contributions to his sport, Mr. Billingsley was the author of a manual, “Diving Illustrated,” that spared future athletes the struggle of learning to dive with nothing more than a few pictures on the wall at their local pool.
He wrote in his autobiography of his abiding gratitude to two men at the Y.M.C.A., the director of the boys’ department and his assistant, who he said were “largely responsible for the person I turned out to be.”
“I was thankful to the 'Y' and those men,” Mr. Billingsley continued, “for taking a kid like me in who was caught up in the grips of the Depression, or I probably would have ended up in prison.” | 2022-07-21T20:04:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hobie Billingsley, diving coach at Indiana University, dies at 95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/21/hobie-billingsley-diving-coach-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/21/hobie-billingsley-diving-coach-dead/ |
Kyler Murray becomes the NFL's second-highest-paid quarterback with his new deal with the Cardinals. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
The offseason unrest between Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals dissipated Thursday, as the quarterback agreed to a lucrative contract extension that places him among the NFL’s highest-paid players at his position.
The five-year extension is worth $230.5 million, including $160 million in guaranteed money, according to a person familiar with the deal.
The $46.1 million per-season average of Murray’s extension ranks second in the league to the $50.3 million average annual value of the three-year, $150.815 million extension quarterback Aaron Rodgers signed with the Green Bay Packers in March. Deshaun Watson’s five-year contract with the Cleveland Browns is worth a guaranteed $230 million, an average of $46 million per season.
Murray, 24, now is under contract with the Cardinals through the 2028 season. He had two seasons remaining on his existing contract.
The Cardinals announced the agreement with Murray on the extension but did not release the terms of the deal.
There had been considerable speculation about Murray’s future with the Cardinals during an offseason that included reports of discontent between the two sides. Murray removed references to the team from his social media accounts.
His agent, Erik Burkhardt, released a statement to media outlets proclaiming in all capital letters that “actions speak much louder than words in this volatile business” and adding that it was “simply up to the Cardinals to decide if they prioritize” Murray as their franchise quarterback.
But General Manager Steve Keim vowed to complete a long-term deal to keep Murray in Arizona. He and Burkhardt completed their negotiations Thursday, ahead of the team’s training camp that begins next week for veteran players.
Murray is a two-time Pro Bowl selection in three NFL seasons since the Cardinals chose him with the top pick in the 2019 draft. The former Heisman Trophy winner at Oklahoma was the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year in 2019.
He led the Cardinals to the NFC playoffs last season but threw two interceptions in a 34-11 opening-round loss to the Los Angeles Rams. | 2022-07-21T20:04:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyler Murray and Arizona Cardinals agree to contract extension - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/kyler-murray-arizona-cardinals-extension/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/kyler-murray-arizona-cardinals-extension/ |
The Biden administration’s monkeypox response has been a mess
A man waits in line to receive the monkeypox vaccine in New York City on July 17. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)
Gregg Gonsalves is an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and associate professor (adjunct) at Yale Law School. He is a 2018 MacArthur fellow.
Let’s not mince words: The monkeypox outbreak is a crisis. And the Biden administration’s response to that crisis has been a chaotic, anemic and bumbling mess.
At the start of June, there were nearly 800 confirmed cases in countries where the virus is not endemic, with just over a dozen recorded in the United States. There are now more than 15,000 cases globally and more than 2,000 in the United States.
Monkeypox is not a new disease. It was discovered in the early 1970s and for years has been well-described by researchers in West and Central Africa, where the disease has been present for decades. There are tests to diagnosis it, vaccines to prevent it, treatments to ameliorate its symptoms and clinical course.
Yet instead of deploying all these tools with urgency in early June, we succumbed to overconfidence. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said at the end of May that “this is a virus we understand.” He added that “it is spread very differently than SARS-CoV-2. It is not as contagious as covid. So, I am confident we’re going to be able to keep our arms around it.”
Now, many scientists fear we cannot contain monkeypox in the United States or around the world and that we are going to have to live with it for a long time. While this outbreak thus far has mostly affected men who have sex with men, it is possible it could begin spreading in settings where there is close, physical contact, which is how the virus is transmitted. Monkeypox, unlike smallpox, can also infect animals, providing new mammalian reservoirs for the infection, which also becomes a possibility as this current outbreak continues to grow.
How did we get here? First, the rollout of monkeypox testing has been conservative, initially routed through state health departments, even as experts begged for testing to be made more widely available through major commercial diagnostic companies. Next, one of the key vaccines against monkeypox — made by a small company in Europe — has been in short supply, far below the volume needed for a full vaccination campaign — even though the United States has dibs on most of the world’s stockpile.
But this isn’t the whole story. Even in the context of a vaccine shortage, it’s unclear whether the U.S. government is clearing barriers to expedite certification and shipment of existing supplies or has any interest in ramping up production. The public health advocacy groups PrEP4ALL and Partners in Healthat the end of June sent a scathing letter to the White House about its failure to ramp up vaccine production. A month later, there is still little movement forward. Meanwhile, doctors are complaining about the burden of paperwork required to access U.S. stockpiles of key drugs to treat the infections.
This is not the nimble, effective response to a new viral threat that we need. It reeks of a lack of leadership at the highest levels of our government, a bureaucracy that even in an emergency cannot move with requisite speed, and agencies that are unable to coordinate with one other and in some instances do not even know what one other are doing. Someone has to shake some sense into the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. where the buck is supposed to stop on matters of national concern. This crisis requires the engagement of multiple federal agencies and close coordination with state and local officials.
The recent announcement that the White House has created a division within the Department of Health and Human Services that will focus on health disasters such as a pandemic offers no solace. The move makes the administration look like it’s in a bit of a political panic. Instead of fixing problems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration and giving them the resources they need to get the job done, the administration is giving the impression, rightly or wrongly, that it is passing a critical portfolio of responsibility to a new government entity in the midst of two epidemics.
Monkeypox has arrived in the United States at a moment when people are fatigued by covid-19, but that isn’t an excuse for resignation. This epidemic is taking shape in our country right now, and we have a real chance to beat it down and limit the damage it will cause. To borrow from Oscar Wilde, to lose the battle against one pandemic is a misfortune; to lose against two looks like carelessness. | 2022-07-21T20:26:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Biden administration’s monkeypox response has been a mess - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/biden-administration-monkeypox-response-has-been-a-mess/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/biden-administration-monkeypox-response-has-been-a-mess/ |
Alysha Clark, right, and her Mystics teammates avoided a season sweep from the Liberty on Thursday at Capital One Arena. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Myisha Hines-Allen took a beat to consider the question before carefully choosing her words. Then she adjusted them anyway.
Her Washington Mystics have just eight games remaining after their 78-69 win over the New York Liberty on Thursday afternoon at Capital One Arena. After notching six wins in their past eight games, the Mystics are in fifth place at 17-11 — one game behind the Seattle Storm and the Connecticut Sun and two behind the second-place Las Vegas Aces, who played late Thursday.
The tendency at this point of the season is to start paying closer attention to all of that. After Thursday’s win, Hines-Allen couldn’t disagree.
“I look at when teams win or lose,” she said. “But for the most part, I don’t think I’m like, ‘Oh, I hope this team loses.’ ... Well, I do. Okay. I do look at the standings. Yeah, I do look at it.”
That’s the push and pull that many players and coaches feel this time of year. The politically correct answer is to say teams focus on themselves and take it one game at a time, but that’s rarely the full truth. Most players know exactly where they stand throughout the season, and that only intensifies as playoff scenarios become clearer. The league-leading Chicago Sky became the first team to clinch a playoff spot Wednesday.
