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If the Washington Nationals trade Josh Bell, Joey Meneses could get the call up from the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. (Photo courtesy of the Rochester Red Wings/Rochester Red Wings Staff)
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Joey Meneses is 30 and has held jobs in the Dominican Republic, Rome, Ga., his hometown of Culiacán, Mexico, Orlando, Zebulon, N.C., Jackson, Miss., Allentown, Pa., Osaka — yes, as in Osaka, Japan — Worcester, Mass., Portland, Me. and Rochester.
If the Washington Nationals deal Josh Bell in the coming days, Meneses could get the call up from the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. He is the organization’s most logical replacement at first base. He first signed a minor league contract with the Atlanta Braves in 2011. He then entered Saturday with a .292 batting average, .346 on-base percentage, .499 slugging percentage and 19 homers in 88 games. So even thinking about debuting — about telling his mom, dad and brothers he did it — made Meneses bend his neck backward, blinking through tears. | 2022-07-23T17:06:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joey Meneses awaits Nats trade deadline moves - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/joey-meneses-nationals-trade-deadline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/joey-meneses-nationals-trade-deadline/ |
An antiabortion campaigner speaks to patients entering an abortion clinic in Dayton, Ohio, on June 24. (Megan Jelinger/Reuters)
Ohio is but one of 15 states that have new or forthcoming laws prohibiting abortion without exceptions for rape or incest, even though about 75 percent of Americans support legal abortions in such cases, according to a 2018 Gallup poll. The other states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin, with others likely to follow.
The poor Ohio child, meanwhile, seemed to get lost in her own story after it became an overnight sensation, providing fodder for demagogues on both sides of the abortion issue. Pro-choice activists didn’t hesitate to use her tale to remind everyone of all the horrors that the Supreme Court hath wrought. President Biden, who has never met a sad story he couldn’t make sadder, used the child in a July 8 speech on abortion rights.
There’s still time to rethink the worst of these unusually cruel laws, and for the mostly male legislators to allow for exceptions. They should remind themselves that they represent the people, not just hard-line pro-lifers — and that they are not themselves deities, as so many seem to think. | 2022-07-23T18:38:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Abortion bans without exceptions for rape, incest are cruel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/23/no-exception-abortion-bans-incest-rape-cruel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/23/no-exception-abortion-bans-incest-rape-cruel/ |
Tour de France cyclists climb through Ayros-Arboix in the Pyrenees mountains on July 21. (Laurence Geai/MYOP/For The Washington Post)
AYROS-ARBOIX, France — The Tour de France has always been a test of human endurance.
The cyclists cover epic distances over the course of three weeks, speeding past fields of sunflowers, bouncing along cobblestone roads and climbing dizzyingly steep mountains with frightening corkscrew descents.
But as the peloton makes its way down the Champs-Élysées toward the finish line on Sunday — on a day forecast to reach 93 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 degrees higher than the average July high for Paris — there are questions about whether the world’s most prestigious cycling race is pushing up against its own limits, whether increasingly intense European summers are making the competition dangerously extreme.
The race has long been a point of pride for the French, highlighting some of their most stunning landscapes. And yet over the past weeks it has also showcased some of the most alarming impacts of climate change, taking cyclists through farmland parched by drought, past melting glaciers, in proximity to raging wildfires and in direct collision with a historic heat wave that saw temperatures approach 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
The race began in Denmark.
BEL.
Max. temperature during race
Rocomadour
Castelnau-Mognoac
Note: Temperatures are for stage destinations.
Source: Terre-Net, Weather Channel, Copernicus
JANICE KAI CHEN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Stages 1 to 3 took place in Denmark.
Arenberg Porte
du Hainaut
A forest fire near Landiras burned over 25 square miles around where the Tour passed through last year.
de’Oisans
Saint-
Gaudens
Temperatures at Carcassonne on Stage 15 reached 96°F, 12 degrees hotter than average high temperatures.
It’s probably safe to say that’s hotter than most early Tour riders could have even imagined. Consider: the original yellow jersey, introduced in the more temperate climate of 1919, was made of wool.
At times the temperatures were so high during this year’s Tour that organizers sprayed water to keep the roads from “melting.” Officials agreed to ease rules that usually prevent riders from rehydrating in the first miles of the race. But they stuck to the schedule, conducting each stage in the oppressive heat of the afternoon.
Europeans shocked by ‘heat apocalypse’ as temperature records fall
“It’s already possible to get the stage shortened, or to cancel,” said Samuel Bellenoue, director of performance for French cycling team Cofidis. Race organizers, though, have not been inclined to invoke those rules.
“It’s the most important race in the world,” Bellenoue said.
The only disruptions to this year’s competition came when climate protesters chained themselves together and blocked the road, temporarily halting the race on two different days. “The world toward which politicians are sending us is a world in which the Tour de France will no longer exist,” said a statement from the group, Dernière Rènovation.
Some of the cyclists were disgruntled by the protesters. But many agree that key aspects of the Tour de France need a rethink, while Europe grapples with the new reality of summer.
“The question we as a society have to ask is: Are we putting athletes into undue harm’s way in the quest for that kind of athletic spectacle?,” he said. “How much is enough?”
Roasting on bicycles
French cyclist Romain Bardet, riding in his 10th Tour de France, told reporters that this year’s heat was unlike anything he’d experienced.
“Sometimes you could really feel it on the tarmac. At the start I said, yeah, it’s warm, it’s pretty okay,” he said to French television network Eurosport. “But when we reached downhill it was like, whoa! Crazy hot!”
Four days later, he blamed the heat when he fell behind in a critical stage, saying he had been “roasted” on his bike.
Competitor French cyclist Alexis Vuillermoz had an even tougher time. After he started vomiting and collapsed in the Alps, he was treated on-site for heatstroke and then taken to a hospital, his TotalEnergies team said. He dropped out the next day, with the team saying he had a fever and a skin infection that required surgery.
Spectator Evelyne Brunet, 67, said she worried for the athletes as she watched the peloton whiz through a Pyrenees mountain village this past week.
“They’re white and green in their face,” Brunet said, resting in a camping chair after hours of waiting in the intense heat, her arms covered with unabsorbed sunscreen. “And then — those eyes! When they take those long turns up the mountains, when they look at the water.”
“It’s horrible,” she said.
Cheung explains what happens in the sorts of extreme conditions France has seen during this Tour. “When the outside air temperature is higher than your body temperature,” he said, “there is no capacity to lose heat to the environment through blood flow going out to your skin.”
The body can cool itself through sweating, he said, but when the weather is both hot and humid, “it becomes a challenge.”
While spraying water on hot tarmac may make the roads safer, he noted, it also increases humidity, putting further strain on riders. “You are solving one problem, but you’re adding to another,” he said.
When Guillaume Martin, one of France’s leading cyclists, struggled with weather conditions, his Cofidis team conducted tests to measure the quantity of liquids and minerals he loses while cycling at temperatures of 95 degrees.
“You can manage this difference by adjusting the intake of minerals in the water,” said Bellenoue, the performance director.
Teams in the Tour de France have begun to borrow strategies from competitions in places such as Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
Before the beginning of a stage, cyclists spend as much time as possible in the shade, wearing vests of ice packs. When racing, they try to maximize the cooling power of the wind with jerseys that let the air flow through more freely and helmets that have more openings. Afterward, they bring their body temperatures down with foot baths as cold as 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
But the athletes and their teams say there is only so much they can do to make racing in a heat wave bearable. The changes that would provide the most relief are in the hands of the organizers: routing the course away from the heat islands of big cities, cutting the length of races, canceling stages when temperatures are too high and moving the racing into the morning.
Tour de France organizers did not respond to questions for this article.
“We’re going to have to change the way the Tour de France is designed in the next few years,” said Matthieu Sorel, a climate change expert at France’s meteorological service who was among the spectators watching the race in the Pyrenees this week. “It won’t be possible to ride with such temperatures during the afternoon.”
The current race schedule is not just about tradition, said researchers and cycling professionals. It’s influenced by the rhythms of television, with afternoons in July being lucrative because they coincide with school vacations and hours when TV viewership picks up in Europe and North America. Any decision to move the timing of the race would upend existing calculations.
Some cyclists, team managers and scientists anticipate the race will only change in a meaningful way when it finds itself in a full crisis.
“Other sports would be canceled if it’s that warm,” Bob Jungels, a Tour de France rider from Luxembourg, told Cyclingnews on a 104-degree Fahrenheit day. “But I think mostly in cycling we learn if something bad happens, which is very unfortunate.”
Rethinking summer in France
What the Tour de France has experienced this summer is no passing hardship. For parts of a continent long used to more temperate norms, it is a sign of a superheated new normal.
France has seen three times more heat waves in the past 30 years compared to the four decades before that.
A study published in Nature Communications this month identified Europe as a “heatwave hotspot,” with the frequency and intensity of heat waves increasing three to four times faster than in the rest of northern midlatitudes, including the hard-hit American West.
More frequent heat waves are an expected result of climate change. But the study authors say western Europe is particularly prone because of a change in atmospheric dynamics and a trend toward temporary but persistent double jet streams — periods when the fast-moving the air current that flows west to east around the Northern Hemisphere splits into two.
For Europeans, it all means a reevaluation of what summer means.
“What we already see is a shift in perception,” said Kai Kornhuber, a scientist with the Columbia University’s Climate School and a co-author the study. “That summer is not only a beautiful day at the beach and fun at water parks, but it’s also associated with wildfires, power failures and excess mortality.”
In the town of Igon, at the foot of the Pyrenees, spectators hid from the sun in the shade of hedges, a gas station and a street sign pointing the way to a ski resort this week, as they waited for the cyclists to zip through the windless valley.
When a Tour de France support car stopped in the village, locals crowded around the open door. “Enjoy our air conditioning!,” a man said from inside the car. (Air conditioning in French homes remains relatively uncommon. Only about 25 percent of all French have it.)
Why European homes (usually) don’t have air conditioning
Niall Turnbull, his 8-year old daughter and 5-year old son were equipped with a parasol, hats, ice cubes and ginger beer. He said he expected life in France to increasingly feel like Australia, where Turnbull, 38, previously lived.
“Here, people are still used to doing stuff in the middle of the day. That might start to change,” he said, sitting almost motionless in his chair just after noon.
Marie Jo Baradat, 65, agreed the French may need to give up their centuries-old rhythm of life and start “going to bed very late in the evening, to enjoy the evening” in moderate temperatures.
After hour of waiting, it took seconds for the Tour cyclists to pass the spectators in Igon, and only minutes afterward for the road to empty, as the crowds rushed home.
Heritage under threat
Firefighters have long been a part of the Tour de France caravan — the parade that winds through towns ahead of the peloton. But this year, when the firefighters went by, bystanders erupted in a particularly long round of applause.
France this summer has experienced some of the worst wildfires in its recent history, with blazes burning over 80 square miles in the country’s southwest, forcing the evacuation of more than 36,000 people.
The Tour de France took riders through the affected region, Gironde. They came within 70 miles of the fires. It was only by chance that organizers didn’t have to reroute the course — determined more than eight months earlier, after towns compete in an extensive and competitive application process.
In future years, as climate change increases the frequency of wildfires, the organizers may not be so fortunate.
In fact, the town of Villandraut — part of one of the final stages of last year’s Tour de France — is among those that have been evacuated.
On the road where the cyclists had raced exactly a year earlier, the smell of burning wood filled the air. Electronic road signs blinked warnings to drivers, but the shops, gas stations and restaurants were all shuttered and dark.
Just outside of town, firefighting planes descended until they were meters above the trees, and columns of firetrucks rushed toward the flames.
Cathy Cerami-dhu, 58, and her mother, Ida Cerami, 82, were drinking coffee at a rest stop just outside the evacuation zone. Both had to leave their homes, which so far appeared to be safe from the fires, they said.
One year ago, they had cheered the riders as the race passed their neighborhood, covered with posters and Tour de France flags.
Now, their streets were covered with banners to motivate firefighters.
Nearby, in a fire-ravaged forest, smoke was rising from the burned grass and tree stumps, and Theo Hernandez, 27, was pumping water out of a basin to supply firefighters.
A winegrower who has seen the impact of climate change in his daily life, he was among the volunteers who had traveled from across the region to help.
Even if the Tour de France were to pass right in front of him, Hernandez said, “I wouldn’t at all care about it.”
But he surveyed the scorched landscape with a pained expression. “This is our heritage that’s burning.”
Anthony Faiola in Miami contributed to this report. | 2022-07-23T18:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change is making the Tour de France more extreme - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/23/tour-de-france-heat-wave-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/23/tour-de-france-heat-wave-climate-change/ |
D.C. man indicted by federal grand jury after six armed robberies
A D.C. man was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on six counts of interfering with interstate commerce by robbery, following a string of incidents around the District earlier this year.
On separate occasions in late January and early February, 35-year-old Michael Daniels entered six small stores, showed a gun to an employee inside and then fled with money, according to the indictment, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The incidents took place over a period of about two weeks and were scattered across the District: at a dry cleaner and a vape shop in Capitol Hill; a liquor store in the U Street corridor; and cell phone shops in Lanier Heights, Mount Pleasant and Petworth. All but one of the robberies took place between 2 and 4 p.m., police said.
Police said in a statement that Daniels “is currently incarcerated in a neighboring jurisdiction.” It is unclear whether he has legal representation; The Post was unable to reach him for comment. | 2022-07-23T20:04:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grand jury indicts D.C. man after six armed robberies in District - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/23/armed-robbery-indictment-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/23/armed-robbery-indictment-dc/ |
A selfie of Brianna Grier. Grier, 28, died Thursday, days after authorities said she “fell” out of a police vehicle. (Courtesy of Lottie Grier)
But when sheriff’s deputies arrived at their home in Sparta, Ga., late one night last week, they told Grier they smelled alcohol on her breath. And after she admitted she had been drinking, they placed her in handcuffs, loaded her into a patrol car and told her that they were going to detain her for intoxication, her father recalled.
A spokesperson for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Police encounter many people with mental-health crises. Could psychiatrists help?
Marvin Grier said his daughter, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia years ago and prescribed medication, had been at her parents’ home on July 14. She was visiting her 3-year-old twin girls, who live with their grandparents. Grier left the house for a while and then came back in crisis after midnight, her father said.
He acknowledged that she used illegal drugs at times to cope. “She had told me a while back that when she did that [use drugs], that would help her because the medication she was getting from the doctors weren’t doing her no good,” Marvin Grier said. But he did not know whether she had used drugs before returning to her parents’ house in a schizophrenic episode.
He said he and Grier’s mother have called 911 in the past when their daughter was in that state. But what happened last week was the first time paramedics didn’t come with police and help her get treatment in a medical setting, he said.
Crisis counselors are being hailed as police alternatives. It’s too heavy a burden, some say. | 2022-07-23T20:09:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgia woman Brianna Grier died after she 'fell' out of a patrol vehicle, authorities say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/23/georgia-woman-police-death-vehicle-brianna-grier/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/23/georgia-woman-police-death-vehicle-brianna-grier/ |
In this image taken from video provided by WHEC-TV, David Jakubonis, left, is subdued as he brandishes a sharp object during an attack U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, right, as the Republican candidate for New York governor delivered a speech in Perinton, N.Y., Thursday, July 21, 2022. Jakubonis, 43, has been charged with attempted assault, arraigned and released, a Monroe County sheriff’s spokesperson said. (WHEC-TV via AP) (Uncredited/WHEC-TV) | 2022-07-23T20:09:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Investigators: Attacker 'did not know who' Zeldin was - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/investigators-attacker-did-not-know-who-zeldin-was/2022/07/23/88821ae2-0ac2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/investigators-attacker-did-not-know-who-zeldin-was/2022/07/23/88821ae2-0ac2-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
This trip is unlike any other in papal history: Expressing remorse over the church’s role in the Indigenous residential school system is its primary purpose
Chico Harlan
Parish council chairperson Glenda Soosay and Sister Monika from the Congregation of Sisters of Merciful Jesus make preparations ahead of a visit by Pope Francis to Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in Maskwacis, Alberta, Canada. (Amber Bracken/Reuters)
TORONTO — Pope Francis on Sunday is scheduled to begin a visit to Canada, where he will come face-to-face with one of the country’s core tragedies: the often-abusive residential schools, run with the help of the Catholic Church, designed to extinguish Indigenous culture and family ties.
Francis has faced calls throughout his papacy to apologize in Canada for the church’s role in the residential school system, but pressure grew in the past year as several Indigenous groups said ground-penetrating radar had uncovered evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves at or near the sites of former schools.
The findings spurred a national reckoning over Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people and diminished the church’s reputation here. After resisting calls for an apology, Francis told an Indigenous delegation at the Vatican in April that he was “sorry” for the behavior of “a number of Catholics” and intended to visit Canada.
Randy Ermineskin, chief of the Ermineskin Cree Nation in Alberta, said he hopes the pope’s remarks bring healing.
“We want the truth about what happened at these schools to be shared to the public,” he said. “Everyone needs to know what happened to us, and that it will never happen again.”
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in a 2015 report that the residential school system perpetrated a “cultural genocide,” leaving deep wounds and intergenerational trauma within Indigenous families that traces across Canada.
An unmarked gravesite drags a not-so-distant horror back into the spotlight. Is this a real reckoning?
Most of the schools were run by Catholic entities. Among the commission’s 94 calls to action was a formal papal apology on Canadian soil.
Francis is the first pope to travel to Canada since Pope John Paul II’s visit in 2002 for World Youth Day, which included an outdoor Mass at a Toronto park that drew several hundred thousand pilgrims. This trip will have a different tenor.
Papal apologies are hardly novel, and they’ve addressed past errors specific and vast, including the sins of colonialism and church discrimination against women. But when such apologies have come during foreign visits — like John Paul II, in Cameroon in 1985, apologizing for White Christian involvement in the slave trade — they’ve been tucked into otherwise standard papal programs of celebration and meet-and-greets.
The trip to Canada has much less pomp: “A penitential pilgrimage,” Francis recently called it.
Though he arrives on a Sunday, Francis will not publicly celebrate Mass until Tuesday. The Rev. Cristino Bouvette, the national liturgical director for the visit, said that was deliberate.
“I think he’s signaling that he’s come with a mission in mind and that is to encounter Indigenous people on their land,” said Bouvette, a priest whose grandmother was a residential school survivor, “and to extend that symbolic olive branch in the hope of reconciliation. … What he’s coming here to do is quite specific.”
Organizers have said the itinerary was planned with the 85-year-old pontiff’s declining mobility in mind. Francis canceled a planned trip this month to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan to not jeopardize the health of his knee.
But in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday, RoseAnne Archibald, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said Indigenous people have had little input in the visit and are being “re-victimized.”
“This visit and apology has evolved to be more for the benefit of Canadian Catholic parishioners and the global Christian community,” she wrote, “and less about actual moves for reparations and reconciliation with the First Nations community that was harmed by institutions of assimilation and genocide.”
For Indigenous leaders, Francis’s trip has been hard-won.
While some Catholic entities and local church leaders here apologized, Francis had long resisted calls, including a personal appeal from Trudeau in 2017, to follow suit.
But earlier this year, the pope welcomed an Indigenous delegation to the Vatican, capping their encounter with an apology for the “deplorable conduct” in residential schools by “members” of the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis won’t apologize for abusive church-run schools in Canada, and lawmakers aren’t happy
“For him to say that is very, very touching,” said Buffalo, 80, who attended the Ermineskin Residential School. “Our people need to hear that — that the wrongs done to us need to be rectified, need to be reconciled with.”
David Gibson, the director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, said Francis’s handling of the abuse crisis has likely influenced his handling of this moment and shaped his approach to apologies: that they should be addressed to the specific victims, after meeting with them and listening to them.
“[An apology] can no longer be just a decree, read from the balcony of St. Peter’s,” he said. “It’s now a personal action between the pope and a person or people.”
She said Francis’s apology in April rang “hollow.”
“It was him apologizing on behalf of some members,” said Bernard, 66. “This is systemic abuse.”
“That’s my prayer,” said Bernard. “Simply saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ is not enough. You need action.” | 2022-07-23T21:41:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pope Francis heads to Canada to apologize for indigenous people residential schools - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/23/pope-francis-canada-trip-apology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/23/pope-francis-canada-trip-apology/ |
At French Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc aims to keep title hopes alive
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is 38 points behind Max Verstappen in the race for the drivers’ championship entering Sunday’s French Grand Prix. (Eric Gaillard/AFP)
A pair of promising finishes have resuscitated Ferrari’s title hopes entering Sunday’s French Grand Prix, which occurs midway through the 2022 Formula One season. But if those victories represent promise, they also serve as a reminder that nothing has come easy for the Italian outfit this season.
During a year when Ferrari has capitalized on regulation changes and sported two of the fastest cars on the grid, the team also has struggled to outpace untimely misfortune. Such was the case during its most recent outing in Austria on July 10, when Charles Leclerc won his first race since April, but only after teammate Carlos Sainz narrowly escaped his car after it caught fire and began to slide down a slope following an engine failure during lap 57 — the team’s fourth mechanical failure in 11 races this season.
Formula One can be a capricious sport, but that’s been especially true for Ferrari, whose brushes with misfortune this season have at times felt like a certainty; a feeling that might help explain why Leclerc, speaking over the team radio, said he was “really scared” in the closing moments of the race in Austria.
Two weeks later, Sainz and Leclerc will try to cross the finish line in first and second, as they did during Friday’s practice in Le Castellet, near Marseille in southern France, where Sunday’s race will take place.
Leclerc enters the race in second behind defending champion Max Verstappen in the drivers’ championship standings. Ferrari is second in the race for the constructors’ crown, trailing Verstappen’s Red Bull by 56 points with 11 races to go (359-303). Mercedes, winner of the past eight constructors’ titles, is third (237 points).
You probably know someone who just got into Formula One. That’s a good problem for the video game designers working on F1 racing games.
Coincidentally, it was Verstappen who was chasing a dominant Leclerc after car trouble forced the Dutch driver into his second retirement during the third race of the season in Australia. Leclerc coasted from pole position to the top of the podium in that race, establishing a 46-point lead over Verstappen as fans of the prancing horse celebrated the team’s competitive renaissance.
But Verstappen won the next three — with a little help — ending with the Spanish Grand Prix in May, which marked the beginning of Leclerc’s mechanical misfortunes.
Leclerc bowed out of that race with an engine failure. The next week in Monaco, he dropped from first and finished fourth as a result of Ferrari’s botched strategy at his home race. At the next race, in Azerbaijan, Leclerc surrendered the lead after an engine failure forced an early retirement midway through the race.
After a string of Ferrari power problems and strategic missteps, Sainz won his first race of the season earlier this month in England. Leclerc then rebounded in Austria, though his early-season lead has morphed into a 38-point deficit behind Verstappen (208-170).
“I definitely needed that one,” Leclerc said after his recent victory. “I mean, the last five races have been incredibly difficult for myself but also for the team obviously, and to finally show that we’ve got the pace in the car and that we can do it is incredible, so we need to push until the end.”
In a year in which podium finishes have at times felt out of reach for the sport’s most dominant driver, Lewis Hamilton, Leclerc and Verstappen have been the class of the 2022 grid — mechanical failures aside.
While the French Grand Prix offers another opportunity for Leclerc to close the gap, it will be the 300th Formula One race for Hamilton, who missed out on a record eighth drivers’ title after the controversial ending to last year’s season finale.
Just five other drivers have competed in 300 Formula One races — Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello and Kimi Raikkonen, who owns the record for most races (349). But none of those drivers won a Grand Prix after reaching the 300-race milestone. Hamilton, who sits in sixth place (109 points), has not won a race this season, though he’s finished as high as third place on four occasions.
“It doesn’t faze me because I am working towards getting that win,” Hamilton told reporters. “I do believe we will at some stage be able to compete with these guys. Whether it is this weekend or in five races’ time.”
Entering the French Grand Prix, Leclerc earned pole position on Saturday ahead of Verstappen. Sainz impressed during practice sessions this week, but will begin in the back row because of an engine penalty incurred after the team replaced car parts damaged by the fire in Austria. | 2022-07-23T23:12:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At French Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari look to keep title hopes alive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/french-grand-prix-ferrari/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/french-grand-prix-ferrari/ |
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the outbreak a so-called public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC (pronounced “fake”), on July 23. The step will empower the agency to invoke new measures to curb the virus’s spread. He last declared a PHEIC in January 2020, during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Tedros said monkeypox is concentrated among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, especially those who have had multiple, recent sexual partners. That fact means the contagion can be stopped with “the right strategies in the right groups,” he said. Meanwhile, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in mid-July that the window for controlling the US outbreak “has probably closed” and that only a small fraction of the cases in the country have been reported, with infections now occurring across the broader population. In the Netherlands, doctors reported a case in a boy under 10 with an immune impairment. Unable to identify how he was infected, they speculate that the virus may be present in the general population and that respiratory transmission may have played a role.
(Updates number of cases in section 5, emergency declaration and pediatric case in section 8.) | 2022-07-24T00:43:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding Monkeypox and How Outbreaks Spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/23/73930a16-0adf-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/23/73930a16-0adf-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
N.Y. family seeks amends from Sesame Place
Family seeks amends from Sesame Place
The family of two Black girls who are seemingly snubbed by a costumed character at Sesame Place Philadelphia in a viral video this past week stepped up pressure on Saturday for the amusement park to turn the incident into a “teachable moment” about racial bias.
At a news conference in New York, attorneys for the family pressed Sesame Place and its owner, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, to make amends after the company issued several statements that the family suggested were insincere.
“The ball is in your corner, SeaWorld,” said Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney. “. . . Let’s make this a teachable moment, Sesame Street, for American society.”
The incident made national news last weekend after an employee dressed as the muppet Rosita was recorded appearing to refuse to high-five two 6-year-old Black girls at a parade at Sesame Place in Langhorne, Pa. Jodi Brown posted the video of her daughter and niece, leading to calls to boycott the park.
1 dead in shooting
in Seattle suburb
One person was killed and five others were treated for gunshot wounds after multiple shots were fired in the Seattle suburb of Renton, Wash., police said.
The Renton Police Department tweeted that officers were called before 1 a.m. Saturday and found multiple victims, five of whom were treated for injuries. Police confirmed one death.
An initial investigation indicates a dispute outside of a large gathering that led to the gunfire possibly by more than one person, police said.
Two sentenced to life in killing of Calif. teens: Two men convicted of killing a pair of California teenagers who vanished six years ago were sentenced Friday to life in prison without possibility of parole, prosecutors said. Chandale Shannon, 25, of Winters and Jesus Campos, 22, of Woodland were sentenced for the 2016 kidnapping and killing of the teens, whose bodies were never found. The men were among four people charged with killing Enrique Rios, 16, and his friend Elijah Moore, 17. Prosecutors said Moore was killed in revenge after stealing 3 ounces of marijuana from three of the defendants. Rios was shot and killed by David Froste in October 2016 when he refused to call or provide a location for Moore, who was killed several weeks later in November, prosecutors said. | 2022-07-24T00:43:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | N.Y. family seeks amends from Sesame Place - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ny-family-seeks-amends-from-sesame-place/2022/07/23/f3a986a4-0a2f-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ny-family-seeks-amends-from-sesame-place/2022/07/23/f3a986a4-0a2f-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
Tanner sold vegetables at President’s Square and saved enough money to purchase the freedom of her family members
Susan Cook, a descendant of Alethia Tanner, speaks during a dedication ceremony at Alethia Tanner Park in Washington on Saturday. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)
It would cost $1,400 for Alethia Tanner to buy her freedom, but she finally managed to do it. On June 29, 1810, Tanner made her last payment of $277 to her enslaver Rachel Platt. Almost two weeks later, on July 10, Tanner received her freedom papers from the Platt family.
Born about 1785, Alethia “Lethe” Browning Tanner grew up enslaved with her two sisters on a plantation near the Patuxent River in Maryland. Tanner’s older sister, Sophia Browning Bell, kept a small garden where she grew vegetables that she would sell at markets in Alexandria and the District.
Alethia’s skill as a gardener allowed her to adopt a similar endeavor when she began selling vegetables at President’s Square, now Lafayette Square, right outside the White House, while she was doing domestic work for President Thomas Jefferson. After buying her freedom, Tanner helped free dozens of members of her family.
On Saturday, the first Alethia Tanner Day was celebrated at Alethia Tanner Park in D.C.'s NoMa neighborhood to recognize Tanner’s achievements. The park itself officially opened in June 2020, but the pandemic forced the NoMa Parks Foundation to open sections of the park in waves.
Jasper said the foundation presented the D.C. Council with a vision of a park and issued a call for names from community members. The community, she said, rallied around using Tanner’s name.
In March 2019, Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) introduced legislation to name the park “Alethia Tanner Park,” and the council later passed the legislation.
Lincoln tried to free the enslaved in D.C. years before he succeeded
Jasper said Susan Cook, an exhibit designer for Montgomery County parks system and a direct descendant of Tanner, shared the research she’d conducted into Tanner, as well as primary documents.
Susan Cook’s brother, Peter, said Tanner’s name will live on in the park.
“We don’t really celebrate people such as Alethia, and I think this is a great starting point,” Cook said. “I feel prideful as a descendant, but I’m excited to see other people’s responses to her story. I’m excited to see the spirit of Alethia gain traction with people.”
Cook said that it was remarkable to learn Tanner’s name had such overwhelming support from the city. She also said the park is a living memorial to Tanner’s perseverance.
More on the history of slavery
She sued her enslaver for reparations and won. Her descendants never knew.
The painful, cutting and brilliant letters Black people wrote to their former enslavers
At 88, he is a historical rarity — the living son of a slave | 2022-07-24T01:52:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alethia Tanner Day honors enslaved woman who bought her freedom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/23/alethia-tanner-day-noma-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/23/alethia-tanner-day-noma-park/ |
Arizona's Carson Kelly slides safely into home with a fourth-inning run. The Diamondbacks have outscored the Nationals 17-3 over the first two games of the series. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
PHOENIX — Madison Bumgarner had a clear plan against Juan Soto on Saturday night: Pound fastballs at or above the top of the zone, test Soto’s sixth-sense plate discipline, see what happens.
And it worked. Soto entered the game with a chase rate of 21.2 percent, the third-lowest in the majors behind only Alex Bregman and Max Muncy. Bumgarner was okay with that. With the bases empty in the first, he watched Soto launch a missile on an up-and-in heater, just wide of the right field foul pole, before flying out to deep center. In the second, Soto chased and whiffed on four fastballs that were high or outside. Then in the fifth, Soto took a called strike — a pitch flirting with the heart of the zone — then fouled off a high fastball, then struck out on one above his head.
The Washington Nationals didn’t lose, 7-2, to the Arizona Diamondbacks because of those at-bats. The rest of the lineup didn’t hit, either. While keeping the Nationals (31-65) in it, Aníbal Sánchez yielded three runs in five innings. Behind him, Andrés Machado entered and was tagged for four runs in the sixth. Josh Bell and Nelson Cruz finished a combined 0 for 7. Victor Robles’s third homer, a solo shot off Bumgarner in the eighth, only trimmed the deficit to five runs.
But those lefty-lefty matchups with Bumgarner were another odd blip of Soto’s season. The 23-year-old saw 10 pitches in three plate appearances. Every one of them was a four-seam fastball in the low 90s. Of Bumgarner’s seven strikes against him, not counting the ball in play in the first, just two were in the zone.
Typically, if a pitcher wants to bait Soto with balls that are high, low, inside or outside, the result is a walk or late-count contact, once the guy on the mound gives in. This game brought the opposite, inverting Soto’s well-documented approach. Bumgarner lasted eight innings, holding the Nationals to two runs, walking none and striking out eight. During his second meeting with Soto, a fan chanted “440! 440!” in the lower bowl, nodding to the record contract offer Soto recently turned down.
Those numbers will trail him wherever Washington travels — or wherever Soto goes with his next club, should he be traded ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline. With an 0 for 4 performance Saturday, Soto snapped a career-best 27-game on-base streak. The Nationals, meanwhile, have dropped 17 of their past 19 contests. They have been outscored by the Diamondbacks, another last-place team, 17-3 in the series.
Why did Keibert Ruiz and Luis García both sit Saturday? Manager Dave Martinez wanted to stack his order with righties against the 32-year-old Bumgarner. So with Ruiz, a switch-hitter, that meant swapping in the right-handed Tres Barrera ahead of Ruiz playing in Sunday’s finale. With García, a left-handed hitter, Martinez replaced him with switch-hitting utility man Ehire Adrianza. The decisions did not jolt the offense.
Why did the Nationals option Josh Rogers to the minors? “Before he left, he was working on different pitches,” Martinez said of the move that corresponded with Rogers, a left-handed pitcher, being reinstated off the injured list Friday. “I know we want to develop a change-up, he’s working on a different breaking ball. But more than anything, it’s to keep him stretched out. … The more starters we can have down in the minor leagues, the better we’re going to be here in the long run.”
Had Sánchez and Bumgarner ever faced each other? Once on July 29, 2010, when Sánchez, then 26, threw a complete-game shutout for the Florida Marlins. Bumgarner, 20 and pitching for the San Francisco Giants, went five innings in a 5-0 loss. They have now combined for 696 career appearances. | 2022-07-24T03:42:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Diamondbacks keep Juan Soto at bay and take care of the Nationals again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/nationals-diamondbacks-soto-bumgarner/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/23/nationals-diamondbacks-soto-bumgarner/ |
Team USA pose after the final in the women's 4x100-meter relay at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday, July 23, 2022, in Eugene, Ore. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
EUGENE, Ore. — The four American men stationed across the Hayward Field track never worried how fast they would run. Their excellence across the first eight days of the track and field world championships had erased all doubt about their speed. They needed only to concern themselves with the security of their baton, the 11.5-inch aluminum cylinder that had vexed prior generations of their brethren.
Minutes after the U.S. women’s 4x100 relay team pulled an epic upset over Jamaica, the American men executed two perfect handoffs and then watched an expected gold medal turn silver on the third. The U.S. men’s 4x100 team did not add another debacle to its star-crossed history. But it did add a disappointment, a silver medal after it had spent the past week piling up victories in sprints.
The problem happened on the final handoff, with 100 meters to go. Elijah Hall-Thompson zoomed around the final turn with a slight lead and stuck out the baton to Marvin Bracy-Williams. On his first attempt to grab, Bracy-Williams missed. He reached again and twisted his upper body, which provided Canadian anchor Andre De Grasse the daylight he needed to storm ahead for gold. Noah Lyles of Alexandria ran a flawless second leg and added silver to his gold medal in the 200 meters.
The American women’s 4x100 relay team stunned the fearsome Jamaican team, which included all three medalists in the 100 meters and the second-fastest women ever in both the 100 and 200 meters. Melissa Jefferson, Abby Steiner and Jenna Prandini handed the baton with a lead to Twanisha Terry, who held off 200 meters champion Shericka Jackson with a lean at the line, finishing 0.07 seconds ahead in 41.14 seconds.
“I knew we were going to do something to shock the world here,” Terry said in an on-track interview.
Steiner may have made the difference. A burgeoning star and relay expert at Kentucky, Steiner won three gold medals at the NCAA Championships in June in the 200 meters and both 4x100 and 4x400 relays. Steiner took the baton for the second leg with a slight lead, running against Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah, who won three gold medals last summer at the Tokyo Olympics. Steiner ran her leg in 9.86 seconds, and Thompson-Herah managed only 10.10.
Despite usually taking the track with the fastest team, the United States had crafted a slapstick history of disappointment in the 4x100 relay. Since 1988, American men had won 12 medals at the Olympics and world championships in the 4x100 relay but been disqualified 11 times. In Tokyo, the United States crossed the line, but a clumsy handoff between Fred Kerley and Ronnie Baker resulted in a sixth-place finish in the qualifying heat.
American men swept every medal in the 100 meters and 200 meters, won gold in the 400, gold and silver in the 100 meters hurdles and silver and bronze in the 400 meters hurdles. If U.S. male sprinters were their own country, they would lead the world total medals, and only Ethiopia would tie them in golds.
Ethiopian female distance runners have matched American male sprinters in dominance. Red, yellow and green flags have been unfurled at rapid pace, including the one a man tried to run onto the track at the conclusion of the women’s 5,000 meters before being dragged away by security. Gudaf Tsegay won in 14:46.29, adding to her 1,500 meters silver, and countrywoman Dawit Seyaum took bronze. Ethiopia finished Saturday night second on the medal table with 10 medals and four golds, seven of them won by women, all of them in distances 1,500 meters or longer.
Nobody in American history has won more track and field medals than the runner summoned Saturday night out of brief retirement. Allyson Felix said goodbye to her sport on the first night of the world championships, walking away after a running a leg for the bronze medal U.S. 4x400 mixed relay team. She flew home to Los Angeles and attended the ESPYs. She “absolutely” felt at peace, she said.
Early last week, Felix went to Hot Wings Cafe in Los Angeles and ordered the favorite cheat meal she craved — hot wings and a root beer float. In the middle of her meal, her coach, Bob Kersee, called and asked if she could run a leg in the preliminary round of the women’s 4x400 relay. | 2022-07-24T03:43:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World track and field championships Day 9 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/23/world-track-field-championships-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/23/world-track-field-championships-/ |
I have always felt like something was missing. Every time I try to reach out and connect emotionally, he becomes angry and withdraws.
Frustrated with his distance and indifference, I recently said that I needed to know if he loved me enough to work with me on improving our relationship. He stated that he doesn’t know if he loves me because he doesn’t know how to feel love, because of the way he grew up.
Knowing this explains why he has been distant and indifferent to me and our children all of these years. My sons and I had nothing to do with the way he grew up, yet we are the ones who are being punished, with a father and husband who cannot feel or express love and connection.
I feel as if my only choice at this point is to walk away from a 40-year marriage, and that makes me sad. What do other women do when married to an empty shell of a man who is unwilling to be a better partner?
Lonely Wife: You know from your own experience that good parents create a sense of security, safety and well-being — so that their children can grow to be resilient, brave, and secure — even with their most challenging emotions. And love is the most challenging emotion of all.
I wonder whether you and your husband are aware of any ways he does try to show love. Maybe it is through work, supporting the family, or pride in you.
I am wondering whether you can help me out with an etiquette question.
Trying: First of all, showing up for people in this way is the most important thing of all. Words often fail in situations like this, but you could make eye contact and say, “I’m very sorry for your loss,” “I was so fond of Uncle James,” or even, “I don’t really know what to say, but I’m glad I came.”
— the Rev. Steve Norcross, Portland, Oregon
Fr. Steve: Nobody parties quite like the Episcopalians. Rock on! | 2022-07-24T04:12:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: After 40 years, I need more affection from my husband - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/24/ask-amy-husband-affection-distant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/24/ask-amy-husband-affection-distant/ |
FILE - Philadelphia Phillies’ Pete Rose bats during a 1980 baseball game. Rose will make an appearance on the field in Philadelphia next month. Baseball’s career hits leader will be part of Phillies alumni weekend, and will be introduced on the field alongside many former teammates from the 1980 World Series championship team on Aug. 7. (AP Photo, File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-07-24T05:17:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pete Rose to appear on field in Philadelphia next month - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/pete-rose-to-appear-on-field-in-philadelphia-next-month/2022/07/23/bb5fc874-0b03-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/pete-rose-to-appear-on-field-in-philadelphia-next-month/2022/07/23/bb5fc874-0b03-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
NEAR IZYUM, Ukraine — If only they had more, and more sophisticated, weapons from the West, Ukrainian officials often tell their American counterparts and anyone else who will listen, they could make short work of Russian invaders. Last month’s arrival of the first of what are now a dozen U.S. multiple-launch precision rocket systems, known as HIMARS, has already been a game-changer, soldiers here said this week.
Since a recent HIMARS strike on an enemy ammunition depot in Izyum, located in the southwestern Kharkiv region, Russian shelling has been “10 times less” than before, said Bohdan Dmytruk, a battalion commander in Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade.
Ukrainian government and military officials have said at various times that they need dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of HIMARS. “For an effective counteroffensive, we need at least 100,” with longer-range munition than what has been supplied, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleskii Reznikov said Tuesday in a video appearance at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “THAT would be a game changer.”
The nerve center of the operation is a large, secure room at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. Cables taped along the floor and folding tables lined with laptops gave it a makeshift atmosphere during a reporter’s recent visit, with a World War II allied vibe as uniformed officers from many countries traded documents, pointed at screens filled with lists and graphs, and consulted on telephones in various languages. The to-do list is complex. Norwegian tanks have needed new barrels to match donated ammunition from somewhere else. Aging Spanish tanks, made in Germany, required refurbishment after years in storage. Shells and spare parts for Ukraine’s own Soviet-era artillery are being solicited from other former USSR states. There are logistics routes to be plotted, and, always, new Ukrainian requests to consider.