“I think I pay attention to the standings all year,” Mystics Coach Mike Thibault said. “... I probably pay attention in a sense more on, ‘Is there a couple of teams we can catch here depending on how it goes?’ But I try not to do it too much just because I’ve told the team all along, ‘Play the next game and let that take care of it.’ ”
Last time out: Mystics lean on their defense for a bounce-back win over the Lynx
The WNBA has a new postseason format for the eight teams that make the cut this summer: Single-elimination matchups and byes are out. All eight teams will play best-of-three first-round series — No. 1 vs. No. 8, No. 2 vs. No. 7, No. 3 vs. No. 6, and No. 4 vs. No. 5 — with the higher seed hosting the first two games. It shifts to best-of-five for the final two rounds.
The Mystics would travel to take on the Storm if the playoffs started today, but there’s plenty of time for that to change. Washington hosts the Storm for back-to-back games next weekend, followed by a visit from the Aces and a game at the Sky.
Elena Delle Donne and Ariel Atkins said they’re not paying attention to all that just yet.
“I haven’t even looked,” said Delle Donne, who had a game-high 25 points. “My only focus is the next game and winning it. And if we can control that, then standings will be whatever they are.”
“This league is crazy, and you just never really know,” said Atkins, who added 16 points and six rebounds. “So I don’t want to put anything in my head.”
Sweep avoided
The Liberty won the teams’ first two meetings, but the Mystics bounced back from a slow start and never trailed after halftime. New York scored the first 12 points, but Washington closed the first quarter on a 16-8 run. The Mystics were strong defensively most of the day; they allowed just 11 points in the third quarter and forced 16 turnovers for the game.
“Not much of a conversation — like, ‘Calm the hell down,’ ” Thibault said of the timeout after the Liberty’s early run. “... When we came to the timeout, we were calm. At least the players were reasonably calm — I wasn’t necessarily, walking into the huddle. The good thing about this team is that we’re pretty resilient about that.”
Delle Donne, Atkins and Hines-Allen (13 points, eight rebounds) did most of the heavy lifting offensively. Delle Donne has scored at least 19 points in her past five games — and has at least 25 in three of those.
“I felt like in the second half it was almost like taking turns, like, ‘You go; I’ll go,’ ” she said. “Whoever had the mismatch, we were just trying to attack it.”
Hines-Allen laughed and added: “Just knowing that you’re playing with an MVP, sometimes you just want to get out of her way.”
Natasha Howard led the 11th-place Liberty (9-17) with 17 points and 10 rebounds. New York has lost five in a row.
Washington’s next game is Thursday at Dallas.
On the Griner mural
On Wednesday, the Bring Our Families Home Campaign unveiled a mural in Georgetown featuring WNBA star Brittney Griner and other Americans detained abroad. Liberty Coach Sandy Brondello was on hand for the ceremony.
“BG is someone that, obviously, I love dearly, and it’s an unfortunate situation that she’s in,” said Brondello, who coached Griner with the Phoenix Mercury. “I hope that we can get her home soon. But to meet some of the families, that was actually quite touching, to realize so many other stories. BG has put it in the forefront about all these other people that are wrongfully detained overseas. ... We’ve got to put their names out there a little bit more.”
For Camp Day, the Mystics played in their old home for the first time since 2019. The stands were full of youngsters holding Thundersticks and wearing matching T-shirts.
“I think one of the biggest reasons we do this is to introduce your team and what you do to a whole new group of potential fans,” Thibault said. “You hope that a bunch of them go home and beg their parents to take them back. Watch more games on TV, see role models. ... And it’s not just the young girls — it’s the young boys seeing role model women athletes that they can respect.”
Thursday’s game was the beginning of a partnership between Monumental Sports and Entertainment and HeadCount to encourage voting. Stations allowed people to register, and that will continue at Capitals, Wizards and Mystics games. | 2022-07-21T20:56:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics defeat Liberty to continue their strong stretch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/mystics-liberty-wnba-playoff-picture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/mystics-liberty-wnba-playoff-picture/ |
Virginia Coach Tony Elliott got a chance to speak as a head coach for the first time at ACC media days. (Nell Redmond/AP)
CHARLOTTE — Virginia’s Tony Elliott arrived at ACC football media day wearing custom designed sneakers in school colors with “heart” painted on the outer soles, serving as a reminder about the message he continues to pass along to his players in his first job as a head coach.
The word carries special meaning for Elliott, who leaned far more on will than skill when he played in college as a walk-on wide receiver at Clemson, where he most recently served as offensive coordinator for the ACC’s premier football power.
So important is determination to Elliott that during his first team meeting in Charlottesville he distilled the mission of the program into a mantra emphasizing heart as the Cavaliers embark on their final season in the Coastal Division before the ACC disbands its two-division structure next year.
“Serving the heart, not the talent,” Elliott said Thursday afternoon. “Now that is a phrase that’s sometimes said at Clemson, but that came from me in a devotion, but it goes even deeper than that. As a player I played from my heart because I wasn’t as talented as everybody else. You can’t measure heart, but I wanted to create an environment where you can articulate what it means to have heart.”
The philosophy resonated especially with some of the more experienced players who came back this season, including wide receiver Keytaon Thompson. The sixth-year graduate student and Elliott have grown close in part because they share the bond of having played the same position.
But Thompson immediately took to Elliott after repeated stories about how he had overcome obstacles in his personal life to reach the highest levels of the sport. Thompson has been through much of the same on the field, having played three positions since transferring from Mississippi State.
He’s settling in at wide receiver permanently this season as part of a potent group that includes Dontayvion Wicks, who set the school’s single-season yardage record last season, and the return of Lavel Davis Jr. The 6-foot-7 junior missed last season with an ACL injury.
“One of the first things he mentioned was serving your heart, not your talent, and kind of meant a lot to me,” Thompson said of Elliott. “I could tell that he meant it, and it was genuine. A lot of coaches around the country would totally disregard someone if their talent was lacking. I don’t see any of that with Coach Elliott.”
Cavaliers quarterback Brennan Armstrong has developed a similar relationship with Elliott while learning an entirely new playbook entering his final year. The record-setting left-hander is set to direct an offense that more closely resembles a pro style as opposed to spread or tempo that’s become popular in the college game.
Armstrong owns virtually every meaningful passing record in school history and fell 144 yards short of matching the ACC’s single-season record for passing, which Clemson’s DeShaun Watson set in 2016.
Armstrong almost certainly would have established a record if he had been able to play in the season-ending Fenway Bowl, but the Cavaliers withdrew because of coronavirus cases within their locker room.
“Even though this is his first year head coaching, he understands everything,” Armstrong said of Elliott. “We have great leaders I think. We have a lot of older guys who can relay his message to our team and hold our teammates accountable through us too. I think that’s a huge deal. He’s been preaching that a lot to us.”
Elliott took over the program following the resignation of former coach Bronco Mendenhall at the end of last season. The stunning announcement came one week after the Cavaliers lost to Virginia Tech, 29-24, at Scott Stadium, marking the 17th time in 18 meetings they failed to capture the Commonwealth Cup.
Army-Navy games to be played at five Northeast sites the next five seasons
Cavaliers Athletic Director Carla Williams hired Elliott a week later, and the former captain as a senior at Clemson, where head coach Dabo Swinney was his position coach in 2003, was officially introduced Dec. 13.