U.S. administration and military officials have said that one of their top concerns is not provoking Russia into a direct conflict with NATO, even as Ukraine points out that Russia invaded their country without provocation. The range of the ammunition the United States is providing for the HIMARS will not reach across the occupied east to Russia itself from Ukrainian front lines, but allows what Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at a Wednesday news conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, called an “echelon of fires," with shorter-range weapons, across various distances.
“It’s not good enough just to provide a piece of equipment,” Austin said. “We need to have that piece of gear plus spare parts, plus tools to repair it."
“The sooner we receive them, the more lives of our soldiers we will save, and the sooner we will start the counteroffensive operation,” Yehor Cherniev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that we have to spend weeks and months to convince our partners."
But for now, he said, they have the HIMARS. “We’ll fight with these,” he said. "If we get the longer-range [munitions], we’ll use those. And the Russians know that either way, it’s the end for them with these weapons.” | 2022-07-24T06:14:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine seeks U.S. HIMARS, ATACMS to push Russia back from east - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ukriane-himars-russia-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ukriane-himars-russia-us/ |
Mikhola Khanatov, mayor of the city of Popasna, in Dnipro, Ukraine, 9th of July 2022. Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post
NOVOMOSKOVSK, Ukraine — Mykola Khanatov is a mayor without a city.
He remembers the last time he saw his hometown of Popasna, in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. It was orthodox Easter and the Russians were at the gates. He was inside his fourth story apartment when a torrent of shells landed nearby.
The 41-year-old took off down the stairs, squeezing through the bars of a locked security door to reach the basement.
There he huddled with his neighbors for the better part of an hour. After weeks of intense bombardment, residents had learned the rhythm of the Russian firing teams — a pause in the shelling meant he had a ten-minute head start before the soldiers reloaded.
He recalls sprinting to his van and racing through the back roads and alleyways that led west, hoping to stay out of sight of the Russian drones used to identify artillery targets. The city he knew by heart, now scarred and disfigured, rushed by in a blur.
Resigned to the loss of his home, he only hoped to make it out alive. “I’ve never prayed so hard for my own life,” he said.
Now in exile, Khanatov, like dozens of other Ukrainian mayors in territories occupied by Russian forces, is determined to keep his community together. He and other city officials have begun the painstaking process of trying to rebuild the administration they left behind in Popasna.
Their headquarters is a three-car garage, 170 miles west in the town of Novomoskovsk. At the school next door, the mayor works out of a former classroom, the walls lined with pictures drawn by students with messages reading “Lets go Ukraine” and “Think happy” scribbled in crayon.
Their new city planning meetings are spent organizing humanitarian deliveries to exhausted families from Popasna, and helping others navigate the bureaucracy of a government at war. With most of the city’s 20,000 residents displaced, and those still there facing increasingly dire conditions, the need is growing.
Before the war, Khanatov had a staff of nearly 100 people, who helped oversee the city’s bus drivers, teachers, accountants and municipal workers. Only fifteen members of his administration are still with him at the makeshift hub, where they take turns fielding phone calls and messages on social media from their former neighbors, who need help with pensions, birth certificates, food, and housing.
“It’s moral support, to let people know their leaders didn’t abandon them,” said Khanatov. “Right now, there are people born and dying in the occupied territory.”
When not registering recent arrivals — about 4,000 have made their way to Novomoskovsk — the team loads boxes with relief supplies, which are driven at least once a week to families sheltering in the front line city of Bakhmut.
The people of Popasna have lived with the sorrow and chaos of war for nearly a decade. A Moscow-backed separatist uprising in 2014 displaced tens of thousands in eastern Ukraine and destroyed infrastructure across the region.
Kyiv made a concerted effort to support those who stayed, building new schools, repairing old roads, and improving government services, Khanatov said. The improvements were incremental, but stark when compared to the poor living conditions in the occupied territories next door, which some Ukrainians compare to North Korea.
Over the years, locals grew accustomed to the presence of Ukrainian troops in their front line town, but the mood began to shift in January as officials warned of a Russian invasion. Days after the start of the war on Feb. 24, many were hesitant to leave their homes — the memories of displacement from 2014 still lingered. Trains departing for Kyiv would wait twelve hours to evacuate ten passengers. Some fled, only to return days later, according to the mayor.
On March 2, the shelling began. The city held out for 68 days, until Russian forces finally overwhelmed its depleted defensive positions. Khanatov says hundreds of residents were killed in the fighting, and the city ran out of plaques for gravestones.
In the early days of the invasion, local officials focused on evacuating the thousands of residents trapped in the city, and providing humanitarian aid to those that refused to leave.
The local administration, working with the heads of the public utilities, the fire department and police, would start their day assessing the damage overnight, sending maintenance crews to make hasty repairs to shelled power and water lines. “They’d bomb at night and in the morning we’d start all over again,” the mayor said.
Officials began quietly removing boxes of government documents, stamps, and computers to their homes, knowing their days in Popasna were numbered. Afraid of stoking panic among residents that they were being abandoned, Khanatov instructed the city accountant to take home one box every night until the office was cleared.
All the while, bodies piled up in the streets. The stench of death was everywhere.
“Taking people out is good, bringing humanitarian aid is good, but dead bodies were scattered across our entire city and they had to be buried,” said Khanatov. “Emotionally, it was a constant struggle, but I had to overcome it.”
Eventually, the mayor found a truck to collect the remains. A local funeral parlor buried them.
The city’s top officials would gather regularly in person before their meeting location was struck twice by the Russians. “Everyone knew what needed to be done,” said Khanatov.
As Russian forces closed in on the city, he gathered the department heads of Popasna a final time. “Whoever wants to leave can leave, whoever wants to stay can stay,” he told them. “I won’t tell you what to do. You’ve been stronger and braver than I could have ever asked of you. I’ll accept your decision.”
Many, including the mayor, chose to relocate to the nearby city of Bakhmut, where they continued carrying out their duties, then moved again to Novomoskovsk as the fighting edged closer.
The water service chief, Dimitri Filishtinskyi, led more than fifty evacuation missions, saving hundreds of people. But the missions grew more dangerous, as Russian drones circled overhead and evacuation buses became targets for enemy artillery. A volunteer driver from Kyiv was captured and held for ransom by Russian forces.
Many residents refused to leave, said Khanatov, fearing they wouldn’t survive the journey. Others preferred to wait for the occupation. Filishtinskyi stopped visiting one bomb shelter after those inside expressed sympathy for the invading Russian forces. “For eight years they’ve seen there is no future there and still they were waiting for the Russian world,” he said.
But Khanatov was struck by the bravery of everyday Ukrainians, willing to sacrifice their lives to save his city. “It’s the young people, the good ones, that are most dedicated to helping others,” he said.
April 29 was the last time anyone would be able to enter Popasna from Ukrainian-held territory. Days later, the governor of Luhansk confirmed the city had fallen.
“When the Russian soldiers arrived, they must have understood that the people of the city were pretty well off — even with the city in ruins,” said Khanatov.
In the months since, some local officials have moved on — the former chief of police accepted a position in another town, as did the head of the fire department. The mayor is trying to hold his government in exile together.
Khanatov shares a spartan one bedroom apartment with his wife and seventeen-year-old daughter, furnished with the few belongings they were able to retrieve from their home. His wife, Rimma, suffers from suffocating panic attacks.
“When we return to see the destruction with our own eyes, there will be a second wave of pain,” said Rimma. “There is still so much to overcome,” she lamented, weeping silently “We built everything in Popasna.”
Khanatov tries to bury his feelings in his work. “From time to time it catches up to me,” he conceded. “I was scared but this fear emboldened me.”
He is sustained by his memories of Popasna, and the hope it will one day be free.
“We are all still hoping to go back someday,” he said. | 2022-07-24T06:14:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mayor of Russian-occupied city in Luhansk sets up government in exile - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/24/ukraine-luhansk-mayor-exile/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/24/ukraine-luhansk-mayor-exile/ |
Is Russia Letting Up on Energy? Don’t Trust Putin
Russia is going to keep creating uncertainty over shipments of oil, gas and agricultural commodities onto world markets. It has nothing to lose and lots to gain.
So don’t get complacent about recent developments that might suggest President Vladimir Putin is walking back from disrupting energy, food and fertilizer flows. He isn’t.
In the past couple of weeks, a Russian court threw out the 30-day suspension of shipments through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s conduit that carries mostly Kazakhstani crude to an export terminal on Russia’s Black Sea coast. The suspension, which I wrote about, would have removed as much as 45 million barrels of crude from global supplies, with a value of more than $4.5 billion. But the fine imposed on the company in place of the suspension was a mere 200,000 rubles, equivalent to $3,200.
The successful appeal was undoubtedly a victory for the pipeline company and a relief for European refiners. But for the government of Kazakhstan and the foreign oil companies operating there, the threat of future disruption hasn’t gone away.
Flows through the CPC system have already been interrupted twice since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. In late March, the terminal was partially shut for a month after a storm reportedly damaged two of the three loading buoys. Then in mid-June, loadings were again suspended from two moorings for a survey of the surrounding water area, which led to the discovery of a number of World War II mines. A skeptic might have expected mine removal to have been a priority when the buoys were first installed.
Of even greater concern for European nations, the Kremlin’s hand has been firmly in control of Russia’s gas flows. For most of last year, deliveries were running at about 400 million cubic meters a day. That abruptly fell by about 25% as winter approached, with flows slashed on the Yamal-Europe pipeline through Poland. They dropped again in January, when volumes sent via Ukraine were also severely curtailed. By June, total pipeline gas flows from Russia to Europe were down to about 40% of normal levels, dropping below 20% in the past two weeks, with the Nord Stream pipeline halted for annual maintenance.
Fears that the line directly linking Russia to Germany wouldn’t restart once the work was finished have been allayed — for now. Shipments along the route resumed on July 21, but President Putin was quick to warn that they could fall again within days unless a turbine sent to Canada for servicing is returned before one of the others on the line is taken out of service.
And then there’s the deal to allow shipments of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. While any agreement to restore these vital exports is to be welcomed, be under no illusion that they can’t be halted again at any time. Theft of Ukrainian grain by Russia is well documented, so too is the wanton destruction of crops in the fields.
Russia’s apparent steps back from the brink in all three of these areas should be treated with caution. Just because the weapons haven’t been used this time, doesn’t mean they won’t appear later.
Just like the nuclear missiles Putin and his henchmen keep threatening to use, much of the leverage gained by Russia’s ability to cut off food and energy exports lies in the uncertainty created by the possibility of their use, rather than in their actual employment. Once used, though devastating, the threat has gone. By holding them in reserve, the pressure can be maintained almost indefinitely.
Expect Russia to keep threatening oil, gas and agricultural flows as winter approaches, even if it doesn’t curtail them.
• Saudi Arabia Reveals Oil Output Is Near Its Ceiling: Javier Blas | 2022-07-24T06:48:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Russia Letting Up on Energy? Don’t Trust Putin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/is-russia-letting-up-on-energy-dont-trust-putin/2022/07/24/aabe0338-0b16-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/is-russia-letting-up-on-energy-dont-trust-putin/2022/07/24/aabe0338-0b16-11ed-80b6-43f2bfcc6662_story.html |
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) speaks at the 2022 NYGOP Convention on March 1. (John Minchillo/AP)
A man accused of attempting to stab Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), the Republican candidate in the New York gubernatorial contest, during a campaign event has been arrested on a federal charge of assaulting a member of Congress using a dangerous weapon.
David G. Jakubonis, 43, of Fairport, N.Y., appeared before a magistrate judge on Saturday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York said in a statement.
Jakubonis allegedly walked onto a flatbed trailer where the congressman was speaking Thursday night, extended a keychain with two sharp points toward him and grabbed his arm, the attorney’s office said. During an ensuing struggle, Jakubonis allegedly pulled Zeldin down onto the bed of the trailer, stating several times, “You’re done.”
Videos from the scene show the attacker climbing onto the stage near Rochester, N.Y., and lunging at Zeldin’s neck. Zeldin grabbed the man’s wrist and others tackled him to the ground. Zeldin later said he was unharmed.
Jakubonis was initially taken into custody Thursday by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, arraigned and released. The federal charges mean he is back in custody ahead of a detention hearing on Wednesday.
Zeldin, who has focused on New York’s rising crime rates in his campaign, wrote on Twitter late Saturday that he was grateful the U.S. attorney’s office “came in to do what NY’s broken pro-criminal justice system could not — uphold the rule of law.” He added that cashless bail “must be repealed.”
Zeldin and other Republicans had criticized Jakubonis’s swift release Friday as a sign of New York’s lax bail laws. Moments before the attacker stepped onto the stage on Thursday, Zeldin was saying that New York residents were increasingly leaving for places like Florida and Texas because they felt “safer” and “freer” there. Attempted assault is not an offense for which suspects can be held pending bail under New York law.
The federal charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
According to Saturday’s federal complaint, Jakubonis told investigators that he was a U.S. Army veteran who had been deployed to Iraq, that he had been drinking whiskey before the incident, and that he did not know who Zeldin was. Jakubonis told investigators that he had gone onstage to ask Zeldin whether he was disrespecting veterans.
When shown a video of the incident, Jakubonis expressed disgust and told investigators that he “must have checked out,” according to the federal complaint. His attorney could not immediately be reached early Sunday.
The incident could fuel ongoing concerns about the rise in violence directed at public figures during a time of heightened political division. Last month, a man with a gun and a knife was arrested near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the mayor of Louisville was punched during a parade.
In a statement released Friday, President Biden condemned the attack on Zeldin “in the strongest terms.”
“Violence has absolutely no place in our society or our politics,” he said.
Andrew Jeong and Joanna Slater contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T08:20:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suspect in Lee Zeldin attack at N.Y. campaign event faces federal charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/zeldin-attack-charges-governor-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/zeldin-attack-charges-governor-new-york/ |
From left, Tyler and Sarah Schmidt, with son Arlo and daughter Lula, during a hike near Cedar Falls, Iowa. (Courtesy of the Schmidt and Morehead families/AP)
The three victims of a shooting at an Iowa campground on Friday were a mother, father and child, according to law enforcement and local officials.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation identified them as Tyler and Sarah Schmidt, both 42, and their daughter Lula, 6, of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The Schmidts are survived by their 9-year-old son Arlo, who “survived the attack, and is safe,” Cedar Falls Mayor Rob Green wrote in a Facebook post.
Law enforcement were “notified of a triple homicide” Friday morning at the Maquoketa Caves State Park campground in eastern Iowa. Upon arriving, officers found the three victims and, after a brief search, the body of Anthony Orlando Sherwin, 23, the suspect in the killings who apparently shot himself, police said.
The state medical examiner is set to conduct autopsies on the victims, as well as on Sherwin, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said. A motive was not yet clear.
Green said he was “devastated” by the loss of the family, noting that they were “regular walkers here in the Sartori Park neighborhood” of Cedar Falls, a city of 40,000. He remembered Sarah Schmidt as “a beloved library employee” at the Cedar Falls Public Library, where Green invited neighbors and friends to leave cards and mementos in honor of the family.
As of late Saturday, a GoFundMe fundraiser for Arlo Schmidt had drawn more than 2,000 donations amounting to more than $100,000. “Arlo is a strong boy, surrounded by family and friends who are supporting him as best we can,” said Beth Shapiro, the fundraiser’s organizer, who said she was Sarah Schmidt’s cousin.
Adam Morehouse, Sarah Schmidt’s brother, told the Associated Press that the family had no connection to Sherwin and that he believed it was a “completely random act.” Morehouse confirmed Arlo was on the family’s camping trip but said he did not know exactly where the boy was at the time of the shooting.
The state park was closed after the shooting, which also forced the evacuation of the Camp Shalom children’s summer camp.
Known as a destination for spelunkers and hikers, Maquoketa Caves State Park has more caves than any other state park in Iowa. About 61 miles northeast of Cedar Rapids, Maquoketa Caves State Park features 13 caves, including Dancehall Cave, which is approximately 800 feet long, according to its website.
Timothy Bella contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T09:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iowa family killed in campground shooting survived by 9-year-old son - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/iowa-campground-shooting-schmidt-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/iowa-campground-shooting-schmidt-family/ |
Jenny Bradshaw, along with dozens of other families, wants to give young Ukrainian orphans a break in the United States
A Centreville, Va., family wants to eventually adopt Katya, a 9-year-old- Ukrainian orphan who's shown during her visit with them last year. (Jenny Bradshaw)
Shortly after they met the energetic brown-haired, blue-eyed 9-year-old girl from Ukraine, Jenny Bradshaw, her husband and their 17-year-old twin daughters were smitten.
They had thought about and researched the possibility of adopting an orphan from overseas and realized after a month-long exchange program in December with Katya at their home in Centreville, Va., that it was the right time. She fit in well with their family.
Katya — whose full name is not being used for safety reasons — enjoyed helping load the dishwasher, cook eggs, bake cookies and play dress-up. She had fun going to parks and museums and helping feed the family’s dogs. The family took her to a semiprivate Russian ballet class during her stay and Bradshaw said she “loved it.”
But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year, the family’s efforts to adopt her have been stalled.
More than 200 adoptions are completed every year from Ukraine to the United States, according to State Department statistics. But those have stopped because of the war, adoption experts and State Department officials say.
Now, Bradshaw and her husband, Holt, are part of a group of would-be parents in the United States who are lobbying Ukrainian adoption authorities, officials at the State Department and congressional leaders to try to raise awareness of their plight. And while the families wait for the normal adoptions to resume, they want the dozens of Ukrainian orphans like Katya who have already done exchange programs in the United States to be able to come and stay a few months with them.
“We’re not asking for a special exception or to skirt around the full adoption process,” Bradshaw said. “We just want to give her a break and respite from the war.”
Becky and Terry Shinault, who live near Harrisburg, Pa., said they’re hoping to do the same and give another young Ukrainian orphan a few months’ stay in their home and away from the war zone.
They hosted the teen, whom they call K and whose full name is not being used for security reasons, twice in the past year for brief stays during an exchange program, and decided afterward that they wanted to adopt her.
The exchange programs are designed to give the children a taste of American life and a break from their respective orphanages. They don’t encourage or discourage adoption but merely allow the Ukrainian children and their American families to experience other cultures, according to the U.S. families and officials who run them.
Shinault recalled how fun it was to see K, who recently turned 14, learn to swim, speak English and enjoy the family’s dogs and horse.
“She enjoyed being an only child and getting all the attention and getting a break from all the other kids,” Becky Shinault said. They had planned to host her again this summer through the exchange program, but the war broke out.
For now, the Shinaults desperately want to get K out of Ukraine — even if temporarily. K had been living at an orphanage in Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, and was evacuated on the first day of the war to another facility in western Ukraine, according to Becky Shinault. She said she is able to sometimes talk to K in online message chats, using Google Translate to communicate, but the internet and power are often spotty.
“She recently wrote us and said she misses us ‘very much and wants to come to us,’ ” Becky said. “But she said, ‘This war does not allow me to fly to you.’ ”
Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), one of the leaders on Capitol Hill who met the families in D.C., said in a statement that she applauds “the efforts of these families who are trying to protect and provide for Ukrainian orphans.” She added that “it is my hope that conditions improve very soon so that intercountry adoptions can resume.”
Officials with the State Department said in a June letter to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that they had been in touch with the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy and the Ukrainian Embassy in D.C.
David Bonine, a senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs, wrote in the letter that his department “has conveyed that many U.S. families want to continue the adoption process and to temporarily host children in the U.S.”
But he said the “Ukrainian government has been clear that adoption is not possible at this time, and they are not approving children to participate in host programs in the United States.”
Attempts to reach adoption and orphanage officials in Ukraine and Romania were unsuccessful.
Experts said it is not uncommon for adoptions or exchange programs to stop during and right after natural disasters, wars or other emergencies because there’s such a high risk of parents or other relatives showing up once a situation calms down. There also is a high risk of children falling into human trafficking circles.
Kelly Dempsey, a lawyer in Charlotte who has done international adoptions for 15 years, said there are at least 40 families in the United States who are in similar situations and want to provide respite care to orphans they’ve previously met through exchange programs. She said the families have already gone through the necessary background checks, home visits and other approvals when they served as host families for Ukrainian orphans, and many of them were in the midst of the adoption process when the war started.
“We disagree that these kids should be separated from American families they know,” said Dempsey, whose clients live across the United States and are trying to help Ukrainian kids who range in age from 6 to 17 years old.
“The short-term solution is to allow the children to come on temporary visas to the U.S. and return only when it’s safe and then resume the adoption process,” Dempsey said.
“If we can take them out of bomb shelters, refugee camps and other dangerous situations and put them in the homes of families that they know and that love them, that’s certainly better.”
For now, Katya — along with the other orphans in her facility — was relocated to an orphanage in a town in rural Romania. Bradshaw went this spring to visit her and let her know, she said, that “her American family hasn’t forgotten her.” She said Katya showed her how she’d learned to use roller skates.
“We hugged,” Bradshaw said, “and she clung to me.” | 2022-07-24T10:52:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | War complicates Virginia family's effort to adopt Ukrainian girl - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/24/ukraine-girl-adoption-virginia-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/24/ukraine-girl-adoption-virginia-family/ |
Frida Kahlo’s life story is being made into a Broadway musical
The show’s creators hope to portray a more three-dimensional, more human version of the iconic Mexican artist, with the approval of Kahlo’s family in Mexico.
A visitor looks at self-portraits by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo at a retrospective at the Martin-Gropius-Bau on April 29, 2010 in Berlin. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has been the subject of so much attention — movies, immersive experiences, countless T-shirts and tote bags — that it’s surprising there’s any Kahlo content left to make. But the Fridamania knows no end: On Thursday, it was announced that Kahlo’s life story will be made into a musical.
The production, which is expected to open on Broadway in 2024, after regional tryouts next year, will follow Kahlo’s life from Mexico City to Paris, to New York and back to the famous “Blue House” where she was born and died in 1954. Currently titled “Frida, The Musical,” the show will include music by Jaime Lozano, lyrics by playwright Neena Beber and will be produced by Valentina Berger.
“In all the stories I heard when I was a little child, our family remembered Aunt Frida as a very joyful woman,” said Mara Romeo Kahlo, universal heiress to the Frida Kahlo legacy, in a statement to The Washington Post. “She was passionate about music, arts and Mexican culture. 'Frida, The Musical’ honors everything she was: a real woman who fought for her dreams, loved like anybody else and always lived ahead of her time.”
Producer Valentina Berger concurs, “Everyone knows a colder Frida, a suffering Frida, but she loved life,” Berger said “She was really, really fun. That’s what we want to portray. I used to have a sad view of Frida, like — ‘Oh, the poor woman.’ Now, knowing how she was so smart and so clever, I look up to her.”
You might think you know Frida Kahlo, but you’ll never understand her pain
There is love and irony in Frida Kahlo’s painting of herself with her husband
“She is such an inspiration not only as an artist but also as a warrior,” he said. “With everything she went through, she kept fighting, making her own art, telling her own story. As a Mexican, to be telling this story and bringing this authenticity to the show, I feel really honored.”
Ten songs have been written for the musical so far, two of which Lozano previewed at the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center in April. One song, “Wings,” captures Kahlo’s persistence — and even joy — amid suffering. It’s based on a famous quote from Kahlo, related to her chronic pain, which often kept her bedridden: “Feet,” she said, “What do I need you for, when I have wings to fly?” | 2022-07-24T11:22:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Frida. The Musical' will take the painter's life story to Broadway - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/24/frida-kahlo-musical/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/24/frida-kahlo-musical/ |
5 economic forces behind the Fed’s next rate hike decision
The Fed is expected to increase its benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point as it faces enormous pressure to avoid causing a recession
Jeboria Gerald, second from right, hands out gallons of milk at a food distribution held by the Farm Share food bank on July 20 in Miami. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
Facing inflation that keeps soaring to new peaks, the Federal Reserve is slated to raise interest rates again Wednesday to fight it.
Several Fed leaders are leaning toward a hike of three-quarters of a percentage point, as they did in June, in what would be the fourth rate increase in five months. Families, businesses and policymakers are all desperate see concrete signs that inflation is coming down and that the economy is cooling, so that the Fed doesn’t have to act even more forcefully and unintentionally trigger a recession.
The Fed’s most important tool for controlling inflation is its interest rate, which the central bank raises or lowers depending on what is happening in the economy. Higher rates are a ticket to an economic slowdown, because they make a host of lending — including mortgages and business loans — more expensive.
After inflation data showed prices soared 9.1 percent in June, compared with the year before, economists and the markets are watching for any signals that the Fed might decide to hoist rates even more sharply than it previously hinted.
So far, the Fed appears likely to stick to its original plan. Here are some of the biggest economic forces guiding how Fed policymakers are thinking about what to do about the economy.
Inflation hit a pandemic-era peak last month, driven by soaring energy costs. Prices rose in practically every nook and cranny of the economy, especially food and housing.
Fed officials had been hoping that as interest rates rise and supply chains heal, inflation would decline steadily. But there is no sign yet of an easing of prices.
“The inflation reading for last month, it was high, but, critically, it was also very broad-based,” said Ellen Gaske, an economist at PGIM Fixed Income and a former senior economist at the New York Fed. “The Fed hasn’t yet seen what it needs to, to slow down.”
Right after the June consumer price index report, financial markets tanked as investors bet that the Fed would decide it needed to ramp up its response and raise interest rates more sharply, which would weigh on Wall Street.
There is precedent for a quick pivot. Days before its policy meeting in June, the Fed suddenly changed course and indicated that a larger interest rate hike than initially planned was on the table. The Fed shifted to more-aggressive action in part because of unexpectedly hot May inflation data and signs that consumer sentiment was especially gloomy. Similarly, the European Central Bank last week increased its benchmark interest rate more than expected amid high inflation.
But uncertainty about how far the Fed would go this month has been quelled by top officials, including Fed governor Christopher Waller, who said recently that although the inflation data is “a major league disappointment,” there are hazards to overreacting.
“A 75 basis-point hike is huge,” Waller said at the Rocky Mountain Economic Summit on July 14. “Don’t think because you are not going 100, you are not doing your job.”
Indeed, another force playing into the Fed’s interest-rate decision is the slowing housing market. The Fed’s previous rate increases, and expectation of more, have caused a brisk run-up in mortgage rates, pushing more buyers out of the market. Existing-home sales fell in June for a fifth straight month, according to the National Association of Realtors. And although the median sale price of a house rose to $428,006 in June, compared with last year, there are indications that prices are starting to ease in some markets.
The biggest, boldest sign that the economy is doing well is the jobs market. The country continues to gain jobs at a brisk pace, but some economists say that pace is unsustainably hot, with far more job openings than people looking for work. For the overall economy to slow meaningfully, hiring needs to wind down, too.
And the unemployment rate has held steady at 3.6 percent, near 50-year lows, for four months.
Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell often points out that two job openings are advertised for every job seeker, a sign of a mismatch in the economy.
As long as the labor market continues in overdrive, policymakers can lean toward big moves on interest rate increases.
In some sectors, job cuts already are occurring. Some companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic have realized that their business models are not a fit for the post-pandemic economy, or they simply have not been able to handle the cost of inflation. Peloton has laid off thousands of workers. The delivery start-up Gopuff is laying off 10 percent of its workforce, Insider Reported. Microsoft also is making cuts.
Goldman Sachs’s chief financial officer last week said, “We have made the decision to slow hiring velocity.” Multiple mortgage lenders across the country, including Wells Fargo and Better.com, have laid off thousands of people as demand for home loans and refinancing drops off.
“There’s a difference between companies slowing the pace of hiring versus outright layoffs, and I don’t think we’re seeing that broadly across industries,” Gaske said. “There are pockets. But a slowdown in hiring would be expected at this point in the cycle.”
Still, it can be tricky to tell whether or when layoff momentum starts to build. First-time unemployment claims have been creeping up and are at their highest level since November. Still, they are nowhere near levels that would suggest a recession is imminent.
“It always starts this way, except for covid,” said Roberto Perli, a former Fed economist and the head of global policy research at Piper Sandler. “Normally, a recession starts slowly. The weakest companies, the most exposed companies, slow [their] hiring, and then they start firing.”
“The labor market is always the last shoe to drop,” Perli added.
Economic growth also influences how the Fed decides its course of action.
Around the globe, major developed nations have been reporting slower or even no economic growth, because of inflation, pandemic problems and the war in Ukraine. The United States is expected to follow that pattern.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports gross domestic product for April through June on Thursday, after the Federal Reserve makes its interest rate decision. But many economists already expect that the economy shrank, again.
Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high
All of those pieces matter for the Fed, which is under tremendous pressure to avoid causing a recession by hiking rates too aggressively. The Fed’s argument is that the economy is fundamentally strong enough to withstand higher rates.
“Even the NBER wouldn’t define this as a recession,” Perli said. “You need more than two quarters of negative GDP growth. You need the labor market and so on. So, no, I don’t think [the Fed] will be stopped by potential negative print.”
After soaring for much of the pandemic, the stock market has taken a dive this year as investors grow jittery that inflation is only becoming worse and that the Fed isn’t equipped to rein it in. The markets clinched their worst six-month start to a year since 1970 and have not let up.
Market swings generally do not affect many Americans, except in their retirement accounts. But the Fed does not simply ignore financial markets, because they can reflect broader issues or unexpected turbulence brewing in the economy.
Fed officials have said that they want to see progress in the actual economy and that the Fed will not change course on the basis of the ups and downs of the stock market.
The Federal Reserve does, though, play a role in shaping financial conditions. For example, when the financial markets plummeted at the beginning of the pandemic, the Fed helped steady the financial sector by injecting trillions of dollars into the economy through a bond-buying campaign that prevented markets from seizing up. More recently, though, the financial system has not needed that kind of support. Not only has the Fed stopped its asset-purchase program, but it also has begun shrinking its balance sheet to further tighten conditions on Wall Street.
Higher Fed interest rates and tighter financial conditions also raise borrowing costs for households and businesses and are key to slowing growth and consumer demand.
Plus, the Fed does prioritize clear communication to the markets on what it plans to do next. Signals that the Fed still leans toward a three-quarter-point increase are intended to avoid surprising the markets.
“I think they’re not really thrilled with the amount of volatility, but they’re happy that conditions are tighter on average,” said Tim Duy, a Fed expert at the University of Oregon and the chief economist at SGH Macro Advisors. “That was the one of the goals here.”
Manufacturing and productivity
Another force that the Federal Reserve monitors is manufacturing.
Manufacturing activity is one a linchpin of the economy, because it creates jobs and is linked to all sorts of other economic activity, reflecting overall demand in the overall economy. For example, a factory that builds a heating and cooling unit also creates business by subcontracting with companies that make parts for each machine, and those businesses work with other companies, and so on.
One benchmark to which policymakers pay attention is a survey of manufacturing activity from the Institute for Supply Management. The June survey showed the volume of new orders contracted for the first time in two years, suggesting a slowdown.
Survey data released Thursday from the Philadelphia Fed also showed that manufacturing activity in the region declined overall in July.
These downward trends could be a way to gauge whether consumers and businesses are starting to pull back, reflecting higher interest rates are working to dampen economic activity. That is not necessarily a bad sign.
Even as manufacturing may be slowing, it is possible that the economy could get a boost from investments that businesses made earlier in the pandemic on tech equipment and software, especially as more people were working remotely. Companies also have been able to beef up their inventories in the past few months.
“What’s critical for a positive outlook is that companies continue to invest,” said Gaske, of PGIM Fixed Income. “It’s going to be the workaround for a tight labor market. It’s going to be a key factor to dampen inflation pressures over time.”
However, if the manufacturing survey dips sharply for a longer period, that also could signal that the economy is teetering toward a recession. | 2022-07-24T11:23:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Explaining Fed interest rate hike of 75 basis points - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/24/fed-rate-hike-july/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/24/fed-rate-hike-july/ |
College alumni groups spread nationally to counter ‘cancel culture’
On some university campuses, independent groups are forming to promote free speech
Bert Ellis leads the Jefferson Council at University of Virginia, which has sought to protect the founder's legacy as well as other traditions. Now he's been appointed to the board of visitors for the university in Charlottesville. (Jason Lappa for The Washington Post)
Alumni groups pressing free-speech issues are popping up at colleges in many states, as debates over academic freedom, “cancel culture” and changes on campus intensify.
More than a dozen groups have joined the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, a group announced last fall that now includes graduates from schools including Harvard, Bucknell, Yale and Cornell universities, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Wofford and Davidson colleges. Organizers say hundreds of people from schools all across the country have contacted them — all graduates who have questions they say their schools’ traditional alumni associations aren’t asking.
To join, the groups must hold freedom of speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity as primary missions, said Edward Yingling, president of the alliance and one of the founders of Princetonians for Free Speech. “There’s a feeling that a lot of universities are losing their way. … There’s very little diversity of thought.”
The alumni groups vary in size, character and sophistication. And some have distinctly conservative roots, even if they are now seeking to ensure that all viewpoints are represented. One of the first to organize, the Generals Redoubt, has been fighting to preserve the traditions of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., an idea echoed by graduates at some nearby colleges with long and complicated histories such as the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia.
Tom P. Rideout, president of Generals Redoubt, said while preserving Lee’s legacy at the school is one of the group’s priorities, free speech is “the big ongoing issue where we will be spending more and more time as we go along.”
Drewry Sackett, a spokeswoman for Washington and Lee, said that while there is an official advisory board that represents alumni, graduates have formed several interests groups in recent years. Sackett said the university is fortunate to have alumni engaged and “we welcome civil and productive dialogue about issues impacting our campus.”
At other schools, the battles have been more focused on whether faculty and students can speak freely, and grapple with ideas across the political spectrum, or if some topics have become too charged to even discuss.
The groups’ founders argue that only alumni have the numbers and clout to lead the fight for free speech at universities — an urgent rebellion against what they see as a growing orthodoxy on campuses, with faculty and students canceling opposing views, afraid to speak freely, and threatening the inquiry and debate that are central to academia.
Critics say some of the groups don’t speak for most on campus, and are using the issue of free speech to hold back change that’s long overdue — especially on issues of race and identity.
Brandon Hasbrouck, an associate professor of law at Washington and Lee, who has argued that the school should be renamed, said conservative students debate things in his classes and aren’t silenced by classmates or faculty.
“I see the false narrative being created, then being embraced, and then being organized around,” he said. “Fundamentally, we should be questioning the narrative itself.”
Faculty resoundingly votes to change the name of Washington and Lee
At U-Va., the president of such an alumni group, the Jefferson Council, was recently appointed by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to join the university’s board of visitors — significantly amplifying the group’s voice and clout.
“The pendulum,” said Bert Ellis, the new board appointee and an entrepreneur, “is swinging back.”
Princeton board fires professor in sexual-misconduct investigation
Some alumni groups were sparked by a flash point on campus, such as speakers or professors generating backlash for their views.
Princetonians for Free Speech has been outspoken in opposing the firing of a professor for failing to cooperate with a sexual-misconduct investigation; his supporters say it was retaliation for statements he made.
Some groups pointed to surveys of students and faculty indicating self-censorship, and other concerns. A study released by the Knight Foundation and Ipsos earlier this year found that a growing majority of college students believe their campus climate stifles free speech: In 2016, almost three-fourths of students felt free-speech rights were secure, the study found, but now less than half do.
Leaders with the national alliance say it is hoping to create something more powerful, and lasting, than a typical alumni letter-writing campaign or petition that flares up and quickly dies away. National free-speech advocacy groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the Academic Freedom Alliance and Heterodox Academy have offered advice, support, coordination and some individual programs such as sponsored debates.
It’s too early to know how effective those efforts will be. But while many alumni groups have just been taking the initial steps to form nonprofits in recent months, some are now plunging into efforts such as hiring employees, paying for surveys, sending frequent newsletters to increase scrutiny of university decisions, and calling on institutions to adopt the Chicago Principles — guidelines written by leaders at the University of Chicago to emphasize the school’s commitment to unlimited debate, since adopted by scores of other universities. Some, like the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, have welcomed faculty and students. The Open Discourse Coalition at Bucknell provides grants to students as well as faculty.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MIT Free Speech Alliance formed last fall after Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago was disinvited from giving a prestigious public talk amid the backlash over an op-ed he co-authored in Newsweek about diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on university campuses.
The school’s provost at the time explained to faculty that the annual event is intended as outreach, featuring a scientist and role model, and that Abbot was asked to speak another time to faculty and students on campus. Abbot gave a lecture about planetary science at MIT in May.
But the controversy quickly became a national issue, and spurred alumni such as Jim Rutt, a former chief executive, past chairman of the Santa Fe Institute and current podcast host, to act.
Rutt, who described himself as politically progressive and the MIT Free Speech Alliance as staunchly bipartisan, said he was shocked and angry when he learned that some MIT faculty members had said their voices were increasingly constrained on campus. “Something was fundamentally wrong,” he said.
The group recently received a $500,000 two-year grant from the Stanton Foundation, and is hiring an executive director, hoping to work with student groups and bring in speakers. They are launching a membership drive, and a donor-advised fund channeling donations to free-speech programs that apply for grants.
The organization plans to host a debate on campus this fall on whether diversity, equity and inclusion practices and policies are inconsistent with the principles of merit, fairness and equality. And they established a sort of free-speech hotline that allows people to report claims of violations and seek help.
“This will show people that there is a constituency for free speech,” Rutt said, “and it is now safe to bring your head up.”
Kimberly Allen, a spokeswoman for MIT, said the school’s alumni association is aware of the group “and has been engaged with them cordially and in a spirit of respect since their founding.” She said the university is grateful for each of its nearly 145,000 living alumni, and respects that there “are a range of views across that group on any number of topics.”
At some schools, officials have been privately dismissive of the groups, saying the older alumni are out of touch.
But many of the groups say they have been working to ensure they are open to all, and to diversify their own ranks — and that while concerns may have started with conservatives, they see a growing number of people across the spectrum upset by what they see as an entrenched intellectual conformity and intolerance.
“I would really emphasize we are not political,” said George Kurzon, a leader of the newly formed Harvard Alumni for Free Speech. “We are not conservative or liberal. All sides are welcome to the free speech work.”
Mike Pence event reignites a debate over free speech at University of Virginia
While these issues spark tensions everywhere, they are particularly fraught at U-Va. in the years since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville brought torch-bearing extremists onto campus.
Some alumni are talking about these lofty ideals, such as academic freedom, free speech, free inquiry, freedom of expression, said Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor of English at U-Va. “But some of their some of their fights feel pretty far from that.”
Ellis, the Jefferson Council president, said he was shocked by a sign cursing the University of Virginia that a student posted nearly two years ago on her door to one of the rooms on the school’s historic Lawn. After trying to talk with the student — and bringing a boxcutter to take down the sign if she had not been home — he and other alumni later formed the council to preserve some of the school’s history and traditions, and fight for free-speech issues.
Ellis has said the Jefferson Council supports the student’s right to say or post anything, but not on the Lawn that Thomas Jefferson designed, a part of U-Va. designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
But not all are convinced. “What they seem to actually be protecting is a version of right-wing ideology that is framed as free speech — and framed as neutral when it is not neutral,” Woolfork said.
“If there is one thing that is common to every university in the world, it is alumni who believe their school started going downhill after they graduated,” Larry J. Sabato, a professor of politics at U-Va., wrote in an email. But he said the facts belie that, as the highly regarded university attracts “diverse and talented students from all over the globe” and continues to lead on important issues through education and research. After more than 50 years in the U-Va. community, he said he is “incredibly proud of the progress we have made during that time and excited about what the future holds.”
U-Va. spokesman Brian Coy said they have undertaken numerous initiatives in recent years tackling free speech and intellectual diversity issues, such as launching a general education curriculum that includes classes designed to get students debating ideas respectfully. U-Va.’s president, James Ryan, has spoken and written about the need to be “empathetic speakers and generous listeners,” and to engage with unfamiliar ideas among the diverse range of people on campus — a place that is very different than it was when only White men were allowed to study there.
U-Va.’s board of visitors adopted a statement on free expression and free inquiry last summer, emphasizing that “all views, beliefs, and perspectives deserve to be articulated and heard, free from interference,” a commitment central to the school’s mission.
But Ellis and others still see problems, with some viewpoints unwelcome or canceled. When the Jefferson Council tried to place an ad in the alumni magazine praising Jefferson and noting some scholarship rejected the claim that he had children with Sally Hemings, a woman enslaved by Jefferson, the ad was rejected.
Coy said the Alumni Association is a separate entity from the university and that it has a policy against running ads that are “overly political or controversial.”
Ellis said the council has more than 700 members.
U-Va. has about 250,000 living alumni.
Ellis said there are groups that think anything goes in public discourse, so they vilify people, or drown them out by yelling and screaming, pushing them to leave rather than arguing their position.
They are The Jefferson Council is using some donated funds to bring speakers to campus, partnering with the conservative student group the Young Americans for Freedom, as they did this spring with former vice president Mike Pence.
“There are lots of groups that disagree with us” on campus, Ellis said. That’s why he believes the Jefferson Council needs to “get bigger and bigger, be vocal ourselves.”
James A. Bacon, a spokesman for the council, said sparking real cultural change will be difficult. But with Ellis’s board appointment, he said, “we feel like we’re going to be getting some traction.”
Now, Ellis said, “We have their attention.” | 2022-07-24T11:23:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alumni groups pop up to foster free speech on campus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/24/college-alumni-free-speech-groups/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/24/college-alumni-free-speech-groups/ |
Teachers gain extra work under new policies that are averse to bad grades
Complications and angst in rise of no-grade-less-than-50-percent rule
I communicate often with teachers, usually by email. They are my best sources. They see me as a so-so student who needs more help if I’m going to get anywhere.
I almost always name them when I quote them. But some ask me not to. Being mentioned in a newspaper can offend colleagues and lead to awkward calls from the principal.
Many teachers have been emailing me on an issue I have been writing about — the move in many states and districts to cut back on homework and reduce penalties for not doing assignments. So far, I have been persuaded by teachers who think that is bad. They say such changes make it more difficult to motivate students to learn.
One educator recently provided me much detail on how the changes in homework and grading are affecting his work. He spoke to me on the condition of anonymity so that he could speak frankly without fear of retaliation by his district. He is a high school teacher in Montgomery County, Md., one of largest and best performing school districts in the country. He has been teaching for more than two decades.
The district has told teachers that they may give a zero for an assignment that is not done if they can document their efforts to contact the parent about the problem. Otherwise teachers have to follow the district’s rule — part of a nationwide grading reform — that even a totally missed assignment can be scored no lower than 50 percent.
“If I have 140 students, and 20 of them do not complete an assignment (a realistic number for many teachers), then I have to email those 20 parents about that assignment,” he said. “If I don’t hear back, I have to email them again. I have to document this effort and then, only then, can I assign a zero.”
Disadvantaged kids hurt by keeping pandemic’s relaxed teaching style
“This takes time, at least 40 minutes if I have 20 students to follow up on (if I assume an efficient 2 minutes per email). That’s 40 less minutes for me to plan a lesson, grade papers, follow up with other bureaucratic tasks.” He mentioned duties ranging from Individualized Education Programs reports for students needing specialized instruction to college recommendations. “I could work well beyond my duty day and do everything, but there is a point where my personal health and family need to take priority. So, like many others, I choose the path of least resistance and give the 50 percent.”
Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Christopher Cram told me “the Well-Being team at each school is available to provide additional support” in such cases. He said the team includes “counselors, admins, mental health team members, team leaders, and outside partners (where possible).”
The teacher told me he wasn’t clear on the Well-Being team and its duties. What he does know is the issue of time for teachers to communicate with parents isn’t being addressed.
There are also changes in how to weight grades. Before, if a student got a C one marking period and a B the next, the grade for the semester would be a B because the student was showing progress. If the student got a B the first marking period and a C the next, the final semester grade would be a C. Under the new policy, if a student gets a B in either marking period the final grade is a B.
“I have made my peace with the student who makes a sincere effort and gets a 30 percent on a test being given a 50 percent,” the teacher said. “I understand the argument which says that a grade less than 50 percent is a ball and chain on their grade and may lead students to give up.”
“However, as a parent of children in the district, I don’t like the idea that we’re deluding ourselves and the students into the idea that they’re something they’re not,” he said. “We as a school system are teaching a value to our students — you can do nothing and still get something. When these young people go to college, this will present a problem.”
Cram said “MCPS is committed to grading and reporting policies and practices that accurately reflect student achievement of learning objectives over time, include varied assessments, and are equitably applied within and across schools. No grading system is perfect.”
Educators in growing debate scold me for defending grading of homework
The teacher had a high-achieving student who told him there was little point studying for an upcoming quiz. Because of the no-less-than 50 percent rule, the student said even if he didn’t take the test, he’d still have a 91 percent. The teacher told the student that reasoning was flawed.
“This is a lousy way to look at education and it’s one that I wouldn’t want my children to have,” the teacher told me. “The school system will tout their high graduation rates as proof that their policies are turning out educated people into the world equipped to handle the challenges of the 21st century. And it would be a lie.”
What bothers me most is the notion that teachers must be told exactly how to teach in excruciating detail by officials who sometimes don’t understand what works in classrooms. Will the changes improve achievement? There is little control-group research on this. Teachers who want to enlighten me should feel free to email me. | 2022-07-24T11:23:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Relaxed grading policies mean more work for teachers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/24/schools-homework-grading-policy-teachers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/24/schools-homework-grading-policy-teachers/ |
Cold hands, numb fingers? You might have Raynaud’s disease.
Exposure to cold causes blood vessels to the hands and feet to constrict, turning fingers and toes white or blue and numb
Raynaud’s disease can cause fingers to turn white. Cold temperatures can be intolerable to people who suffer from the condition. (iStock)
George Banker keeps a pair of hand warmers in his car in case he needs them for trips to the grocery store. Without them, walking down the freezer aisle will turn his fingers white, then numb. Rita Cognion has a supply of “koozies” at home, polyurethane foam sleeves used to keep beverage bottles and cans cold. In her case, she stretches them to fit around an icy glass, protecting her hands from the cold.
Both Banker, from Fort Washington, Md., and operations manager for the Army Ten Miler foot race, and Cognion, a data scientist from Alexandria, Va., have Raynaud’s phenomenon (also called Raynaud’s disease), a condition in which exposure to cold causes blood vessels to the hands and feet to constrict, turning fingers and toes white or blue and numb. As they warm, they often turn red and throb with pain.
Attacks are more likely in the winter and in cold climates. But they can happen in any season, even when it’s hot outside.
“Raynaud’s doesn’t take the summer off,” says Marie Denise Gerhard-Herman, a cardiovascular medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “This condition can be easily triggered in summer situations that involve cold exposures like going into the cold ocean or the freezer aisle of the grocery store, or an air-conditioned theater.”
There are two types of Raynaud’s phenomenon — primary and secondary. The primary form has no identified cause, experts say, while the secondary form usually accompanies another health condition, often autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or scleroderma. The secondary type can be more severe, sometimes leading to ulcers, tissue damage, even the need for amputations, experts say.
An estimated 5 to 10 percent of the population has Raynaud’s, the vast majority the primary type, according to the Raynaud’s Association.
Primary Raynaud’s afflicts more women than men, and usually occurs in those younger than 30, often starting during the teenage years. It can run in families, which suggests there may be a genetic connection, according to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS).
For most people, primary Raynaud’s is no more than a nuisance, although it can cause people to leave certain jobs or shun cold-related activities.
“Some people don’t even think to talk to a physician about it,” says Maureen Mayes, professor of internal medicine and Elizabeth Bidgood chair in rheumatology at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School. “They just think: ‘Oh, I must be cold sensitive.’”
The secondary form also can occur from an environmental exposure, or from some medications, including those for hypertension, migraines or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among others — and work-related exposures, such as repeated use of vibrating machinery, while certain chemicals or cold also can initiate it, according to NIAMS.
Sarah Hoddinott, a self-employed software and fundraising consultant from Belleville, Ontario, learned she had Raynaud’s when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis a year ago. “To quote the doctor who first used the word Raynaud’s: ‘My dear, once you have an autoimmune disease, it’s like having pizza — Raynaud’s is just one of the toppings you also might get,’” she recalls, adding that she often describes it as “a side dish” to her rheumatoid arthritis.
Even certain situations, commonplace for the unafflicted, can become problems for people with Raynaud’s. But they find ways to cope.
“I was at an airport recently trying to get my bags using a kiosk,” Banker recalls. “My fingers were so cold I couldn’t use the touch screen. I had to get help from an attendant.”
When Cognion dines out and forgets to bring a koozie, she wraps a dinner napkin around her glass. “When you have Raynaud’s, stemware is your friend,” she adds. She spends part of her time in Hawaii, where dealing with Raynaud’s is easier. Still, even when there, she takes measures to keep her Raynaud’s under control.
“I wear fingerless typing gloves in the overly air-conditioned offices,” she says. “I wore them in my office here on the mainland too before I started working remotely. The bad thing about the typing gloves is that the fingers stick out, but it’s the best I can do.”
When she is indoors and sedentary, even 70 degrees can feel cold, she says. It’s worse when she opens the freezer or washes produce under cold water, inconvenient since she eats a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.
“I try to be quick when moving items around in the freezer,” she says. Also, “even at 70 degrees, I probably wear more layers indoors than other people,” she says.
She relies on mittens when running outdoors if the temperature goes below 70 degrees — they keep fingers warmer than gloves and puts air-activated chemical handwarmers inside the mittens when outdoor temps go lower than 62 degrees. “They have been a lifesaver,” she says.
Hoddinott, too, uses heated gloves and mittens and wears them every time she goes outside for more than a minute or two. “Last summer when the temperature dropped to … 64 Fahrenheit, I had to start wearing them because my fingers would go numb and white four or five times a day,” she says. “I also keep a small heater on my desk so I can warm up my fingers a bit if I’m on a conference call. Otherwise, they stay numb until I run them under warm water for a few minutes.”
Hoddinott, a former Rockville, Md., resident, shunned air conditioning when she lived in the suburb near D.C., despite the often sweltering weather. “The shock of very hot to very cold was always uncomfortable, so I would [set] my air conditioner at 85 [Fahrenheit] and feel quite comfortable” she says. “But anytime I step into a heavily air-conditioned space from the heat … my fingers immediately start to go numb.”
Gerhard-Herman advises her patients to give up caffeine or stick to just one cup of coffee a day and avoid medication for ADHD that stimulates “the narrowing of the arteries in fingers and toes,” she says.
Mayes, who also directs the university’s scleroderma clinic, recommends keeping the central body warm to prevent the body from drawing heat away from the extremities to protect the core, a survival reflex. “Wear an extra layer — a sweater or jacket — even in the summer,” she says.
Raynaud’s has no cure. But some treatments can help. Although there are no approved medications for Raynaud’s, doctors sometimes prescribe drugs used for other conditions, such as vasodilators, which improve circulation by opening blood vessels. “The problem is that they also can lower blood pressure, and people can get dizzy and lightheaded,” Mayes says.
For people with severe Raynaud’s, a physician may recommend a sympathectomy, a procedure performed by incision or injections that destroys the nerves that trigger narrowing of the blood vessels. It can improve symptoms, but it may need to be repeated after several years, according to NIAMS.
Finally, experts also urge Raynaud’s patients to try to ignore the insensitive comments of others who find glove-wearing in the summer and other behaviors odd.
“I had a patient tell me that after she shook someone’s hand, the other person said: ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you dead?’ That was a terrible thing to say,” Mayes says. “I tell my Raynaud’s patients to just say: ‘I’m cold sensitive’ — and leave it at that.” | 2022-07-24T11:23:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Raynaud's disease - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/25/cold-hands-raynauds-disease-symptoms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/25/cold-hands-raynauds-disease-symptoms/ |
Elaine Riddick, 68, at her home in Marietta, Ga., said she was sterilized without her consent in North Carolina when she was 14. (Tami Chappell for The Washington Post)
Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she says she was raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C. Nine months later, in 1968, she was involuntarily sterilized in the hospital while delivering her first and only child.
“I had no idea,” she told The Washington Post, adding that she didn’t find out about the operation until five years later, at age 19, after she had married and hoped to have more children.
The doctors “butchered” her — cutting, tying and cauterizing her fallopian tubes — she said she was told when she learned of her sterilization during a medical examination. After the sterilization, Riddick had lost blood and fallen ill frequently. “I didn’t have a childhood because of the hemorrhaging and passing out,” she said. “This is how badly they damaged my insides.”
Riddick, who is now 68 and lives in Marietta, Ga., is one of tens of thousands of survivors of forced sterilization in the 20th century — a disproportionate share of them Black, like Riddick. She was subjected to a eugenics program by the state of North Carolina, which sterilized 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974 because they were deemed “unfit” to be parents. In 2017, after fighting for compensation for almost 50 years, she received $47,000 from the state.
North Carolina had labeled Riddick “feebleminded” — the same justification that had been used in 1924 to authorize the sterilization of Carrie Buck, a Virginia woman who had also been raped as a minor. Buck’s case went to the Supreme Court, which in its 1927 ruling in Buck v. Bell upheld mandatory sterilizations of people considered unfit to bear and raise children. That decision has never formally been overturned.
Britney Spears, Carrie Buck and the awful history of controlling ‘unfit’ women
With the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, states now have full license to legally compel a person to continue a pregnancy. For many activists and legal experts, this isn’t a far cry from Buck, which used similar legal reasoning to allow the government to prevent certain people from becoming pregnant in the first place. Some lawyers and activists worry that the use of forced sterilization could be expanded after the Dobbs decision.
California once forcibly sterilized people by the thousands. Now the victims may get reparations.
Professor Victoria Nourse at Georgetown University Law Center said the Buck ruling denied “a right of bodily integrity, or that there was a claim of equality.” She added, “And Dobbs does the same thing.”
Clarence Thomas tried to link abortion to eugenics. Seven historians told The Post he’s wrong.
“Justice Thomas has very selectively and opportunistically misread Buck v. Bell as something that is about racism against Black people and abortion, which it was not,” said Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine.
“On one hand, there is a law that says that certain categories of people shall be prevented from determining their own reproductive destiny, such as to be able to have a child,” Goodwin said. “On the other hand is lawmakers enacting laws saying, ‘We will force you to have children even when you don’t want to,’ and there’s a lot in common in that.”
For Jasmine Harris, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, the issue of forced sterilization has personal significance: She is descended from one of its survivors. She was 11 years old and growing up in the Bronx when her Puerto Rican grandmother, Rita, mentioned “la operación.”
She learned that Rita, after giving birth to Harris’s father in the early 1950s, had received a hysterectomy, a procedure to which Puerto Rican women of that generation were sometimes subjected without their informed consent.
“She vaguely remembers someone saying, ‘Are you done [having children]?’ ” said Harris, “and she said she was done and they basically performed a hysterectomy.”
One-third of all women in Puerto Rico between the ages of 20 and 49 were forcibly sterilized between the 1930s and 1970s through a program supported by the U.S. government that sought to control the growth of the island’s population. The program also aimed to promote the migration of textile workers to New York, Harris said, under the theory that having children would make it difficult for women to enter the workforce. Rita, a textile seamstress, worked in a Bronx factory and traveled between Puerto Rico and New York throughout her life.
Today, 31 states have laws that allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities, according to a report issued in January by the National Women’s Law Center.
“That’s really grounded in the assumption that disabled people like me can’t or shouldn’t make our own decisions about our bodies, that other people need to make those decisions for us,” said Ma’ayan Anafi, the report’s author and the center’s senior counsel for health equity and justice, who is autistic. “We know that assumption is wrong and it’s dangerous, and it’s been used for years to justify the reproductive coercion of disabled people.”
The lesser-known history of birth control
Often, these states deem a person with a disability unable to provide informed consent to a sterilization and claim the individual’s health would be harmed by a pregnancy, according to the report.
Anafi added, “Laws were passed as recently as 2019, so the legacy of forced sterilization is very much alive today.”
Robyn Powell, an associate professor of law at the University of Oklahoma, who uses a wheelchair because of arthrogryposis, a condition characterized by joint stiffness, said she has been offered a hysterectomy by doctors “dozens of times, for no reason other than the assumption that I shouldn’t reproduce.”
Powell said doctors have suggested hysterectomies since her early 20s without providing a reason. “It’s not for any sort of medical reason,” she said. “It’s always been this societal belief that, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re a woman in a wheelchair. Why would you want to reproduce?’ or ‘Should you be reproducing?’ ”
Anafi worries that judges could use the Dobbs decision to allow more people with disabilities to be forcibly sterilized. Before ruling on sterilization, judges often consider a person’s access to abortion and other methods of nonpermanent birth control. The Dobbs ruling has abortion rights advocates worried that the court could curtail access to birth control, particularly given Thomas’s concurrence suggesting that the court revisit decisions including one protecting the right to contraception.
Abortion rights advocates fear access to birth control could be curtailed
“A lot of judges have said that disabled people have a lot of trouble getting nonpermanent birth control,” Anafi said. “They assume the person won’t be able to use it properly, and so because of that, they conclude that sterilization is the best and sometimes only option.”
Ultimately, Riddick believes that “women should have control of their reproductive health” and that the government should not interfere with their decisions.
“I think a woman should have control of her body,” she said. “I didn’t have control of my body, and I have been devastated since I found out that this is what happened to me. I never had the chance to say yes or no.”
More on the history of abortion
Who was Jane Roe, and how did she transform abortion rights?
Abortion in the Founders’ era: Violent, chaotic and unregulated
‘Call Jane’: Underground network helped women get abortions before Roe | 2022-07-24T11:23:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | History of forced sterilization, which some fear could rebound post-Roe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/24/forced-sterilization-dobbs-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/24/forced-sterilization-dobbs-roe/ |
Biden’s promises to Palestinians probably won’t help foster peace
The pledge of economic assistance comes from a century-old playbook — one that has never worked.
Perspective by Jake Beckert
Jake Beckert is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on American investment and capitalist "development" in Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s and 30s.
President Biden and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shake hands in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on July 15. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
At a speech in East Jerusalem this month, President Biden acknowledged that peace between Israelis and Palestinians appears further away than ever. Instead of pushing the peace process, Biden offered economic aid and 4G access to the Palestinians. He also urged Israel to remove the restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank.
Without the prospect of a meaningful peace negotiation on the horizon, these actions aim to improve daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the hope that improved economic conditions will make them more willing to abandon nationalist claims and embrace unappealing compromises. This American strategy of hoping economic improvement can both replace and simultaneously help foster political reconciliation between Jews and Arabs is hardly a novel approach. In fact, Americans have tried this approach in the region for nearly 100 years — with little success. And history indicates that while Biden’s proposals may marginally improve Palestinian life, they won’t lead to true rapprochement or peace.
In 1926, some of the most important Jewish American leaders, including eminent banker Felix Warburg, future New York governor and U.S. senator Herbert Lehman, civil rights lawyer Louis Marshall and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (Brandeis’s role remained unofficial for political reasons) jointly founded a corporation to promote economic development in what was then British-controlled Palestine. The Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC) was a for-profit organization designed to use capitalist investment and development practices to “modernize” Palestine, making it more suitable for Jewish settlement. Despite the mission to abet Jewish settlement, the leaders of the organization were insistent that they operated on a “strictly business basis,” and that their work in Palestine had nothing to do with politics or even Zionism, to which some of them were openly agnostic, or even hostile.
While there is reason to be skeptical of this claim, the historical record indicates that the leaders of the PEC were sincere — if perhaps naive — in believing in the potential of apolitical capitalist development. Their primary concern was finding a home for Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe (in 1926 primarily from Eastern Europe, but soon from Germany as well) who were mostly barred from entering the United States due to immigration restrictions. Despite having a Jewish population of only around 100,000, Palestine appeared to be the most promising destination for these refugees. However, the influx of tens of thousands of new immigrants in 1925 and 1926 strained the economy and forced a dramatic reduction in immigration levels, a problem the leaders of the PEC hoped Western capital and expertise could fix.
Initially, the PEC, like so many Western organizations, almost entirely ignored the Arab population. On the rare occasion when the corporation’s leaders discussed the Arab presence in Palestine, they expressed fear of Arab economic competition or concern about Arab culture negatively impacting Jewish settlers.
This pattern changed dramatically, however, in August 1929 with the outbreak of interethnic violence. PEC leaders no longer felt they could ignore Arab grievances toward Jewish settlement, but as an organization that vigorously enforced what it saw as an apolitical agenda, they had limited options for how to respond.
PEC leaders decided to offer limited loans and technical expertise to Arab farmers and cooperatives. They believed this work could bring Jews and Arabs closer together. In essence, they hoped that by having their economic lot improved, Arabs would view the Jewish presence in Palestine not as a threat, but as a benefit, since they would appreciate Jewish support for bringing the benefits of modernization.
Yet, while the PEC expended a great deal of time and energy investigating how to assist the Arab population, their track record was far from impressive. While the corporation may have made a few loans through subsidiaries (the historical record is murky), it appears that between 1929 and 1936, the PEC itself only granted a single $300 loan to Arab farmers.
The PEC’s efforts fell flat because its leaders lacked a serious commitment to the project of Arab economic improvement; some of them were even hostile to the idea of granting what they referred to as “Arab loans.” Even this limited commitment waned as a semblance of peace returned to Palestine in the years following the 1929 strife. Some who had previously been supportive turned their attention to other possibilities. Warburg, for example, became increasingly interested in a plan to transfer the Arab population of Palestine to what was then Transjordan.
Even if the PEC had followed through on its flirtation with loans to Arabs, it lacked the knowledge, networks and resources to offer meaningful assistance. Early in the process of considering Arab loans, PEC leaders realized that they lacked personnel capable of evaluating Arab agricultural or business practices. In fact, the PEC believed that their board of experts in Palestine (which appears to have had no Arab members) would be so hostile to the idea of working with Arabs that they elected to keep the plan a secret from them. This, combined with prejudiced fears that Arabs inherently lacked economic sense, meant that the PEC assumed Arabs would have a much higher default rate than Jews.
This perception mattered because while profit had never been the PEC’s primary motive, supporting Jewish settlement had turned a steady profit for the investors. While the PEC’s leaders theoretically wanted to offer capital to Arab industries in Palestine, they didn’t feel it was a cause worth losing money over.
Finally, and most critically, the very premise of the PEC’s approach was flawed. Since the earliest days of Zionism, Arabs in Palestine worried that they would be locked into permanent subordination to the Jewish population. This included fears of Jewish economic domination. Some of the first Arab protests against Zionism were economically connected, including demonstrations in Jaffa in 1923 against the electrification concession to a Zionist. This fear of economic domination was intrinsically connected to the Arab population’s political grievances that Jewish newcomers ultimately held more power than the native-born Arabs.
Attempts like the PEC’s to bifurcate the “political” from the economic did not grapple with how political and economic power were interwoven — or that meager economic improvement wouldn’t alleviate systemic political grievances.
Even a century later, American leaders have never fully grasped this reality, which has doomed repeated efforts to use economic improvement to help bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians.
In 2010, for example, construction began on Rawabi, a city in the West Bank funded by private investment and designed to be the Palestinian “Silicone Valley.” Dovish American backers touted the city as a model project because economic breakthroughs would herald a new era of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. Today, however, Rawabi has just a few thousand residences, and almost no one continues to tout it as holding promise for the future. Rawabi’s success was doomed from the start by several factors, such as: a lack of continued support from the West, poor existing economic systems of debt and mortgage, opposition from many Palestinians who believed that the project normalized relations with Israel, and most importantly, Israeli actions to delay the project to extract political concessions from the Palestinian Authority.
So why the continued push for these types of economic projects that produce few results, including Biden’s new 4G plan? Again, the PEC provides historical clues. In 1936, it submitted a report to the commission investigating the future of the British Mandate in the region. Despite the PEC having offered almost no support for the Arab population, the report mentioned Arabs nearly 20 times and claimed that the corporation’s work had benefited both Jews and Arabs — spurring friendships and connections between the two groups. Like Biden, the PEC understood that no matter their success, these efforts at economic improvement made for great public relations. | 2022-07-24T11:23:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s promises to Palestinians probably won’t help foster peace - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/24/bidens-promises-palestinians-probably-wont-help-foster-peace/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/24/bidens-promises-palestinians-probably-wont-help-foster-peace/ |
An antiabortion advocate along with abortion rights advocates hold up signs during a rally in Las Cruces, N.M., on July 19. (Meg Potter/The Las Cruces Sun News via AP)
It was a story so gruesome that at first, many doubted it was true: No sooner had Ohio’s abortion “trigger law” taken effect than a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to go to Indiana for an abortion. The fact that she had to cross state lines for an abortion is, of course, the least horrible thing about this whole story. But it added insult to already grievous injury, and wise legislators would never have passed a law that further brutalized that poor little girl.
Stories like this are a symptom of a Republican Party that came to depend on Roe v. Wade even as they labored to undo it. Roe meant you could pass never-never abortion laws to please the hardest-core activists in your base, safe in the knowledge that you wouldn’t actually have to confront the pregnant 10-year-old you were forcing to carry a baby.
(Jim Bopp, the general counsel for National Right to Life, told Politico, “We would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.” And I’m sure we all hope that Jim Bopp eventually gets the chance to meet some human beings during his visit to our planet.)
But stories like this are also a symptom of a broader problem with the abortion debate as it unfolded under Roe: We spend far too much time talking about the rarest, hardest cases rather than the prosaic realities of abortion as it usually occurs.
The overwhelming majority of abortions — more than 91 percent — are obtained by adult women. Out of the 618,789 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, a little more than 1,400 were performed on patients under the age of 15, which is about 0.2 percent of the total.
Girls that age are too young to consent, and I believe every one of them should have access to a safe, legal abortion to protect them from the physical and emotional trauma of delivering their rapist’s child. And of course you can’t blame the pro-choice movement for using these rare cases to publicize the extreme, unpopular consequences of the no-exceptions laws Republicans passed in states where they control the legislatures. But if you want broad access to abortion, that right can’t rest on the public’s visceral reaction to extreme edge cases.
After all, Republicans can make those cases go away by doing what they should have done in the first place: carving out exemptions for rape and incest, including a blanket exemption for any girl who is too young to consent to sex with anyone. Yes, purist pro-lifers will argue, logically, that a baby is a baby no matter how it was conceived, and doesn’t deserve to be killed in the womb. But the overwhelming majority of voters disagree with forcing rape victims to carry to term.
And even a committed hard-liner might concede that with fewer than 0.5 percent of abortion patients in the United States reporting rape as the primary reason for the abortion, it is probably better to allow a small number of the procedures than to provide pro-choice activists a steady stream of edge cases that shock the public’s moral conscience.
A similar caution applies to Republicans who prefer to focus the debate on late-term abortions. This has been politically fruitful territory for the pro-life movement, which had its greatest successes under Roe with bills banning “partial-birth abortion” and other methods used for abortions after the first trimester. They have been abetted, unfortunately, by a Democratic Party that increasingly shies away from accepting any restrictions at all on abortion access, even quite late in pregnancy (and justifies it by insisting that later abortions are only sought by women facing severe health problems or fetal anomalies, which isn’t true).
Most recently, Senate Democrats botched a bill codifying a national right to abortion because they insisted on pushing a messaging bill that would have forbidden nearly all restrictions on abortion, rather than one closer to where the mainstream of the public is: restrictions on abortions after the first trimester, but broad access before that point. If grateful moderate Republicans didn’t send Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) a fruit basket to thank him for sparing them a tough vote, they should have.
Yet pro-lifers who enjoy fighting on this territory are in the same pickle as pro-choicers who want to focus on rape and incest: Democrats can undercut them at any time by conceding the relatively small number of elective, later-term abortions to protect the 93 percent that are performed before the 14th week.
Eventually we have to be prepared to argue about what abortion mostly is: a medical procedure largely obtained early in pregnancy by healthy women who don’t want a child right now. That terrain may not be quite as comfortable to fight on, but it’s where you need to win. | 2022-07-24T11:23:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Abortion fight can't rely on cases like rape or late-term procedures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-fight-edge-cases-rape-late-term/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-fight-edge-cases-rape-late-term/ |
A Prince George's County emergency response officer in Upper Marlboro, Md., on Jan. 28, 2016. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
In Prince George’s County, Md., heedless judges, sluggish bureaucrats and an unaccountable courthouse culture have apparently combined to keep hundreds of inmates behind bars even after they’ve been deemed eligible for release as they await trial. In that hermetic culture, the fact that inmates sit in cells for weeks and months after a judge has determined they can or even must be released has been routine for many years. In fact, it seems to be routinely unconstitutional.
A lawsuit on behalf of those detained inmates has now been filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit group; Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection; and WilmerHale, a law firm. The suit describes a system in which low- and mid-level corrections officials exercise more power over whether defendants are incarcerated or set free than judges do. That is not how things are supposed to work.
Nor is that how things generally work at courthouses elsewhere, where judges make decisions, with input from corrections officials and others who recommend appropriate conditions for release — home detention or ankle bracelet monitoring, for example. In Prince George’s, the system seems to be flipped: In effect, officials in pretrial services make the calls on who can be released, with input from judges, who then turn a blind eye, unconscionably.
Shortly after the pandemic began, in May 2020, a review of the jail population determined that at least 121 of 503 inmates had been authorized by judges for pretrial release but remained incarcerated. Of that cohort, 48 had been waiting more than three months to be released.
Bear in mind that the inmates in question have been charged but not convicted, and therefore enjoy a presumption of innocence. Brought to court after their arrest, they are presented at bail hearings to Prince George’s district court judges who assess, in at least a fifth of the cases, that they are eligible for pretrial release, attorneys said. At that point, or very quickly thereafter, the jail doors should swing open. They often do not.
Instead, the fate of those inmates passes into the hands of the Population Management Division of the county’s Department of Corrections, colloquially known as “pretrial services,” which the lawsuit describes as “an inscrutable black box.” For weeks, and frequently months, the division’s officials “process” those inmates, who remain in jail. There is generally no notice, update or explanation to judges or defense lawyers.
Incredibly, that occurs not only for inmates who are authorized for release but even for those ordered released.
It may be the case that officials in the county’s pretrial services are overwhelmed and under-resourced. Staffing shortages and turnover problems were exacerbated by the pandemic, and a spike in some categories of crime has left the judicial system in Prince George’s reeling and, lawyers say, frequently chaotic.
Still, there is no excuse for judges who delegate their authority to bureaucrats and then have no routine, swift mechanism to determine that their orders have been followed — and, if not, why not. That may be a long-standing norm for judges in Prince George’s, but it is a Kafka-esque dereliction of duty. | 2022-07-24T11:23:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Prince George’s County judges turn a blind eye to inmates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/prince-georges-county-maryland-inmates-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/prince-georges-county-maryland-inmates-lawsuit/ |
The U.S. Capitol, seen from the Canon House Office Building, on July 21. (Tom Brenner/The Washington Post)
Even though 47 House Republicans joined with Democrats to pass a bill on marriage equality last week, many assumed a similar effort in the Senate would be dead in the water. But it is not — and reasonable senators should do everything in their power to pass it soon.
The Respect for Marriage Act would formally repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and woman. Although that definition was struck down in the courts, DOMA was never removed from the books. The new bill would also require state governments to recognize marriages legally performed in other states, and would give the attorney general the authority to bring civil action against figures who do not. It was written to encompass both same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.
Several Senate Republicans have already signaled support for the bill: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Rob Portman (Ohio) are co-sponsors, while Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) have suggested they would likely vote to approve it. Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) has said, though he believed it was “unnecessary,” he saw “no reason to oppose it.” These senators deserve credit for taking an early stance on the correct side, as do the 47 House Republicans who voted for it last week.
But the bill’s backers, including co-sponsors Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), need at least five more willing Republicans to get a filibuster-proof majority. Eight other GOP senators have indicated they would vote against it. The rest remain undecided or have not taken a public stance, according to CNN.
Some have complained the bill only codifies existing law and distracts from more pressing items, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) going so far as to call it a “stupid waste of time.” Yet, after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — and Justice Clarence Thomas’s unrestrained concurring opinion in the case — advocates worry that other precedents resting on the due process clause could be targeted next. This includes Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that enshrined the right to same-sex marriage across the country.
There may not be an immediate threat to Obergefell, but millions of LGBTQ Americans fear their hard-won right to marry whomever they love could at some point be taken away. This bill would relieve that uncertainty and enshrine their rights in the future.
It comes at a particularly trying time for the LGBTQ community. From Florida’s “don’t say gay” law barring teachers from bringing up sexuality and gender identity in classrooms, to Texas’s targeting of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents, a number of jurisdictions have enacted policies designed to exclude and stigmatize. And right-wing activists and politicians are increasingly relying on dangerous rhetoric around sexuality in an attempt to stoke a culture war.
Encouragingly, most Americans do not agree with them. More than 70 percent say same-sex marriage should be recognized, according to a Gallup poll, up from 27 percent in 1996. This includes 55 percent of Republicans. Passing the Respect for Marriage Act would be politically popular. It would also be the moral, just thing to do. In a time of intolerance and partisanship, we hope at least 60 senators will recognize that. | 2022-07-24T11:23:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pass the Respect for Marriage Act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/respect-marriage-act-senate-should-pass/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/respect-marriage-act-senate-should-pass/ |
Noah Lyles set an American record while winning the 200 at the world championships in Eugene, Ore. But he had some issues with the host country: “I feel the ball’s been dropped a little bit,” he said of the meet. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
EUGENE, Ore. — The first track and field world championships held in the United States have delivered clear successes and highlighted profound challenges for the sport in the host country. Knowledgeable and passionate crowds provided electricity at Hayward Field. U.S. athletes have dominated the medal count and produced historic performances. But crowds have not always filled the stadium, and it is unclear how much the atmosphere in a track-mad city has penetrated elsewhere.
The sport’s leaders hoped the event would enhance the profile of track and field here. World Athletics, the global governing body of track and field, views America as a market “not punching its weight,” President Sebastian Coe said. It owns a powerhouse track and field team, 50 million recreational runners and a high school system in which more kids participate than any other sport (if cross-country is included).
By the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, World Athletics hopes track and field has grown in popularity, and it placed its marquee stand-alone event in the United States as part of that aim. As U.S. athletes produced on the track, the organization must wonder the effect the event will have on potential U.S. fans.
“I feel the ball’s been dropped a little bit, not going to lie,” said sprinter Noah Lyles, who broke the 200 meters American record during the meet. “I feel there could have been way more advertisement on America’s side. This is an immaculate meet. This is by far the best track and field meet that America has had in years. And I’m watching these immaculate performances, and I’m like, ‘The crowd is here, yes. But gosh darn it was this not put together well.’ All the times are happening late at night. I’m still barely seeing much presence outside of what NBC is doing. Yes, people are talking about it. But people are late.
“It’s not so much the people inside of track. It’s the people who are trying to say they want to be a part of track, and they are not fully committed to distributing the information. People need to be saying how big of a deal this is or why this is so important. The whole story should be, ‘If you think this is amazing, just wait until L.A ….’ That’s what this is. This is a prelude to L.A.”
Coe allowed that most Americans who watched the world championships would have been inclined to do so regardless of their location. Being in the United States, though, provides a new set of data to study and learn from.
“For the very first time, it gives us a real-time audit of what we’re up against,” Coe said. “We’ll look at the viewing numbers. We’ll look at seats. We’ll look at stadium capacity. We’ll look at broadcast. We’ll look at the way it’s got covered, the penetration. But it’s a cluttered, complicated marketplace. It’s a tough nut to crack. It’s not been made easier by the fact that at a time when we probably should as a sport have been focusing on engagement and promoting the athletes, it didn’t happen in the way it should have been done.”
Last Sunday’s coverage on NBC averaged 2.235 million TV-only viewers, according to the network. NBC boasted that it was the most watched track and field competition in the United States over the past 18 years outside of the Olympics and the U.S. Olympic trials. It also said it was the fifth-most watched sports program of the weekend, although that is a low bar to clear in the sports desert of mid-July.
The fans at Hayward Field have made the world championships feel worthy of the event’s global stature. “It really made us feel special as athletes,” American 400 gold medalist Michael Norman said. “The fans gave me almost chills.”
The problem is, there have not been many of them compared to other championships. Hayward Field has a capacity of about 30,000. Once sponsors and delegations from every country were taken care of, it sold about 12,000 seats per session. It still sold 90 percent of available tickets, with some but not all night sessions selling out.
If you want to put on the best track meet in the United States, Eugene is an obvious choice. If you want to expand the reach of the sport in the United States, it is not the best choice. Only locals or fans willing to make a long pilgrimage could have attended. Both of those groups are composed of people track and field already has.
This week, Lyles overheard a local resident say, “I know this is the world championships, but I’m all tracked out.” Since May, Hayward Field had hosted the Prefontaine Classic, the NCAA championships and the U.S. championships. The frequency of major events may have spread local enthusiasm out.
'I feel free': U.S. athletes embrace track's world championships
“We knew there was a risk,” Coe said. “I do politely make the point there weren’t a lot of options available. There should have been, and we should have engaged earlier.”
Coe wished more cities had engaged with USATF, but only Eugene pushed to host after World Athletics made clear it wanted to bring the event to the United States. World Athletics changed its host city selection process and could now engage directly with a possible city rather than only a country’s governing body, Coe said.
“We can’t keep relying on Eugene to be our epicenter of track and field,” Lyles said. “There are other places we can go. When we went to New York for the Grand Prix [in early June], their interaction was just as strong as the interaction I had at Prefontaine. We don’t have to have everything in Eugene. We can get the same interaction in other places. We just to have to market and get people knowing we’re going there.”
World Athletics is trying to help in a country it believes, Coe said, has not always marketed track and field well. World Athletics and USATF have formed an initiative called “Project USA” to increase popularity here. As part of that, World Athletics is funding a documentary in the style of “Drive to Survive,” the Netflix hit that spurred a surge of popularity in Formula One car racing. | 2022-07-24T11:24:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. track athletes dominate at world championships. U.S. fans, not so much. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/24/world-track-field-championships-american-fans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/24/world-track-field-championships-american-fans/ |
Victor Robles got under Madison Bumgarner's skin with the way he celebrated a solo homer in the eighth inning of a 7-2 loss on Saturday night. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
PHOENIX — The inciting action: Victor Robles hitting a home run off Madison Bumgarner in the eighth inning Saturday night, then pausing to admire it — backpedaling a bit, delaying his trot up the line — despite the Washington Nationals trailing by five runs in an eventual 7-2 loss.
Bumgarner’s reaction in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ clubhouse? “He’s a clown. Golly,” the 32-year-old starter told reporters. “No shame ... No shame. Like, it’s 7-1, you hit your third homer of the year and you act like Barry Bonds breaking the record. Clean it up. I don’t care about giving up the run. Hell, we won 7-2, 8-2, whatever it was. It’s frustrating. I’m the old grumpy guy, I know, but that type of stuff — that didn’t use to happen. That’s ridiculous.”
And Robles’s reaction to Bumgarner’s reaction? “When he’s pitching well, he’s able to celebrate and do what he likes to do,” the 25-year-old center fielder said in Spanish through a team interpreter. “It seems like he calls everybody a clown that actually has a big hit or home run against him. If he doesn’t want anyone hitting a home run against him or having any issues with that, then just strike people out or make better pitches to where he doesn’t have to worry about that.”
This wasn’t the first time Bumgarner took exception to an opponent’s behavior. It wasn’t the second or third, either. Remember when, in 2019, Bumgarner yelled at Max Muncy and Muncy told him to fish a home run ball out of the ocean? Or Bumgarner’s run-ins with Yasiel Puig when the Cuban outfielder player for the Los Angeles Dodgers? Or when Bumgarner announced his class on the unwritten rules, available to all players between the ages of 12 and 30?
Okay that last one didn’t happen. But throughout his 14-year career, Bumgarner has believed — and often vocalized — that there’s a right way to play baseball. Those standards have changed in recent years, something that obviously irks him (made evident when he lamented Saturday that Robles’s quasi celebration “didn’t use to happen.”). Robles is just the latest hitter in his path.
Bumgarner, a four-time all star, was right that Robles isn’t having a notable season. The home run was his third, as Bumgarner noted, and raised Robles’s on-base-plus-slugging percentage to .623. And yes, the Nationals were way down in the inning, as they have been for much of their season.
The solo shot put a tiny dent in the final difference. Washington dropped to 31-65. The Diamondbacks, also a last-place team, improved to 42-52. Aside from the homer, Robles singled on a bunt, stole second after Bumgarner had him picked off first, scored on a grounder and had the wind knocked out of him on a diving attempt in center. It was the full Victor Robles experience.
And as he rounded the bases in the eighth, Bumgarner appeared to shout something at him. But if he heard, Robles didn’t flinch or acknowledge as much after the game. Speaking with a small group of reporters, he was more smiley than usual. At a few points of what amounted to a pseudo-serious interview, he even seemed on the verge of cracking into laughter. He started by thanking Octavio Martinez, who was interpreting for him, for throwing great batting practice before the matchup with Bumgarner. He finished by brushing off the whole situation.
“I didn’t hear anything. I was just running around the bases,” Robles said. “And honestly, even if I had, I wouldn’t have reacted. I respect the career he’s had. He has done a lot in this game. He’s earned his stripes, as we would say. He’s a veteran guy. My kind of personality, I don’t take into account that kind of stuff. I don’t react to those reactions or words that come out of him. I just play my game.”
Did he feel like his response to the homer was over the top in any way?
“No, I thought that I was just celebrating a little bit,” Robles answered. “... I was excited. Just like he would be if he had a great inning. He would probably have some kind of little reaction to that, too.” | 2022-07-24T12:19:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Madison Bumgarner calls Victor Robles 'a clown' after HR celebration - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/madison-bumgarner-victor-robles-clown/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/madison-bumgarner-victor-robles-clown/ |
Blue, my happy 12-year-old mutt, had a tumor. The high-tech medical help was wonderful but costly. I’d be happy to deal with it again, though, for my pet.