Elliott served on Swinney’s staff for the past 11 seasons and in 2021 was elevated to assistant head coach and solo offensive coordinator. He had been co-offensive coordinator from 2014 through 2020 as well as running backs coach from 2011 through 2020.
Since Elliott became co-offensive coordinator the Tigers either led or were ranked second in the ACC in total offense five times. In 2017 Elliot received the Frank Broyles Award as the top assistant in major college football.
“I told him he needs to take the job,” Swinney said. “I told him this is the right one. I felt like he was a great fit for Virginia, and I felt like Virginia was a great fit for Tony and his family. He has turned down several head jobs over the last few years, but I felt like Virginia was the right fit for him. As far as how prepared he is, he is incredibly prepared.” | 2022-07-21T20:57:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Virginia football coach Tony Elliott focusing on heart - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/tony-elliott-virginia-football-heart/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/21/tony-elliott-virginia-football-heart/ |
FCC cracks down on scam auto warranty robocalls
FCC cracks down on warranty robocalls
U.S. voice service providers must now “take all necessary steps to avoid carrying this robocall traffic,” or provide a report outlining how they’re mitigating the traffic, the FCC’s Robocall Response Team said in a statement on Thursday. The calls are coming from Roy Cox Jr., Aaron Michael Jones and related companies and associates.
The group appears to be responsible for making more than 8 billion unlawful prerecorded calls to Americans since at least 2018, per the FCC statement.
Gap debuts Yeezy brand in its stores
The in-store debut has been a long time coming. Gap’s 10-year partnership with Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, was initially met with enthusiasm when announced in June 2020 — the stock surged about 20 percent that day. The collaboration was supposed to push Gap into the luxury apparel space, while also piggybacking off the rapper’s popularity to attract younger shoppers to the struggling retailer.
But Gap executives grew increasingly silent on the Yeezy partnership, which has courted controversy. Product drops became few and far between and sold only online. So far, the tie-up hasn’t meaningfully helped the underperforming Gap brand.
The Times Square event is promoting a product line, which included T-shirts for $140, that was already available online and is also a collaboration with luxury brand Balenciaga.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week rose to the highest level in more than eight months in what may be a sign that the labor market may be weakening. Applications for jobless aid for the week ending July 16 rose by 7,000 to 251,000, up from the previous week's 244,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's the most since Nov. 13, 2021, when 265,000 Americans applied for benefits.
Truckers protesting California's new "gig worker" law blockaded the Port of Oakland, the state's third busiest, for a second day on Thursday, stalling agricultural exports and threatening to worsen U.S. supply chain backups. The law would make it more expensive for big rig drivers to remain independent contractors and is pushing the trucking industry to hire those workers as employees. | 2022-07-21T20:57:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FCC cracks down on scam auto warranty robocalls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fcc-cracks-down-on-scam-auto-warranty-robocalls/2022/07/21/2e5c3486-08e1-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fcc-cracks-down-on-scam-auto-warranty-robocalls/2022/07/21/2e5c3486-08e1-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
Unvaccinated Rockland County, N.Y. man diagnosed with polio
This is the first U.S. case of polio in nearly a decade
This 2014 illustration made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depicts a polio virus particle. On Thursday, July 21, 2022, New York health officials reported a polio case, the first in the U.S. in nearly a decade. (Sarah Poser, Meredith Boyter Newlove/CDC via AP) (AP)
The first U.S. case of polio in nearly a decade has been confirmed in an unvaccinated individual in Rockland County, N.Y., local and state health officials announced Thursday.
While the origins of the case are still being investigated, the 20-year-old man had traveled to Poland and Hungary earlier this year and was hospitalized in June, according to a public health official close to the investigation who was not authorized to speak on the record. He was initially diagnosed with a possible case of acute flaccid myelitis, caused by inflammation of the spinal cord that results in severe muscle weakness and paralysis. But subsequent testing detected a type of polio that indicates transmission from outside the United States, according to a joint alert Thursday from the New York State Health Department and Rockland County.
The patient has since been discharged and living at home with his wife and children. He is able to stand, but is having difficulty walking, the official said.
Rockland County and New York State health officials on Thursday alerted clinicians to be vigilant for additional cases.
Asked about the possibility of more polio cases emerging locally, Rockland County Health Commissioner Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said, “We only have the one case. Let’s hope that’s all we find.”
Rockland County Executive Ed Day said at the news conference that the patient who is infected is not contagious.
Polio is a life-threatening viral disease that causes permanent paralysis in people who are not fully vaccinated in about 5 out of every 1,000 cases. Most of the U.S. population has protection against the disease because they were vaccinated during childhood. But in communities with low vaccination coverage, people who are not vaccinated are at high risk. There is no treatment for polio, but vaccination prevents the disease.
Due to the success of a national vaccination program after the vaccine was introduced in 1955, polio cases were cut dramatically. The last naturally occurring cases in the United States were recorded in 1979.
While still rare, more recent polio infections in the United States were imported through travel or contact with someone who had received oral polio vaccine in another country. The last known U.S. case was recorded by the CDC in 2013.
Polio is very contagious, and a person can spread the virus even if they aren’t sick. Symptoms, which can be mild and flu-like, can take up to 30 days to appear, during which time an infected individual can shed the virus to others. Though rare, some polio cases can result in paralysis or death.
The virus typically enters the body through the mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the fecal matter of an infected person. Respiratory transmission and oral to oral transmission through saliva may also account for some cases.
Up to 95 percent of people infected with polio have no symptoms, yet they can still spread the virus. About 4 to 5 percent of infected people have minor symptoms such as fever, muscle weakness, headache, nausea, and vomiting. One to two percent of infected people develop severe muscle pain and stiffness in the neck and back. Less than 1 percent of polio infections result in paralysis.
In this case, genetic sequencing performed by the Wadsworth Center, New York state’s public health laboratory, and confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed a type of polio virus that indicates transmission from someone who received the oral polio vaccine, according to an alert issued Thursday by the New York State Health Department and Rockland County, N.Y.
There are two types of vaccine that can prevent polio. Inactivated poliovirus vaccine, or IPV, is given as an injection in the leg or arm, depending on the patient’s age. Only IPV has been used in the United States since 2000.
Wild type polio is the naturally occurring form of the virus. However some people can become infected from a weakened strain of the virus that was used to make the oral polio vaccine early on. Most countries, including the U.S., immunize children using vaccine made from a form of the virus that is no longer alive. But some people become infected by a weakened strain of the virus shed by children vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine .
“Many of you may be too young to remember polio, but when I was growing up, this disease struck fear in families, including my own,” Day said in a statement. “The fact that it is still around decades after the vaccine was created shows you just how relentless it is. Do the right thing for your child and the greater good of your community and have your child vaccinated now.”
Rockland County plans to host polio vaccination clinics starting Friday. Health officials are urging anyone who is unvaccinated, including those who are pregnant, or are concerned they might have been exposed, to get vaccinated. Individuals who are already vaccinated but are at risk of exposure should receive a booster, which will also be available at the clinics. | 2022-07-21T20:58:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | First polio case in U.S. in nearly a decade confirmed in unvaccinated Rockland County man - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/21/polio-rockland-county-unvaccinated/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/21/polio-rockland-county-unvaccinated/ |
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department arrested Jesenea Miron, 23, on July 15 and charged her with kidnapping for allegedly posing as a nurse and taking a newborn from a hospital room. (iStock)
A Southern California woman is facing kidnapping charges after authorities said she posed as a nurse and snatched a newborn from a hospital room before the baby’s father stopped her.
Jesenea Miron, 23, allegedly walked into the Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley, Calif., “disguised as a nurse” on July 14, according to Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Saul Fernandez. Miron entered the room of a patient who had just given birth and “walked out with her baby,” Fernandez wrote in a declaration for Miron’s bail.
The baby’s father stopped Miron and hospital staff intervened, but Miron managed to escape, according to police. The woman fled the hospital — about 60 miles east of Los Angeles — but police arrested Miron at her home the following day, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.
After her arrest, she confessed to posing as a nurse, according to the declaration.
“She wanted to be close to a baby,” Fernandez wrote. “She also said if she wanted to kidnap a baby it would be easy and she could walk out of a hospital with one.”
It is unclear whether Miron knew the family or chose the infant at random.
When she was arrested, police also found ultrasounds from two other hospitals in Miron’s home, according to the declaration.
Miron faces felony charges of kidnapping and child stealing and is being held on $1 million bail in a jail in Banning, Calif., according to court records. She pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to be back in court for a bail hearing on Tuesday.
Her attorneys did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Jennifer Cruikshank, the hospital’s CEO, said in a statement that the facility has “multiple layers of security” and it is grateful that “those systems and our vigilant staff were able to thwart this suspect.”
Cruikshank said the hospital is working with the sheriff’s office to investigate the incident and is supporting the family to “ensure their emotional well-being.”
“Our security protocols have been reviewed and reinforced, and we have additional sheriff’s deputies on campus,” Cruikshank said.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), infant abductions are most commonly carried out by a “female of childbearing age who appears pregnant” and may have lost a child or is unable to have one. They frequently pose as a nurse or other health-care worker and may have visited more than one hospital before carrying out the abduction, though they usually do not target a specific infant, according to NCMEC.
Almost 35 years ago, she let a stranger hold her newborn. It has haunted her ever since.
In 2017, police arrested 51-year-old Gloria Williams in South Carolina for kidnapping an infant in Florida in 1998 and raising her as her own for 18 years. The abductor dressed as a nurse and spent five hours in a hospital room with the baby’s mother before claiming the infant needed to be checked for a fever and leaving with the infant.
The 18-year-old believed Williams was her mother and was in otherwise good health. She met her birthparents in 2017.
She was abducted from a hospital as a newborn. 18 years later, she met her birth parents.
Infant abductions, however, remain extremely rare. NCMEC has logged 364 such cases between 1964 and November 2020, with 140 of those being from health-care facilities. | 2022-07-21T20:58:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California woman Jesenea Miron accused of posing as nurse to kidnap baby - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/california-nurse-kidnapping-baby-miron/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/california-nurse-kidnapping-baby-miron/ |
Sam Dobbins, the police chief in Lexington, Miss., was fired Wednesday, after the disclosure of a recording of him bragging about killing people in the line of duty and using the n-word repeatedly. (Screenshot via YouTube/WL/Screenshot via YouTube/WLBT)
A police chief in Mississippi was fired Wednesday after a leaked recording showed that the official had bragged about killing 13 people in the line of duty and used the n-word repeatedly, including to describe one Black person the White man says he shot at least 119 times.
The racist, homophobic and expletive-laden remarks that Sam Dobbins, the chief in the small town of Lexington, made during an April conversation with an officer caused an uproar this week in the Mississippi Delta community.
The roughly 16-minute conversation, which was first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, was recorded by Robert Lee Hooker, a Black man who resigned as an officer from the Lexington Police Department last week due to what he described as a toxic work environment.
In the recording, later obtained by The Washington Post, Dobbins can be heard boasting to Hooker about all of the men he killed when he was an officer.
“I’ve killed 13 men in my career, justified,” he said, according to the recording. “In my line of duty, I have shot and killed 13 different people.”
While describing an alleged shootout in a cornfield, Dobbins claimed to Hooker that he “saved 67 kids in a school” by shooting a Black man more than 100 times.
“I shot that n----- 119 times, okay?” Dobbins said to Hooker, adding that the man he shot was “DRT,” or “dead right there.” It’s unclear what case he’s referencing, but Dobbins reiterated, “The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me.”
As backlash mounted in Lexington — a town of 1,600 people, 80 percent of whom are Black — the board of aldermen voted 3-2 Wednesday to oust Dobbins, effective immediately.
“Once we heard it, I was just appalled and angry,” Cardell Wright, the paralegal for JULIAN, the civil rights and international human rights organization that obtained the audio from Hooker, told The Post. Wright, the president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, added: “Just to see the hatred in your own backyard was disturbing. We knew we had to do something immediately.”
Neither Dobbins nor Hooker immediately responded to requests for comment early Thursday. Messages left for the mayor’s office were also not immediately returned.
Dobbins told the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting that he was unaware of the recording and that the topic of killing people in the line of duty was “something we don’t discuss, period.” He also denied using the slurs: “I don’t talk like that,” Dobbins said.
Mississippi is a one-party consent state when it comes to recording conversations, meaning not all parties in a conversation have to be made aware they are being recorded.
Jill Collen Jefferson, the founder and president of JULIAN, told The Post in a statement that “the corruption we’re seeing here is on a scale I haven’t seen since the civil rights movement.”
“This audio is damning,” Jefferson said. “It’s not just a reflection of one officer. It’s a reflection of an entire culture of policing, and it should spur Congress to finally rein in this modern-day slave patrol. A culture like this does not deserve immunity.”
Dobbins’s firing comes at a time when policing and the culture of small police departments is under scrutiny, nationwide. After the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in May in which 19 children and two adult teachers were killed, critics and policing experts said the handling of the tragedy raised more concerns as to whether tiny police agencies still made sense. Agencies with fewer than 10 officers make up nearly half the nation’s more than 12,200 local departments, a 2016 federal survey found.
Uvalde intensifies doubts over whether tiny police agencies make sense
More than 1,050 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year, according to data tracked by The Post. Although half of those people were White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate: They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of Whites. Hispanics are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.
Much of America wants policing to change. But these self-proclaimed experts tell officers they’re doing just fine.
In Lexington, about 64 miles north of the capital, Jackson, Dobbins was promoted to police chief last year, Wright said.
In recent months, more than a dozen Lexington residents have accused law enforcement of harassment — with one person calling the culture of policing in the town as “the Wild, Wild West.”
Shirley Gibson, a lifelong resident, accused Lexington police of breaking into her home in December and using force against her and her son, even though she says the officers did not have a search warrant. “I’m very terrified because this isn’t the first time they did this,” she told WLBT at the time.
Hooker had resigned as an officer with the force only days after he joined the department earlier this year, Wright said. But the officer, who was allegedly frustrated with how Dobbins was speaking to him and others, decided to rejoin the force to help bring some accountability if needed.
“He was waiting to see if the chief slipped up any more and showed his true colors,” Wright said.
This police chief is hiring female officers to fix 'toxic' policing
On April 11, Hooker and Dobbins were talking to each other following a couple of arrests in town. Dobbins is heard in the recording using multiple racial slurs to Hooker while arguing that he would defend the officer.
“There’s only going to be one man fighting for you, and it’s going to be me, okay?” Dobbins said, according to the recording.
Then, Dobbins talked about the 13 people he’s killed in the line of duty. When Hooker asked if he really did fatally shoot that many people while on duty, Dobbins responded, “Yes, sir, justified, bro. Ask around.”