Perspective by Kim Kavin
A German shepherd is monitored during a CT scan at NorthStar VETS in New Jersey in June. Medical bills for a dog or cat can easily run into the thousands of dollars. (Bryan Anselm for The Washington Post)
When my happy, energetic 12-year-old mutt had what appeared to be an eye infection, I didn’t think much of it and took him to the veterinarian. A few X-rays later, that watery eye turned out to be the result of a tumor. I was distraught. Blue needed to see a specialist.
A few days later, a veterinary oncologist lifted my spirits when she said there was, indeed, something that could be done. But then, she started talking about money: It would cost thousands of dollars.
I had already spent about $2,000 in three days at the two vet practices. The CT scan Blue needed next would be another $2,500, and radiation therapy after that could cost at least $9,500 more.
This is a problem that many pet owners face: Medical bills for a dog or cat can easily run into the thousands of dollars. But for many of us, these are beloved family members. And some 86 percent have said we would pay whatever it takes if a pet needed extensive veterinary care.
That sentiment is more about love than actual math. It was a cold shock of reality when I added up Blue’s total projected expenses on paper. Getting the best available treatment for his tumor could cost more than $15,000 — and that was if everything went right. I’d already spent a lot. And it was unclear how much time it would buy him.
The oncologist at NorthStar VETS in New Jersey said they make sure pet owners understand up front what they’re getting into financially because many people can’t afford that kind of cost — many don’t have enough money in the bank to cover their own, or their kids, medical care. The call like the one I got is usually the heartbreaking beginning of the end of their pet’s story.
Rising costs of vet care
Like human health care, veterinary care is a marketplace of spiraling expense. According to the American Pet Products Association, pet owners in 2021 spent $34.3 billion on veterinary care and products, up from $24 billion in 2010.
And just as with human health care, there are now advanced treatments for pets in a range of vet fields, including dermatology, ophthalmology, orthopedics and, in my dog’s case, oncology.
The founder of NorthStar VETS added radiation oncology to his clinic’s services after his own dog had a brain tumor in 2014. He had to drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to find radiation therapy that cured the cancer, so he partnered with a company called PetCure Oncology to open a radiation center on NorthStar’s campus in May 2021.
And that was where my adopted shelter mutt ended up for treatment a year later.
PetCure provides something called stereotactic radiation. This is a gold-standard radiation treatment for humans: In 2015, former president Jimmy Carter had stereotactic radiation for melanoma in his brain; in 2019, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had it for a tumor on her pancreas.
For dogs, stereotactic radiation has been mostly available in veterinary teaching hospitals affiliated with universities and a handful of private practices nationwide. If pet owners live near one of those places and have the financial wherewithal, their beloved animals can receive the same cancer treatment as a former president and a justice.
“It is exactly what humans with cancer get in human oncology centers all the time,” says Ben Chiswick, vice president of operations and growth at PetCure. “It’s much more precise and impactful than other forms of radiation therapy. The more precise that beam of radiation can be going to the tumor, the less that beam is going to touch surrounding, healthy tissue, which is where the side effects come from.”
Stereotactic radiation is done over the course of one to three days, each time with the dog under anesthesia. In Blue’s case, the recommendation was for a three-day regimen with cumulative anesthesia and radiation effects that would leave him briefly disoriented and mostly exhausted, but still a lot better off than with traditional radiation courses that take place daily over several weeks.
I lucked out living near that clinic. After spending $5,000 on vet bills for a previous dog’s leg injury, I also had bought pet insurance when I adopted Blue II. Over the course of his life, the premiums averaged about $700 a year — less than many human health insurance policies cost for a single month. Maybe I’d never I’d use it, but if Blue needed it, it was there.
Now he needed it. When I asked the specialist on the phone whether Blue’s pet insurance policy would reimburse me for this type of radiation therapy, the answer was yes. So I greenlit the CT scan, checked the available credit on my Mastercard to cover the costs until insurance reimbursement arrived and rushed to get him into the radiation machine faster than his tumor was growing.
Long wait times
Over 100,000 veterinarians work in the United States, but a spike in pandemic pets and a huge demand for care have meant long wait times for many pet owners. Veterinary oncology is even less accessible. Only about 1,000 vets have degrees in medical or radiation oncology or surgery. Getting access to one can take four to six weeks nationwide, Chiswick says; every place I called near my home in New Jersey told me the wait would be two to six weeks just for an initial consult.
My regular vet said that wasn’t fast enough. Blue needed us to find a way to do better.
And so, I got up at 3 a.m., drove to NorthStar’s emergency department at a time when it was most likely to be empty and waited several hours while persuading them to admit Blue for a consult. My regular vet had sent his paperwork and X-rays over digitally.
The NorthStar emergency vet told me not to bother waiting; an oncologist might get to Blue that day, or maybe the next day. He would have to sit in the back until, well, whenever they could squeeze him in.Luckily, the medical oncologist was able to assess Blue later that same day.
This dog knows 40 commands and can play cards. A hospital hired him.
Within a week, the CT scan and consult with a radiation oncologist were done, and within two weeks of the initial trip to my regular vet, he began the first treatment. About 48 hours after his treatment was completed, he was back to bounding around the park and chasing squirrels in the backyard. He had no side effects other than temporarily needing drops in his eye, which was dry. There was a lump on his face where the cancer mangled some bone, but he’s on the doggy version of ibuprofen and showed no signs of discomfort.
The little stinker even figured out that begging for treats now works for him every time.
What was the cost at that point?
I bought Blue’s health plan individually, when he was a year old. (An increasing number of clients, according to PetCure, get pet insurance through their jobs, just like human health insurance.) During his 12 years of life, I’ve paid about $9,000 in insurance premiums. The policy paid out more than $10,000 for his initial cancer treatment, in addition to other reimbursements for smaller vet bills over the years. I covered a little more than $4,500 in deductibles and co-pays from my personal savings, because I set up the insurance with a 70 percent reimbursement rate, to keep the annual premiums down.
Of course, if a dog never has an expensive diagnosis, the math goes the other way. My other dog has the same policy. So far with her, I’ve paid more for insurance than I’ve used. And it’s typical insurance — I had to fight for days to get one of Blue’s claims paid in full. Even so, I’m glad I have it. I’ll never have another dog without it again.
“Literally every client we see would benefit from it,” Chiswick says. “It’s the same cost-benefit analysis as in human medicine. You may be throwing money away, or it may save you thousands of dollars.”
According to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association, as of May 2022, Blue was among only 4.41 million insured pets in all of North America. In the United States, it’s mostly dog owners with these policies, but we represent a tiny fraction of the 69 million U.S. households with a dog.
Even so, the association says, the pet insurance marketplace increased 27.7 percent in the past year. Based on my conversations with experts as well as with Blue’s veterinary team, a lot of the people buying these policies are like me: We’ve been hit with a big vet bill in the past.
More important to me was that Blue was still covered if he survived long enough to become eligible for another round of stereotactic radiation. And yes, that was an “if.”
Even with $15,000 spent on his treatment, the projected survival time is only six to 18 months. The doctors warned me that Blue will probably be at the lower end of that range because his type of cancer is the squamous cell variety. It’s an aggressive type that fights back. A second round of stereotactic radiation is only recommended after six months and would probably buy only about half as much time as the first round.
In other words, if Blue made it to mid-October, I would have the option to go through all of this again, to maybe help him live through Christmas.
When Blue was first diagnosed, every friend with pets who I asked for advice said they’d do whatever it took to try to save their pet.
One, whose teenager is battling cancer and spends almost all her time quarantined at home with the family dog, said she’d go into debt to save that dog’s life right now.
Another, whose father recently completed radiation therapy for eye cancer, said he wouldn’t even hesitate to try to save his two mutts.
A cat-owning friend who survived Stage 3 B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma said that she, too, would proceed in Blue’s case.
A woman who works at the salon where I get haircuts told me she once spent $15,000 for a dog’s surgery, without pet insurance, and would do so again without question.
As pet parents go, I’m exceedingly common — and part smart, part lucky — to be in a position where I could actually do whatever it took for my dog to get the best available treatment.
Larisa Love, director of clinical communications at PetCure, says her team hears the same thing every day from callers to the helpline they run.
“They say it constantly,” Love told me. “We hear about a husband whose wife just died of cancer, and this was her dog, and he’s going to do everything he can to save this dog. It’s a full-circle family member. Clients who have been through cancer say their dog or cat got them through it, and they say now, they’re going to get their pet through it.”
Sadly, in Blue’s case, his tumor came roaring back in late June. Another $2,000 CT scan (covered by insurance) showed that the cancer would still overtake him even if we did a “radiation boost” and added chemotherapy.
And so as I write this, we don’t have much time left.
He has been comfortable, and on pain meds, and I’m at least comforted that I did everything possible for him. We gained another two to three months of walks in the park, swims in the river and snuggles in bed.
If I had to do it over again, I would do the same thing.
I’d pay double.
Kim Kavin wrote about Blue in her 2012 book “Little Boy Blue: A Puppy’s Rescue From Death Row and His Owner’s Journey for Truth.” | 2022-07-24T12:54:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cancer care for pets is hugely costly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/dog-cat-cancer-care-price/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/dog-cat-cancer-care-price/ |
If you’re older and have prediabetes, try to eat better and not worry
Two recent reports about the condition in the elderly population are spurring interest in the issue
A nurse helps administer a blood sugar test. (iStock)
More than 26 million people 65 and older have prediabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How concerned should they be about progressing to diabetes?
Not very, some experts say. Prediabetes — a term that refers to above-normal but not extremely high blood sugar levels — isn’t a disease, and it doesn’t imply that older adults who have it will inevitably develop Type 2 diabetes, they say.
“For most older patients, the chance of progressing from prediabetes to diabetes is not that high,” said Robert Lash, the chief medical officer of the Endocrine Society. “Yet labeling people with prediabetes may make them worried and anxious.”
Other experts believe it is important to identify prediabetes, especially if doing so inspires older adults to add more physical activity, lose weight and eat healthier diets to help bring their blood sugar under control.
Type 2 diabetes may accelerate brain function decline
“Always a diagnosis of prediabetes should be taken seriously,” said Rodica Busui, president-elect of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, which recommends adults 45 and older get screened for prediabetes at least once every three years. The CDC and the American Medical Association make a similar point in their ongoing “Do I Have Diabetes?” campaign.
At 5 feet and 106 pounds, Selvin, a ceramic artist, is slim and in good physical shape. She takes a rigorous hour-long exercise class three times a week and eats a Mediterranean-style diet. Yet Selvin has felt alarmed since learning last year that her blood sugar was slightly above normal.
Over a quarter of 12-to-19-year-olds have prediabetes, research shows
Two recent reports about prediabetes in the older population have heightened interest in this topic. Until their publication, most studies focused on prediabetes in middle-aged adults, leaving the significance of this condition in older adults uncertain.
A new study by researchers at the CDC, published in April in JAMA Network Open, examined data for more than 50,000 older patients with prediabetes between January 2010 and December 2018. Just over 5 percent of these patients progressed to diabetes annually, it found.
Researchers used a measure of blood sugar levels over time, hemoglobin A1C. Prediabetes is signified by A1C levels of 5.7 to 6.4 percent, or a fasting plasma glucose test reading of 100 to 125 milligrams per deciliter, according to the diabetes association. (This glucose test evaluates blood sugar after a person hasn’t eaten anything for at least eight hours.)
Of note, study results show that obese older adults with prediabetes were at significantly heightened risk of developing diabetes. Also at risk were Black seniors, those with a family history of diabetes, low-income seniors and older adults at the upper end (6 to 6.4 percent) of the A1C prediabetes range. Men were at slightly higher risk than women.
Gestational diabetes during pregnancy is rising. Experts are alarmed.
Since 2018, Medicare has covered the Diabetes Prevention Program, a set of classes offered at YMCAs and in other community settings designed to help seniors with prediabetes eat healthier, lose weight and become more active. Research has shown the prevention program lowers the risk of diabetes by 71 percent in people 60 and older. But only a small fraction of people eligible have enrolled.
Another study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year, puts prediabetes in further perspective. Over the course of 6.5 years, it showed, fewer than 12 percent of seniors with prediabetes progressed to full-fledged diabetes. By contrast, a larger portion either died of other causes or shifted back to normal blood sugar levels over the study period.
“We know that it’s common in older adults to have mildly elevated glucose levels, but this doesn’t have the same meaning that it would in younger individuals — it doesn’t mean you’re going to get diabetes, go blind, or lose your leg,” said Elizabeth Selvin, daughter of Nancy Selvin and a co-author of the JAMA Internal Medicine study. She is also a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Almost no one develops the [diabetes] complications we’re really worried about in younger people,” Elizabeth Selvin said.
“It’s okay to tell older adults with prediabetes to exercise more and eat carbohydrates evenly throughout the day,” said Medha Munshi, director of the geriatric diabetes program at the Joslin Diabetes Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. “But it’s important to educate patients that this is not a disease that is inevitably going to make you diabetic and stress you out.”
Many older people have slightly elevated blood sugar because they produce less insulin and process it less efficiently. While this is factored into clinical diabetes guidelines, it hasn’t been incorporated in prediabetes guidelines, she said.
For those with prediabetes, dropping four to six pounds can cut the risk of getting diabetes
Aggressive treatments for prediabetes, such as the medication metformin, should be avoided, said Victor Montori, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. “If you get diabetes, you will be prescribed metformin. But it’s just nonsense to give you metformin now, because you may be at risk, to reduce the chance that you’ll need metformin later.”
At the time, Hissam was going to exercise classes five days a week and walking four to six miles daily, as well. When her doctor advised “watch what you eat,” Hissam cut out much of the sugar and carbohydrates in her diet and dropped nine pounds. But when she had another A1C test at the start of this year, her number had dropped only slightly, to 5.6 percent.
“My doctor really didn’t have much to say when I asked, ‘Why wasn’t there more of a change?’ ” Hissam said.
Experts said fluctuations in test results are common, especially around the lower and upper ends of the prediabetes range. According to the CDC study, 2.8 percent of prediabetic seniors with A1C levels of 5.7 to 5.9 percent convert to diabetes each year.
Nancy Selvin, who learned last year that her A1C level had climbed to 6.3 percent from 5.9 percent, said she has been trying to lose six pounds without success since getting those test results. Her doctor has told Selvin not to worry but prescribed a statin to reduce the potential for cardiovascular complications, because prediabetes is associated with an elevated risk of heart disease.
For her part, Libby Christianson, 63, of Sun City, Ariz., started walking more regularly and eating more protein after learning last summer that her A1C level was 5.7 percent.
“If prediabetes is a kick in the butt to move people to healthier behaviors, I’m fine with that,” said Kenneth Lam, a geriatrician at the University of California at San Francisco. “But if you’re older, certainly over age 75, and this is a new diagnosis, it’s not something I would worry about. I’m pretty sure that diabetes isn’t going to matter in your lifetime.” | 2022-07-24T12:54:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | If you’re older and have prediabetes, try to eat better and not worry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/seniors-prediabetes-eating-well/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/seniors-prediabetes-eating-well/ |
By Steven L. Isenberg
President Joe Biden waves as he boards Air Force One at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on July 15. (Abir Sultan/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Steven L. Isenberg is a former publisher of New York Newsday and was chief of staff to New York Mayor John V. Lindsay.
The conventional calculus argues that a president would be a fool to reveal such a plan before he has to, because it would instantly undercut his ability to get anything of real significance accomplished. But in Biden’s case the argument is exactly wrong. Here’s why the decision not to run should come promptly.
No more self-conscious maneuvering by Biden and his staff, nor whispers and unattributed quotes about what the president should or will do. Once the expense of spirit, dollars, actions and arguments to keep alive the possibility of a second term is ended, the need for Biden to posture or tactically temporize will be gone, too.
That new freedom would permit him to say with absolute conviction that every ounce of his energy, focus and political capital will be devoted to addressing the nation’s immediate needs and the matters he feels most deeply shape our future.
The plotting and the politicking of Democrats aspiring to the presidency has already begun. Unless Biden announces that he is not running for reelection, this quiet campaign against him will intensify — whether it comes from people who intend to challenge Biden in the primaries in 2024 or just to flex their muscles to discourage him from running again. This is fueled by his low standing in the polls on job performance and on desirability as the party’s 2024 nominee.
Biden might be playing for time to avoid the consequences of being a lame duck, but that is a canard. It might be hurtful and unfair, but Biden is already seen by some as lame and lacking intensity — older, more frail, less persuasive — even when he says the right things. All understandable in age (I am 81), but why stir those concerns and doubts unnecessarily by retaining the prospect of a second term?
It’s true that if Donald Trump were to run for the presidency again, and won, he would assume the office at 78. Age, however, is far down the list of attributes that argue against his reelection.
Biden, on the other hand, has been a stronger president than the polls suggest. His convictions on guns, abortion, the Supreme Court, China and inflation have been made with candor. His attainments in judicial appointments, and aspirations for physical and social infrastructure, as well as climate change, form a serious agenda. He has been strong and firm enough to lead the West’s response to Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and used his time and presence by traveling to further his foreign policy on the world stage.
He would bolster this agenda, and silence the unnecessary polling questions and their unsettling results, which sap his hold on voters' patience and confidence, by making a one-term decision and announcement before the midterms.
Why not direct all Biden’s strength to moving public opinion and Congress toward comity and achievement over the next two years? Biden stands a better chance of a favorable congressional result for the Democrats in November’s election, and of being able to pass legislation during the rest of his term, if the focus is on the House and Senate candidates and their positions on the issues. His age, and his presidency, would be greatly reduced as an issue this fall.
He would avoid questions about who his running mate might be, or who should be in his next Cabinet. He would not have to resist appraising challengers from his own party or the GOP. Perhaps he had all this inherently in mind when he called himself “a transitional president.”
If so, he should not wait to share his decision with the rest of us. Biden’s power and dignity can be strengthened by framing the next two years with clarity and without electoral distractions.
He would become entirely a man for the urgent present. | 2022-07-24T12:54:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden should announce right now that he's not running in 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/biden-midterms-why-he-should-announce-not-running-reelection/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/biden-midterms-why-he-should-announce-not-running-reelection/ |
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during an event at the U.S. Capitol on July 20. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took charge of the national response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in a way no one in the White House, Senate or even pro-choice groups has been able to do. She understood that not only the court’s right-wing majority but also the Republican Party who put them on the bench were wildly out of step with the public.
So in a Dear Colleagues letter just days after the opinion was announced, she vowed to bring to the House floor measures that would protect “women’s most intimate and personal data stored in reproductive health apps”; affirm the “Constitutional right to travel freely and voluntarily throughout the United States”; and once more pass the Women’s Health Protection Act to make Roe v. Wade federal law.
But she did not stop there. She seized on Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, which called for an even broader assault on privacy rights — including access to contraception, in-vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage.
She has made good on her promises. Earlier this month, the House passed the Women’s Health Protection Act and measures to protect the right to travel and information privacy, which Republicans opposed in almost unanimously. In doing so, Republicans effectively put their stamp of approval on tech companies and governments rummaging through women’s phones to figure out whether and when they became pregnant. Republicans also own any state efforts to ban interstate travel for abortion patients.
Pelosi then put a bill protecting same-sex marriage on the floor. This time, the legislation lured 47 Republicans to vote yes, but vast majority of Republicans voted against a now popular feature of American life.
Finally, on Thursday, Pelosi put on the floor a bill codifying the right to contraception, which Democratic, Republican and independent voters all overwhelmingly favor. Lo and behold, 195 Republicans voted against it. Democrats should be popping open the champagne. If ever there was a vote that epitomized the GOP’s extremism and disdainful view of women, this is it.
As Pelosi said on the House floor, “It’s outrageous that, nearly 60 years after Griswold was decided, women must once again fight for fundamental freedom to determine the size and timing of their families,” she said, referring to the court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. She added, “But as Republicans turn back the clock on contraception, Democrats today are making it clear: We are not going back.”
The speaker was just getting warmed up: Controlling women’s options for contraception, she said, “is just another plank in the Republican extreme agenda for America.” She explained that the bill would establish an “unequivocal statutory right to obtain and use contraception,” affecting only the most “extremist state laws.”
It’s a matter of health, of “economic justice” and “a matter of fundamental freedom to make their own decisions about your own body and own life” She reminded Republicans that the vast majority of Americans think they should have access to contraception.
She then lowered the boom: “Let us be clear: Those that oppose this legislation are only revealing their dark desire to punish and control America’s most intimate and personal decisions. . . .What is this about? They are against birth control, but they are for controlling women. This is about servitude.”
She couldn’t resist taunting Republicans. “I ask those who oppose contraception, again, do you even know what’s going on in your own families? Why don’t you ask? Do we need a session of the birds and bees to talk about why this is important?”
Democrats would be foolish not to feature this issue in every congressional race. At a moment when Democrats’ numbers are surging in generic congressional ballot polls, which measures which party voters prefer to control Congress, Pelosi has found an effective way to hoist Republicans with their own petard.
For reaffirming overwhelmingly popular positions on privacy rights, underscoring the extremism of the right-wing Supreme Court and exposing Republicans’ radically misogynistic views, we can say well done, Madam Speaker. | 2022-07-24T12:54:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Nancy Pelosi's post-Dobbs strategy is working splendidly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/pelosi-strategy-working-splendidly-dobbs-abortion-gay-marriage-contraception/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/pelosi-strategy-working-splendidly-dobbs-abortion-gay-marriage-contraception/ |
Among the areas of disagreement are key questions over how to enforce abortions bans.
By Rachel Roubein
Antiabortion demonstrators chant and celebrate near the Supreme Court on June 24 after the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Roughly 40 antiabortion leaders projected resolve and unity on a 2.5-hour long webcast to thousands of viewers just days after the nation’s highest court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last month.
During the virtual event titled “Life Beyond Roe,” they detailed next steps for a movement that had just won its greatest victory in nearly 50 years. One by one, they spoke of flipping Democratic congressional seats, of empowering state legal offices, of avoiding a victory lap and instead doubling down on their long-running crusade to curtail abortion access across the country.
“I believe that for the rest of your life, you’re going to remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news on Friday, June 24,” David Bereit, the former CEO of 40 Days for Life, told the audience. “But — this is an important but — we have to recognize that this is not the end.”
Abortion rights groups grasp for a post-Roe strategy
“There’s always been a 50-year debate over what’s the best way to bring down Roe v. Wade,” said Clarke Forsythe, the senior counsel for Americans United for Life, an antiabortion law firm and advocacy group. “And now there’s a big debate, and everybody’s involved, about what’s the best road forward — or what are the best roads forward — after Dobbs,” he said referring to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe.
A narrow slice of activists take a more extreme stance of imposing criminal penalties on patients who get abortions — but such a position is at odds with the more mainstream antiabortion movement which contends the woman should not be punished.
The looming battles will be waged in state legislatures, as antiabortion groups work with local leaders on passing ambitious plans to ban abortion. Major groups have their own model legislation — or are planning to soon unveil language — that state lawmakers can introduce when legislative sessions resume in a race to influence what a new post-Roe America will look like.
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Leading antiabortion advocates downplayed the divisions among various organizations, contending they amount to a healthy debate that can be found within any social movement.
“There’s always tactical disagreements,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America. “I think what’s so great about our movement, though, is that there is that unity of what is our end goal, and how are we trying to transform our culture to be one that respects life.”
But the issues they disagree on are consequential and resolving them could be difficult.
“It was easy to unite against Roe v. Wade,” said Louisiana state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who offered an amendment nixing a proposal advanced by a Louisiana House panel in May allowing women who have an abortion to be criminally charged. He voted for the original version of the bill in committee, but later apologized for doing so.
“I think this issue has the potential to divide the right,” he said, referring to abortion restrictions in general, “because of the issue of where you put the line. It’s not clean, neat and easy.”
Abortion rights groups aren’t taking any comfort from the divisions within the antiabortion movement and have vowed to fight restrictions through the courts and the ballot box.
“These are all variations of the same thing,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the head of the National Women’s Law Center. “They are bans on abortion and so we will resist them at every turn.”
Civil enforcement and crossing state lines
Some national antiabortion groups — such as the Thomas More Society — and GOP state lawmakers are seeking to advance proposals allowing private citizens to sue people who help or provide a resident of a state that has banned abortion terminate a pregnancy in another state, The Washington Post previously reported. But some groups, like Alliance Defending Freedom, believe doing so could conflict with the right to interstate travel.
The idea of civil enforcement comes from a novel method used in Texas where the state has deputized private citizens with filing lawsuits against anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion. That mechanism of allowing citizens to sue — which went into effect last September — has received praise from groups like Students for Life of America, who said they “appreciate Texas’s ingenuity.”
One question is to what degree this legal strategy should be used to enforce abortion bans within a state while another is how or whether it should be used to sue people who help or provide abortions to women traveling from states where the procedure is banned.
President Biden has already directed his cabinet secretaries to fight measures that would prevent patients from accessing abortion pills and traveling out of state. The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the merits of allowing private citizens to sue, and it’s not yet clear if the Justice Department will go after states that utilize the new mechanism.
The Thomas More Society typically focuses on litigation, but decided to wade into the legislative arena after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The conservative legal organization is planning to help legislators craft language using Texas’s mechanism empowering private citizens to sue, which could include prohibiting medication abortion and cracking down on out-of-state abortions. The efforts wouldn’t criminalize the patient.
“I see civil enforcement as important for the entire abortion law because of this issue of public officials not enforcing laws they don’t like,” said Peter Breen, the organization’s vice president and senior counsel. Some antiabortion advocates said they are worried about scenarios where a state’s governor or attorney general is a Democrat and refuses to enforce a ban put in place by a Republican-led legislature.
But Texas’s approach has also received skepticism from groups who contend it’s far too broad.
“We don’t support an open-ended, any Tom, Dick or Harry can use the law,” said Forsythe, of Americans United for Life, which has been behind hundreds of antiabortion bills introduced in state legislatures. “The civil enforcement mechanism should be limited to women injured by abortion or family members involved or affected.”
According to James Bopp Jr., the NRLC’s general counsel, “we think that it should only be family members” who can sue.
Oklahoma passed a law using Texas’s broad enforcement mechanism earlier this year, while Idaho adopted a more narrow measure more similar to Bopp’s legislation.
Other groups are instead taking a wait-and-see approach. For instance, SBA Pro-Life America — a leading antiabortion organization — is “neutral” on the civil enforcement mechanism as long as the woman isn’t prosecuted.
“[We] generally don’t think it should be taken off the table, especially because in some states you have AGs who have stated they won’t enforce laws passed by the legislative branch,” Mallory Carroll, the group’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Rape and incest exemptions
Among leading national groups, there’s unity around banning abortion even in the cases of pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. Such a position has thrust Republicans in an uncomfortable spotlight in recent weeks, as most bans in effect now only include an exception for life of the mother.
Some organizations — like Americans United for Life — say they’re cognizant that some states may choose to allow abortions in the case of rape and incest to muster enough political support to pass new restrictions. Meanwhile, others are more “doctrinaire” on the question of exceptions, said one consultant who works with an antiabortion organization.
“Other groups have taken the practical approach that we’ll never have consensus in America if we don’t include the rape and incest protections … personally, I think that’s the right approach,” said the consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely.
Abortion foes push to narrow ‘life of mother’ exceptions
Yet, several groups are instead pushing for narrow or to remove exceptions to save the health or life of the mother, arguing they create loopholes that can be exploited. Matt Sande, legislative director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, contends that a doctor can still intervene during life-or-death situations, but that medical providers should also attempt to save the fetus.
“I will not say it’s a slam dunk to pass a total protection statutory abortion ban in Wisconsin,” said Sande. “Among the Republican caucuses, there would be a fight, but it’s a fight worth having.”
Prosecuting providers vs. women
Another division between hard line and more mainstream groups is over prosecuting the woman. Major antiabortion groups have taken pains in recent weeks to publicly oppose the idea, particularly after the Louisiana proposal to criminally charge patients drew national attention.
“As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear: We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include such penalties in legislation,” over 70 groups wrote in a May 12 open letter led by the National Right to Life Committee.
But Bradley Pierce, executive director of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, helped draft the Louisiana measure and said he was disappointed when antiabortion lawmakers backed away from it. | 2022-07-24T12:54:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antiabortion leaders weigh enforcing bans, civil cases, criminally charging women after Roe v Wade's end - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/antiabortion-movement-divisions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/24/antiabortion-movement-divisions/ |
By Chris Megerian, Fatima Hussein and Ellen Knickmeyer | AP
FILE - President Joe Biden leaves after speaking about Intel’s announcement to invest in an Ohio chip making facility, at the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, Jan. 21, 2022. Biden is having trouble fulfilling his promises to the rest of the world because of political challenges at home. Although he’s made pledges or reached deals on climate change, taxes and pandemic relief, legislation for all of those issues has stalled on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Biden’s ability to meet his pledge, however, has been undermined twice recently. First the conservative majority on the Supreme Court limited the administration's powers to regulate emissions, and then Manchin said he wouldn’t support new spending to support clean energy projects.
Biden is trying to demonstrate that he'll push forward on his own, without legislation, and he’s considering declaring a state of emergency that would allow him to shift more resources toward climate initiatives. | 2022-07-24T12:55:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden's global promises held back by politics at home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bidens-global-promises-held-back-by-politics-at-home/2022/07/24/a56537e8-0b4e-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bidens-global-promises-held-back-by-politics-at-home/2022/07/24/a56537e8-0b4e-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Solution to Jan. 27, 2019 crossword, “Change of Address” (Evan Birnholz/The Washington Post)
As I mentioned last week, today’s puzzle is a rerun from the archives. I picked the Jan. 27, 2019 puzzle “Change of Address.” You can read the original post for that puzzle here, but to quickly recap: Three phrases contain circled letters that signify a type of home (FRANCHISES, VILLAINESS, and GOT A SECOND OPINION). Each of those circled letters can be changed to form the word HEART and the crossing starred Down clues will still work. For instance, 31D: [*Sound of laughter] can either be HAR or HAH and 3D: [*Result of two people with incompatible values exchanging numbers, perhaps] can either be BAD DATA or BAD DATE. The theme is revealed by the grid-spanning HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS at 125A: [Phrase about feeling a strong connection to a particular place, and a hint for substituting letters in this puzzle’s circled squares].
This puzzle was originally a bittersweet crossword — a tribute to my parents’ old house in Highland Park, Illinois. I grew up there. They lived there for 36 years. The last time I set foot in that house was when I wrote this crossword. I made it as a gesture of saying goodbye to a place that’s still very special to me.
I chose this puzzle today for a different, but still strongly emotional, reason. On July 5, I informed my editors that I just didn’t have the energy to write a new puzzle for July 24. I had still been waiting to hear about friends who live in Highland Park — if they were among the seven people who were killed or the dozens of people injured in the mass shooting on July 4. One of my childhood friends had been asked to emcee the Fourth of July parade but luckily couldn’t make it. My brother’s friend Jessica actually was the emcee that day. Several other old friends had brought their families to the parade, and all I could do for several days was wait for calls or text messages and refresh my phone every few minutes to see if there had been any updates from local or national news.
I did not personally know any of the victims, but Highland Park is a small town of about 30,000 people. Having lived there for the first 18 years of my life it was impossible not to know at least a few survivors. Just as surreal for me was learning one day after the shooting that almost twenty years ago I had met the suspected shooter’s father, Bob Crimo Jr. He was a community staple, running the White Hen Pantry convenience store in Ravinia. I didn’t know him but friends of mine did, and I met him briefly when we got late-night sandwiches at the White Hen in the summer of 2003 when his son would have been maybe two years old. It wasn’t the most memorable encounter, but when a traumatic event like this occurs in your hometown, it tends to evoke memories of people and places that previously seemed insignificant. You wonder if any of those memories could make any of this tragedy make sense.
“Change of Address” was originally intended as a personal memory of my childhood home. Because memory is a powerful emotional influence, I wanted this old puzzle to serve as a small gesture to remember the victims and their families. Crosswords are almost always designed to be a fun escape from the troubles of the world, and I am sorry if this puzzle had been a chilling reminder of those troubles, but crosswords can also be a small form of healing. They are for me, anyway — it’s an activity I’ve enjoyed doing since I was a kid. It’s what I share with the world in my adult life now. In that spirit, I’ve also made a donation to the Victims of the Highland Park July Fourth Shooting GoFundMe campaign. If you are so inclined to make a donation, please see more information at the link above.
New puzzles will resume next week. Thanks for solving and reading. | 2022-07-24T13:33:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Solution to Evan Birnholz’s July 24 crossword, “Change of Address” - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/24/solution-evan-birnholzs-july-24-crossword-change-address/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/24/solution-evan-birnholzs-july-24-crossword-change-address/ |
Legislation includes $52 billion to subsidize chip manufacturing and research, and tens of billions more for science and tech spending
Semiconductor chips are printed onto silicon wafers and loaded into containers in the clean room at GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in Malta, N.Y. The Senate is expected to vote on a bill this week that would provide subsidies for more such factories in the United States. (Cindy Schultz/For The Washington Post)
Semiconductor companies and universities are already jockeying for slices of the funding, in an early sign of what’s likely to be a heated competition, should the bill become law.
Much of the $52 billion would go to chip manufacturers to incentivize construction of domestic factories to produce the components, which are the brains that power all modern electronics.
Global shortages of the tiny components have hobbled all types of manufacturing, forcing automakers to cut production and driving up prices for cars and other goods.
“Our universities are very structured around winning NSF grants and publishing. They’ve been less focused on actually patenting,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, told The Washington Post. The new funding would aim to help the United States translate its science into applications and domestic manufacturing faster, she said.
Chip manufacturing giants including Intel and TSMC have already said they are counting on receiving some of the U.S. semiconductor subsidies to help finance factory construction projects in Ohio and Arizona. GlobalFoundries, another big chip producer, also hopes for some of the funding to support a factory expansion in Upstate New York.
Three months, 700 steps: Why it takes so long to produce a computer chip
Last week, Minnesota-based chipmaker SkyWater Technology and Purdue University said they intend to win part of the funding to help finance a new $1.8 billion factory and research facility next to the university in West Lafayette, Ind.
In an interview, SkyWater chief executive Thomas Sonderman said the rough plan is for federal and Indiana state funding to pay for two-thirds of the factory, with the rest coming from SkyWater and its chip customers.
The facility would most likely make chips for the auto industry, medical device manufacturers, aerospace customers and the Department of Defense, he said.
Announcing the plan at an event last week, Purdue President Mitch Daniel said the project would make the university “a more vibrant and attractive environment so that the brightest minds in the world will want to come and study and teach and research and live here.”
IBM, the State University of New York at Albany and other partners are also lobbying for funding to establish a semiconductor research center in Albany. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer is backing that effort.
This week, IBM is planning to fly nearly 60 senior executives to Washington, D.C., to push members of Congress to pass the legislation, spokesman Sean Higgins said Friday.
“Congress has a once in a generation opportunity to reinvigorate U.S. leadership and innovation in a critical field of technology while creating good paying tech jobs nationwide,” Mukesh Khare, vice president of hybrid cloud at IBM Research, said in a statement. | 2022-07-24T14:08:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chips Act vote expected in Senate this week to provide subsidy for fabs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/24/chips-act-senate-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/24/chips-act-senate-vote/ |
Cotton wool soaked with calamine to sooth chicken pox, shingles and insect bites. (Jennifer A Smith/Getty Images)
Women around the world are smearing calamine lotion all over their faces before applying makeup — a “beauty hack” that’s gone viral on TikTok that they say helps dry out oily skin, repair acne scars, and keep their makeup in place for hours on end.
Some are using a sponge or a make-up brush to dab on the over-the-counter product commonly used to soothe rashes and other skin conditions that cause itching, such as chickenpox. Others wasted no time — pouring the pink lotion directly onto their face and rubbing it in with their bare hands before applying foundation and other makeup right on top of the thin crust.
“I cannot see my pores anywhere," one TikToker said in approval, claiming the product made her skin appear “super matte." Other beauty enthusiasts on the platform have hailed calamine as a primer — claiming it helps their makeup stay put in the summer sun and throughout 12-hour workdays.
TikTokers say they are “obsessed” with the discovery and the hashtag #calamineprimer has around 3.5 million views on the platform. But dermatologists and makeup experts are warning that those jumping on the makeup trend could risk worsening of skin conditions and long-term damage.
“It just doesn’t make sense to use calamine lotion and risk drying out the skin and damaging the skin barrier,” Azadeh Shirazi, a dermatologist practicing in San Diego, Calif., told The Washington Post.
Shirazi, who goes by the username “skinbydrazi” on TikTok, has tried to tackle the trend head on, using her account to debunk beauty myths and trends. Shirazi said that in recent months users have tagged her in comments on such videos, asking her for medical advice.
Shirazi has used the platform to urge people to consider the ingredients before turning to calamine lotion as a primer, as overuse may lead to “severe irritation and worsening of scars."
While experts say the lotion can be used to shrink acne lesions and marks left on the skin, especially as a targeted treatment, the American Academy of Dermatology warns that the astringent calamine can worsen skin irritations if not used sparingly.
“Calamine lotion is made up of zinc oxide, ferric oxide, and phenol. Zinc oxide is an astringent that can help absorb excess oil and have a mattifying effect,” Shirazi said, adding that the product is generally recommended to treat oozing wounds from infections such as chickenpox and monkeypox. The lotion is also used to soothe insect bites, pimples, rashes and poison ivy.
The product, Shirazi says, causes the skin surface to dry up and harden, protecting it while it repairs. “Ferric oxide helps with itching and the phenol is also a powerful exfoliant," she said. “Combining phenol with an astringent as in calamine lotion can be very drying and irritating, leading to a damaged skin barrier. It can worsen skin conditions such as acne, rosacea, and dermatitis.”
On TikTok, Shirazi told her 1.8 million followers simply: “It’s a no from me."
Makeup pros say primers are an essential beauty staple that should be used underneath makeup to help prepare and smooth skin and keep makeup locked in place. But make-up artist Kourtney Hammett, based in Essex, England, also warned against using the lotion as primer, predicting that it may cause fine lines and wrinkles in the long-run due to the product’s “drying" nature.
Hammett stressed: “You should be using makeup that is suitable for your skin type," including primers and moisturizers. At a minimum, she said, don’t use it daily.
While some people may be able to tolerate using the lotion as a primer, not everyone will see positive results, Shirazi stressed. "Much like anything else related to skin care the potential risks depend on your skin type so it’s best to always check with your dermatologist first,” Shirazi said.
The trend is also coinciding with reports that calamine lotion is becoming harder to find. In the United Kingdom, some parents have reported in recent months that they are struggling to buy the lotion in order to treat children suffering with chickenpox.
In the United States, others have also reported issues on social media. Under one of many calamine primer videos, one user wrote on TikTok: “I have to use this when my lupus flares up, now it’s sold out in Walmart."
Despite the warnings from experts, the lotion may hold its appeal as a cheaper alternative compared to primers from leading makeup brands amid a cost of living crisis. A bottle of calamine lotion in the U.K. costs under 2 pounds ($2.40).
One makeup enthusiast told her followers on TikTok that she had tried an array of expensive products but that calamine lotion had worked best for her.
“I tend to spend a lot of money on primers. I’ve tried all kinds of primers,” she tells viewers, holding up primers ranging from $20 to $64.
“I was so surprised at how good my makeup looked," she says, holding up a bottle of calamine that she said costs $4.50 from Walgreens. | 2022-07-24T14:21:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TikTok trend of calamine lotion as makeup primer draws dermatologist concern - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/tik-tok-calamine-lotion-primer-beauty-trend/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/24/tik-tok-calamine-lotion-primer-beauty-trend/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 26: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) talks to reporters after casting his last vote before the Memorial Day recess at the U.S. Capitol on May 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. When asked about the possibility of the Senate taking legislative action following the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Manchin said this time feels different. “I’ve never been in this frame of mind, I can’t get my grandchildren out of my mind,” he said. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
Senator Joe Manchin’s negotiating stance has long been frustrating to the left, but on many crucial issues he’s been correct, and I’ve defended him. Until now.
Having persuaded his Senate negotiating partners to support a budget reconciliation proposal that would reduce the deficit, invest in US energy production and fight inflation, Manchin is now opposing legislation that would do just that. Not only is Manchin’s position harmful to causes he has long championed, but it will also push the White House toward risky and irresponsible policy choices Manchin won’t like. He needs to reconsider before he blows his chance to be a constructive influence on policy.
The precipitating event for the latest blowup seems to have been the inflation numbers released earlier this month, which once again exceeded consensus expectations. That’s a serious issue, and Manchin has been worried since at least last summer that the White House and the Federal Reserve were lowballing inflation. So you can see why it spooked him.
Still, just because President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal was inflationary, doesn’t mean this legislative package is. In fact, it’s not inflationary at all.
Build Back Better had two fundamental problems from a macroeconomic stabilization perspective. One was that it was highly redistributive, relying on revenue raised from a tiny base of wealthy people to finance new programs for the poor and the middle class. Because the rich consume a smaller share of their income than the poor, this kind of top-to-bottom redistribution tends to increase consumption, stimulate the economy and generate at least mild inflationary pressure.
These programs were mostly cooked up at a time when Democrats expected to inherit a depressed economy, so it’s no surprise they were structured to be stimulative. It’s also true that, in ordinary times, a little inflationary pressure is not a reason to forego the opportunity to cut child poverty in half or enroll millions of children in preschool. But given the economic circumstances of the last 18 months, it was a questionable set of priorities.
More important, Build Back Better as passed by the House was a fiscal shell game. Democrats were counting on permanent tax increases to pay for programs that they set to expire after a few years. That allowed the Congressional Budget Office to say this bill was deficit-neutral bill. But by using 10 years of revenue to pay for five years of spending, it would have significantly increased short-term deficits and inflationary pressure.
Thus Manchin was correct to torpedo this legislation.
The latest draft agreement, by contrast, does the right thing — returning to the traditional Clinton-Obama formula of taxing the rich to reduce the deficit. Manchin, whatever his distance from mainstream Democrats, has always supported this agenda. He backed the partial expiration of the Bush tax cuts when he was a new senator, and stood firm against the Trump tax cuts even when he was under ferocious political pressure in his 2018 re-election bid. Deficit reduction slows demand, thereby making it easier for the Federal Reserve to slow inflation.
Conservatives say that focusing tax hikes on the wealthy will hurt investment, but that’s their own version of an outdated idea from a non-inflationary economy. The Fed’s current cycle of interest rate increases is, in effect, a direct tax on inflation. Anything Congress can do to make the deficit lower reduces the need for rate hikes and protects the investment climate.
Manchin was right to worry about inflation when others were dismissing it as transitory, right to criticize Build Back Better as inflationary, and right to insist on a legislative focus on inflation. But this is an anti-inflationary bill, and he well knows there is no bipartisan route to raising taxes. Killing it is counterproductive.
And when it comes to energy policy, Manchin and his colleague Ron Wyden were looking at a smart package of tax credits. The bill would subsidize the production of zero-carbon energy in a technology-agnostic way.
This would benefit America’s wind and solar sectors, while also preserving room for technologies Manchin himself prefers such as nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture. Environmentalists do not love these ideas, but they were willing to swallow them for the sake of Manchin’s vote. And collectively they give the West Virginia energy sector a much more promising path forward than it faces under the status quo. Indeed, Manchin’s latest negotiating blowup seems not to consider that a bunch of energy production credits he’s always supported expired last year.
But most of all, giving Biden a strong, technology-agnostic, supply-side climate bill to sign will let him meet his long-term climate goals in a way that is compatible with continuing to support domestic fossil-fuel production in the short term.
One reason so many on the left were so eager to give up on Manchin last year is that they don’t like this idea. Instead, they want Biden to issue executive orders to curb fossil-fuel exploration. They include ending new oil and gas leases, blocking permits for new pipelines and, most of all, a zany scheme to get America’s financial regulators to block new investments in fossil fuels.
Compared to a package of tax credits, this approach would be much less effective at reducing global emissions and much more destructive to the US economy. So far, the idea of doing a legislative deal with Manchin has served to keep the fanatics at bay. But if Manchin pulls the plug decisively, the pressure to go at least partway down this road may prove insurmountable. Manchin, meanwhile, may be worried that if he agrees to a deal, he will lose his leverage over these executive actions.
To the extent that this is the real holdup, Manchin needs to recognize that his leverage is effectively infinite. Biden is going to want to continue filling judicial vacancies, confirming subcabinet officials, and otherwise governing the country. Manchin will always have the ability to throw a wrench in the works if the White House goes rogue. What will cost him his leverage is if he proves his critics right by being inconsistent or unable to settle on a deal.
Until now, Manchin has been a thorn in the administration’s side who has nonetheless made the Biden agenda better. But unless talks can be revived and resolved quickly, he’ll have betrayed the causes he’s been fighting for and set the country on a much worse course.
• Manchin’s Energy Plan Is Just What Biden Needs: Karl Smith
• The Case for Manchin’s Intransigence: The Editors | 2022-07-24T14:25:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Build Back a Better Joe Manchin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/build-back-a-better-joe-manchin/2022/07/24/565a7264-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/build-back-a-better-joe-manchin/2022/07/24/565a7264-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
The Senate’s Election Reform Bill Does Just Enough
When senators from both parties took up the cause of reforming the archaic law governing counts of presidential electoral votes, the effort looked worthwhile but full of potential pitfalls. The bipartisan group has now released its proposal, and the good news is that the main pitfalls have been avoided.
Passed in 1887, the Electoral Count Act was the congressional response to the chaos following the contested election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Its vague and confusing provisions contributed, however, to the turmoil after the 2020 election. President Donald Trump exploited them in his effort to reverse his defeat after the votes had been cast. The reform under consideration would reduce the risk that future candidates will take similar steps, or succeed in them.
The bill now under consideration clarifies that states must appoint electors in accordance with the laws they had before Election Day. Trump had asked state legislators to appoint electors for him in states where the popular vote had gone for Joe Biden, and where there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to affect the outcome. Under the Constitution, state legislatures may appoint electors without holding a popular vote at all. But they should not be able to throw out the winner of the state’s popular vote just because they dislike how it turned out.
The bill also requires the governor, or another official designated by the state in advance, to certify a state’s electors. That requirement closes off the possibility that Congress will have to choose among dueling slates. Both of these reforms reduce the chance of mischief on the part of state governments while avoiding deep federal intrusion into them.
But the bill’s main focus is properly on preventing misconduct at the federal level. (A companion bill responds to threats to federal and state election workers.) The current version of the law lets Congress throw out electors if a state has held a “failed election.” The reform lays out narrow and objective criteria for discarding electors, and again requires following procedures enacted prior to the election.
Under current law, it takes only one representative and one senator to force Congress to vote on an objection to a state’s electors. The proposal raises the threshold to one-fifth of each chamber.
It also says objections may be made only if electors’ appointments have not been lawfully certified or their votes have not been “regularly given.” That’s a welcome, if incomplete, tightening of standards: Legislators from each party have raised frivolous and wispy objections during the last quarter century. The change to the threshold may be more important because none of those objections, including the Republican objections of Jan. 6, 2021, had the level of support that the proposal requires.
Trump and his die-hard supporters never had a plausible argument that the vice president has the power to throw out electors on his own, but the reform would explicitly deny it to him. That’s another avenue for overturning an election closed off. Mike Pence would have been subject to a lot less improper pressure if this reform had been in place when he was vice president.
One of the faults of the existing law is that it obscures the distinction between the two stages of presidential elections: the general election by which the electors are chosen, and the vote of the electors themselves. The reform clarifies that the role of Congress is to review that second stage, and not to use that review as a pretext for second-guessing the first.
The reform is also commendable for the ideas it does not contain. Some proponents of changing the Electoral Count Act wanted to allow objections to be sustained only after a supermajority vote by Congress. That’s too high a threshold, especially considering the simultaneous narrowing of the grounds for objection, and it would have raised constitutional and practical issues having to do with the ability of one Congress to bind its successors.
Another idea that wisely got chopped: letting federal judges, in some instances, certify the electors. The Constitution gives that job to the states.
When reform efforts began, some Democrats expressed opposition on the ground that it was a distraction from the changes in voting rights they consider a priority. As it has become clear that Congress is not going to make those changes, that sentiment has faded. But the bill may still be disappointing to some people because it does not make it completely impossible to steal an election. It will always be possible to imagine a scenario in which enough officials at the state and federal level betray their duty and abuse their power to carry out a successful coup.
No set of laws can perfectly forestall this danger. Officials have to have some sense of fidelity to the law, and voters have to demand it of them. The fact that this bill does what can reasonably be done, without attempting the impossible, is an argument in its favor.
• Fix the Electoral Count Act: Bloomberg Editorial Board
• Worried About a Disputed Election? Steel Yourself: Cass R. Sunstein | 2022-07-24T14:25:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Senate’s Election Reform Bill Does Just Enough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-senates-election-reform-bill-does-just-enough/2022/07/24/569706fc-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-senates-election-reform-bill-does-just-enough/2022/07/24/569706fc-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Analysis by Robert A. George | Bloomberg
Robert A. George: You’re a political scientist and the author of several books, including The Optimistic Leftist (2017) and, with John Judis, The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002). Most recently, you’ve warned liberals that the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left will harm its ability to win future elections, in part because Democrats can no longer count on winning the Latino vote. Let’s start with definitions. Is there a “Latino vote” or are there several discrete Latino “votes” that differ by ethnicity and nationality?
Ruy Teixeira, nonresident senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute: There certainly is a Latino vote in the sense that it’s a statistical aggregate — we dump all these people under the rubric of “Hispanic” and we call it “the Latino vote.” But Latinos are made up of a very diverse basket of ethnicities. Obviously, there’s a heavy influence of Mexican immigrants and children of Mexican immigrants. You’ve also got Puerto Ricans, who are quite different from Mexican immigrants; Cuban immigrants who are the most conservative part of the Hispanic population; and then you’ve got people from South America, Venezuela, Colombia. So all of these people are put together in this basket we call the Latino vote.
RAG: Speaking of demographics, twenty years ago, you and John Judis co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority – a provocative title, with the awkward timing of being released shortly after 9/11, when George W. Bush had record approval ratings…
RT: It came out right before the 2002 midterm election – which was a bad one for the Democrats. And Bush subsequently won re-election.
RAG: With significant Latino support.
RT: So, people definitely teased us about that. But that’s a good jumping off point for talking about what the book did and didn’t say and how that relates to today. Our analysis was designed to look at a number of trends re-shaping the American political landscape. It made the case that, on balance, these things favored Democrats quite a bit more than Republicans and created the potential for the Democrats to consolidate a majority coalition. But several things had to be true for that to be the case. The short-term thing that we did point to – but people immediately forgot – is that given the demographic structure of the country, if you lose too many white working-class or non-college voters, the whole arithmetic of your coalition becomes difficult. And so, if Democrats were to take advantage of these emerging trends, they had to maintain a certain baseline competitive minority of the white working-class vote. That’s something they failed to do.
And now we’ve seen a lot of trends in the last several elections that definitely call into question whether the Democrats can maintain the high levels of support they’re used to among Hispanic voters, particularly those in the working class. And if that’s the case, then you may have more Hispanic voters overall, but that’s being canceled out — perhaps even more than canceled out — by the fact that a significant part of this group is moving away from the Democrats. And I think that’s happening. In my estimate in the 2020 election, Hispanic voters, even though they grew significantly as the share of voters, contributed less to the Democrats margin in that election than they did in 2016.
RAG: So why do you think that group is starting to slide away from the Democrats? In 1992, Clinton campaign manager James Carville’s line was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Is that true for Latino voters? Are they focused on the economy and the Democrats aren’t? Is it cultural issues?
RT: It’s definitely a mixture of stuff. One point I’ve tried to make is that Democrats don’t really seem to understand the Hispanic vote right now. After the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020, Democrats assumed that Latinos, like other non-whites, would just be super animated by this issue. They assumed that Latinos wouldn’t be that affected by Trump campaign appeals saying, “Until Covid hit, this was a pretty good economy for you guys. The Democrats don’t care about reopening the country, don’t care about you guys who work in oil and gas and resource extraction, they’re going to take away your jobs, they’re going to prevent you from going to work, so vote for us.” That turned out to be a pretty successful appeal.
Democrats thought that they could get away with being perceived as committed to criminal justice reform to the point of not being concerned about public safety and being associated with slogans like “defund the police.” The assumption was the Democrats could skate over these issues with the Latino population. They thought only conservative whites would be alienated…but I think a lot of Latinos were very alienated by this seemingly lax approach to crime and law enforcement. So all of those things painted the Democrats as being a little bit alien culturally to the Hispanic population. And one thing that’s very important to understand about Hispanics, particularly working-class voters, is they’re not liberals. They’re moderate to conservative, especially on cultural issues.
RAG: Which is true, by the way, for African Americans as well.
RT: Absolutely. That is another potential trouble spot [for Democrats] we could talk about some other time. But right now the bleeding is most obvious among the Hispanic population. So if you have all these moderate-to-conservative, especially working-class voters – and Hispanics are like, basically 75% or more working class — and you appear to be way out over your skis on cultural issues saying and doing things that they don’t feel comfortable with because they’re patriotic and relatively traditionalist in their cultural outlook, this can cause you a lot of trouble.
And then combine that with a sense Democrats don’t really have a good plan or are attentive enough to them on economic terms -- it’s a recipe for big problems. That’s what we’re continuing to see moving into the 2022 election cycle. Biden’s approval rating is absolutely terrible among Hispanic voters – probably as bad as among voters overall, where it’s like minus 15 or minus 17. And Latino voters are pretty important in a lot of congressional races. They’re important in Nevada, in Arizona, more important than one thinks in Georgia. So Democrats have a lot riding on being able to stop this bleeding among Hispanic voters. And it’s not clear to me that’s going to be very easy to do partly because the national brand of the Democratic Party is now so left on cultural issues that it’s going to be hard to convince Latinos that, in fact, it’s actually a moderate centrist party.
In 2020, Democrats misperceived Latino voters as being immigration voters. This turns out to not have been such a Get Out of Jail Free card issue. Latinos are not, in fact, supportive of open borders; they don’t think the border should be decriminalized. They care about border security, particularly Hispanics who live near the southern border. Democrats have sort of mis-learned the lessons of the past and are not attentive to present-day lessons. You’ve got to meet these voters where they are, what their fundamental day to day concerns are, which are actually pretty material: It’s about jobs, the economy, health care, better schools, public safety. Above all, it’s about upward mobility: they want to get ahead in life, they want their families and their kids to get ahead…and of course, Democrats, fairly or unfairly, are being targeted because of the inflationary and other problems in the economy. A lot of Hispanics are saying, what have you done for me lately? You sound like you’re sort of concerned with all this stuff I have not the slightest interest in and you know, the economy’s kind of in the toilet.
RAG: Back on the immigration question. In 2020, after Trump lost in the Supreme Court on repealing DACA, he basically stopped talking about it. With the borders shut because of the pandemic, there wasn’t much of an anti-immigration drumbeat coming from the Trump administration – allowing Republicans to focus on other things, no?
RT: That’s a good point. But even in 2016, when Trump was just getting elected, the Democratic margin among Hispanic voters shrank relative to 2012. You would have thought they would have totally run the table with that incarnation of Trump, which was so flamboyantly anti-immigrant. In 2018, the Democrats did benefit from the perception that the Trump administration’s border policy was needlessly cruel – kids in cages – but arguably with more liberal and white voters than anything else. That’s really what drove that election. The problem was in 2020 that wasn’t really happening anymore.
RAG: So, as Trump began lowering the anti-immigrant rhetoric, what was happening on the other side?
RT: The Democrats ratcheted up their rhetoric about, “let’s decriminalize the border” – which was actually not popular with anybody, including Hispanic voters. During the Democratic presidential primary, you had candidates all like, “Who’s for decriminalizing? Me!” Even though in a general election, that’s nothing but toxic and doesn’t help among Hispanic voters.
These are citizens who are voting in these elections, let’s not forget. These voters want an orderly society; they don’t want to see things out of control. They want to sort of work where they are and get ahead where they are. And Democrats need to be much more attentive to that. The vision Democrats have, of a lot of these Hispanic voters being, rah, rah, liberal to the max, supporting Democrats down the line – it’s not at all true. We’re seeing that change in a lot of the country.
RAG: Speaking about Democrats going too far left culturally, how do you see the phrase “Latinx”?
RT: It’s really almost comical, the extent to which this ridiculous term has caught on which has no support or interest in the Latino or Hispanic community. Right? It’s been polled now, four, five, six times and usually only 2- 3% of Latinos say they like the term “Latinx” and would like to use it. This is purely an invention of the academic, activist-industrial complex. Nobody outside of that is interested in this term and wants to use it. A number of Hispanic politicians, including some in the House of Representatives, say, “I have forbidden my staff from using this term; it is stupid and alienates us. We’re talking a language people don’t understand.”
RAG: I think it was also Carville who said that Democrats increasingly sound more like they’re having conversations in the faculty lounge than at the dinner table.
RT: That gets to something that is very important about the Democrats writ large. In terms of how they relate to Hispanics, they literally, on a lot of things, use a language that people find off-putting and don’t understand. If you want to reach voters, you’ve got to talk more like a normie. Don’t use terms that are just gonna strike people as like, “What are these folks talking about?” It sends a signal to them that you’re living in a world that’s different from theirs, and you evaluate things in a way that’s different than theirs, probably have values different than they do. And that’s not a good look for you. So “Latinx” is, I mean, it’s not a big unforced error in the sense that it’s not a voting issue, exactly. But it’s just another another brick in that wall separating the Democrats from normal Latino voters. And I think it’s a big mistake.
Don’t Blame Biden for Liberals’ Mistakes: Ramesh Ponnuru
Why More Republicans are Over Trump: Julianna Goldman
Can Immigrants Save U.S. Democracy?: Romesh Ratnesar
Robert A. George is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering government and public policy. Previously, he was a member of the editorial boards of the New York Daily News and New York Post. | 2022-07-24T14:25:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Are Democrats Losing Latino Voters? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-are-democrats-losing-latino-voters/2022/07/24/5624ffc6-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-are-democrats-losing-latino-voters/2022/07/24/5624ffc6-0b51-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
More than 1,000 Jewish Americans rally outside the U.S. Capitol against overturning abortion rights. (Michelle Boorstein/TWP)
Avraham Steinberg, an Israeli physician, explains in a paper for the Journal of Medical Ethics that Jewish medical ethicists prioritize not only human life but also the value of personal autonomy. “Autonomy is not only the privilege of the patient. It is widely agreed that the physician’s autonomy, too, must be respected,” he writes. A doctor’s professional and ethical obligations are generally to prevent risk of harm, favor less risky and invasive procedures over more risky and complicated ones.
In a similar vein, medical ethicist Dr. Jay B. Lavine explains, “Everything possible must be done for every patient in terms of preserving life, treating illness, and relieving suffering. All therapeutic decisions must be in the patient’s best interests. The safest, gentlest treatment for a given condition must always be the preferred one.” Lavine adds, “Prevention is the highest form of healing. Drugs and surgery have their place in the holy art of healing, but the need to resort to invasive treatment must also be regarded as a failure in prevention.”
Florida’s abortion ban would no doubt prevent the procedure in situations that Jewish ethics would either permit or require it. Whether this is sufficient to prove a violation of federal or state religious-freedom rights is an open question that will be litigated around the country. (Put it down on the list of legal conundrums that doctors and patients must now sift through thanks to the Supreme Court.)
In any event, this is an issue the forced-birth crowd should care about. For years, right-wingers have strenuously insisted on religious carve-outs to allow employers to avoid government mandates for contraception coverage or health providers to deny certain services they disagreed with. While the federal ReligiousFreedom Restoration Act mandating conscience clauses was ruled unconstitutional as it applied to the states, 21 states have conscience clause laws in place as a matter of state law. Those just happen to include many of the states that have the most severe abortion bans in place.
Failure to respect faith traditions with regard to abortion bans would prove that the right is looking out for Christians — and that it is willing to blithely infringe upon the rights of other religious groups.
We will see whether state or federal constitutional claims invoking free-exercise clauses can prevail against state abortion bans. In the meantime, forced-birth advocates should be honest enough to acknowledge that protections for “fetal life” are nothing more than state enactment of a particular religious dogma. Moreover, they should ask themselves: If they value the right to opt out of state laws to protect their religious views, why do they find it acceptable to deny the same protections for those who don’t agree that personhood starts at conception? | 2022-07-24T14:26:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Doctors and patients deserve a ‘conscience’ exception to abortion bans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-bans-need-conscience-exceptions-jewish-religious-freedom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-bans-need-conscience-exceptions-jewish-religious-freedom/ |
The unsubstantiated claim led to a backlash against sex ed that helped topple local Republican Party leaders and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school board
By Beth Reinhard
In an image from video, retired pediatrician Sue Greenwald speaks in opposition to the Nebraska Department of Education's proposed new sex-education standards during the May 7, 2021, board meeting. (Nebraska Department of Education)
KEARNEY, Neb. — Last year, when the state board of education proposed new sex-education standards for teaching about issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and consent, a retired pediatrician in this central Nebraska town reached out to Gov. Pete Ricketts and state lawmakers.
“This is NOT Sex Ed as anyone knows it,” Sue Greenwald wrote in a July 16, 2021, email obtained by The Washington Post. Lessons that met these standards, she wrote, would be “ ‘grooming’ children to be sexual victims.”
It was a shocking claim, and it was catching on — repeated by Greenwald, by members of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition, a group she co-founded to oppose the standards, and embraced by Ricketts (R) himself. The message also spread through screenings at libraries and churches of “The Mind Polluters,” billed as an “investigative documentary” that “shows how the vast majority of America’s public schools are prematurely sexualizing children.”
Grooming erupted as a national issue earlier this year, but this state in America’s heartland has been roiled by that attack on comprehensive sex education since last spring, providing a unique window into a newly inflamed debate. The unsubstantiated claim helped activate an army of self-described Nebraska patriots who rose up against the standards, took over the local Republican Party and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school boards, a Post examination found. Earlier this month, these activists were part of a broader, anti-establishment insurgency that toppled leaders of the state Republican Party.
The term “groomer” has become a catchall epithet hurled by the right wing against the left, particularly against advocates forLGBT people, who have become the target of a recent surge in violent threats and attacks. The Post’s examination focused on the specific claim that modern sex education — including lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — makes children more vulnerable to pedophiles.
Reisman, who died last year, makes multiple appearances in “The Mind Polluters” to bolster the argument that modern sex education makes children more vulnerable to predators. Greenwald and candidates endorsed by a political committee she helped launch have promoted the film, and much of their criticism of the proposed standards echoed Reisman’s views.
Paul Hazard, a former state trooper who dubbed the proposed sex-ed standards “a pedophile’s dream,” was the top vote-getter in the May primary among eight candidates for the Kearney school board. Sherry Jones, a retired educator who has said the standards “sealed” her decision to run for an open seat on the state school board, garnered more than twice as many primary votes as Danielle Helzer, who supported the sex-ed framework. Elections for the local and state school boards are nonpartisan.
“Vote for SHERRY!!! Helzer wants to groom your kids for pedophiles & traffickers,” one Jones supporter wrote on Facebook. Helzer, 36, is a former teacher who has screened volunteers for the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program.
“I don’t take it personally because I know it’s not true, but I don’t take it lightly,” Helzer, who as the runner-up will move on to the general election in November, said in an interview. “People are genuinely fearful of their kids being sexually abused, and that fear has driven them to use grooming as a political weapon.”
“The fact that they are already desensitized or ‘groomed’ by a trusted adult to accept sexual language and images as appropriate could make it that much easier for a predator to gain that child’s cooperation in understanding and accepting sexual demands,” Greenwald wrote.
A songwriter becomes a crusader
Reisman was not trained as a psychologist or sociologist or sex researcher. She had worked as a songwriter for the children’s television program “Captain Kangaroo” in the 1970s. Then, concerned about the effect of television on children, she earned a doctorate in communications in 1980, according to her résumé.
Her 10-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted years earlier by a neighbor boy who had been looking at his father’s Playboy magazines, Reisman later recalled in an essay, and she focused some of her research on pornography. But she made a name for herself by criticizing Kinsey, whose work had helped to usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Reisman highlighted data he had published about children’s orgasms, claiming that his work had justified child sexual abuse and triggered a cultural decline.
Her work caught the attention of conservatives in Washington, and in the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department approved a grant of more than $700,000 that she used to study cartoon images of children in Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse magazines. The fact that the grant had been awarded on a noncompetitive basis, coupled with questions about Reisman’s credentials and an auditor’s finding that the study as originally proposed could be done for $60,000, fueled congressional oversight hearings.
Reisman defended her work in a 1985 Washington Post op-ed, writing that her efforts to catalogue depictions of children engaged in sexual or violent activities would lay a foundation for preventing abuse. “When it is completed, I believe the citizenry will consider their $734,000 well spent,” she wrote.
Reisman went on to a career as an independent researcher, and later as a research professor at the Liberty University School of Law and at the evangelical university’s School of Behavioral Sciences, though she was not trained as a lawyer or psychologist. Her advocacy helped prompt the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University to disclose that a pedophile’s diary had been the source of the data on children’s orgasms.
She likened school clubs that supported LGBT students to Hitler Youth groups, claiming that both sought to cut children off from their parents’ traditions and beliefs, a review of her writings shows. She praised “Pink Swastika,” a widely denounced book whose authors claim that gay people were “the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.” And she claimed gay adults were trying to persuade children to be gay using “vigilant and organized wooing.”
Reisman was dedicated to fighting what she called “Kinseyan” sex education that she said was becoming the norm in the United States. A 1990 book she co-wrote argued that modern sex education was tainted with a “gay agenda” and a “pedophile agenda.”
Over the years, Reisman continued claiming links between sex education and pedophilia, though the terminology shifted: What she and her allies once called “Kinseyan” sex education got a new name, “comprehensive sexuality education,” or CSE.
In 2012, she spoke at a gathering of the powerful network of Republican donors and activists known as the Council for National Policy, according to a confidential agenda obtained by the watchdog group Documented. “Action steps” circulated after the session, also obtained by Documented, included a call for investigating sex educators “for criminal ‘grooming,’ lowering children’s … resistance to both pedophile predation and victimization.”
Those who echo Reisman’s views today often cite an FBI agent’s 2002 congressional testimony describing how pedophiles aim to “sexually arouse children” and “expose them to sexual acts before they are naturally curious.” Sex-education materials do the same thing, critics argue.
Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International, an Arizona-based nonprofit that works with Greenwald’s group and opposes CSE and LGBT rights, wrote in an email to The Post: “While there is no empirical evidence supporting the claims that CSE can make children more vulnerable to sexual abuse, there is ample evidence based on the many CSE programs Family Watch has analyzed that an alarming number of popular CSE programs utilize the same techniques often used by pedophiles to sexualize children or groom children to engage in sex.”
David Finkelhor, a child abuse expert at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, said research on comprehensive sex education shows that it reduces risky sexual behavior and may be in part responsible for decreases in teen pregnancy and early onset of sexual activity. Research also suggests that sex education — including teaching children the proper names of private body parts — helps “prevent grooming rather than to make them vulnerable to grooming,” Finkelhor said.
Reisman, he added, for years took “extreme and alarmist positions that are far outside the bounds of social science findings about children and sex education.”
Proposed standards prompt backlash
On March 10, 2021, Nebraska’s education department released proposed health-education standards, including grade-by-grade guidelines for sex education. Kindergartners would learn medically accurate terms for body parts, including genitalia, and about interracial and same-sex families. They would also learn about “consent” and “how to clearly say no.” First-graders would learn the definitions of gender identity and gender-role stereotypes. The meaning of sexual orientation would be explained in third grade.
Kearney resident Kathy Adams, 67, a retired nurse, recalled printing the standards out and using a yellow highlighter and red pen to register her objections. “Pornography,” she called the standards. Homosexuality is at odds with her Christian faith, she told The Post, and she questioned the idea that a person’s gender identity could be different from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Adams said she also was concerned about the effect of peer pressure and social media, remembering that when she worked as a middle school teaching assistant a few years ago, “all of sudden it was like a fad and it was kind of taking off, either claiming to be gay or claiming to be transgender.” The proposed sex-ed framework would make children curious to take risks, she added, and would “make it easier for kids to get abused.”
By May 2021, the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition counted more than 14,000 followers on Facebook. Slater said Family Watch International provided advice and technical support for the coalition. Greenwald, who in the Facebook group called Slater “an extraordinary mentor,” described the coalition to The Post as grass roots and Nebraska-led.
Slater has written that teaching children that homosexuality is normal is part of a broad effort to “justify behavior that is inherently destructive to both society and to the individual.” She told The Post that her organization condemns imparting any information that would “sexualize children,” including lessons about heterosexual sex.
The Protect Nebraska Children Coalition helped build a groundswell against the standards by starting a petition drive, lobbying public officials and launching a Facebook campaign targeting the Nebraska Department of Education and some state school board members. “#AbolishNDE,” said one July 2021 Facebook post featuring photos of drag queens next to state education officials. “Get your kids out of Nebraska public schools.”
By then, Greenwald had been making her case to Ricketts, the governor, for months, emails show. In the email she sent to a legislative aide on June 23 and then forwarded to three state lawmakers and a staffer to Ricketts in July, Greenwald claimed that the goal of CSE is to “unmoor children from their parents’ values.”
She elaborated in her email to The Post, saying that a CSE curriculum already in some schools, developed by the nonprofit Advocates for Youth, teaches 10th grade students about forms of contraception they might choose if they are afraid of their parents finding out. “Parents want excellent public education, free from sexual content, religion or political and gender ideology, just as it has been for generations,” she told The Post.
In the CSE curriculum that Greenwald flagged, when lessons in older grades turn more explicitly to sex and sexuality, assignments call for children to talk with their parents about their values, a review of the curriculum shows. It does suggest that teachers can discuss options for teenagers who want to use birth control without their parents’ knowledge, one of which is talking about forms of contraception that are easier to hide. Lessons in early grades focus on naming body parts and respecting personal boundaries.
As an example of “sexually explicit” terms taught to young children, Greenwald pointed to language describing the vagina and penis, but the descriptions come from a page labeled “teacher’s use only … not to be distributed to students.” She also said she objected to material that “normalizes masturbation” and “describes orgasm in detail.”
Advocates for Youth said in a statement to The Post that opponents of comprehensive sex education misrepresent what it teaches. If parents examine the curriculum themselves, the statement said, they will find it “encourages students to think critically, act responsibly and respect each other’s boundaries and diversity.”
As they attacked the proposed curriculum, Greenwald and like-minded activists had a powerful ally in Ricketts, who called for the standards to be scrapped just one day after their release and then toured the state to galvanize opposition. At a July 1 “Protect Our Kids & Schools” town hall meeting he held, Ricketts referenced Greenwald: “These standards are sexualizing our children. I talked to one pediatrician who said this is ‘Grooming 101.’ ”
‘We know our opponent now’
Drew Blessing, a Kearney school board member, early on joined the Protect Nebraska Children group on Facebook and tried to correct what he called “a ton of misinformation” about the proposed standards. But Blessing said he was shut out from the private group over the summer. Some foes of the standards accused him of being a “groomer” in emails, he said.
“We’re talking about public schools, not Christian schools,” said Blessing, 34, who is active in his church. “We are not trying to teach kids to be gay or trans … but we have to acknowledge these differences exist and that we all deserve kindness and respect.”
Greenwald said Blessing was excluded from the Facebook group after “multiple complaints” from other participants, which she did not detail.
On July 29, 2021, Nebraska education officials announced revised standards that omitted references to genitalia, sexual orientation and same-sex and interracial families. Gender identity would not be introduced until seventh grade, and “consent” would not be mentioned until eighth grade. School districts would not be required to adopt the standards.
Protect Nebraska Children Coalition opposed this draft, too, arguing that it still contained Kinsey-inspired CSE, according to materials posted to the group’s Facebook page. One standard highlighted as objectionable said: “Describe ways to show dignity and respect for all people.” Greenwald said that standard was “intentionally vague” and could open the door to “divisive” ideas such as critical race theory, an academic framework that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism.
“We know our opponent now; who they associate with and who funds them,” she wrote that day on Facebook. “We know who our allies are in the Legislature and the Governor’s office. We know who to support and who to replace on all our respective local school boards. …. We will not be caught sleeping again.”
“I’ve been more politically active in the last year than I was in my entire life combined. And I am 54 years old,” he told The Post.
Soon, “The Mind Polluters” began showing around Nebraska. Adams, the resident who took a pen and highlighter to the standards, who like Meyer had not been involved in politics, said she organized several screenings at Kearney Public Library.
The movie was produced last year by Mark and Amber Archer, a Christian couple from Indiana whose “statement of faith” on the website of their Fearless Features filmmaking ministry describes homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexuality as “sexual immorality,” grouped with bestiality and incest. The Archers did not respond to requests for comment.
The movie claims students “are being groomed for sex with pedophiles” and says parents are obligated as Christians to remove their children from public schools.
Helzer, the state school board candidate in the district that includes Kearney, attended a screening in March, 2022, hosted by her opponent, Jones, at Jones’s church. In a Facebook post, Helzer said she thought it was “weak in research but strong in scare tactics.”
Mutiny in Kearney
Starting in February, a debate over sex education erupted in Florida and began drawing national media attention. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was pushing what a spokeswoman called “an anti-grooming bill,” which barred teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with young children. Opponents derided the legislation as “don’t say gay.”
Over the three previous years, Twitter averaged 940 mentions per day of the term “groomer,” according to an analysis by Advance Democracy Inc., a nonpartisan nonprofit that conducts public interest research. On March 28, the day DeSantis signed the bill, that jumped to more than 11,000 mentions. By April 6, it had climbed to more than 80,000 mentions.
By then, Christopher Rufo, a right-wing influencer credited with spearheading attacks on critical race theory, had turned his attention to grooming, his Twitter account shows. “Grooming has a range of definitions: one can be groomed into an ideology, groomed into a gender identity, or groomed for physical abuse,” he wrote in one April Twitter post. Another April post described public schools as “hunting grounds for sexual predators.” It linked to an essay he wrote citing a 2004 study by scholar Charol Shakeshaft, who estimated that 10 percent of K-12 students receive unwanted sexual attention from a school employee.
In an interview, Shakeshaft told The Post that she is “distraught” that her research has been used to justify claims that sex education amounts to grooming. She supports teaching comprehensive sex education. “It gives the child a set of tools to help keep themselves safe,” she said.
Rufo told The Post that Shakeshaft has done important research that deserves federally funded further investigation, adding that he finds it “quite strange that she is ‘distraught’ that the public is learning more about this problem and expressing concern.”
After their victory over the standards, the newly emboldened activists took on the Buffalo County Republican Party. Almost 100 people signed up to be delegates to the county GOP’s biennial convention on March 31, nearly triple the number in three previous election cycles, records show.
“We didn’t know what the hell was going on,” said Buffalo County Election Commissioner Lisa Poff, whose office is required to verify that delegates are registered Republicans.
At the convention, the surge of delegates elected a new slate of officers — nearly all of whom had been involved in the sex-ed fight. Greenwald was named state committeewoman. Kirby Wilson, a 56-year-old Kearney businessman who quoted a Bible passage referring to “homosexual offenders” at one state school board meeting, was tapped as state committeeman. Joe Maul, a 54-year-old insurance adjuster who had helped start a group called the Central Nebraska Patriots, which also opposed the standards, was elected chairman.
“They didn’t work hard enough so they got replaced,” Maul said.
On the eve of the May primary, James Clark, the Buffalo County party’s new vice chairman, was setting up folding chairs for the monthly meeting at the Kearney library. Clark, 69, had testified against the standards and said the debate was a major reason he decided “it’s time” to get involved.
Clark had never been to a local party meeting before his own election. “I was never invited. It was like they didn’t know me,” Clark said, grinning. “They know me now.”
About 50 people attended the meeting, mostly middle-aged folks and seniors. Maul waxed nostalgic about a time when his parents didn’t lock the front door. Whether anyone was “gay or straight” was never discussed. Parents were responsible for warning their kids about the neighborhood “pervert.”
“There’s been a lot of people that have woken up to the fact that the public school system now no longer teaches reading, writing and ’rithmetic,” he told the receptive crowd, adding that teachers are trying to “usurp the parents’ responsibility and teach our kids about sexuality, gender, you name it. And when did that happen and why? As Christian conservatives, why would we ever agree with that?”
In the next day’s primary, all four of the state school board candidates endorsed by the Protect Nebraska Children PAC advanced to the general election. For seats on the Kearney school board, only one of the four candidates the political committee backed did not garner enough primary votes to compete in November.
Earlier this month, Protect Nebraska Children Coalition members were among the newly minted Republican activists who flooded the party’s state convention, held in Kearney. Many had been mobilized by false claims of election fraud and a divisive gubernatorial primary. And much like leaders of the Buffalo County GOP in late March, leaders of the state party faced a mutiny.
“When I traveled the state to talk about the standards, I would tell people they no longer have the option not to pay attention,” Innis said. “They have to be involved so the radical left doesn’t indoctrinate our children anymore. People have woken up”
Jeremy Merrill and Alice Crites contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T15:57:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Claim that sex ed ‘grooms’ kids jolted Nebraska politics a year before it swept the nation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/24/grooming-sex-ed-nebraska-judith-reisman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/24/grooming-sex-ed-nebraska-judith-reisman/ |
After Trump helped revolutionize Claremont from a minor academic outfit to a key Washington player, the think tank is facing blowback for standing by lawyer John Eastman after he counseled Trump on overturning the 2020 election.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Reno Event Center on Jan. 10, 2016, in Reno, Nev. (Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post)
CLAREMONT, Calif. — Early in 2016, as Donald Trump’s march toward the Republican presidential nomination gathered the air of inevitability, alumni of a conservative think tank nestled here at the base of Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains received an email with a tough question: Was it time for supporters of the Claremont Institute to help make Trump president?
“I’d sooner cut off my arm with a rusty spoon!” replied Nathan Harden, an editor at RealClearEducation, an offshoot of the political site RealClearPolitics, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
Others were interested, however. “I’m graduating this May and would very much like to get involved,” wrote Darren Beattie, a philosophy graduate student who would later work in Trump’s White House, until he was fired in 2018, after revelations that he had attended a conference with white nationalists. Harden declined to comment. Beattie did not respond to requests for comment.
The next four years would revolutionize the role of the Claremont Institute and a handful of other intellectual institutions that preach an America-first, originalist ideology. The institute — along with its journal, the Claremont Review of Books, as well as related journals such as American Greatness, and allied organizations, including Michigan’s Hillsdale College — gained influence during Trump’s tenure, funneling ideas and personnel to the administration despite Trump’s lifelong suspicion of academics and other experts.
Claremont blossomed under Trump just as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute had during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, adding a Washington office and expanding its recruitment of conservative activists and sheriffs to study its ideas.
But now, as the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol reaches its zenith, the role played by one of Claremont’s leaders, John Eastman, has divided its followers and raised some of the same questions posed in that 2016 email: How far should scholars go to put their ideas into action?
Eastman, once a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was a mainstay of the institute from its earliest days and an architect of its approach to the Constitution. He argued, against centuries of legal precedent, that Kamala D. Harris was ineligible to serve as vice president because her parents weren’t American citizens when she was born in California. Then, in the final months of 2020, he burst into the national consciousness as he helped lead Trump’s drive to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He wrote confidential memos urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject official electoral vote totals and went on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s show to build support for his widely discredited theory. And, on Jan. 6, he rallied Trump supporters at the Ellipse before a mob stormed the Capitol.
As dozens of courts rejected Eastman’s arguments, he fell from grace in many quarters. At Chapman University, where he was a professor and former dean of the law school, more than 140 faculty members signed a letter demanding he be disciplined. The university quickly announced his resignation.
But the Claremont Institute, where he sits on the board of directors, stood by Eastman, keeping him on as head of its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a position for which he was paid $120,000 in 2020, tax records show. An institute statement condemned “widespread lies peddled by malicious domestic political opponents” and decried a “blackout on the Claremont Institute or on John.”
That statement belied the debates and tensions that have persisted for more than a year, as the institute remains divided and other conservative journals ask what “happened to the Claremont Institute?”
To some who have gone through institute programs, its trajectory is less surprising. Several former Claremont fellows said Eastman’s legal strategy drew on doctrine that for many years has been at the heart of the institute’s politics.
“How on Earth does Eastman get to this point of being ready to jettison the Constitution?” said one former fellow, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating friends at the institute. “It’s by pushing deeper into this idea of natural rights, which justify any means necessary to preserve the republic. … That’s how Claremont goes from this quirky intellectual outfit to one of the main intellectual architects of trying to overthrow the republic.”
Charles Kesler — a senior fellow at the institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, which is located nearby but is not related to the think tank — said the institute is split between some “who continue to believe that the election was stolen and some who have denied that from the beginning.”
Many of the institute’s leaders remain close with Eastman, but Kesler said: “I’m persuaded that John was wrong in the advice he gave Trump. ... Whether his actions will hurt us or not, I’m not sure. It’s awkward and it raises some questions.”
Eastman did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for the institute’s president, Ryan P. Williams, declined to make him available for an interview and asked for written questions. Those yielded no response. There was no answer when a reporter knocked on the door of Williams’s home in Claremont. At the institute’s headquarters, a two-story unit with gold-colored chandeliers at the back of a drab office building in nearby Upland, a receptionist said Williams was away.