At that point, he again used the n-word and claimed to have shot a Black suspect 119 times. While he does not specify the case, Wright told The Post that JULIAN has received calls indicating that it was an incident in Montgomery County, Miss., involving an unarmed man. Dobbins said in the recording that the man was armed. Dobbins told Hooker in April that the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office, where he worked at the time, cleared him of all wrongdoing.
A spokesperson with the sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dobbins is also heard uttering homophobic slurs and claiming that he would smash suspects “through the window” to get their respect.
“It would get your attention real quick,” he said, according to the recording.
Wright said he was unaware such a recording existed until Hooker resigned from the force and handed over the tape last Friday. Hooker told reporters on Wednesday that he came forward because he could no longer sit back and let Dobbins’s alleged behavior continue.
“I just got to the point where you’re not doing the people right, you’re not doing right, so therefore let me expose you for what you are, who you are,” Hooker said, according to WLBT. “And that’s how it happened.”
Investigator Charles Henderson has been named interim chief in Lexington until a permanent replacement is found.
Hooker is thankful that Dobbins has been dismissed, but he is also cautious of any potential backlash that could come, Wright said.
“He’s being cautious because we don’t know who in the community is mad about the situation,” Wright said. “But he is relieved that he was able to do his part in standing up for the Black community in Lexington.” | 2022-07-21T20:58:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mississippi police chief Sam Dobbins fired after recording bragging about shootings is disclosed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/mississippi-police-chief-recording-fired-dobbins/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/21/mississippi-police-chief-recording-fired-dobbins/ |
In this image taken from video provided by ABC7 Los Angeles is the scene where a shuttle bus at Los Angeles International Airport crashed and at least two people were seriously injured in Los Angeles, Thursday, July 21, 2022. The Los Angeles Fire Department says there were 30 people on board the bus but the majority of the passengers were not hurt. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP) (Uncredited/ABC7 Los Angeles) | 2022-07-21T20:58:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shuttle bus crashes at Los Angeles airport; 9 injured - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/shuttle-bus-crashes-at-los-angeles-airport-2-injured/2022/07/21/c7887d82-0930-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/shuttle-bus-crashes-at-los-angeles-airport-2-injured/2022/07/21/c7887d82-0930-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Draghi steps down; elections set for Sept.
Italy’s rancorous government collapse was finalized Thursday morning, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigning and new elections called for September.
Although Draghi tried to hold the government together after his first offer to resign was rejected by Italy’s president last week, his effort ended instead with recriminations and deepened divisions, bringing a crashing end to a period of relative political unity in the European Union’s third-largest economy.
The snap elections set for Sept. 25 favor a grouping of parties from the center right and far right.
For a year and a half, the centrist Draghi led a broad, left-to-right government and marshaled his reputation — built as Europe’s former top central banker — to increase Italy’s influence in Brussels and vouch forcefully for a hard European line against Russia in its war in Ukraine.
But leaders of several coalition parties signaled that they preferred something else.
The collapse became official Thursday morning, when Draghi met with President Sergio Mattarella and informed him of his resignation, once again. This time, Mattarella’s office said the president had “taken note” of the resignation and had asked Draghi’s government to remain in place as a temporary caretaker.
— Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli
Ride-sharing giant fined in data-security probe
China’s cybersecurity regulator fined ride-hailing juggernaut Didi Global $1.2 billion after a year-long probe, saying it had violated laws on data security and the protection of personal information.
The Cyberspace Administration of China said Thursday that Didi, a 10-year-old company based in Beijing, illegally collected 12 million pieces of “screenshot information” from users’ mobile photo albums and excessively accumulated 107 million pieces of passenger facial recognition information and 1.4 million pieces of family relationship data, among other violations.
The regulator also said there were “severe security risks” in Didi’s data-processing methods.
In addition to the fines on the company, Didi’s chairman and president were each fined $148,000. Didi said Thursday that it accepted the judgment and would strengthen its protection of personal information, while stopping short of apologizing to customers or sharing details on what changes it would make.
The crackdown on Didi reflects Beijing’s alarm at the vast troves of personal data that internet companies are gathering, and the risk that they could leak overseas and undermine national security.
— Eva Dou and Pei-Lin Wu
Death toll from weeks of rains in Pakistan rises to 282: The death toll from five weeks of monsoon rains and flash floods has jumped to at least 282 in Pakistan, officials said, as downpours continued lashing the country. The deluge has swollen rivers and damaged highways, bridges and about 5,600 houses since June 14, the National Disaster Management Authority said. Most of the damage and casualties were reported in the southwestern Baluchistan province.
Iran recalls envoy to Sweden over court decision: State TV said Iran has recalled its ambassador from Sweden after an Iranian citizen was sentenced to life by a Swedish court for his role during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The Stockholm District Court said Hamid Noury took part in severe atrocities in July and August 1988 while working as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at a prison outside the city of Karaj. Noury denied wrongdoing, and Iran called the court a "show" based on political motives.
Peru opens criminal probe of president after minister's firing: Peru's attorney general has opened a new probe of President Pedro Castillo, a day after the former interior minister accused the leftist leader of obstructing graft investigations of close allies. The investigation was triggered by Castillo's abrupt firing of Mariano González, who had served as interior minister for two weeks, following González's decision to authorize the appointment of a special police unit to track down and arrest presidential allies who are under criminal investigation. In May, the attorney general opened a separate investigation of Castillo over alleged influence peddling, collusion and being part of a "criminal organization."
Rio de Janeiro police conduct deadly favela raid: Multiple deaths were reported during a police raid in Rio de Janeiro's largest complex of favelas, or low-income communities, but the exact toll remained unclear. An officer and two other people were killed and a woman was injured, an early police statement said. Police said the raid targeted a criminal group in Complexo do Alemão that stole vehicles and cargo and robbed banks as well as invaded nearby neighborhoods. Nearly 400 officers were involved in the operation. | 2022-07-21T20:59:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 21, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-21-2022/2022/07/21/e96731a0-08fe-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-21-2022/2022/07/21/e96731a0-08fe-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
By Joseph L. Votel
The al-Hol camp, which holds relatives of suspected Islamic State fighters, in northeastern Syria in December 2021. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)
Joseph L. Votel, a retired four-star general in the U.S. Army, served as commander of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019. He is a distinguished senior fellow on national security at the Middle East Institute.
Soon after taking over as commander of U.S. Central Command in April, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla visited the al-Hol refugee camp in northeastern Syria. The visit brought welcome and necessary attention to the camp, where roughly 60,000 people — a large majority of whom are women and children — live in squalid conditions.
Most of the inhabitants are family members of Islamic State fighters who were killed or captured as their so-called caliphate collapsed. The need to relieve their plight by arranging long-term resettlement was obvious as the general toured the camp.
Unfortunately, al-Hol is not a new problem. As commander of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019, I saw this problem brewing late in 2018, when the fight against the Islamic State neared its conclusion, and both the victims and families of Islamic State fighters had nowhere to go. By the spring, with the allied military campaign ending, we had begun working with our Syrian Democratic Forces partners to evacuate Islamic State family members left behind to a location where they could be safeguarded, supported and ultimately returned to their countries of origin.
That place was al-Hol. We did not intend for it to be a long-term displacement camp, because consolidating these Islamic State family members for an extended period could mean planting the seeds of future violence. We knew a massive, concerted effort to repatriate, rehabilitate and reintegrate these families was required.
Hauntingly, as they boarded buses after the last battles and headed for al-Hol, many were singing songs about the glory of the Islamic State and reminding us they would return to slaughter us all.
The best opportunity to address a problem like this is always at the beginning — when appreciation for the threat is at its highest, providing the attention and momentum for resolution. Unfortunately, we — the U.S. government and all of our coalition partners — failed to do that, and the situation at al-Hol has now festered for nearly three and a half years — with little discernible progress.
Only 25 of almost 60 countries have stepped up and repatriated their citizens who are at al-Hol, according to a 2021 Human Rights Watch study. That response is certainly inadequate — if anything, the camp’s population is swelling, with not enough to address the volume of people housed at this camp, where more than 60 babies are born monthly.
There are reports that violence in the camp is rising dramatically, with more than 90 murders in the previous year, the United Nations said in March. Visits by humanitarian organizations are met with disdain, suspicion and outright threats.
Moreover, we are leaving the security of this camp to our Syrian Democratic Forces partners, sandwiched between the Russians and Turks, all while securing a restless foreign-fighter camp, disrupting Islamic State remnants and with little political support.
It is a lousy and irresponsible situation — and I am alarmed to see that what we feared several years ago is coming to fruition.
The region has a sad history of long-term displaced-person camps. Lebanon stands out as one of several states where they have existed for decades. Al-Hol threatens U.S. national security interests by nurturing instability, promoting violent rhetoric and indoctrination, and allowing those who harbor ill-will against the United States and its allies to continue recruiting and radicalizing. Resolving this problem would mitigate a long-term threat to U.S. security at home and in the region.
An international interagency task force is urgently needed to develop concrete solutions. The United States or another major Western nation should lead it. Military resources can help — but they should not lead the effort; instead, diplomatic, legal and international nongovernmental organization leadership is required. Every option should be considered for motivating and incentivizing countries to repatriate, rehabilitate and reintegrate their citizens from al-Hol.
Iraq is a central challenge in this problem, as the majority of families at the camp trace back to that country, with its ever-turbulent political landscape. None of this will be easy — there will be thorny issues around the citizenship of children at al-Hol, and many adults there lack legal documentation. Undoubtedly, there will be countless difficult matters to resolve. But that shouldn’t deter us from taking the action we know is necessary.
Al-Hol is a job unfinished. I can almost guarantee that if we allow conditions there to go on, unresolved, in the coming years we will find ourselves being drawn back to the region, to deal with a next-generation Islamic State that got its start at al-Hol. | 2022-07-21T20:59:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This Syrian refugee camp is incubating the next-generation ISIS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/rehabilitate-islamic-state-family-members/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/rehabilitate-islamic-state-family-members/ |
After vowing to go ‘medieval,’ the former Trump adviser called no defense witnesses
Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon speaks to the media as he departs the federal court in Washington on July 21. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
A jury is scheduled to hear closing arguments Friday in the trial of former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who faces two counts of contempt of Congress for allegedly refusing to comply with a subpoena about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
That means the 12-member jury could begin deliberating about Bannon’s fate Friday, after only about a day and a half of testimony. The government called just two witnesses in the high-profile trial. Bannon, who in the run-up to the trial had vowed to go “medieval” on his enemies, called none. Bannon’s legal team argued they should have been allowed to call the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), but U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols didn’t allow it.
Nichols is weighing a defense motion challenging whether prosecutors have met their burden of proof, as well as defense arguments that Thompson’s testimony is essential to their case.
Before sending the jury home Thursday, the judge said a woman on the panel had to withdraw from service because of a medical issue, though he sought to reassure the jurors that it wasn’t covid or anything else contagious. That juror will be replaced with one of two alternates. Without mentioning the prime-time congressional hearing scheduled Thursday night about Jan. 6, the judge also reminded jurors to steer clear of news reports about the Capitol attack, as he has throughout the trial.
Do you remember who said what during the Jan. 6 hearings so far? Take our quiz.
Bannon did not testify during the trial. Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse Thursday afternoon, he said the real issue in the case was not the extent of his cooperation with the Jan. 6 committee, but whether the committee was willing to negotiate with him.
In the past, Bannon said, he has given “I think, 50 hours of testimony, every time the exact same way,” before investigations by a special counsel and by the House and Senate Intelligence Committee, with a lawyer present invoking executive privilege at times over communications involving then-President Donald Trump.
“We’ve worked it out and every time, and every single time, more than anybody else in the Trump administration … Stephen K. Bannon testified,” Bannon said.
Unlike the House Jan. 6 probe, however, those investigations came while Trump was president and spanned conversations that Bannon had while he was in the White House before leaving in 2017.
In issuing a subpoena to Bannon, the Jan. 6 committee said it wanted to question him about activities at the Willard hotel the night before the Capitol riot, when Trump supporters sought to persuade lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election results.
The committee said Bannon spoke with Trump by telephone that morning and evening, the last time after Bannon predicted “hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6. | 2022-07-21T22:02:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bannon trial: Defense presents no witnesses, closing arguments Friday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/21/bannon-trial-jury-january-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/21/bannon-trial-jury-january-6/ |
The Florida chef whose Pepto Bismol-hued condiment went viral this week — with people on social media analyzing her TikToks with Zapruder-like intensity and questioning its legality, safety and ingredients — says she’s proud of her product.
The Miami-area personal chef who goes by her professional name, Chef Pii, and her newly introduced Pink Sauce have been at the center of a Barbie-colored swirl of controversy and the subject of dozens of TikTok videos that have racked up millions of views. “The world is really curious about my creation,” she said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And they’re being malicious.”
Chef Pii, 29, who declined to go on the record with her real name, has an answer to all the criticisms that have been leveled against her and her nascent brand. First among them: Her product, she says, is legal and safe. She makes it in a commercial facility that is certified by the Food and Drug Administration, per the law, she says, not a home kitchen, as some people suggested. She says she had been making the sauce, which she uses to top fried chicken, french fries and vegetables, long before producing it for sale. “I’ve been using it and serving it to my clients for a year — no one has ever gotten sick,” she says.
She owns up to early stumbles, such as bottles being mislabeled. TikTokers had seized on errors on the initial packaging and questioned whether any of it was to be believed. She says a typo in the graphic design mixed up the number of grams of product with the number of servings (444 servings instead of about 30 servings totaling 444 grams). And after getting backlash, she added the instructions to “please refrigerate.” She apologized for the mistakes. “This is a small business that is moving really, really fast,” she said in a video posted yesterday.
As customers began receiving their products when shipping began July 1 (she said she’s sold about 700 bottles so far), people complained that the packaging was poor, with some posting images of leaking bottles. Chef Pii says she’s switched shipping companies and apologized to customers who got damaged bottles.
And to those who said they suspected the sauce contained something that wasn’t listed — at least one video suggesting that she used mayonnaise to thicken it had gotten 3.9 million views as of Thursday afternoon — she says that’s just not so. But she’s not divulging everything about her process: “I will not explain my process, and I won’t be bullied into it.”
Previously, Chef Pii had only offered a cryptic response to many on social media who wondered whether she was operating legally. “Yes, we are following FDA standard,” she said in a video, adding that “we are currently in lab testing, so one we go through lab testing, we will be able to pitch to stores, to put the Pink Sauce in stores.” She now plans to post a long video, maybe as long as 45 minutes, tonight on YouTube to answer all of the questions people have raised.
Plenty of people thought it was strange that the sauce’s inventor wouldn’t describe its flavor, an omission that helped fuel the mystery around the sauce — and stoked the sense that she was hiding something. But Chef Pii says she wasn’t being intentionally coy or even trying to create hype. She says she really can’t put the flavor, which some have described as ranch-adjacent, into words. “I wasn’t trying to be rude or anything,” she insists.