Later, as The Post prepared to publish this story, Williams, 40, who has risen through the institute’s ranks since graduating from Hillsdale College in 2004, sent an emailed statement that read, in part: “We’re proud of what we do at the Claremont Institute; for over 40 years, our scholarship and teaching have had a positive and substantive effect on the nation’s political discourse. … That said, the Claremont Institute is not interested in participating in the fiction that the Washington Post is a legitimate media outlet, or that its chronically discredited journalists are dispassionate fact-finders intent on bringing their readers objective news.”
Ralph Rossum, who supervised Eastman’s PhD work at Claremont Graduate University, which is unaffiliated with the institute, said Eastman’s notion that Pence could overturn the election result left him “extraordinarily disappointed.”
“His reputation is in tatters, and the institute is badly damaged,” Rossum said.
Institute leaders, however, have been unwilling to speak out against Eastman because of long-standing philosophical agreement and enduring friendships, he added. “They are grappling with how to gracefully separate themselves from him,” Rossum said.
But for some, no such separation is warranted. Brian T. Kennedy, a past institute president and current member of its board, said Eastman’s association with Claremont remains, for him, a “point of pride. A lot of the lawyers on the right ran for the hills when it came to Trump and the election.”
The institute has also stood by Eastman because it has not paid much of a price for its association with him, according to people close to the institute and in wider conservative circles. A tax filing shows its revenue grew to $9.5 million in the 12 months ending June 2021.
“There’s been a subtle retreat from Eastman,” said David Swartz, a sociologist at Boston University who researches Trump’s impact on American academia, “but the institute is doing well despite the publicity about Eastman. Their network of influence continues to spread.”
‘Know where your loyalty lies’
For much of the Claremont Institute’s history, the idea of embracing a presidential campaign and placing its people in White House jobs seemed far-fetched. Founded in 1979 by students of conservative political philosopher Harry V. Jaffa, the institute steered clear of policy analysis, preferring to focus on “deeper philosophical developments, the causes of our deep political discontents,” according to Kesler.
But by the 2010s, many at the institute had come to believe that America had fallen into precipitous cultural decline, accelerated, in their view, by the left’s demands for racial and gender equality. The institute “evolved in the direction of impatience,” Kesler said. “We have a legitimacy crisis in America. We’re one nation with two ideas of our Constitution — the conservatives’ view of the Founders’ vision, and the liberal notion of a living, evolving Constitution — and it’s not sustainable to have two constitutions governing one nation.”
Then came Trump.
The dilemma involved in going to work for Trump was expressed in biblical terms by Michael Buschbacher, a Washington lawyer who had been a Claremont fellow. In an email to other former fellows, which was obtained by The Post, he described Trump as “singularly uninterested” in the institute’s mission of applying “the principles of the American Founding” to the job of “preserving constitutional government.”
There was, Buschbacher argued, “a case to be made for helping Trump in a Daniel-in-the-court-of-Darius sort of way,” referring to the Old Testament story of a Jewish captive thrown to the lions for staying loyal to his God. Buschbacher exhorted conservatives who decided to enter the lion’s den and join Trump to “do great work, but know where your loyalty lies, not with earthly power, but with truth.”
Buschbacher himself later joined the Trump administration, serving as counsel to Jeffrey Clark, the assistant attorney general who, former colleagues have said in testimony before the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, volunteered himself as acting attorney general in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency to help push false claims of election fraud. Buschbacher told The Post that a family emergency kept him away from work in the weeks after the 2020 election and that he learned about Clark’s ambitions from media reports. He did not respond to other questions about the dilemma he had articulated in 2016.
Once Trump took over the Republican Party, many Claremonsters, as some at the institute call themselves, concluded that despite their misgivings about the candidate’s personal behavior and lack of commitment to conservative principles, he could be effective in bringing a nationalist focus to U.S. policies and deepening the ranks of originalist judges on the federal bench.
Their rhetorical styles were not in sync, but the institute’s view of the country echoed Trump’s in basic ways: Its scholars preach an America-first approach that is suspicious of international entanglements (they opposed the Iraq War) and joined Trump in embracing the long-standing view among Christian evangelicals that America was in spiritual and cultural decline. The institute and the Trump administration also shared a loathing for the “administrative state,” the term they both used to deride the federal regulatory bureaucracy, and encouraged a flavor of patriotism that rejected the critical approach to American history dominant in some academic and media circles.
The institute came to fill the ranks of its fellowship programs, which admit about 30 people a year, with pro-Trump influencers, such as Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA; Jack Posobiec, who once promoted the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory; and Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart News editor and Bannon acolyte.
Meanwhile, some institute leaders adopted a rougher rhetorical style, seemingly inspired in part by Trump. Williams, the institute’s president, launches Twitter fusillades about “tyrannical left-liberalism” and “unmanly liberalism” and shares GOP talking points labeling testimony about Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 a “hoax.” Williams was awarded a National Humanities Medal by Trump in 2019.
Rossum, the Claremont McKenna professor who is close to many institute leaders, said, “They’re not cultural warriors, they’re political warriors.”
The pivotal moment for many at the institute was its publication of a 2016 article by Michael Anton called “The Flight 93 Election,” which argued that the United States was in such dire trouble that Americans had to do whatever it took to grab control over the country from liberals and social reformers — and especially from Hillary Clinton.
Anton, a former investment banker, argued that electing Clinton was equivalent to choosing not to charge the cockpit of a plane hijacked in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
When Trump won, he rewarded several Claremont leaders with policy positions. Anton joined the National Security Council. Michael Pack, a former institute president and conservative filmmaker, was tapped to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which became engulfed in scandal when he fired leaders of the news outlets under his direction and launched an investigation of his own top executives. Anton and Pack did not respond to requests for comment.
Both the administration and Republicans in Congress liked to point to intellectual and legal foundations for their policy proposals, and scholars at the institute could provide those arguments.
“Trump was such an amateur that he didn’t have contacts even with the establishment conservative think tanks in Washington, like Heritage and AEI,” Kesler said. “That was an opportunity for us to have a little more influence as an outsider.”
Trump named Kesler and Larry Arnn, vice chairman of the institute’s board and president of Hillsdale College, to serve on his 1776 Commission. The panel was created to promote patriotic education as a response to the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which argued that slavery and white supremacy were the organizing themes of the nation’s founding. Arnn did not respond to a request for comment.
The Claremont Institute crowd “saw Trump as a vehicle for their ambitions,” argued William Kristol, editor at large of the Bulwark and a lifelong conservative who became a prominent voice of the “Never Trump” movement. “They always had a streak of radicalism, which could be provocative and interesting.”
But in recent years, Kristol added, “they had a big impact in legitimizing the demagoguery, the mean-spirited willingness to demonize outsider groups.”
Still, William Voegeli, a senior fellow of the institute and senior editor at the Claremont Review of Books who wrote a response to Anton’s “Flight 93” warning of Trump’s dangers to conservatism, said he has never been prevented from expressing his misgivings about Trump in institute publications. He has called Trump “volatile and vindictive … lightly informed and unjustifiably self-assured.” Voegeli said in an interview at his home in California that he would prefer the GOP choose a different nominee in 2024, but added that he would back Trump over a Democrat.
‘Not just a group of political philosophers’
The Claremont Institute’s main funder is Thomas D. Klingenstein, a Manhattan investment manager who chairs the institute’s board and has argued that the United States is in a “cold civil war.” His firm, Cohen Klingenstein, reported about $2.4 billion worth of stock in publicly traded companies this year, including investments worth a combined total of nearly $20 million in Facebook and Twitter and nearly $1 million in a fund that invests in large Chinese companies. Those comparatively small holdings contrast with the institute’s criticism of Silicon Valley and China.
Klingenstein’s philanthropy, the Thomas D. Klingenstein Fund, gave $2.5 million to the institute in 2019, the last year for which a tax filing is available. A filing for 2020 was due more than a year ago but is late because “there were some questions that needed to be addressed,” said Amy Marder of Prager Metis, the accounting firm listed on the fund’s tax filings.
Klingenstein, 68, declined to be interviewed and did not respond to written questions, and leaders of his firm did not respond to requests for comment. Appearing on Bannon’s “War Room” show last week, Klingenstein said the institute has been widely “recognized as the intellectual basis for Trump,” making this “a great time for us. … Our budget is going way up. The Washington Post is going to write a hit piece on us and we take great pride in that. … It tells you that they think we’re important, and we’re not just a group of political philosophers.”
Other institute funders include the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation — controlled by the family of Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, who resigned following the Jan. 6 attack — and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based conservative philanthropy. Each donated several hundred thousand dollars in 2020, according to tax filings. A spokesman for the DeVos foundation said the support had no connection to Eastman, noting, “Claremont does work in many areas.” A Scaife representative did not respond to a request for comment.
The continuing success of the institute’s fellowship programs has strengthened its resolve to remain “all in” on its association with Eastman, Kristol said: “No one is paying a price for going out there. They’re getting ambitious 28-year-olds who say, ‘I’m a Republican, I want to move up, and this Claremont stuff seems to be a good way to get there.’ ”
Graduates of the institute’s Publius fellowship and similar programs end up in a wide array of Washington roles. “They’re trying to train people to take a kind of extreme populist right-wing ideology back with them to Washington,” said Swartz, the Boston University sociologist.
Former fellows include Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), right-wing filmmaker and commentator Dinesh D’Souza, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro.
After Jan. 6, the institute’s fellowships still attract prominent conservatives, including Kirk of Turning Point USA; Anthony Sabatini, a member of the Florida House of Representatives and an ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R); and Jack Murphy, a podcaster who runs a men’s group called Liminal Order.
The institute set up a Washington office last year, announcing that the Center for the American Way of Life would push for a “restored Right,” proposing to counter “radical feminism, ‘,’ and globalism” with “mental and moral toughness.”
Claremont also last year launched a program to bring sheriffs to California for a week-long training on the Constitution and “the Roots of Radical Leftist Ideology,” among other topics. Invitees have included conservative sheriffs who gained national notice with appearances on Fox News or at Trump’s White House. Of three participating sheriffs who spoke to The Post — Michael A. Lewis of Maryland’s Wicomico County, Mark Lamb of Arizona’s Pinal County and Brian Hieatt of Virginia’s Tazewell County — none would acknowledge the 2020 election was legitimate.
Lewis said he agreed with Claremont leaders that the country is locked in a cold civil war. “Our country is upside down,” he said. “It’s unrecognizable.” He praised the program and its focus on “the myth of systemic police racism.”
Institute leaders say that as they have expanded their role in politics, they have stayed true to the ideas of their mentor, Jaffa, who advised Barry Goldwater in his 1964 presidential campaign and wrote the Arizona senator’s famous statement that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
Some who were close to Jaffa, who died in 2015 and was a scholar of Abraham Lincoln, see matters differently.
Charles C. Johnson, a former intern and fellow at the institute who studied under Jaffa, wrote the 2016 notice asking if former associates of the institute wanted to help elect Trump. Once a right-wing provocateur who has since stepped away from those endeavors, Johnson said the institute today has “little to do” with the worldview of his former professor. “I regret my involvement,” he said, stressing in particular the institute’s rhetoric about a “cold civil war.”
Jaffa would have been disappointed but unsurprised by the institute’s fealty to Trump, according to one of his sons, Philip Jaffa, who said his late father had grown disturbed by the institute’s teachings.
Philip Jaffa said his father had harsh words for the institute, which he “repeated endlessly those last few years.”
“They did not wait to bury the teaching with the teacher,” Jaffa recalled his father saying. “What they are trying to do is put a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call it Abraham Lincoln and the dust cover of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ on ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and call it Aristotle.”
Fisher reported from Washington. Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T15:57:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the Claremont Institute, home to Trump lawyer John Eastman, rose and fell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-john-eastman-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-john-eastman-trump/ |
The Tour de France finally features women again — after 33 years
By Amanda McCracken
Marianne Martin, in the yellow jersey, winning the first women’s Tour de France in 1984. (Courtesy of Marianne Martin)
After a 33-year hiatus, women have returned to the world’s most-watched sporting event: the Tour de France.
On Sunday, 24 teams of six cyclists each lined up on the Champs-Élysées in Paris to begin the eight-day Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. The 640-mile stage race features two mountain stages and ends in the Vosges Mountains. In the 119-year existence of the men’s tour, women have competed in the official Tour de France only five times. The women’s tour lasted from 1984 to 1989 — and then was canceled because of a lack of financial backing. A women’s one-day race called La Course emerged recently, but some riders have said that it has been more of an insult than an opportunity.
This year, the women’s race was kick-started by sponsor Zwift, a cycling app, and will be one of the highest prize purses — around 250,000 euros in total — in women’s cycling racing history.
“For the women to take the stage, to be elevated through that platform that they deserve, is really the key to unlocking so much more audience, investment and growth in the sport at all levels,” said Kate Veronneau, Zwift’s director of women’s strategy and a former pro-cyclist. “For little girls growing up and seeing themselves in a variety of sports … that’s powerful.”
When U.S. cyclist Marianne Martin won the first women’s Tour de France in 1984 at 26, things looked a lot different for female cyclists. Notably, she had neither salary nor radio. During one stage race in Grenoble, France, she rode ahead of the pack for over 30 miles, she said.
“I didn’t know where they were, so I just pushed ahead, thinking, ‘They’re gonna catch me,’ ” Martin, now 64, recalled. But they never did. The 10 minutes she gained on the peloton during that pivotal stage race, she says, gave her the confidence to win the entire Tour — which was then an 18-stage race covering just over 600 miles.
When Martin was competing, widespread interest in women’s sports was limited. But that world looks different now.
“Women’s sports is trending hard because the companies that have invested in sports are seeing fabulous returns,” Veronneau said. Indeed, as The Washington Post has reported, female athletes are garnering more attention from fans and marketers — which is leading to a belief that women are one of the best investments in the sports industry.
Women’s sports can do at least one thing men’s can’t, experts say: Get bigger
“Female athletes take their responsibility to be role models extremely seriously because they have to fight for every sponsorship dollar that they have,” Veronneau added. “They know everything they do is going to impact the opportunities that come after them.”
The majority of the 2022 female cyclists riding the Tour are under 35; most have never had the opportunity to watch other women ride this race.
U.S. Human Powered Health team cyclist and Olympic bronze medalist Lily Williams, 28, was inspired to start cycling after watching the men’s Tour de France on TV every summer with her family.
“I think certainly if there had been a women’s Tour de France, I would have started cycling a lot earlier,” Williams said, adding that she only started cycling a couple of years ago. “And I think my career arc would look a lot different.”
Williams said her mom, speed skating Olympian Sarah Docter, was a pro-cyclist in the 1980s who never had the chance to ride the Tour. “She got burned out really early,” Williams said. “A lot of that is probably due to the complete lack of support that women’s sports had back at that time.”
One crucial piece of support is a salary. This is the first year that Williams is riding as a professional cyclist without also having to work. “It’s been huge to have that time to rest and recover. That completely changes the sport when you have 10 or 20 teams of riders who are being paid a living wage,” she said.
But not all female cyclists in the Tour de France receive a salary. Only 14 of the 24 teams competing in the Tour are licensed under the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Women’s WorldTeams Tour, which requires teams to provide a minimum salary of 27,5000 euros per year to each rider.
“It’s a very new concept for women professional cyclists to earn a required minimum salary,” Veronneau said. “The best of the best are making good money these days, but for most pro women, it’s still squeaking by and a challenging career choice. Most often have to work secondary jobs alongside their training of 25 to 30 hours per week.”
Zwift is funding a total prize purse for the women’s race of 250,000 euros, with 50,000 going to the winner. The men’s prize purse is 2.3 million euros, with 500,000 going to the winner. Compared with 1984, this is a 10-fold improvement in the women’s to men’s prize winnings ratio. Martin recalls winning less than $1,000 compared with the $100,000 the 1984 male champion, Laurent Fignon, took home.
Race organizers say the goal is to grow women’s cycling to the point where full parity is possible, but they are starting with what is most sustainable first. For now, that means eight stages instead of the 21 stages that men ride. Women’s cycling teams are smaller than men’s, Williams explained, making 21 stages exceptionally more difficult for the women’s teams to commit to from a financial, staffing and physical standpoint.
Williams also says that eight stages with shorter races allows the women’s races to be more dynamic, less predictable, and thus more exciting to watch.
“Every day in the men’s tour, there’s a four-to-six-hour race [in which] a group goes off the front to get media exposure, and then they’re reeled in, and the general classification contenders maintain their position,” she said. “In women’s racing, where races are three to four hours, people are fresher to attack throughout the race; breakaways might have a chance to stick. You have a wide variety of women who could be winning the race.”
Regardless of numbers, riders say the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is a game changer for women’s cycling and will serve as an inspiration for young women and girls worldwide watching the event.
“We need the media to show more women in sports so that girls think about more options,” Martin, the former pro cyclist, said. “I mean, if they only see women in fashion, they’re going to only think about fashion. If they see women in sport, and it’s exciting, they’re going to see that as an option.” | 2022-07-24T15:57:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The women’s Tour de France returns after 33-year hiatus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/women-tour-de-france-returns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/women-tour-de-france-returns/ |
Who do crypto investors turn to for advice? BitBoy, for one.
Ben Armstrong is one of a handful of influencers who have gained huge followings by offering advice on cryptocurrency. Critics say it’s a profession riddled with ignorance, conflict and moral hazards.
BitBoy, the moniker of a 39-year-old Atlanta-area resident named Ben Armstrong, has become hugely popular — and controversial — for his many crypto investment recommendations. (Ben Armstrong)
“You can’t possibly EVER support Celsius Network or [CEO Alex] Mashinsky in any way,” Armstrong, who goes by the moniker Bitboy_Crypto, told his nearly 900,000 Twitter followers after Celsius froze all depositors’ money in June.
Armstrong had talked up the company often on his daily YouTube show and, just two weeks earlier, even appeared with Celsius’s chief executive on its weekly promotional video. (“Atlanta is famous for BitBoy, no longer for CNN,” Mashinsky had said admiringly.)
Armstrong is a leading example of a crypto influencer. One-part media personality, one-part untrained investment adviser, the 39-year-old Georgia native wields significant power in the world of cryptocurrency investment, steering tip-hungry online trawlers to the latest token. In polished daily news-like feeds featuring a team of deputies and videos designed to go viral (in one, he drives around the Atlanta area in wraparound sunglasses suggesting the best way to invest $1,000), he has become a go-to source for the newest crypto trends.
BitBoy’s rise — and even his recent Celsius wobble — highlights how low the threshold can be for gaining power amid the morass of gamified finance. In the land of crypto, the one-eyed man is king — and the line between carnival barker and investment guru extremely difficult to find.
Whatever the validity of BitBoy’s advice, there is certainly a lot of it. Armstrong’s daily news show on his YouTube channel (with about 1.5 million subscribers) is a dizzying list of tokens (Cardano, Solana, Ripple’s XRP) and jargon-filled tech-speak — “layer-2 rollups on the ethereum blockchain” — all undergirded by the cheerful supposition that there are just so many darn ways to make money out there.
One key to Armstrong’s appeal is the juxtaposition of this insider-speak with his everyman frame and beard, a bear of a man selling a bull of a market. BitBoy is prone to sprinkling personal details — a moose hunt he will go on in Alaska, the Atlanta United game he just attended — with his stream of recommendations. Some of these details do radiate wealth (the Atlanta United game, he made sure to note, was seen from a luxury box), but that, too, sends a signal: Great wealth is also accessible to you fellow average Toms.
What is perhaps even more effective, though, is how Armstrong does not always predict a steep line up for crypto values — many of his boosts come with a warning. “I said don’t do that; that’s a terrible idea,” he recounts as his response in one YouTube video when someone asked him whether they should put the proceeds from the sale of their house in crypto.
Not only does this give Armstrong credibility in a bear market, but it also keeps sales flowing. Armstrong’s credibility-restoring pronouncements of do-not-buy-now almost always wind their way to do-buy-later. “For people who want to put in big chunks, it’s going to be better to wait until next year,” is how that house warning finished in the video.
“The word I use is authentic: I’m the same person on-camera as off-camera,” Armstrong told The Washington Post in a phone interview when asked how he believes he has amassed so many followers. “It happens everywhere, whether it’s a Falcons game or a crypto conference, people will come up to me, not because I’m better than other influencers, but because I’m more approachable.”
If nothing else — and if one forgets about the large sums of money involved — he is clearly having fun. In a world of dry financial advice, BitBoy’s accounts are rife with references, memes and jokes — not many investment advisers hold competitions for the best NFTs issued by a fast-food chain.
As for the bear-market material, he says it’s just another way of telling it like it is: “I’m a hardcore proponent of the bitcoin four-year cycle,” he said, a reference to the idea that the coin’s value plunges quadrennially. “I’m not sure why anyone else wouldn’t be.”
Armstrong describes a dramatic backstory. He was addicted to meth for several years, he said, when one day in 2007 he walked straight into traffic while high and ended up in an altercation with police. After a stay in the hospital, he entered a rehab program for 10 months, eventually getting sober, starting a family and finding work as an addiction counselor.
He used bitcoins to make a purchase almost by happenstance a decade ago, and in 2013 even sold six of them using the WiFi at a local McDonalds, netting $1,700. (They would be worth more than $100,000 today.) It wasn’t until 2017, as the crypto market was cresting, that he became interested in it professionally, eventually deciding in 2018 to start making videos. Originally, the idea was not news but animation. “BitBoy and Hodl” were supposed to be crypto superhero characters. (The latter is crypto slang for staying with an investment long term.)
This 2018 period coincided with what’s known as the crypto winter, a time when many of the assets were suddenly very inexpensive and, he predicted, would go up. Few were buying or even paying attention then. But he was vindicated in 2020 and 2021, when coronavirus shutdowns brought people to crypto in droves and sent values skyrocketing. The enterprise grew, and Armstrong bought studio space near his home in Acworth, about 45 minutes north of downtown Atlanta.
He would soon be promoting a barrage of news videos that attracted what came to be known as the “BitSquad,” the name for his informal group of followers. He also hired sidekick personalities with handles like “Deezy.eth.”
BitBoy is now a full-on media enterprise, he said, with 70 part- and full-time employees and revenue in the millions.
The actual totals traded on Armstrong’s word are hard to quantify. Most people don’t say exactly what made them invest, but the dialogue in his social media threads draw a picture of the activity.
“I lost everything bec of you,” a user named @BoofyBush recently wrote on Twitter.
“You lost everything because of yourself Bru,” replied a user named @PeepsXr. “Take responsibility for your actions.”
“Bitboy helped tho,” responded @ItsBillysan.
Armstrong brags that he’s “made hundreds if not thousands of millionaires.” There are fewer statistics about how many wealthy people are now poor.
“I think it’s easy to say, ‘Why would you listen to some stranger on the internet tell you where to put your money?’” said Nicholas Christakis, a Yale University sociologist and physician who wrote “Connected,” a seminal book on the scientific underpinnings of online influence, when asked why so many have flocked to BitBoy. “But what the research shows is that, particularly when there’s a lot at stake — like all the money online in crypto — online interactions can be as influential as in-person ones.”
He said the idea of large groups communicating within these online bubbles can amplify the effect. “This sense of shared community — ‘We’re all in this together’ — makes people trust more. It’s not that different from the logic of a cult. I mean, don’t we all have a desire to find a guru who can tell us the meaning of life and protect us from bad decisions?”
It’s not surprising perhaps that Armstrong would amass influence in this space in particular. Like stocks, crypto is a system that demands a constant stream of people to buy in if the value is to continue going up. Unlike stocks, though, there is little to fuel those buyers — no earnings, products or market need. That means hypesters are needed, say experts who follow such markets.
“Since you’re not really buying anything of actual value, in my view, you need someone to tell you what it’s worth,” said Peter Schiff, a controversial money manager and prominent crypto skeptic. “I think what you have to ask with any influencer is who they’re actually serving — or if they’re just serving themselves.”
The question of culpability is a potent one. If BitBoy’s pronouncements can make investors reach for their laptops, many critics — including a growing number of his followers in the wake of Celsius’s fall — say influencer content can be ill-informed and corrupt, governed by its dispenser’s own interests.
A blockchain investigator known as ZachXBT conducted an undercover sting last year in which he procured a flier with BitBoy’s “rates,” which included $35,000 for a “dedicated review” and $20,000 for a “livestream mention.”
Armstrong admits he took so-called sponsored content for years but, concluding it eroded his credibility, stopped in January and has not taken a penny since. He estimated that his total haul was “maybe close to a million.”
Armstrong also acknowledges that his company owns much of what he recommends, which at least gives him a financial stake in its success. But he said that he personally doesn’t own crypto, that his chief financial officer handles all crypto transactions for the firm, that he discloses much of it in the show and that, in any event, the potential for conflict is limited.
“It’s impossible for us to have an effect on these large [market] caps,” he said. (He thinks a transparent “portfolio tracker” would be a good idea for anyone who broadcasts on YouTube.)
Like other influencers, Armstrong said he’s simply providing information and users can do with it what they will, an opinion shared by other crypto advocates.
“I look at it as caveat emptor,” said Alanna Roazzi-Laforet, the co-founder of Decrypt Studios, a blockchain-oriented content organization. “You shouldn’t do any of this blindly. You do your own homework — who is pumping the token, how much is in their wallet, whatever you need to do. It’s not like anything is hidden from you.”
But others say investigating the blockchain is far from easy and constantly changing anyway. Long threads on Reddit in recent months have listed projects that Armstrong touted that proved to be scams.
“Bitboy has been involved in 7 Crypto scams in the past all of the projects he worked on either got Exit Scammed or Rug pulled,” said a user with the handle naji102, referring to the investigation that uncovered a number of BitBoy-promoted projects that allegedly turned out to be scams. “He has deleted all the videos of scam projects he shilled to his community. I have no idea how this person has over 1 Million subscribers,” the user wrote.
Armstrong admits he deletes videos. “Of course I’m going to do that. I don’t want people to find them now and think they should go out and buy it.”
Asked about the investigation, Armstrong pointed to a Twitter thread responding to details on each of the projects. “I answered every single question — I’ve never been involved in a scam,” he said in the interview. But he also sent out a thread later in which he acknowledged that he should have scrutinized some of the projects more closely. He’s learned from his mistakes, he said.
“If you can’t see that we are tighter, more well-rounded, more responsible channel two years later then it’s simply because you don’t want to see it Zach,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to his critic.
Online experts say influencers such as Armstrong pose a problem, one that deserves a solution.
“This is the really interesting area where crypto and social media intersect,” said Jason Goldman, an early Twitter executive and chief digital officer at the White House during the Obama administration. “You’ve always had people who sell snake oil. But they had to go door to door, and now with social media they can sit at home and be amplified to every corner of the world.”
He said social platforms should — and eventually probably will — do more to curb crypto influencers. “You can say you have a right to say what you want, but that doesn’t mean companies have to give a megaphone to every multilevel marketer and gambling tout around,” Goldman said. Although influencers point to investment experts in other media who hardly always give sound advice, Goldman drew a distinction.
“Sure, [CNBC’s] Jim Cramer doesn’t have a great record versus the S&P 500, but there’s a whole apparatus on cable news that the advice stays within the bounds. We need to develop that here.”
Armstrong said he follows the stock-market practice of not buying or selling a coin within 72 hours after he mentions it on his show. He also said his larger role should be considered.
“No matter how many haters there are — and I know I have a lot — I also have helped so many people financially. Which is why I do this — to help people.”
As for Celsius — which before its bankruptcy froze billions of dollars deposited by half a million people — Armstrong said he was hurting, too. “They were hiding so much, it was just hard to know. We lost $3 million. We were as fooled as everyone else.”
When pressed that part of why he’s gained such a following is precisely because he’s supposed to know more than anyone else, Armstrong grew momentarily rueful.
“I guess we didn’t ask the right questions,” he said. | 2022-07-24T16:36:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For crypto advice, thousands turn to BitBoy, a.k.a. Ben Armstrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/24/crypto-advice-bitboy-armstrong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/24/crypto-advice-bitboy-armstrong/ |
Hogan’s presidential ambitions undampened after Tuesday’s primary
Governor says he’ll ‘double down’ on what he views as long-term fight for direction of Republican Party after Md. GOP voters elevated a Trump-aligned candidate to succeed him
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan fills out his paper ballot during early voting in the Maryland gubernatorial primaries at Annapolis Middle School on July 7, 2022. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Asked Sunday about his presidential ambitions after Maryland voters elevated a Trump-aligned candidate to succeed him, Gov. Larry Hogan said he planned to “double down” on his long-term fight to pull the Republican Party in a different direction.
“I can tell you I’m not giving up,” Hogan told Jake Tapper on CNN. “It just makes me want to double down and fight back against what I think is kind of a hostile takeover of the party that I love.”
Hogan, a regular guest on Sunday political shows, told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl: “It makes me more determined than ever to continue the battle … to win over the Republican Party and take us back to a bigger-tent, more Reaganesque party. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I’m certainly not giving up.”
Hogan has been weighing a presidential bid after he leaves office in January, seeking a path for his brand of pragmatic conservatism in a party still under the sway of former president Donald Trump.
Del. Dan Cox’s decisive triumph Tuesday over Hogan protege Kelly Schulz meant voters who knew him best repudiated his chosen successor.
Hogan told The Post on Wednesday he didn’t see it as personal political loss, pointing out that Cox was buoyed by more than $2 million in advertising from the Democratic Governors Association that highlighted Cox’s antiabortion, pro-gun views and his ties to Trump.
But regardless of who paid for them, the messages appealed to the state’s GOP base, which once rallied around Hogan, and it raised questions about whether his pitch to build a more inclusive party could resonate.
Hogan has taken the long view: that Republicans will chalk up more losses this fall before Trump’s grip on the party loosens further.
“There’s no question that we lost a battle, and we’re losing a few battles. But the fight is long,” Hogan said on CNN. “We have another couple of years before the next election.”
The governor used his appearances to further denigrate Cox, whom he regularly calls a “nut” and “Q-Anon whack job.” On CNN, he said Cox “really is not a serious candidate.”
“I wouldn’t let him in the governor’s office, let alone work for the governor’s office,” Hogan said on ABC News. “We have no chance of saving that governor’s seat.”
Hogan also downplayed Cox’s win, noting that Republicans are in the minority and that turnout was relatively low. “So about 2 percent of the people in Maryland voted for this guy. It’s not going to be the same in November. So it’s not a big win, it’s really a loss.”
Cox declined to comment. He has celebrated his win as a loss for Hogan. On his Facebook page, Cox posted an analysis of Hogan’s 2014 primary win, noting that the governor received fewer votes when he first clinched the GOP nomination.
Hogan said Sunday that while he would not vote for Cox, he had until November to decide whether to cast a ballot for the Democratic nominee, best-selling author Wes Moore. | 2022-07-24T16:44:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Larry Hogan's presidential ambitions undampened after his protege lost - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/24/hogan-president-maryland-dan-cox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/24/hogan-president-maryland-dan-cox/ |
Robert Earl Keen’s melancholy but raucous farewell at the Birchmere
The Texas troubadour makes a sentimental and satisfying stop on what he says will be his final tour
Review by Dave McKenna
Robert Earl Keen has said he will stop touring after this summer. (Melanie Nashan)
Partying can be such sweet sorrow. Robert Earl Keen’s Friday show at the Birchmere, on a tour designed to let the Texas troubadour say farewell to fans and vice versa, was full of melancholy raucousness.
Keen announced earlier this year that he would stop performing for good after this summer, and the flock that packed the club for the first of two sold-out nights seemed very conscious that the hourglass is running out of sand. Keen, 66, has said health is not a factor in his decision to give up the road; he just had an epiphany during yet another overnight tour bus ride that he didn’t want to die far from home and alone.
Yet Keen seemed frailer than normal on this night. He took a seat at the center of the stage and stayed there, a departure from the stand-and-deliver format of his previous tours. And before he sang a note, Keen gave a long and nostalgic monologue on how hard he had to work as a young artist, back when he was best known for being Lyle Lovett’s college roommate, just to get to a slot as an opening act at the Birchmere, and how much it still means to play the exalted concert hall.
Given the heavy prologue, one couldn’t help but look for deeper meaning in the lyrics. Keen sometimes made it easy. He turned his opening song, “What I Really Mean,” a sweet ballad from 2005 that was originally a love letter to folks back home whom he missed while on the road, into a thank-you to folks who filled the club to say goodbye, changing its last line, “Wish you were here,” to, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Then again, words have always mattered at Keen’s shows, where it sometimes seems as if every fan not only knows every lyric, but also wants everybody to know that they know every lyric, and to prove it by outshouting the next guy. The decibel competition was predictably fierce on “Gringo Honeymoon,” “Corpus Christi Bay” and “Merry Christmas From the Family.”
“Amarillo Highway,” an anthem written by fellow Texan and singing storyteller Terry Allen, was delivered over a ZZ Top-like boogie beat. “Dreadful Selfish Crime” had even Keen banging his head and dancing in his chair. “Shades of Gray,” one of Keen’s many up-tempo crime tunes, came complete with a shredding solo from guitarist Brian Beken. Keen seemed amused by the ferocity of the arrangement. “Turn that crap down, son!” he joked to Beken, the youngest member of his backing trio. (Beken signed on with Keen in 2015. The rhythm section of drummer Tom Van Schaik and bassist Bill Whitbeck has been with Keen since the 1990s.) But nobody really wanted the din diminished.
The glorious noise peaked on “The Road Goes On Forever,” Keen’s best-known story song, as he got to its climactic line, “The road goes on forever and the party never ends.” That song closes as Sonny, its anti-hero protagonist, gets arrested for murder and is condemned to death. In the real world, Keen has sentenced himself only to rest and relaxation. But as Keen ambled back to the dressing room and the lights came up, there was an overwhelming sense that nothing really goes on forever and that something wonderful was ending. Keen, like everybody else in the room, is going to miss this. | 2022-07-24T17:28:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robert Earl Keen’s melancholy but raucous farewell tour - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/24/robert-earl-keen-farewell-concert-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/24/robert-earl-keen-farewell-concert-review/ |
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A rights group gathering evidence on Sri Lanka’s alleged rights abuses said it filed a criminal complaint with Singapore’s Attorney General, seeking to arrest an ex-Sri Lankan president for his role in war crimes alleged to have been committed during the island nation’s civil war that ended more than a decade ago. | 2022-07-24T17:29:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Group seeks ex-Sri Lankan president's arrest in Singapore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/group-seeks-ex-sri-lankan-presidents-arrest-in-singapore/2022/07/24/5b0ec6b8-0b72-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/group-seeks-ex-sri-lankan-presidents-arrest-in-singapore/2022/07/24/5b0ec6b8-0b72-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Jonas Vingegaard celebrates after winning the Tour de France. (REUTERS/Christian Hartmann)
Vingegaard’s winning time was 79:32.29. Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar took second place (+3.34), and Geraint Thomas of Great Britain was third (+8.13) in the three-week event.
The festivities also featured women back in the world’s most viewed in-person sports spectacle. The Tour de France Femmes began Sunday with 24 teams of six riders vying for the title in the eight-day, 640-mile stage race ending in the Vosges Mountains, marking the fifth time in 119 years of the Tour de France with female competitors.
Vingegaard placed second in Saturday’s time trial in 3:34 behind Jumbo-Visma teammate Wout van Aert. His time, however, left him so far in front of his closest pursuers that shortly after finishing he was able to begin his coronation by embracing his partner, Trine Hansen, and their 2-year-old daughter, Frida.
He did the exact same almost immediately after crossing the line Sunday.
“Having my two girls on the finish line means even more to me,” he told reporters Saturday following an especially grueling stage amid conditions that have set records for high temperatures in the United Kingdom over the past week. “I’m just so happy and proud.”
Despite the sweltering elements, including temperatures rising into the triple digits, Vingegaard managed to extend his lead during the 20th stage comprising countless hills and mountain climbs in what was one of the most demanding tests in Tour de France history.
Among the closest challengers to Vingegaard was Pogacar, who was seeking a third consecutive victory. He had been dueling with Vingegaard, the runner-up in last year’s Tour de France, for the lead until the last few stages.
Vingegaard surged at last year’s competition after Jumbo-Visma’s No. 1 rider, Primoz Roglic, dropped out following a crash. His performance on the heels of Roglic’s departure featured one of the fastest times on the Mont Ventoux climb.
The storybook finish this time for Vingegaard is all the more compelling given in 2019 he had been working part-time in a packing plant in Denmark, gutting and cleaning fish. He also was employed at a fish auction, often waking well before sunrise and laboring in frigid temperatures.
Van Aert, meanwhile, finished this year’s Tour de France wearing the green jersey, which is awarded to the competitor who amasses the most points in stage times and midrace sprints. Van Aert won three stages while also assisting his teammate during the rugged Hautacam climb, breaking away and controlling the pace.
Pogacar was unable stay attached and eventually faded as Vingegaard and van Aert continued to climb, keeping the Jumbo-Visma team well ahead in winning its sixth of 20 stages.
“I think the battle between me and Jonas was really something special, and Jonas was really something special,” Pogacar, 23, said. “It’s going to be an interesting couple of years ahead for us.” | 2022-07-24T18:38:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jonas Vingegaard wins Tour de France - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/jonas-vingegaard-tour-de-france/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/jonas-vingegaard-tour-de-france/ |
In defense of authenticity, she influenced generations of chefs and deplored Americans’ fast-food experience of wan tacos and overseasoned enchiladas
By Bonnie S. Benwick
Diana Kennedy at her home garden in Zitácuaro, a city in Michoacán, Mexico. She was a leading authority on Mexican cooking. (Paul Harris/Getty Images)
Diana Kennedy, a British-born cookbook author and expatriate who became one of the world’s leading experts on authentic Mexican cuisine, influencing generations of chefs and deploring Americans’ fast-food experience of wan tacos and overseasoned enchiladas, died July 24 at her home in Zitácuaro, Mexico. She was 99.
Mrs. Kennedy first settled in Mexico in the late 1950s after marrying a foreign correspondent based there for the New York Times. She painstakingly hunted down traditional recipes from Mexican home cooks and documented indigenous edible plants in the manner of a questing scholar.
Over the decades, she became known as the “Julia Child of Mexican Cuisine” or the country’s “high priestess of cooking” — sobriquets she typically dismissed with a wave of a hand, as so many June bugs in her outdoor Mexican kitchen.
She described herself as a “licensed scourge” of gastronomy, promoting cuisine from the humble to the refined, from meatballs in chipotle sauce to cream of squash flower soup. She also unapologetically pursued more adventurous recipes for iguana tamales and beef brains with jalapeños.
Intrepid, salty and forthright, Mrs. Kennedy had no patience for inefficiency, inaccuracy or waste, and she often punctuated her pronouncements with a choice curse word. An oversimplified explanation of how corn tortillas are made could cause her to confront a cookbook author face to face or write scolding letters to The Washington Post, the Times and Saveur magazine.
Yet her towering reputation led future superstar chefs, including José Andrés and Rick Bayless, to make pilgrimages to Mrs. Kennedy to soak up her knowledge.
Andrés treated Washingtonians to visits with Mrs. Kennedy every few years beginning in 2008, during which time she would consult at one of his restaurants. Mrs. Kennedy said she could tell how well a professional kitchen was run by seeing what was in its garbage pail.
Mrs. Kennedy spent the last four decades of her life working from her adobe home and ranch in the Mexican state of Michoacán. “I wanted a house of locally made materials that would address itself to the resources of the area and be in tune with the restrictions with which my neighbors had to live, and had survived, for many years,” she wrote in her cookbook “My Mexico” (1998).
From her first work, “The Cuisines of Mexico” (1972), to later volumes such as “Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food” (1984), Mrs. Kennedy stood for meticulous study and patience. A single recipe might fill multiple pages.
“Never before in history have more people had more kitchens, more equipment, more ingredients to cook with and more time to cook than the average American today,” she wrote in “Nothing Fancy,” “so why not relax and try a few recipes that span over four days.”
Early fascination with food
Her godmother paid for young Diana to attend a girls’ school in Hampstead, where she first began learning culinary arts. She went to Wales during World War II to work in the forestry corps and came to savor the fresh, local produce and cheeses cooked over wood fires on the job.
The attraction was swift and fierce. She soon joined Kennedy in Mexico City, where he was stationed, “with $500 and a half-promise of matrimony.”
The couple wed in 1957 and spent nine years in Mexico. She cooked, learning techniques from her housemaids, and studied Spanish. Paul Kennedy would collect recipes for his wife when she couldn’t accompany him on travels through Central America and the Caribbean.
In “Nothing Fancy,” she recalls a story that speaks to how honed their palates had become by 1966, when the couple were on their way to New York because of Paul Kennedy’s advanced cancer:
“We were in a motel dining room somewhere in Texas. Paul laid his knife and fork down soon after he had started his meal. ‘I don’t know whether to thank you or not,’ he bellowed. ‘Most of my life I could eat anything anywhere, but now look what you have done to me. This damned rubbish …’ With that, he pushed his plate back in disgust.”