Another thing she says isn’t a gimmick? The sauce’s distinctive color, which comes from the red dragon fruit, or pitaya. Chef Pii says she has suffered from depression and anxiety, and she had long found the fruit’s properties useful in treating her conditions. “I have a relationship with this sauce,” she says.
No because folks did all of that talk about not trusting the vaccines for COVID. But willingly spent $20 on some watery “pink sauce” because they saw strangers on TikTok eating it. Lmao.
Covid, monkey pox, abortion rights decimated and now this unholy pink sauce…..the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse yall 🥴 pic.twitter.com/lu6qBkDzTm
— Mihrimah| FS | xanaxed &living on prayers 🪬🤲🙏 (@Mihrimah_FS) July 21, 2022
Chef Pii says some of the online backlash stung. “I’m a normal human being, and I woke up to a million insults,” she recalls. Still, she has big plans for the brand, starting with bringing down the price tag from its current $20 to make it more accessible. She doesn’t want to sell her brand to a bigger company, but she dreams of partnering with one — maybe a fast-food company that would serve her sauce.
But she’s trying to tune out the backlash as she stays busy filling more orders.
“Yes, the sauce is extremely controversial, but for my curious, artsy people that are actually into the Pink Sauce craze, I love y’all,” she said in a video this week. “The haters are not taking my light away.” | 2022-07-21T22:11:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TikTok's Pink Sauce chef defends her viral condiment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/21/pink-sauce-tiktok-food-safety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/21/pink-sauce-tiktok-food-safety/ |
Fairfax school health aide accused of stealing pupils’ medications
An elementary school health aide in Fairfax County has been indicted on charges of stealing Ritalin, Adderall and other medications that were prescribed for pupils and giving the children sugar pills or over-the-counter drugs instead, authorities said Thursday.
Jennifer Carpenter, 45, a county health department employee assigned to Greenbriar East Elementary School in Chantilly, became the focus of a criminal investigation in May after a health department supervisor noticed “a discrepancy in the amount of medication several students maintained at the school,” Fairfax County police said in a statement.
Carpenter was responsible for administering prescription drugs to youngsters during school hours, the statement said. It said detectives determined that she had falsified documents related to the drugs and was dispensing “sugar placebo pills” and over-the-counter medications “in place of the prescribed narcotics,” which she kept for personal use.
“During the investigation, detectives identified seven students whose medicine was being abused,” the statement said.
Police said Carpenter was indicted by a grand jury Monday on charges of illegal drug possession, obtaining drugs through fraud, illegally dispensing substitute pills without the recipient’s permission and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Carpenter could not be immediately located for comment Thursday and it was unclear from court records whether she has retained a lawyer.
“As parents, we have an expectation that a person in a position of trust will care for our children,” police Capt. Frederick Chambers, head of the criminal investigations division, said in the statement. “When that trust is broken, we can feel betrayed.”
Police urged anyone with information about the case to call 703-591-0966. Tips can also be submitted anonymously by phone at 866-411-TIPS (866-411-8477). | 2022-07-21T22:23:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax school health aide accused of stealing students' medications - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/fairfax-aide-steals-student-medications/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/fairfax-aide-steals-student-medications/ |
Maryland voters made it official — the glass ceiling is double-paned
Canvassers for Montgomery County Board of Elections review mail-in ballots for the primary election on July 21, 2022 in Germantown, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
It’s not Larryland or Harryland. It’s Maryland.
But the state named for a queen is not going to elevate a woman to its highest office anytime soon.
From Harriet Tubman to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D), Maryland’s women have shaped our nation. On Tuesday, its voters once again stubbornly denied women the power to lead us into the future. “I always said that though I was the first, I wanted to be the first of many,” Mikulski said in a 2010 interview, when she recalled her 1986 fundraiser, “Bebop for Barb.”
Maryland let her down.
Democrats didn’t even consider a woman for governor — although nearly every candidate picked one for a running mate, citing impressive resumes. They didn’t return Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D) to her House seat. No Maryland woman will get a shot at trying to fill Mikulski’s wish for the Senate.
And with the nation’s political gazed fixed on what GOP gubernatorial candidate Kelly Schulz’s loss means for outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan’s political future, we’re left to lament the historic first that wasn’t.
Maryland is one of 19 states, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, that haven’t had the ovaries to put a woman in the governor’s chair, and voters blew it in spectacular fashion, not only rejecting Schulz, but elevating a Jan. 6, 2021 skeptic and acolyte of former president Donald Trump who wants to curtail abortion rights.
Oh wait. I’m forgetting the huge leap that Democrats made putting Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City) up for state comptroller, right?
No offense to Lierman, a civil rights and disability lawyer with a solid record, but state comptroller is the Aerosoles of the political world. Not exactly sexy, influential or high-profile.
In other words, Maryland voters are preferring their women in supporting roles. Exhibit A: the lieutenant governors. All but one was female.
“It seems to signal that while women can have a seat at the table they just can’t be at the head of it,” Krishanti Vignarajah, who ran in Maryland’s last gubernatorial Democratic primary four years ago, told my colleagues Ovetta Wiggins and Erin Cox, before the primary.
Where are the women in Maryland's gubernatorial race?
This is not exactly what Shirley Chisholm meant when she said “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
It matters when women are part of government. In some cases, they’ve produced twice as much legislation as their male counterparts. “Additionally, in interviews, both Democratic and Republican men and women expressed the belief that women and minorities bring a different perspective to the policy process,” said Georgetown University professor Michele L. Swers, in one of her many publications that examine the role of women in politics and government.
Is it too easy to say Maryland voters are treating their candidates the same way they treat their beloved blue crabs? A premium for males and their big chunks of meat, but the females — cheap by the dozen and preferred in the soup?
Female leaders across the political spectrum have opined on the efficacy of women in power. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
The polar opposite of Thatcher, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed a different type of leadership that women bring to politics. “One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, it means I’m weak,” she said. “I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.”
Even if you don’t want to believe that women make different kinds of leaders, there’s no question that representation matters.
The Obama effect is how one researcher explained a measurable difference in the way an observed group of Black, male high school kids saw themselves once a person who looks like them became the nation’s leader.
A black woman in the Senate: 'When she sits there, we all sit there.'
Obama’s “accomplishments made it possible for them to believe that they can also achieve success in life,” Aundra Simmons Vaughn wrote in her 2015 research paper, after interviewing students in Georgia.
That’s what voters told me back in 2016, when Edwards was trying to be the only Black woman in the Senate.
“When she sits there, we all sit there,” Betsy Simon, then 76, told me back then, right after she met Edwards at the Neighborhoods United annual banquet in West Baltimore on Sunday.
“She has lived her life; it’s like our lives,” Simon said. “And she knows what we need.”
Knowing is part of it. So is showing, showing all of America in our leadership, our legislatures, in the faces we present to the world as a diverse and dynamic nation.
What is Maryland showing, in its selection of Dan Cox, a one-term state lawmaker, over Schulz, who is a mother, small-business owner and served seven years in Larry Hogan’s administration as the state’s secretary of labor and commerce?