Mexico was also where Mrs. Kennedy met Times food editor and restaurant critic Craig Claiborne. The Kennedys’ home “was an international gathering place,” he wrote in the revised 1986 foreword of “The Cuisines of Mexico,” in which he remembers her very good cooking, her enthusiasm for the country’s native ingredients and her offer to buy Claiborne a Mexican cookbook at their first meeting.
Paul Kennedy died in New York in 1967; two years later, at Claiborne’s urging, Mrs. Kennedy began teaching Mexican cooking classes, which were rare at the time. She used her earnings to fund several trips back to Mexico over the next nine years or so, gathering research and recipes.
Frances McCullough, an editor at Harper & Row, took one of those classes. She and Claiborne pushed the idea of Mrs. Kennedy’s doing a Mexican cookbook. McCullough coaxed the richness of detail and Mrs. Kennedy’s passion into the manuscript for “The Cuisines of Mexico,” asking why the author preferred feet, tongue, noses and ears over chicken breasts and beef filet.
Mrs. Kennedy returned to live in Mexico in the late 1970s. In 1980 she bought the Michoacán property, which she eventually christened Quinta Diana. She entertained Charles, Prince of Wales, there in 2002, serving him tequila aperitifs, fresh tortillas, cream of squash blossom soup, pork loin baked in banana leaves and mango sorbet. She kept a home in Austin, Texas, as well.
Over the years, she consistently refused to write her autobiography or work with a biographer, but she did allow a documentary crew to film her in 2014. In 2019, the documentary “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” featured interviews with chefs Alice Waters, Bayless, Andrés and more.
One of the world’s foremost authorities on Mexican food is British. A new film reckons with her legacy.
Mrs. Kennedy received a life achievement award in 2003 from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and a cookbook of the year award from the James Beard Foundation for her 2010 volume “Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy.” In 2014 she was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame, which noted the groundbreaking legacy of “The Cuisines of Mexico.”
The Mexican state of Oaxaca had fascinated Mrs. Kennedy since she took her first trip there in 1965. “Oaxaca al Gusto,” her last book, took 14 years to research, requiring many backpacking trips to forage for herbs and to research varieties of chilies that grow wild nowhere else.
“Perhaps I am surprised and very happy that the Mexicans themselves use my books,” Mrs. Kennedy once wrote, “and are so generous in acknowledging, as they say … ‘what I have done for their regional cuisines.’ ” | 2022-07-24T18:59:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Diana Kennedy, cookbook author who promoted Mexican cuisine, dies at 99 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/24/cookbook-author-diana-kennedy-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/24/cookbook-author-diana-kennedy-dead/ |
Jan. 6 committee to ‘contemplate a subpoena’ for Ginni Thomas
The wife of a Supreme Court justice had zealously pushed in text messages for the overturning of the 2020 election results
Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election
In some comments, Ginni Thomas zealously appealed to Meadows to help overturn the 2020 election results. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark,” she wrote on Nov. 10, 2020. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Her text messages to Meadows, revealed in the spring, prompted calls for her husband to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases related to the 2020 election. They also renewed a push from some Democrats for a code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
Lawmakers have emphasized that their work will continue through the summer, even after a prime time hearing last Thursday capped off six weeks of televised testimony.
“The floodgates have opened,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” noting that Thursday’s prime time session was expected to be the final hearing when the committee initially planned its summer. “But so many more witnesses have come forward.”
Cheney said the committee has several interviews scheduled in the coming weeks, including with even more former members of Trump’s Cabinet and of his campaign.
Lawmakers remain focused on collecting information from the Secret Service, which the committee recently subpoenaed after reports the agency erased text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, after the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General had requested them.
Among the revelations from Thursday’s hearing was that members of Vice President Mike Pence’s security detail began fearing for their lives as the Capitol attack unfolded, to the point where some called their families to say their goodbyes, according to witness testimony.
Cheney said she has been particularly troubled by the developments involving the Secret Service, noting that she was protected by Secret Service agents for eight years when her father, Dick Cheney, served as vice president.
“We will get to the bottom of it,” Cheney said, adding that those who watch the hearing should recognize “the really serious and grave threat the vice president was under. And the agents who were protecting him certainly did a tremendous service that day.”
The House select committee released dramatic footage detailing the chaos in Vice President Mike Pence’s office on Jan. 6, 2021. (Video: Julie Yoon/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
On “Fox News Sunday,” Cheney said the committee expects testimony from Anthony Ornato, former White House operations deputy chief of staff, and Robert Engel, a Secret Service agent who was the head of Trump’s security detail. Former Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Ornato told her Trump had lunged in anger at Engel while in the presidential limo on Jan. 6 after Trump was told he would not be taken to the Capitol.
Analysis: The education of Adam Kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that he remained confident in Hutchinson’s testimony and said the panel would “throw the doors wide open” to hear from those who allegedly dispute her testimony.
“What we have is a very credible witness in Cassidy Hutchinson, talk about what she had heard,” he said.
“Cassidy Hutchinson will go down in history as a hero, and she never sought to,” Kinzinger added. “She’s just a young woman telling the truth with more courage than the vast majority of men in politics today.”
Committee members didn’t mince words about what they view as Trump’s dereliction of duty. But Cheney reiterated Sunday that the committee has not yet made a decision on whether to make criminal referrals of Trump to the Justice Department. Earlier this month, she said multiple criminal referrals of Trump were possible.
“I sure as hell hope [the Justice Department] have a criminal investigation at this point into Donald Trump,” Luria said. “I have no direct knowledge of the status of their investigations, but what I’d say is I can tell the Department of Justice is watching our hearings closely.”
Kinzinger said he believed there is evidence Trump committed crimes and hoped to see the former president prosecuted.
He added that he worried about the precedent it would set if the Justice Department did not prosecute him even if it had enough evidence to do so — and had a pointed message for those who continue to believe Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Ladies and gentlemen, and particularly my Republican friends, your leaders by and large have been lying to you,” he said. “They know stuff that’s very different than what they’re telling you. They know the election wasn’t stolen, but they’re going to send out fundraising requests, they’re going to take your money from you, and they’re going to use you to stay in power. You’re being abused.”
Naomi Nix and Laura Reiley contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T19:52:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 committee to ‘contemplate a subpoena’ for Ginni Thomas, Rep. Liz Cheney says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ginni-thomas-jan6-cheney-subpoena/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ginni-thomas-jan6-cheney-subpoena/ |
Catholics in D.C. mourn loss of Latin mass after decree bans practice
By William Wan
Parishioners at Saint Mary Mother of God in Washington held one of their last masses in Latin on Sunday. On Friday, the Archdiocese of Washington issued a decree banning such masses at most parishes in the region. (William Wan/The Washington Post)
Standing before his parishioners holding the sacred bread of Communion in his hands, parish priest Vincent De Rosa solemnly intoned in Latin, “Ecce Agnus Dei.”
The English translation of those words: Behold the lamb of God.
Those kneeling in the church responded with ancient words of their own, “Domine, non sum dignus.” Lord, I am not worthy.
An air of earnest contemplation hung over Sunday Mass at Saint Mary Mother of God Parish, tinged by sadness.
This would be one of the last weeks the church’s parishioners would be able to celebrate using a traditional Latin form that traces its roots back more than a millennium.
Last year, prompted by ideological wars between conservative and liberal wings, Pope Francis said he wanted to limit use of the old Latin form of Mass.
This week, the consequences of that papal letter — issued halfway across the world — landed here in Washington with heavy consequences for this small parish in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.
By Sept. 21, the parish was told, they were to cease use of the Latin rituals that had been part of Saint Mary’s history almost since its founding in 1845.
Friday’s local decree, written by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who oversees the archdiocese of Washington, allows only three non-parish churches in the region to perform the Latin Rite. That means hundreds of Catholics who attend that type of Mass at roughly six parishes in the D.C. area — including Saint Mary Mother of God — will be forced to overhaul their ritual or abandon their spiritual homes to attend the three locations in the area allowed to perform it.
“It’s been devastating to be honest,” said Erin Menke, 42, whose family has attended Saint Mary for almost two decades. Three sons had been altar servers at the parish. To assist the parish priest, they painstakingly learned the intricacies of the Latin Mass, which incorporates traditional elements like incense, Gregorian chant and elaborate gestures and words often missing from the modern form of the Mass.
Most Catholic churches now give modern Mass in the language most easily understood by local parishioners, a practice spurred by reforms in the 1960s. For that reason, the decree won’t affect the majority of Catholics in the Washington region.
Saint Mary Mother of God, however, was among the most vocal churches lobbying the cardinal to allow them to keep Latin Mass in their services. They wrote letters, spoke in synodal listening sessions with archdiocese leaders and begged the cardinal to visit their church to see for himself the importance of the Latin Mass to their community.
“You feel a connection to all the Catholics who came before you and celebrated using those same words,” said Matthew Balan as he sat in the wooden pews. He comes from a family of Catholics going back generations in the Philippines. Balan met his wife at Saint Mary attending the Latin Mass, and they got married there as well. But now he’s not sure whether they and their two young boys will remain at the parish or move to one of the other locations still offering Latin Mass. “It’s a confusing time for a lot of us.”
“I do worry about our parish and what happens in September,” he said. “I’m planning to stay. Saint Mary’s has become a home to me. But for others who leave, I can understand that too. We’re not just losing the Latin Mass. We are going to be losing a lot of families and people who have been part of this community for years.” | 2022-07-24T20:31:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Catholics in DC mourn loss of Latin mass after decree bans practice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/24/dc-latin-mass-saint-mary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/24/dc-latin-mass-saint-mary/ |
FILE - Referee Zack Clayton, right, steps in after challenger Muhammad Ali, second from right, knocked down defending heavyweight champion George Foreman, bottom, in the eighth round of their championship bout on Oct. 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali’s championship belt from the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight title fight was sold at auction on Sunday, July 24, 2022, for $6.18 million. (AP Photo/File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-07-24T20:32:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Muhammad Ali's 'Rumble in the Jungle' belt sells for $6.1M - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/muhammad-alis-rumble-in-the-jungle-belt-sells-for-61m/2022/07/24/69f5c278-0b89-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/muhammad-alis-rumble-in-the-jungle-belt-sells-for-61m/2022/07/24/69f5c278-0b89-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Brooke Henderson wins the Evian Championship, the second major title in her career. (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Not even a four-putt early in Sunday’s final round could derail Brooke Henderson from winning the Evian Championship.
The Canadian overcame that potentially crippling double-bogey at No. 6 by making birdie on three of her final five holes at Evian golf club in France, including a decisive eight-footer at the 18th, for an even-par 71 to outlast American Sophia Schubert by one stroke in the penultimate major of the year.
Henderson, 24, finished 17-under 264 to secure the second major championship of her career and the traditional dousing of champagne and Evian. She also pocketed an Evian-record $1 million winner’s check, continuing a trend this year of record prize money at women’s golf majors.
Five players were tied for third. Most notable in that group two shots back included world No. 4 Lydia Ko of New Zealand and South Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim, ranked eighth. Ko fired a final-round 66 and Kim a 67.
“To get that many birdies on the last five holes or so was really big,” Henderson said. “Obviously to make that putt on 18 was just a huge relief so I didn’t have to play that hole again [in a playoff]. Just super excited to have this trophy and to be a second-time major champion.”
Henderson won her first major in 2016 at the Women’s PGA Championship at Sahallee Country Club. At that tournament outside of Seattle, Henderson shot 6-under 66 in the final round to force a playoff with Ko, winning with a birdie at the first hole and becoming the second-youngest major champion at 18.
Henderson began the final round at the Evian holding a two-shot lead over So Yeon Ryu but lost it at the first hole with bogey. Ryu made birdie at No. 1 in what became a frenzied Sunday during which seven players at one point shared the lead on the back nine, and 10 were within a stroke of first.
The chaos included 13 leader changes and a spectator picking up a ball that American Nelly Korda had driven into the rough. A rules official told the patron to replace the ball back on the ground, and Korda, ranked No. 3 in the world, hit from there on the way to finishing in a tie for eighth at 13 under.
Henderson fell out of the lead briefly when Schubert (68) birdied No. 12 to reach 15 under. But Henderson rallied with birdies at Nos. 14 and 15 to move back into a tie for first with Schubert, an LPGA Tour rookie who was playing one group ahead.
Archives: In Gee Chun wins Women’s PGA title after Lexi Thompson falters late
“You know, I just want to cry,” said Schubert, who earned $586,262 in her second appearance at The Evian Championship. “I want to cry tears of happiness. I’m proud of myself, proud of everyone that’s helped me get to this point. It came up just short, but I know that I’ll be back, so I’m really happy.”
The 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion’s putt for birdie at 18 stalled an inch from the cup moments after Henderson hooked her tee shot, with the ball caroming off trees and into the rough. Henderson laid up before landing her 107-yard third shot on the green well within birdie range.
Henderson’s putting was brilliant over much of the tournament, helping her become the first player in LPGA Tour history to post 64 or lower in each of the first two rounds of a major. The 10th-ranked player in the world modified her putting grip to left-hand low earlier this summer, and her command of the greens soon followed.
She won for the second time this season and for the 12th time in her LPGA Tour career.
“The left-hand low move was huge,” Henderson said. “Also we worked a lot, my coach and my sister [caddie Brittany Henderson], have worked a lot on green reading, being more confident over it, trying to clear the mind a little bit. Those steps have really made a huge difference.” | 2022-07-24T21:01:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brooke Henderson wins Evian Championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/brooke-henderson-evian-championship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/brooke-henderson-evian-championship/ |
17 dead as boat with Haitian migrants sinks
Seventeen people died after a boat carrying dozens of Haitian migrants capsized off the coast of the Bahamas, authorities said Sunday, as more Haitians attempt to reach the United States to flee gang violence and poverty at home.
Rescue teams recovered the 17 bodies, including that of an infant, and 25 people were rescued, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said at a news conference. Davis said authorities believe they were on a speedboat heading for Miami.
Up to 60 people may have been on board, Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander said.
Authorities said two people were taken into custody, both from the Bahamas, over the suspected human smuggling operation.
3 killed as gunman opens fire on campus
A gunman opened fire on a university campus in the Philippine capital region on Sunday, killing a former town mayor and two others ahead of a graduation ceremony, police said.
The gunman had two pistols and a silencer and was captured in a car he commandeered trying to escape the Ateneo de Manila University in suburban Quezon City, police said. He was blocked by witnesses and authorities outside the university gates.
The university was put under lockdown and the graduation rite at the law school on campus was canceled, police said.
Investigators were trying to determine a motive for the attack, but the Quezon City police chief said the suspect, apparently a medical doctor, had a long-running feud with Rosita Furigay, a former mayor of Lamitan town in southern Basilan province.
She died in the attack, along with her aide and a university guard. Furigay’s daughter, who was to attend the graduation, was wounded, a police report said.
2 reported killed in gun battle with troops
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the two men were killed in clashes with the military in Nablus. The rescue service said 19 Palestinians were wounded, including two critically.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the men had been wanted in shootings.
The military said it also operated in a separate area of the West Bank, where another brief exchange of fire occurred.
Israeli forces have been carrying out near-daily raids in the West Bank for months, in a bid to quell attacks by Palestinians. The military has faced resistance during some of those raids, which in several instances have turned deadly.
Fire damages homes in southern Greece: A major fire broke out in southern Greece, burning homes in villages not far from the archaeological site of ancient Olympia and prompting the evacuations of six villages. The fire erupted near the villages of Krestena and Skillountia, which are south and southeast of ancient Olympia. At least six more significant fires were burning across the country, according to the fire service. | 2022-07-24T22:02:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 24, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-24-2022/2022/07/24/6625731e-0b52-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-24-2022/2022/07/24/6625731e-0b52-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html |
“I cannot wait,” said 22-year wide receiver John Metchie III, “to come back stronger than ever.” (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
Houston Texans wide receiver John Metchie III revealed Sunday he was diagnosed with a form of leukemia that likely will sideline him for his rookie season.
Describing his diagnosed condition, acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), as “the most curable form” of the disease, Metchie expressed an optimistic outlook.
“I am currently receiving great medical care, am in good spirits and I expect to make a recovery at a later point in time,” he said in a statement shared by the Texans.
“I cannot wait,” added the 22-year wide receiver, “to come back stronger than ever.”
A second-round pick out of Alabama, Metchie has been recovering from surgery to fix a torn knee ligament he suffered during the SEC conference title game in December. He was able to participate on a limited basis in some offseason training activities with the Texans and had stated he hoped to be at full strength for the team’s training camp, which began Sunday.
Metchie said in his statement he “will likely not be playing football this season.” He added, “My main focus will be on my health and recovery.”
According to the National Institutes of Health’s Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, APL is estimated to be afflicting fewer than 3,000 people in the United States. It is described as a condition in which an overabundance of immature blood-forming cells (promyelocytes) in the blood and bone marrow results in a deficit in white and red blood cells and platelets. APL can lead to excessive bleeding or blood clots, and other symptoms may include anemia, anorexia, fatigue, vertigo and muscle weakness.
Approximately 90 percent of APL patients reach full remission, per the Canadian Cancer Society, with a long-term survival rate of 70 to 90 percent.
The Texans, who had traded up to land Metchie with the 44th overall pick in April’s NFL draft despite his knee injury, placed him Sunday on the non-football illness list.
A native of Ontario, after being born in Taiwan and spending his earliest years in Ghana, Metchie twice won the Jon Cornish Trophy as the top Canadian player on college football. He led Alabama last season with 96 receptions, racking up 1,142 yards and eight touchdowns.
“If you spend some time to getting to know his story, his story is probably as unique as anybody in the draft,” Texans General Manager Nick Caserio said after drafting Metchie. “He’s very worldly, this kid is an awesome kid, very smart, very studious, tough as nails.” | 2022-07-24T22:03:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texans’ John Metchie III expects to miss rookie season with leukemia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/texans-john-metchie-iii-expects-miss-rookie-season-with-leukemia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/texans-john-metchie-iii-expects-miss-rookie-season-with-leukemia/ |
Former Red Sox star David Ortiz was the only player elected by the baseball writers. Sunday's other inductees were Bud Fowler, Buck O’Neil, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges and Jim Kaat. (John Minchillo/AP)
Even among baseball’s most electric stars, Ortiz’s energy was different — and it still affects the game when he takes the microphone during All-Star Game broadcasts or appears during the playoffs.
Ortiz was a defining character during one of the most memorable eras in one of baseball’s best rivalries, a star for the Red Sox when they ended their World Series curse in 2004 and as they battled the New York Yankees in October after October. He was already a legend before he inspired the city after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, declaring Boston “our f---ing city” in a speech that became the stuff of lore.
On Sunday, he told the story of his first spring training at-bat with the Red Sox, when he tried to move a runner over against his former team, the Minnesota Twins. Then-Red Sox manager Grady Little pulled him aside and told him he didn’t want Ortiz to move runners over — he wanted him to drive them in.
Ortiz headlined a seven-player Hall of Fame class that righted some long-perceived Cooperstown wrongs and welcomed some of the game’s pioneers. The other additions: Bud Fowler, Buck O’Neil, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges and Jim Kaat.
Ortiz was the only player voted in by the writers last offseason. The other six players were chosen by the Era Committees, formerly known as the Veterans Committee, which consider the candidacies of former major leaguers no longer eligible for election by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, as well as that of managers, umpires and executives.
“There’s an unmistakable line you can follow from Bud to Andrew Rube Foster, who created the Negro Leagues in 1920, to Jackie Robinson in 1947,” Winfield said.
The Jackie Robinson of ...
Neither did O’Neil, the longtime Negro Leagues star and manager who spent eight decades in baseball. O’Neil was the first Black coach in MLB history, and he emerged as one of the sport’s most treasured historians before he died in 2006. On Sunday, induction finally arrived.
O’Neil’s niece, Angela Terry, addressed the crowd on his behalf. She noted the joy he would have taken in being inducted with Fowler and Miñoso.
Like O’Neil, Miñoso made a name for himself in the Negro Leagues. He was one of the first dark-skinned Latino players in the majors — a forerunner of Ortiz in that way and in the joy with which he played. The Cuba native was the first Black player for the Chicago White Sox and emerged as a treasured star who grabbed attention and attracted fans with his on-field energy. He died in 2015.
Miñoso’s widow, Sharon, spoke on his behalf — and to the difficulty he faced as he broke through stubborn racial barriers.
“What makes today’s recognition especially bittersweet is that Minnie faced many obstacles to arrive at this day. As a dark-skinned Afro-Latino at the height of segregation, he knew of the racial challenges he would face in the United States,” she said. “Little did he know as a pioneer, he was opening doors for many who came behind him.”
Kaat won 283 games, which ranks 31st all-time. Only four pitchers with more wins — Roger Clemens, Tommy John and 19th-century players Bobby Matthews and Tony Mullane — are not in the Hall of Fame. Kaat scored 16 Gold Gloves and won the World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982 before embarking on a broadcasting career. | 2022-07-24T22:54:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Ortiz inducted to Baseball Hall of Fame - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/david-ortiz-baseball-hall-fame/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/david-ortiz-baseball-hall-fame/ |
Analysis by Daniel Moss and Ruth Pollard | Bloomberg
Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) stand in formation during a review at JGSDF Camp Asaka in Tokyo, Japan, on Saturday, Nov. 27, 2021. Japan is planning its biggest-ever allocation to defense spending in an extra budget, as it seeks to speed up missile defense projects with China tensions simmering. (Bloomberg)
Is the economy ready for a steep defense bill and how does the nation buttress its armed services with a contracting population? I spoke with Sheila A. Smith, senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of several books on Japanese diplomacy and politics. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Daniel Moss: How has Japan’s strategic posture changed in past two decades? Did Abe instigate that or merely channel it?
Sheila A. Smith: He was always hawkish and wanted Japan to be more self-reliant. There are several pieces that came together during his time in office. One was the rise of China, which is a very significant shift in the balance of power. Japan’s complex relationship with its own past is baked into that, along with differences in the political systems of the two countries. So Japan had to rethink its approach. It also has to contend with a more assertive Russia and North Korea.
Abe is often portrayed as right-winger. I’m not sure that’s the right way to understand him. He was on the conservative side of interpreting Japan’s post-war experience, deeply uncomfortable with the US-written constitution and didn’t think Japan should always have to apologize. From 2012 until he stepped down in 2020, you saw a man who was coming to terms with his aspiration to lead and, critically, a Japan that is confronting a world that is changing. There was an intersection.
DM: To what extent has the ruling Liberal Democratic Party changed? Center-right parties globally have become more right-wing and nationalist.
SS: The conservative right in many democracies has also become populist, less establishment. That is the difference with the LDP. The party has become more conservative in recent years without embracing the populist bit. You see now, after Abe, a fairly large swathe of people in the LDP who want a stronger military, want to lift defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product. They don’t support nuclear weapons, but want to be able to reach out and touch an adversary with conventional weapons as a means of deterrence.
SS: Traditionally, Japan’s leaders hadn’t seen the global defense industry as a place where Japanese companies ought to play. There were restrictions adopted in the 1950s that said Japan shouldn’t sell weapons. Abe opened that up. During the Abe era they were encouraged and urged to participate in the arms market. Could they be significant? We’ll see. For Japanese industrial companies, defense is only a small part of their operations. But now they are expected to be out and about and showing what they can do. I don’t think executives are fully on board. They feel there’s a lot of reputational risk with their brand being too associated with the military.
SS: A new national security strategy document is going to be issued. The first leader to issue was Shinzo Abe, in 2013. So this will be only the second statement by Japan, ever. It’s significant this is all together in one place, not just bombs and bullets. It’s about what Japan needs to do to achieve its interests in the world and how to proceed? In 2013, the language on China was pretty benign compared with what I think we will see in the next one. Russia will be near the top of concerns after the Ukraine invasion. North Korea continues to be a problem, given its missiles and the ability to launch them undetected.
SS: I don’t know how they pay for it. Debt servicing is somewhere near 23% of Japan’s budget. Social security is about a third. The budget doesn’t have a lot of latitude. I’m not convinced about 2% of GDP, but let’s use that as a reference point. Last year, Japan spent about 1.3% of GDP on defense. You get to 2%, you are basically doubling it. That’s big.
Kishida may back off a specific number and instead talk about substantial spending over a period of time. We will have watch his maneuvering. He will have to show that spending goes up in a way that is demonstrable. He promised Joe Biden. So where does that come from? It is zero sum. It’s not like Japan’s economy is about to really take off.
SS: People have this idea that Article 9 means Japan can’t do anything, which isn’t correct. There needs to be some kind of self-defense. How much is necessary? That is the political elasticity and where Abe tried to push the envelope. If we read the parliamentary deliberations in the early 1950s when Japan was creating the self-defense force, they never used the word nuclear, but they do talk about modern weapons, which was code for nuclear. They aren’t banned, if needed for self-defense. That is where interpretations come in.
That aside, there is an acutely sensitive antennae among the Japanese public that pays great attention when weapons systems are discussed. Even in the conventional strike debate, the public reaction is going to be very interesting. You may have some people who say China has missiles, North Korea has missiles and so does Russia, so we need them, too. But there will be a lot of people who say this takes us way beyond where we are ready to go and increases the chances of war. We shouldn’t dismiss the balancing act required here.
SS: There is the fiscal burden of an aging population, which gets us back to the tug and pull on the budget. Pension reform in the name of higher military spending is a tough sell. So you will see more automation, you will see more emphasis on women serving. You are just now starting to see women take on command positions. There will be more robotics. That is where the opening to the international arms market will happen, the use of Japan’s technological ability to get economies of scale. There will be much more emphasis on battle drones, undersea drones, surveillance and reconnaissance. There are recruitment problems. Big challenges, demographically. That has implications for how quickly Japan can deploy. | 2022-07-24T23:33:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Tension in Japan’s Dialed-Up Defense Ambitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-tension-in-japans-dialed-up-defense-ambitions/2022/07/24/c4d7b6c0-0b9c-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-tension-in-japans-dialed-up-defense-ambitions/2022/07/24/c4d7b6c0-0b9c-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
By Annie Gowen
From left, Sheila Gregory, Cariann Dureka and Emily Daniel, volunteers for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, knock on doors in Leawood, Kan., to encourage people to reject a state constitutional amendment that could further restrict abortion access in Kansas. (Christopher Smith/For the Washington Post)
The energy around the pitched battle in the state is palpable: As Kansas melted under an oppressive heat wave, canvassers on both sides of the debate have been knocking on doors since before early voting began July 13. “Stop the ban: Vote No” and “Vote Yes!” signs dot lawns, and televisions are buzzing with nearly $2 million in issue ads, according to the tracking company AdImpact.
Republicans in the state legislature placed the abortion measure on the ballot as a special election alongside the previously scheduled primary, where traditionally only party-affiliated voters are allowed to vote. Many of the state’s unaffiliated voters — about 30 percent of the electorate — may not be aware they can vote this time, said Davis Hammet, the president and founder of Loud Light, a voter advocacy group, who called the move “blatantly anti-democratic.”
Kansas has long been at the center of the abortion debate. The state’s laws were once viewed as some of the least-restrictive in the country, prompting the Summer of Mercy antiabortion protests in 1991, when thousands of protesters converged on Wichita and were arrested at sit-ins and clinic blockades. In 2009, George Tiller, one of the country’s few third-trimester abortion providers, was murdered in Wichita by an antiabortion extremist.
In recent years, Kansans have been slightly less supportive of abortion rights than the country as a whole, experts say. For example, an Associated Press VoteCast survey of 2020 election voters in Kansas found that 54 percent said abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while 44 percent said it should be mostly or always legal, compared with 59 percent nationwide who felt abortion should be legal. Yet the AP survey found that 62 percent of Kansas voters had wanted the Supreme Court to leave Roe v. Wade as it was, while 35 percent said it should be overturned (nationally, 69 percent said the court should leave Roe as it was).
Last year, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment released statistics that showed a 9 percent increase in total abortions from 2019 to 2020, leading to criticism from abortion opponents, who charged that the state was becoming an abortion “sanctuary” led by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Much of that surge was because of short-term pandemic restrictions in clinics in Oklahoma and Texas, officials said. While this year’s preliminary data shows a 4 percent increase in abortions from 2020 to 2021, the majority of those were from in-state patients, the agency said.
Magda Jean-Louis, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this report. | 2022-07-24T23:34:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kansans to decide first state abortion amendment since Roe struck down - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/25/kansas-abortion-constitutional-amendment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/25/kansas-abortion-constitutional-amendment/ |
A Ukrainian serviceman opens the door to an HIMARS vehicle in Eastern Ukraine on July 1. (Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post)
In his battalion alone, Dmytruk said, the number of killed and injured has fallen dramatically compared with when his soldiers moved to this part of the front line three months ago. “We have about one guy suffer a concussion every week now. Before the HIMARS hit, it was about two to three a day because of the intensity of the shelling.”
Sea of
troop movement
Russian troop movement
Ukrainian government and military officials have said at various times that they need dozens, hundreds or even thousands of HIMARS. “For an effective counteroffensive, we need at least 100,” with longer-range munition than what has been supplied, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said last Tuesday in a video appearance at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “That would be a game changer.”
U.S. administration and military officials have said that one of their top concerns is not provoking Russia into a direct conflict with NATO, even as Ukraine points out that Russia invaded their country without provocation. The range of the ammunition the United States is providing for the HIMARS will not reach across the occupied east to Russia itself from Ukrainian front lines, but it allows what Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at a Wednesday news conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, called an “echelon of fires,” with shorter-range weapons, across various distances. | 2022-07-24T23:34:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine seeks U.S. HIMARS, ATACMS to push Russia back from east - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ukraine-himars-russia-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ukraine-himars-russia-us/ |
Biden's symptoms continue to improve
President Biden, who tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, continues to experience mild symptoms that are improving, the White House said Sunday.
“His predominant symptom now is sore throat,” O’Connor wrote, adding that it was an indication that his body is clearing the virus.
“The President is responding to therapy as expected,” O’Connor wrote in his latest letter.
— Laura Reiley and Dan Diamond
Wildfire explodes beyond 14,000 acres
Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate because of a wildfire burning thousands of acres near Yosemite National Park and challenging firefighters.
The Oak Fire began Friday afternoon and on Sunday afternoon had burned more than 14,200 acres outside Yosemite, according to Cal Fire.
Cal Fire spokeswoman Natasha Fouts said about 6,000 people had been evacuated from the area as of Saturday morning. She revised that number in an interview with The Washington Post on Sunday, saying that about 3,000 people were under evacuation orders and that nearly 2,000 were being warned that they may need to leave soon.
The wildfire had destroyed 10 structures and damaged five as of Sunday, according to the agency’s website. None of the Oak Fire had been contained Sunday.
Justin Macomb, a Cal Fire operations section chief, said in an operational update Sunday morning that firefighters are trying to contain the blaze’s spread in residential areas.
Earlier this month, a wildfire in Yosemite threatened hundreds of giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove, the park’s largest grove.
— Praveena Somasundaram
White House says U.S. can contain monkeypox
Monkeypox “can be contained” in the United States, with the goal of eventually eliminating the illness as testing and vaccinations ramp up, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator said Sunday.
Ashish Jha repeated that, with more than 2,000 cases nationwide, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is weighing whether to declare monkeypox a public health emergency. The head of the World Health Organization declared the global outbreak a public health emergency of international concern Saturday.
“We think we can get our arms around this thing,” Jha told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “ . . . If we need further tools, we will invoke them as we need them.”
He said “monkeypox can be contained, absolutely,” through testing and vaccines. The United States can test 80,000 people per week and has 300,000 vaccines, Jha said. The country should have “an additional 750,000 doses” of vaccine by the end of the month, Anthony S. Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show.”
Suspect in Lee Zeldin attack faces charges
A man accused of attempting to stab Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee in the New York gubernatorial contest, during a campaign event Thursday has been arrested on a federal charge of assaulting a member of Congress using a dangerous weapon.
David G. Jakubonis, 43, of Fairport, N.Y., appeared before a magistrate judge on Saturday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York said. According to Saturday’s federal complaint, Jakubonis told investigators that he had been drinking whiskey and that he did not know who Zeldin was.
— Rachel Pannett | 2022-07-24T23:34:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s covid symptoms continue to improve - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bidens-covid-symptoms-continue-to-improve/2022/07/24/1d359f62-0a30-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bidens-covid-symptoms-continue-to-improve/2022/07/24/1d359f62-0a30-11ed-911b-f04803b1891b_story.html |
The XFL is returning next year — and it’s coming back to Washington
After an abbreviated three-game stint at Washington’s Audi Field in 2020, the XFL announced the nation’s capital will be one of eight cities taking part in the league’s third iteration in 2023. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
When the XFL returns in February, so, too, will spring football in the nation’s capital.
On Sunday night, ahead of the league’s third iteration, the XFL announced the cities and venues where its eight teams will play and the head coaches assigned to those clubs. The list includes Washington, which will be coached by Reggie Barlow, a former NFL wide receiver and returner who led Virginia State from 2016 to 2021. The unnamed D.C. team will play its games at Audi Field, the league announced.
“To the fans in D.C. — we’re coming back,” Barlow said in a statement released by the XFL. “It’s an honor and a pleasure to have an opportunity to coach a team in the D.C. area. Our XFL team is going to play with a lot of passion, and we are looking forward to being a part of this great city. It’s going to be really exciting, and we already know you guys are going to show up and get loud for us.”
The league also will have teams in Arlington, Tex. (at Choctaw Stadium, coached by Bob Stoops), Houston (TDECU Stadium, Wade Phillips), Las Vegas (venue to be announced, Rod Woodson), Orlando (Camping World Stadium, Terrell Buckley), San Antonio (Alamodome, Hines Ward), Seattle (Lumen Field, Jim Haslett) and St. Louis (Dome at America’s Center, Anthony Becht).
Barlow left Virginia State in March to join the XFL. Before leading VSU, he was the coach at his alma mater, Alabama State, from 2007 to 2014.
The league announced several coaching and front-office positions for each team in June, but it didn’t specify where each group would coach. Barlow’s staff includes defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, offensive coordinator/running backs coach Fred Kaiss, director of player personnel Von Hutchins and director of team operations Stacie Johnson.
Williams, a former head coach of the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns, was the defensive coordinator of Washington’s NFL team from 2004 to 2007 and most recently was the New York Jets’ defensive coordinator in 2019 and 2020. Kaiss coached with Barlow at Alabama State. Hutchins, selected in the sixth round of the 2004 NFL draft, played defensive back for the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans.
Q&A: Cam Phillips, the XFL’s best receiver, is still waiting for another shot at the NFL
In February 2020, the DC Defenders hosted the first game of XFL 2.0, providing an alternative for the dwindling fan base of Washington’s NFL franchise. The Defenders averaged more than 16,000 fans in three games at Audi Field and went 3-2 in the shortened season, with all three wins coming in front of their raucous home crowd.
“I’ve played a lot of football in the NFL, high school, college or whatever, but these fans are different,” safety Rahim Moore said after the team’s fifth and ultimately final game. “I don’t know if the XFL is paying these dudes to be this loud, but the energy is just crazy.”
WE ARE DEALING WITH AN ALL-TIME BEER SNAKE FOLKS.
THIS IS WHAT LEGENDS ARE MADE OF.
THIS IS THE XFL. pic.twitter.com/UYrDS7ut1I
— XFL (@XFL2023) March 8, 2020
That version of the XFL, owned by wrestling magnate Vince McMahon, shut down in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The next month, the league filed for bankruptcy and sought a sale. That August, former WWE star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson bought the league for $15 million along with his business partner and ex-wife, Dany Garcia, and investment firm RedBird Capital Partners.
Next year will mark the first season of XFL action in San Antonio, and the league will return to the Las Vegas and Orlando regions, where the original XFL had teams in 2001. In 2020, the XFL had teams in the New York, Los Angeles and Tampa areas, but they had lackluster attendance. Those markets accounted for the five lowest-attended games of the 20 that were played that year.
Unlike the USFL, which played all of its 2022 regular season games in Birmingham, Ala., and its postseason in Canton, Ohio, the XFL will play all of its games in its host cities. The league will unveil team names, logos and uniforms at a later date. Games will air on ABC, ESPN and FX; the XFL announced a multiyear broadcast agreement with the Walt Disney Company and ESPN in May. | 2022-07-25T00:43:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | XFL announces teams for 2023 reboot; Washington is among them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/xfl-2023-announcement-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/xfl-2023-announcement-washington/ |
Analysis by Alfred Cang | Bloomberg
A freight train carrying iron ore travels along a track near a Rio Tinto Group rail yard in Karratha, Western Australia, Australia, on Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Iron ore is on course to end the week lower, with the increase in Chinese steel plants being idled and swelling inventories seen as signs of stagnant demand. Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
China has embarked on one of the biggest shake-ups of the global iron-ore market in more than a decade. A newly minted state-owned group will be a hub for everything from huge mine investments in West Africa to buying the steelmaking material from international suppliers. It comes amid pandemic-related disruptions and rising geopolitical tensions that have highlighted threats to supply chains and made resource security a major focus for President Xi Jinping. Mining giants Rio Tinto Group, BHP Billiton and Vale SA will be looking to understand exactly what China is now planning for them.
1. What is the new company?
China Mineral Resources Group was established July 19 in Xiongan -- President Xi Jinping’s greenfield city in Hebei province -- with a registered capital of 20 billion yuan ($3 billion). That puts it in the same league as China’s national oil and gas pipeline company, or the state-owned aviation king, Comac. The group’s mandate covers mining, ore processing and trading. Bloomberg News has reported it will manage overseas investments including the giant Simandou project in Guinea, which China sees as crucial for reducing its reliance on Australian ore, and eventually become the main or sole channel for buying ore.
2. What’s the plan?
The goal is to tackle what Beijing says is a power imbalance between a clutch of global mining giants on the one hand and China’s vast but fragmented steel industry on the other. China imports 1.1 billion tons of iron ore annually, at a cost in 2021 of about $180 billion. There are about 500 steel mills in China, of which the top 10 companies only contribute 40% of the national output production. Each of the individual steel plants are responsible for buying their own raw materials, while iron ore supply by contrast is highly concentrated. By centralizing purchasing, China aims to gain more clout with suppliers over pricing.
People familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg that the company’s creation was encouraged and closely monitored by top leaders in Beijing. They see a consolidated platform for buying resources as a way to strengthen the country’s negotiating position in an unfriendly international environment. Chinese leaders have repeatedly accused the US and its allies, including Australia, of ganging up to try to suppress China’s global rise. As of last year, Australia was responsible for more than 60% of China’s imports of iron ore, despite deteriorating relations between the two countries.
4. Who’s at the helm?
A mini “who’s who” of China’s mining and metals industry. Yao Lin, former chairman of Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chinalco, will be chairman. General manager is Guo Bin, executive vice president of China Baowu Steel Group Co., which as the country’s top steelmaker is a huge iron ore consumer. Others include current and former officials at Ansteel Group, MMG Ltd and the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s economic planning agency.
5. What are the numbers?
Since the top executives of the new company came from the top two steelmakers in the country, it’s expected that it would import iron ore on their behalf. Baowu and Ansteel jointly produce over 230 million tons of steel a year and are expanding by merging with rivals. That indicates that the new company will likely import at least 460 million tons of iron ore a year, or more than 40% of the Chinese total. In addition, the inclusion of Simandou gives the new group responsibility for one of the world’s biggest and most important new mines, which Rio has estimated could produce 100 million tons of ore a year.
6. What’s the back story?
Prior to 2010, iron ore prices were fixed for a whole year in annual talks led by the biggest miners and the biggest steelmakers in Europe and Asia. But the rapid expansion of Chinese demand in the early 2000s spurred the creation of a separate spot market that was often way out of whack with annual prices. Annual negotiations became increasingly fraught, and BHP spearheaded the move to floating prices that’s been in place since. China’s steel industry regularly complains about the market mechanism, especially when prices are high. Beijing’s push for centralized purchasing also carries echoes of the even more distant past, when only designated trade agencies were allowed to import raw materials.
7. What do the miners say?
Any attempt to reshape this trade will have ramifications for companies like BHP and Rio, which get more than half their revenue from iron ore. So far, though, the miners haven’t sounded any alarm publicly. BHP Chief Financial Officer David Lamont told a business forum in Melbourne that his company believes markets will sort out where the price needs to be based on supply and demand, according to The Australian. Fortescue CEO Elizabeth Gaines said her company will continue to optimize distribution channels to meet the needs of China’s steel industry. Rio Tinto has declined to comment. Meanwhile, Philip Kirchlechner, director of Iron Ore Research in Perth, suggested that if a buying cartel were established, suppliers might decide to form a cartel of their own, like an OPEC of iron ore.
8. Are there precedents in other commodities?
Sort of. China has more informal purchasing groups in some sectors. The big state-owned oil refiners including Sinopec have been buying crude together for two years, collectively issuing bids for certain Russian and African grades. Copper smelters including Jiangxi Copper Co., have a group which collectively negotiates raw materials contracts with BHP and other miners. It’s got more than 10 members, accounting for more than 80% of imports. But this is still well short of a separate legal entity charged with being a middle-man for the industry.