Sally Ride, the first American woman in space described it best, the example she wanted young girls to watch: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” | 2022-07-21T22:24:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland voters once again left women behind this election cycle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/maryland-primary-election-glass-ceiling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/21/maryland-primary-election-glass-ceiling/ |
BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has a certainty not backed up by results. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Whatever else killed George Washington, the draining of more than a third of his blood in less than half a day would probably have done him in anyway. Well into the 19th century, bloodletting, as it was called, was the favored treatment of doctors for pretty much everything for two reasons: First, it was based on a generally accepted (though woefully wrong) idea of how the human body worked. And second, no one really tracked treatments’ success or failure rates.
The reason for this historical medical stroll is that current central bankers, for all their impressive-looking equations and studies, have more in common with those long-ago doctors than they would like to think. When bloodletting didn’t work, the remedy was often more bloodletting. To the modern central banker, the answer to just about everything that has gone wrong in the past couple of decades was looser monetary policy, by which they meant ever lower short- and long-term rates. But their theories, it turns out, have often rested upon shaky foundations and, in some cases, the evidence strongly suggests that rather than stimulating economic growth and inflation, their activities have done exactly the opposite. Nowhere is this more true than in Japan, despite the reassuringly avuncular certitude of Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor of the Bank of Japan.
The BOJ stood pat again this week, though this was not a surprise: It hasn’t changed policy for years. Kuroda got his job in 2013 as the archer of Shinzo Abe’s third arrow: ultra-loose monetary policy. Not wanting to send short rates too negative, the BOJ started buying Japanese government bonds in 2013 and formalized this in 2016 with a policy of yield-curve control whereby it wouldn’t let 10-year yields rise above a set level, currently about 0.25%. It now owns more than half of all publicly issued government bonds. Under Kuroda, the BOJ also started buying stocks. It now owns about $430 billion of Japanese equities. Its balance sheet is now the equivalent of 135% of gross domestic product. No other top central bank has a balance sheet remotely this size compared with its economy.
Though I suspect that Abe’s assassination will have, if anything, increased the BOJ’s desire not to waver, there is no evidence that this frenetic activity has had the desired effect of stimulating activity and inflation. The recent pickup in Japanese inflation has been imported entirely. Domestically, the evidence suggests that the BOJ’s activities are making matters worse, not better. When central banks cut interest rates, the idea is that households and companies will spend more and save less, boosting activity. In fact, though, Japanese companies have continued to save at a similar rate, meaning that they invest less than their net profits. Much more strikingly, Japan’s household saving rate has climbed relentlessly. The only way that Japan hasn’t fallen into an economic black hole is because all this private saving is offset by huge government spending.
Why might households have increased their savings? One reason is that Japan isn’t like economies in textbooks. It is, quite literally, the oldest country in the world and aging rapidly. The average Japanese citizen is pushing 50 and can expect to live to 85, though Germans and Italians aren’t that far behind. Moreover, the population is shrinking partly because Japanese families aren’t having enough children and partly because the Japanese aren’t that keen on foreigners. The evidence suggests that when interest rates are cut, the Japanese save more, not less. From this perspective, paradoxically, lower interest rates tighten monetary policy and higher interest rates loosen it. That explanation is at least consistent with what has actually happened rather than what the BOJ would like to have happened.
It gets worse. Alone among the top central banks, the BOJ has sat on its heels and done nothing to interest rates, and the yen has plummeted. Although Kuroda contended that the problem was a strong dollar, this simply isn’t true: The trade-weighted yen has fallen sharply over the past couple of years. Add the weak yen to vertiginous commodity prices, and the result is a huge terms-trade shock, crushed corporate margins and a chunky trade deficit. The only reason that Japan still has a current-account surplus is because it has such a large stock of overseas investments. I can’t see any of this reviving animal spirits.
All of this is remarkably visible and worrying, for sure. Less visible and more worrying is that Japanese policy makers don’t think that there are any costs to controlling financial markets to the extent that they do. Although the BOJ controls markets more than any other top central bank, all have gone down the same path and are only reluctantly and slowly shifting to another one. You don’t have to be fanatically pro markets to worry about this. Developed economies need more productivity growth, Japan’s more than most. We had, I thought, learned that, whatever their faults, markets are better allocators of capital than bureaucrats. Nothing the Bank of Japan and others have done in the past many years suggests otherwise. | 2022-07-21T22:28:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bank of Japan Should Stop Meddling in Financial Markets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bank-of-japan-should-stop-meddling-in-financial-markets/2022/07/21/4748271a-0941-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bank-of-japan-should-stop-meddling-in-financial-markets/2022/07/21/4748271a-0941-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
FRANKFURT, Germany — The European Central Bank has raised interest rates for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount. It’s joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation. The ECB’s surprise hike Thursday of half a percentage point for the 19 countries using the euro currency is expected to be followed by another increase in September. Bank President Christine Lagarde says the forecasts don’t point to a recession this year or next but acknowledged the uncertainty ahead. The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the price of fighting inflation.
NEW YORK — Stocks ended higher on Wall Street Thursday, building on their winning week. The gains came amid a deluge of news about the economy, interest rates and corporate profits. The S&P 500 rose 1% after shaking off an early stumble, returning to its highest level in six weeks. The Dow rose 0.5% and the Nasdaq rose 1.4%. Much of the focus was on Europe, where a yearslong experiment with negative interest rates came to a close. In the U.S., reports suggested the economy is slowing more than expected, while a better-than-expected profit report from Tesla headlined a mixed set of earnings.
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week rose to its highest level in more than eight months, a sign the labor market may be showing some weakness. Applications for jobless aid for the week ending July 16 rose by 7,000 to 251,000, up from the previous week’s 244,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the most since Nov. 13, 2021 when 265,000 Americans applied for benefits. First-time applications generally reflect layoffs. Analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet expected the number to come in at 242,000.
NEW YORK — CVS Health is asking pharmacists in some states to verify that a few of the prescriptions they provide will not be used end a pregnancy. A spokesman said Thursday that the drugstore chain recently started doing this for methotrexate and misoprostol, two drugs used in medication abortions but also to treat other conditions. Spokesman Mike DeAngelis said the policy started the first week in July in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas. The request from the drugstore chain based in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, comes after the U.S. Supreme Court last month overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had provided a constitutional right to abortion.
SAN BRUNO, Calif. — YouTube will begin removing misleading videos about abortion in response to falsehoods being spread about the procedure that is being banned or restricted across a broad swath of the U.S. The move announced Thursday by the Google-owned video site comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the case that had protected the legality of abortion in the country for nearly 50 years. YouTube said its crackdown will expunge content promoting unsafe at-home abortions, as well as misinformation about the safety of undergoing the procedure in clinics located in states where it remains legal.
DALLAS — American Airlines reported a $476 million profit for the second quarter as summer travelers pack planes. It was American’s first profit without government pandemic aid in the COVID-19 era. American said Thursday that it achieved record revenue of more than $13 billion in the second quarter. CEO Robert Isom says he’s encouraged by trends in the business, and the airline predicts it’ll remain profitable in the third quarter.
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook is rolling out an update that enables its 2 billion daily users to more easily view their friends’ posts in chronological order. The feature is the company’s latest attempt to keep people coming back to its social network amid intensifying competition with its trendier rival TikTok. The changes announced Thursday will offer up two different perspectives. When Facebook users first open the app, they will initially see the usual news feed featuring posts selected by an algorithm. But a new “Feed” tab in the shortcut bar of the mobile app will now allow users to see all their friends’ posts in the order they were shared. | 2022-07-21T22:28:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Cool housing market, jobless claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-cool-housing-market-jobless-claims/2022/07/21/ba0da826-093f-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-cool-housing-market-jobless-claims/2022/07/21/ba0da826-093f-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.