That’s debatable, and depends on just what the goals are. Channeling all of China’s iron ore imports through one entity would be a gargantuan task. And history has shown difficulties with centralized trade, including corruption and other inefficiencies. And even if China charges this new iron ore champion with buying for, say, three or four of the top producers, that wouldn’t necessarily have much bearing on spot prices. Skeptics will argue supply and demand is more important.
• A deep dive into how China’s quest for iron in Guinea’s Simandou mountains is jeopardizing a biologically rich ecosystem.
• More QuickTakes on the China-Australia spat, the Quad alliance and Aukus, and China’s big pipeline plans.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas on a nascent steel crisis.
• A ranking of the world’s biggest steelmakers.
• Bloomberg Businessweek on the billion-dollar hack that led to Rio’s China crisis. | 2022-07-25T01:05:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How and Why China Is Centralizing Its Billion-Ton Iron Ore Trade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-and-why-china-is-centralizing-its-billion-ton-iron-ore-trade/2022/07/24/7d9fdbee-0bb4-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-and-why-china-is-centralizing-its-billion-ton-iron-ore-trade/2022/07/24/7d9fdbee-0bb4-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Denny Hamlin disqualified after victory in rarity not seen since 1960
The Toyotas of Denny Hamlin (No. 11) and Kyle Busch (No. 18) lead the field during the NASCAR Cup Series M&M's Fan Appreciation 400 at Pocono Raceway. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
After finishing one-two in a Cup Series race Sunday, Denny Hamlin and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch had their cars disqualified. The decision, which followed a post-race inspection by NASCAR officials, gave the victory to Chase Elliott, who had crossed the finish line in third place.
In comments afterward to reporters, Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran didn’t specify the infractions at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway, but he revealed there were “some issues discovered that affect aero” in the front bumper fascias of Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota and Busch’s No. 18 Toyota.
“There really was no reason why there was some material that was somewhere it shouldn’t have been,” said Moran. “And that does basically come down to a DQ.”
Moran said the pair of Toyotas were being hauled away to NASCAR’s research and development center in North Carolina. He added that Hamlin and Busch would have opportunities to appeal and that final decisions would be “sorted out by next week.”
“We were shocked to learn of the infraction that caused our two cars to fail NASCAR’s post-race technical inspection,” Gibbs said in a statement. “We plan to review every part of the process that led to this situation.”
The ruling against Hamlin wiped away what would have been his third Cup Series win of the year. With 48 for his career, the 41-year-old remains in 16th place on the all-time list, one behind Tony Stewart.
It was the first time in 62 years, per Fox Sports, that the winner of a Cup Series race was disqualified. In that 1960 race, Emanuel Zervakis was found to have driven with an oversized fuel tank, at which point Joe Weatherly was given the victory.
On Sunday, Elliott was handed his fourth win of the year, all in the past 11 races, despite never leading a lap.
It was a tough day all around for the Busch family. Kyle’s older brother, 2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Busch, did not receive medical clearance for Sunday’s race after suffering concussion-like symptoms following a crash during qualifying Saturday.
Ty Gibbs drove the No. 45 car in his place for 23XI Racing — co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan — and ended up in 16th place after the top two finishers were demoted to the bottom of the field.
Asked if the disqualifications were related to NASCAR’s introduction this season of its “Next Gen” car, Moran acknowledged that inspection “rules have tightened up” in the wake of that vehicle’s debut.
“We just saw a great race, and the last thing we want to do is be here afterward talking about this problem,” Moran said. “But the teams and the owners and everybody was well aware that this new car was going to be kept with some pretty tight tolerances. There’s some areas that all the teams are well aware that we cannot go down the path that we had in the past with the other car.” | 2022-07-25T03:20:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Denny Hamlin disqualified at Pocono, giving Chase Elliott the win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/denny-hamlin-dq-pocono-giving-chase-elliott-win/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/24/denny-hamlin-dq-pocono-giving-chase-elliott-win/ |
Two dead in Whistler after daylight shooting in Canadian resort town
Two people were arrested after a fatal shooting in the central Whistler Village area, police said. (iStock)
Two people were arrested, and Inspector Robert Dykstra, the officer in charge of the Sea to Sky RCMP, said authorities were confident there was no longer any “risk to community safety.”
Sunday’s shooting — which police said took place out in the open in the central Whistler Village area — shocked the tightknit resort community. Tourists and residents scrambled for cover as reports of shots being fired spread through the village.
The resort operator, Whistler Blackcomb, said in a statement on Twitter that it was closing for the day “out of respect for all of those impacted.” Lifts remained open while all remaining guests were brought down from the mountain.
“We are shocked and deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence, and we stand in support of our community,” the resort operator said.
Local media reported that the shootings may be gang-related, citing unnamed sources. Police said they have “not yet determined if this incident and a recently located burned car are related, or if they are related to ongoing gang conflict.”
Gruesome videos circulating on social media showed two men lying face down outside the hotel.
Canada vows to ‘freeze’ handgun sales, buy back assault-style weapons
Fatal shootings are rare in Canada compared with the United States, although they have grown in recent years — from 134 in 2013 to 277 in 2020, according to Statistics Canada. The percentage of homicides involving a firearm jumped from 26 percent to 37 percent in that period. Most gang firearm-related homicides in 2020 (63 percent) were committed with a handgun.
Canada introduced new gun-control legislation in May that, if passed, would implement a “national freeze” on buying, importing, transferring and selling handguns, effectively capping the number of such weapons already in the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted at the time that gun violence has been getting worse in recent years. The nation “need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter,” he said in the wake of mass shootings in Texas and across the U.S.-Canada border in Buffalo.
Amanda Coletta in Alberta, Canada, contributed to this report. | 2022-07-25T03:59:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shooting in Canada’s Whistler Village leaves two dead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/24/canada-whistler-shooting-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/24/canada-whistler-shooting-deaths/ |
After he and his wife split up, I let him stay with me so he could save money, sort things out and receive some emotional support. He is a good guy and he pays half of the bills. He pays them late — but he pays them.
He is also sloppy, and I am constantly cleaning up after him. He is aware of my displeasure with cleaning up after an adult, but he seems not to care.
He has lived with me for close to five years now — and I need my space. We are both middle-aged and divorced. I’m an empty nester and want to live alone.
Sister: Five years in, your brother is no longer “newly divorced.” (His divorce has already lasted longer than my first marriage.)
He is a middle-aged man living with a sister who treats him exactly the way he wants to be treated: like a child. It sounds like such a good and comfortable situation for him that of course he doesn’t want to leave!
It's a marvel that you still consider your brother a “good guy,” because — according to you — he is completely disinterested in your discomfort. Instead, he seems to be drafting along on your superior caretaking abilities and your guilt regarding him.
I suggest that, to save your relationship with your brother, it is time for you to ever-so-certainly, calmly and kindly show him the door. Consider this gentle shove a declaration that it’s time for him to start his next chapter, and that he is ready.
Tell him: “It’s time for you to find your own place. I need to live on my own, and so do you.” Don’t get personal. Don’t re-litigate his past behavior or allow him to bargain his way into staying.
Tired: I’ll tell you what I’ve done: I’ve gone outside.
Call it vitamin D therapy, exercise therapy or running away(!) — reconnecting with nature has been a game changer for me.
Long walks, twice a day (or long outdoor sits, if walking is too difficult). Birdwatching. Tending garden beds or flower pots.
Horrified: Many readers did not like my answer to this question. To recap: “Mystified” reported that his wife had recently lost a lot of weight, that the intimacy in their marriage had changed, that she had become more independent, and that he believed his wife was “going through the motions” in their marriage. | 2022-07-25T04:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: After five years, I need my brother to move out - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/25/ask-amy-brother-move-out/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/25/ask-amy-brother-move-out/ |
I reframed the invitations as suggestions of things to do, and would get a wishy-washy answer. I confronted my friend and said that I had thought we would spend some time together, and that I was a little upset my time wasn’t being respected when she would agree to plans and then bail.
Smoke them out?
My wife thinks that it's a must for us to be there, but I disagree. I don't believe that after being lied to for three years, I have to go to a party to celebrate that fact. It's basically a $1,000 weekend to celebrate someone's four-year anniversary. And they lied to us!
That the definition of a wedding seems generally to have become disconnected from the act of getting married, even aside from its disconnection to setting up a household and having children. Now the term is used merely for a couple’s self-centered fundraising extravaganza. | 2022-07-25T04:08:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Friends came to visit and barely left our guest room - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/25/miss-manners-guest-room-visit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/25/miss-manners-guest-room-visit/ |
The problem with ‘great power competition’
Over the past half decade in Washington, an old concept has taken new and even bipartisan life. Republicans, Democrats, liberal interventionists and old-school neoconservatives all proclaim that we are now plunged into an era of “great power competition,” harking back to the tense decades of imperial rivalries on the European continent that ended up reshaping the world in the early years of the 20th century.
In the current context, the new competition seems to be clear: China looms first and foremost in American crosshairs, with Russia a lesser threat that is posing bigger problems following its invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of Washington’s foreign policy establishment view the United States’ interests and goals on the world stage through the lens of these rivalries.
But that’s not the wisest way to see things, argues Ali Wyne, senior analyst at the Eurasia Group. His new book — “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition” — makes the case that while “interstate competition is a characteristic of world affairs,” it does not need to become “a blueprint for foreign policy.” Indeed, when you let anti-Chinese or anti-Russian agendas drive your own, it gives these putative adversaries outsize influence over your own decision-making, he argues.
Wyne chatted with Today’s WorldView about the policymaking uses and abuses of “great power competition.” The text below has been edited for clarity and length.
TWV: What does this framework of great power competition say about the mind-set of U.S. policy elites?
AW: The traction that great power competition has come to achieve as a policymaking framework reflects a paradoxical combination: strategic anxiety on the one hand, bureaucratic comfort on the other.
The United States is not as relatively preeminent as it was at the end of the Cold War — or even at the turn of the century — and China and Russia are increasingly able and willing to contest its influence. On the other hand, the existence of formidable challengers would seem to furnish the strategic clarity for which Washington has been searching since the Soviet Union’s collapse; it would also, importantly, seem to require a familiar playbook.
For roughly half a century, after all, U.S. foreign policy was largely oriented around dealing with external competitors: imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union. The trouble is that that stretch of history primed the United States to expect decisive victories: Japan and Germany suffered military defeats, and the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic disintegration.
It seems unlikely, however, that China and Russia will collapse, notwithstanding their myriad socioeconomic challenges and strategic constraints, so America’s task will be to forge ambiguous and uncomfortable cohabitations.
So are we in a new Cold War?
It is essential for the United States to learn from the Cold War, which furnishes its sole experience of long-term strategic competition. But analogies can sometimes obscure more than clarify. While U.S. frictions with China have clear and growing military and ideological components, economic and technological components are as important, if not more. The Soviet Union’s economy was never more than roughly two-fifths as large as America’s economy, and Moscow was not a major source of innovation.
China’s economy, by contrast, is already over three-quarters as large as America’s, and Beijing is a global innovation hub. In addition, while Washington and Beijing are both moving to decouple selectively from one another, their interdependence vastly exceeds that which existed between Washington and Moscow.
It will be impossible for the United States and China to mitigate pandemic disease, slow climate change, contain macroeconomic instability and manage other transnational challenges without maintaining a baseline of cooperation. Where the Cold War ended conclusively, neither Washington nor Beijing will be able to achieve a decisive victory over the other; they will have to cohabitate in perpetuity.
THREAD: Dear friends,
Today marks the launch of my book “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition”, published by @politybooks.https://t.co/njW8FOsMTB
— Ali Wyne (@Ali_Wyne) July 5, 2022
The Chinese often decry the United States’ Cold War mentality. But isn’t it also true that the great power competition narrative is as profoundly coming from Beijing or Moscow as it is Washington — that the United States is just responding to the challenges posed by powers that see their rivalry with the United States in confrontational, even civilizational terms?
The United States veered too far in the direction of complacence after the Cold War, discounting China and Russia’s competitive potential. Now, however, as they demonstrate a growing ability and willingness to challenge its influence, Washington is increasingly — and understandably — reacting.
China believes that its resurgence is simply correcting what it regards as an aberrant post-Industrial Revolution period, and it sees the United States as the foremost constraint on its strategic outlook. Russia poses a different kind of competitive challenge because it is far less integrated into the postwar order than China — and, as its invasion of Ukraine makes clear — far more risk-tolerant.
What’s the danger in aligning U.S. policy around the need to compete with or check Russia and China?
Great power competition is descriptively useful in that it distills a core set of dynamics that shape contemporary geopolitics. Prescriptively, however, it is problematic on at least three grounds:
First, it risks advancing a reactive approach to China and Russia — one that, beyond being unlikely to find enduring support from U.S. allies and partners, is likely to lead to ubiquitous struggle over selective contestation.
Second, it risks overstating the competitive challenges that those two countries present, heightening U.S. anxiety and facilitating the Sino-Russian entente’s progression. Formidable, multifaceted competitors though they are, Beijing and Moscow are not as strategically skillful as U.S. commentary sometimes suggests; China’s diplomacy has increasingly estranged it from the advanced industrial democracies that still wield the balance of global power, and Russia has severely undermined its long-term strategic outlook by invading Ukraine.
The third and final risk of viewing great power competition as a prescription, not simply as a description, is that it legitimizes the judgment that cooperative pursuits with China and Russia are fool’s errands at best and perhaps even strategic concessions.
You point to the opportunity for the United States on the world stage. Where do you see it?
America’s great power opportunity arises from two sources. First, China and Russia have made competitive missteps that give the United States breathing room to pursue a foreign policy that speaks more to its aspirations than to its anxieties. Second, the diminution of its relative influence and the absence of a ready playbook for navigating the complexities of strained coexistence mean that it has no choice but to think more creatively about how it exercises its influence abroad.
Today’s geopolitical environment is obviously not as auspicious as the one that the United States faced three decades earlier. Even so, Washington can manage a resurgent Beijing and a revanchist Moscow with quiet confidence if it swims its own race and focuses on renewing its competitive advantages at home and abroad. | 2022-07-25T04:12:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ali Wyne Q&A: The problems with the ‘great power competition' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/great-power-competition-problems-ali-wyne/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/great-power-competition-problems-ali-wyne/ |
Pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, a native of Louisiana competing for Sweden, tops his own world record
Athing Mu needed to give everything she had to win the 800 meters Sunday. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
EUGENE, Ore. — Athing Mu often transforms the final 100 meters from competition to exhibition, from race to coronation. At the U.S. Olympic trials and in Tokyo last summer, a highway could have been laid in the distance between her and the best women’s 800-meter runners in the world. She needed only her languid stride.
Sunday night at Hayward Field demanded something else. A runner defined by her elegance required grit.
Before the final night of the world track and field championships, Mu had proved she has the most artful running form in the sport at only 20 years old. Now everybody knows she has guts, too. Mu held off a late charge from Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson to become the first American woman to win the 800 at the world championships, finishing in 1 minute 56.30 seconds — the fastest time in the world this year — with Hodgkinson breathing down her neck in 1:56.38.
“At the end of the race, golly, I was just happy it was over,” Mu said. “Today was kind of a rough day for me. I was just happy I could make it to the line and finish the race. Thank God I won gold.”
As Mu helped the United States finalize its record performance in the medal table, world records fell in predictable and stunning fashion. The event ended with the pole vault record Mondo Duplantis, the greatest the sport has seen at only 22, has been chasing. Duplantis, a native of Louisiana who competes for his mother’s home country of Sweden, cleared 6.21 meters (20 feet 4½ inches), breaking his own world record with a jump he just missed while winning gold in Tokyo.
“Not so bad, eh?” Duplantis said in an on-track interview.
Mu provided a different kind of signature performance on the final night of the meet. She did not dominate as she usually does. After her victory in Tokyo, Mu looked as if she had run a different race than her rivals. As they writhed after perhaps the most grueling race in the sport, she ambled as if walking down the cereal aisle. Sometimes Mu watches the replay and is awed by it.
Clayton Murphy, the men’s 800 winner at last summer’s Olympic trials, jokes with Mu every time he sees her: “You going to put a little effort in today?”
Sunday was different. Mu arrived at the track and “just physically wasn’t where I would like to be,” she said. “I just didn’t feel my best.”
Mu still took control by the end of the first lap, surging to the front and increasing her pace to avoid the tangle of the pack. By the final 150 meters, Mu had created a gap between herself and Hodgkinson. Around the final turn, Hodgkinson, a 20-year-old who won silver in Tokyo, started to shrink it. Mu felt Hodgkinson charge on her inside and unintentionally drifted one lane to the outside. Hodgkinson had an opening, but Mu would not let her exploit it. She pumped her arms and leaned at the line, winning by 0.08 seconds.
“I knew it would come down to the wire,” Hodgkinson said. “I just need to find that 1 percent extra, don’t I?”
It will take a lot to beat Mu. She has few equals when she steps on the track, and even her fellow athletes watch her with a degree of awe.
“I see poetry in motion — just the smoothest runner I’ve probably ever seen,” 400-meter hurdles world record holder Sydney McLaughlin said in June. “And it’s absolutely beautiful. She’s so young. She has so much ahead of her. I see a great future and, obviously, the future of USA track and field.”
Not old enough to legally drink, Mu is atop the sport. She won two gold medals in Tokyo, setting the U.S. record in the 800 meters at 1:55.21 — which she lowered weeks later to 1:55.04 — and running the anchor leg of a starry 4x400 relay team alongside McLaughlin, Allyson Felix and Dalilah Muhammad.
“It’s crazy because Tokyo wasn’t even a year ago,” Mu said. “This whole year-and-a-half for me has gone so fast, and I’ve gone through so many adjustments. … It was a complete change of everything. It means a lot to me because I know what I’ve been going through the entire year.”
At 19, she placed herself alongside McLaughlin as the future of U.S. track and field. In her elegance on the track and effervescence off it, Mu stands alone. That combination will make her one of the leading figures not only when the Olympics arrive in Paris in 2024 but probably when Los Angeles hosts them in 2028. She appeared in a recent Nike commercial starring Spike Lee, her portrait hanging above a stack of medals and trophies during a montage packed with the greatest athletes Nike has sponsored.
“She’s an incredibly charming and wonderful individual,” USA Track & Field CEO Max Siegel said. “We have one of the most diverse teams in the world. They all work hard. But Athing is an incredibly special athlete. We really plan on using her as one of the faces of our team.”
“It’s incredible to see what she’s doing — pretty much running the world at this point,” Murphy said. “With her, the sky is the limit. I don’t see any reason why she can’t challenge the world record, go past it and become one of the all-time greats ever.”
Mu skipped May’s Prefontaine Classic with the coronavirus and paused her training for about 10 days. The break made her less dominant this year, which only was another reminder of her superiority — at less than full strength, she still owned the fastest time in the world this year at 1:57.01 heading into the event. Mu received a rare challenge from Ajee’ Wilson, whose American record she seized in Tokyo, at the U.S. championships but outraced her over the final 20 meters.
Barely a year removed from turning professional after one season at Texas A&M, Mu may take on new challenges. In Tokyo, Mu hinted she could try to win gold in the 800 and 400 in 2024. The possibility grew more tantalizing after McLaughlin said here she may add the 400 to her program. Mu reiterated that desire Sunday, potentially setting up a showdown between the women likely to carry U.S. track and field over the next decade.
“It’s still in my thoughts,” Mu said. “I think it would be really fun.”
In the early evening, a world record dropped without warning. Nigerian Tobi Amusan, 25, had never run the 100-meter hurdles faster than 12.40 seconds, a time she posted in Saturday’s preliminary round. With the crowd still filtering in Sunday, Amusan in a semifinal heat cleared 10 hurdles in 12.12 seconds, faster than any woman ever. When she looked at the clock, her mouth stretched open and her eyes bulged.
American Keni Harrison, who had held the world record of 12.20 since 2016, finished second in the same heat in 12.27, the 11th-fastest performance of all time. Four of the eight finalists — and one hurdler who didn’t qualify for the final — broke a national record in the semifinals. Twelve of the 23 semifinalists set or tied their personal bests.
The stunning collection of fast times in a semifinal led to suspicion: Was the clock working right? American legend Michael Johnson, who once held the world record in the 200 and 400 meters, wrote on Twitter that he believed the times had been clocked incorrectly. A World Athletics spokeswoman said race officials had no questions about the authenticity of the results. “The timing was working as normal,” she said.
In the final, Amusan clocked 12.06 seconds for gold, not getting credit for a second world record because it was not wind legal. It was one of few medals the United States did not claim. The United States took three more golds, with both 4x400 relays winning, and pole vaulter Chris Nilsen added a silver. The United States finished with a record 33 medals and 13 golds. No other country had more than 10 medals of any color.
The meet ended in appropriate fashion. Two days after she shattered her own world record in the 400 hurdles, McLaughlin was the U.S. anchor for the 4x400. She ran her lap in 47.91 seconds, the fastest of anyone in the race by 1.48 seconds and perhaps a preview if she switches to the 400. McLaughlin carried the baton across the line as the U.S. anchor — all alone, no one close to her and nothing but open track ahead. | 2022-07-25T05:13:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Athing Mu wins 800 as U.S. wraps dominant world championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/25/athing-mu-800-world-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/25/athing-mu-800-world-championships/ |
An electricity transmission tower near an illuminated street lamp in Upminster, UK, on Monday, July 4, 2022. The UK is set to water down one of its key climate change policies as it battles soaring energy prices that have contributed to a cost-of-living crisis for millions of consumers. (Bloomberg)
Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel.
On most days, the bottlenecks mean distorted costs. Sometimes, it results in sky-high prices where energy is in short supply when it is needed. At other occasions, prices can tumble to zero, or go negative, when producers cannot sell their power into a congested transmission system. Increasingly, it puts the whole system at risk. Talk to most industry executives and you quickly get the sense that we are sleepwalking into more blackouts. Discuss the problems with the engineers who manage the system day-in, day-out, and that danger appears even closer. The £9,724.54 price, settled between noon and 1:00 p.m. on July 20 via the so-called NEMO interconnector that links the UK with Belgium, was the highest Britain has ever paid to import electricity, nearly five times higher than the previous record. The absurdity of that level is apparent when comparing it with the year-to-date average for UK spot electricity: £178 per megawatt hour.
“It was an absolute shock,” says Phil Hewitt, who has been monitoring electricity prices for over two decades and is now executive director of EnAppSys Ltd, a consultancy. “It was the price to keep the lights on. The security of supply was a stake.”
In a normal situation, without the traffic jams on the grid, the UK should have been able to send power to the southeast of England from elsewhere in the country — even from all the way in Scotland, where offshore wind farms are producing more than ever. The problem is that the UK, and the rest of industrialized nations, aren’t investing enough in their grids, leaving the system exposed.
Now, grid bottlenecks create perverse situations. In Spain, for example, there are times when solar electricity producers in the south have to switch off their plants while, in the north, gas-fired power stations are turning on to meet demand. In some corners of the US, electricity prices often drop below zero, with power plants forced to sell their energy due to grid constraints. Meanwhile, in other corners of the US, consumers are facing calls to reduce power demand on peak days and face record prices.
Aging infrastructure, often 30 or 40 years old, needs to be replaced. But refurbishment and expansion come up against local opposition to more pylons and overhead cables. In the UK, authorities are bypassing popular resistance by moving some parts of the grid offshore, using undersea cables. “Fish don’t vote,” goes the industry’s joke. It is, however, an expensive undertaking.
High metal prices are making building new grids even more costly. Cables are made of copper or aluminum which, at today’s prices, account for nearly a third of what will be spent on a new grid, up 10 percentage points from investments made between 2010 and 2020.Across the US and Europe, utilities and grid managers need to invest billions of dollars into digitalization of the network to allow demand-side load management that would reduce consumption at peak times, often via hourly prices. Managing peak demand is going to be even more important when millions of households shift to electric vehicles, creating a new source of electricity consumption.
Last year, the UK paid just under £1,600 per megawatt hour on one day to import electricity and avert a short squeeze. On July 18, it paid just over £2,000, which became the record. Two days later, the price went to nearly £10,000. The pattern is clear. At some point, even sky-high prices won’t be enough. Then, a blackout would belatedly lay bare the consequences of our under-investing ways.
Europe’s Heat Wave Is Bad for Energy Prices, But the Drought Is Worse: Javier Blas | 2022-07-25T05:40:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How London Paid a Record Price to Dodge a Blackout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-london-paid-a-record-price-to-dodge-a-blackout/2022/07/25/7570956c-0bd7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-london-paid-a-record-price-to-dodge-a-blackout/2022/07/25/7570956c-0bd7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Gold medalist Jakob Ingebrigtsen, of Norway, celebrates after the men’s 5000-meter run at the World Athletics Championships on Sunday, July 24, 2022, in Eugene, Ore. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
EUGENE, Ore. — They all had stories about how the distance runner known as “Pre” gave them motivation. How they considered it an honor to race in his backyard, in his signature event, at one of the biggest track meets in the world. | 2022-07-25T05:41:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ode to Pre: Ingebrigtsen takes 5K in Prefontaine's backyard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ode-to-pre-ingebrigtsen-takes-5k-in-prefontaines-backyard/2022/07/25/9cc83e0a-0bda-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ode-to-pre-ingebrigtsen-takes-5k-in-prefontaines-backyard/2022/07/25/9cc83e0a-0bda-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
ROME, ITALY - MAY 21: Italian and EU flags are seen outdoor the Villa Doria Pamphilj during the welcome ceremony before the Global Health Summit, on May 21, 2021 in Rome, Italy. The European Commission and Italy, the G20 chair, co-host a virtual health summit for world leaders and key organisations to exchange on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, endorse a ‘Rome Declaration’ of principles for multilateral cooperation and prepare joint action in global health crises. (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images) Photographer: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images Europe (Photographer: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images Europe)
There’s a lot of things to worry about in the wake of another government collapse in Rome — but, please, let’s expunge Italexit from the list for good.
In fact, a lot of the concerns I often hear when debating Italy outside of Italian circles fail to incorporate the reconfiguration the country has gone through in the past two years, both at home and in Brussels. The transition to more moderate positions on Europe — and therefore Italy’s place within the European Union — began in 2019 under the second government of Giuseppe Conte, the leader of the Five Star movement, who pulled a volte-face during his time in office.
The new approach was cemented under Mario Draghi’s government — the one that collapsed last week. In his first speech before the Senate in 2021, the former central banker made Europe a pillar of his government action as well as a key to enter his coalition, which every party except for Brothers of Italy joined. At the time, Draghi told lawmakers: “Without Italy, there is no Europe, but outside of Europe, there is even less Italy.”
Of course, the counter argument is that Italian politics is volatile. Investors got burned in 2018 and have reason to worry. Before Italy doubled down on Europe under Draghi, the populist coalition led by the League and the Five Star Movement openly flirted with euroskeptic arguments. It tried to appoint a well-known critic of the euro as finance minister and even toyed with the idea of issuing Treasury-backed mini-bills as an alternative means of payment, an idea that was quickly shot down by Draghi, then head of the European Central Bank.
Still, who is to say — and better yet — guarantee that won’t happen again? Here, I like to point to three factors.
For starters, the parties themselves. If you look at polls right now, the next coalition will likely be a center-right government led by Brothers of Italy, the League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. The three parties argue they’ll reinvigorate the economy, but the stresses of Italexit would certainly frustrate those hopes.
The Italian right likes to present itself as more effective in economic management, a friend of lower taxes and everything Made in Italy. Now, when it comes Giorgia Meloni, the head of Brothers of Italy, and likely winner of this whole mess, one thing to remember is that she is a force of opposition. If Draghi says the euro is irreversible, she is bound to say the opposite, not so much for ideological reasons, but simply for tactics. And it has served her well so far. I’m just not convinced it will be as effective when the fiery politics of confrontation gives way to the sobriety of governing.
When it comes to Forza Italia, euroskepticism was never really a thing for Berlusconi’s party. The group belongs to the European People’s Party in Brussels, the same affiliation that unites the mainstream center-right across Europe and also happens to be the political home the current head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Finally, the Italian political system has a fascinating ability to cut losses and reduce damage if need be. President Sergio Mattarella, a largely symbolic figure on paper, has shown strong political instincts during each crisis, signaling that there are limits once you get to government. Like the time he rejected a draft coalition government deemed too euroskeptic in the aftermath of the 2018 vote.
Now, I’m not saying everything is rosy. It’s not. Draghi’s fall takes Italy back to its old ways: messy, unpredictable and volatile. The collapse of the government, in the midst of a European war all while facing a winter of discontent, proves just how self-absorbed the Italian political class is. With political turbulence, comes market jitters, some of which are already playing out on the Italian bond market — and investors are right to be concerned about the implications for the country’s long-term debt management. But they shouldn’t fret about the prospects of Italexit creeping back.
In fact, the challenges facing the next government are so big, their hands are full — and tied. And considering the level of bickering we’re about to see as the campaign gets underway, they probably could not even agree on how to exit even if they wanted to. | 2022-07-25T07:11:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Don’t Fear Italexit. It Won’t Happen. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-fear-italexit-it-wont-happen/2022/07/25/d6ea4cea-0bdf-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-fear-italexit-it-wont-happen/2022/07/25/d6ea4cea-0bdf-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Pro-democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu, center, known as Ko Jimmy, in January 2012. (Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images)
Myanmar’s military junta has executed four pro-democracy activists, state media reported, carrying out its first executions in more than three decades and defying international appeals for restraint.
The four men included two high-profile activists: Kyaw Min Yu, also known as Ko Jimmy, who rose to prominence in a series of student uprisings in 1988, and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a hip-hop artist turned member of parliament widely admired among Myanmar’s youths.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, and Ko Jimmy, 53, were convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to death in closed-door trials last fall. The other two men executed were Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, state media reported, who were convicted of killing an alleged military informant.
Myanmar’s rebellion, divided, outgunned and outnumbered, fights on
Moe Zaw Oo, a member of the National Unity Government — an alliance of anti-junta groups, many of which are in exile — said NUG officials were alerted to the executions early Monday. “It’s unbelievable. … This will just create more violence across the country,” Moe Zaw Oo told The Washington Post.
Aung Myo Min, another NUG minister and prominent human rights activist, wrote on Twitter that he was “extremely saddened” by the news. “What else do we need to prove how cruel the murderous Myanmar’s military is?” he wrote.
The military junta did not immediately confirm the deaths ahead of a scheduled news conference Monday.
Myanmar’s military first seized power in 1962 but gradually loosened its grip, allowing for general elections and an influx of international companies, which introduced the country to digital technology and social media. Led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition politicians from the National League for Democracy rose to power in 2015, but their rule was short-lived. The military violently reclaimed control in February 2021.
Myanmar’s military had not used the death penalty for more than 30 years, but amid a violent — and so far unsuccessful — campaign to stamp out resistance, officials are turning to new forms of intimidation, experts say.
At least 117 people have been sentenced to death in the past year, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar nonprofit organization that tracks and attempts to verify the status of those detained by the junta.
The pro-democracy activists’ executions were met with condemnation from human rights advocates and the international community on Monday.
“The junta’s barbarity and callous disregard for human life is on full display here. There are many, many others who have been unfairly convicted to death row since the coup under these secretive military tribunals, and this act sends a chilling effect against the pro-democracy movement,” Manny Maung, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who focuses on Myanmar, said in an email.
The advocacy group called on the United States, Europe and others to demand the “immediate release of all political prisoners” and to put in place measures that would halt the flow of revenue to the military junta.
Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar, said in a statement that he was “outraged and devastated” by the news.
“These depraved acts must be a turning point for the international community,” he said.
“What more must the junta do before the international community is willing to take strong action?” he added, pointing to what he called “the widespread and systematic murders of protesters, indiscriminate attacks against entire villages, and now the execution of opposition leaders.” | 2022-07-25T07:12:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Myanmar junta executes four democracy activists, state media says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/myanmar-execution-democracy-activist-junta/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/myanmar-execution-democracy-activist-junta/ |
Ukraine Live Briefing: Lavrov rallies support in Africa; grain deal fragile...
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addresses the Arab League organization in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, July 24, 2022. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP) (AP)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a four-day tour to try to shore up African support for the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s top diplomat, while in Egypt, cast Russia as an ally of the continent and blamed Western sanctions on Russia for the turmoil in international food markets. Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Ukraine has called for shipping companies to take part in a caravan to transport grain but says efforts to resume grain exports will not be easy following Russia’s missile strike on the port of Odessa. Saturday’s attack came less than 24 hours after a deal to release Ukrainian grain was signed.
Ukraine says it is now within range of targets in the Kherson region as part of a counteroffensive in the south. Analysts say exact military positions in the area are difficult to pinpoint because of a lack of official information.
Britain’s defense ministry says Russia is faced with a “dilemma” over whether to press on with its offensive in the east or bolster its defenses in the south.
Russia is struggling to extract and repair vehicles damaged in the fighting, according to British military intelligence. A repair facility in Barvinok, near the border with Ukraine, had some 300 damaged vehicles including tanks and trucks inside, the U.K. reports.
All three bridges controlled by Russia leading into occupied Kherson city have been damaged over the past week, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War says. These include a bridge over a dam at the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.
Rescue teams in the city of Chuhuiv have been digging people from the rubble of buildings destroyed in overnight attacks, the governor of Kharkiv region, Oleh Synyehubov, said in a post on Telegram.
A Virginia family’s push to give a Ukrainian orphan respite from war. Shortly after they met the energetic brown-haired, blue-eyed 9-year-old girl from Ukraine, Jenny Bradshaw, her husband and their 17-year-old twin daughters were smitten, Dana Hedgpeth reports. The family had researched the possibility of adopting from overseas and realized after a month-long exchange program in December with the girl at their home in Centreville, Va., that it was the right time. She fit in well with their family.
However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year, the family’s efforts to adopt her have been stalled. More than 200 adoptions are completed every year from Ukraine to the United States, according to State Department statistics, but those have stopped amid the conflict.
Now, Bradshaw and her husband, Holt, are part of a group of would-be parents in the United States who are lobbying Ukrainian adoption authorities and U.S. officials to try to raise awareness of their plight. And while the families wait for the normal adoptions to resume, they want the dozens of Ukrainian orphans who have already done exchange programs in the United States to be able to come and stay a few months with them. “We’re not asking for a special exception or to skirt around the full adoption process,” Bradshaw said. “We just want to give her a break and respite from the war.”
Ukraine Live Briefing: Russia blames West for global food crisis despite blockade on Ukrainian grain | 2022-07-25T08:12:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/25/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
The general crisis of global leadership continues to deepen. One of Europe’s most impressive leaders, Italy’s Mario Draghi, has resigned in frustration. The leading candidate to replace the UK’s Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, is likely to make even more of a hash of things than he did. (Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s one-time consigliere, uses a trolley emoji to denote Johnson, because he careers all over the place, and a hand grenade to denote Truss.) Across the Atlantic, Joe Biden is hampered not just by old age but by an approval rating of just 38%. And in the emerging world, the president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has been driven out of office and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salem, is wasting untold billions building a fantasy city in the desert, Neom, that features canals so that children can swim to school (thus solving the obesity crisis) and flying elevators.
Why is the quality of global leadership plummeting? The best explanation I have come across is provided by the 99-year-old Henry Kissinger in his new book, “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.” This book should be prescribed reading for businesspeople not only because they need to understand an increasingly volatile political world, but also because the leadership problems that Kissinger diagnoses afflict businesspeople as well as politicians.
The ostensible subject of “Leadership” is the generation of leaders who made the postwar world: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. Kissinger knew all of these personally and, of course, worked intimately with Nixon.
But two pressing questions lie in the background: Will we see their like again — men and women who rise to the challenge of their times? And if we don’t, how much does it matter? Is history driven by abstract forces beyond our control? Are leaders merely “crests of foam” and “surface disturbances” as the French historian Fernand Braudel put it in “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II”? Or are they capable of changing the direction of history?
Kissinger’s answer to the second question is overwhelmingly positive: Leaders may not be able to make history just as they please, but they can change its direction. Would France have remained a vital force in the postwar era without de Gaulle’s indomitable will and unshakeable belief in French grandeur? Or would Singapore have become a hub of the global economy without Lee’s obsession with cultivating talent and institutionalizing excellence? Sadat’s willingness to contemplate reconciliation with Israel, a revival of the “brotherhood of Ismail and Isaac” as he called it, surprised Israelis and Egyptians alike (and eventually got him assassinated). Nixon’s opening to China came as a bolt from the blue to the Cold War establishment. “Without leadership, institutions drift, and nations court growing irrelevance and, ultimately, disaster.”
Which makes his answer to the first question even more worrying: that the civilizational springs that water great leaders may be drying up. Nobody noticed this possibility during the “holiday from history” that followed the end of the Cold War. The job of political elites was essentially to consolidate the Reagan-Thatcher revolution while softening its harsher edges. The holiday from history is now over, thanks to the rise of strongmen in Russia and China and the rise in political volatility at home, but so far nobody comparable with the six figures who dominate this book has emerged.
Leadership is most vital during a period of transition from one order to another. We are certainly in such a period now — not only from the neoliberal order to something much darker but also to a new era of smart machines — yet so far leadership is lacking. We call for leaders who are equal to the times, but nobody answers.
Kissinger offers two explanations for this troubling silence. The first lies in the evolution of meritocracy. (Full disclosure: He mentions a book I have written on this subject). The six leaders were all born outside the pale of the aristocratic elite that had hitherto dominated politics, and particularly foreign policy: Adenauer and Sadat were the sons of clerks, Thatcher and Nixon were the children of storekeepers, Lee’s parents were downwardly mobile. But theirs was a meritocracy with an aristocratic flavor. They went to elite schools and universities that provided an education in human excellence rather than just passing tests. In rubbing shoulders with members of the old elite, they absorbed some of its ethic of noblesse oblige (“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required”) as well as its distaste for populism. Hence Lee’s recurring references to “Junzi” (Confucian gentlemen) and de Gaulle’s striving to become a “man of character.” They believed in history, tradition and, in most cases, God.
The world has become much more meritocratic since Kissinger’s six made their careers, not least when it comes to women and ethnic minorities. But the dilution of the aristocratic element in the mix may also have removed some of the grit that produced the pearl of leadership: Schools have given up providing an education in human excellence — the very idea would be triggering! — and ambitious young people speak less of obligation than of self-expression or personal advancement. The bonds of character and duty that once bound leaders to their people are dissolving.
The second factor Kissinger identifies is the decline of deep literacy under an onslaught of visual images and verbal snippets. A great leader’s first task is analysis — assessing the state of your society in the light of its history and mores. It is only when you have learned how to distinguish between significant facts and mere epiphenomena and simulacra that you can become an agent of change. The second task is education — convincing the public to share your vision of the future and bear the costs of historical change. But how can you understand your situation unless you study it deeply? And how can you get people to follow you unless you can produce soul-stirring rhetoric?
All six of Kissinger’s heroes were serious readers and writers. Sadat spent almost six years in solitary confinement with only books for comfort. In 1933, Adenauer retreated to a monastery to escape from the Nazis and spent his time studying two papal encyclicals, promulgated by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, which applied Catholic teachings to socioeconomic conditions. Thatcher read her official briefs until early in the morning and drew attention to grammatical errors and stylistic blunders. De Gaulle wrote some immortal French. Deep literacy provided them with what Max Weber called “proportion” — “the ability to allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and composure.” It also provided them with a sense of perspective as they put daily events into the wider scheme of history or even God’s will.
Today’s visual culture does exactly the opposite: It destroys any sense of “proportion” by immersing us in a never-ending stream of images and kills any sense of perspective by bombarding us with “breaking news.” Politicians devote ever more time to curating their image on Twitter and Instagram. Liz Truss is reportedly so addicted to “Insta” that, when she ran the Department of International Trade, employees dubbed it “the Department for Instagramming Truss.”
I would add two more problems to Kissinger’s list: the collapse of followership, a subject that I have written about before, and the crisis of the university. Universities have assumed an ever more central role in training today’s leaders as knowledge becomes more vital for success and other training institutions such as trade unions are marginalized. But if anything, they are getting worse at the job of producing leaders. Both students and faculty, particularly younger faculty, are in the grip of what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the effervescence of democratic negation.” Academics are selected and promoted based on how many articles they produce rather than how much care they take over nurturing their charges. Liberal orthodoxy is now so entrenched that students don’t get a chance to engage with conservative or in some cases mainstream ideas: A recent survey by the Harvard Crimson newspaper found that only 1.4% of faculty members would describe themselves as “conservative.” To the extent that “character” is considered, it is interpreted purely in terms of social justice rather than older ideas of duty, service and nation-building.
What does all this mean for the business world? A popular thesis in the Davos class is that we suffer not so much from a decline in the number of outstanding leaders as from a reallocation of leadership talent from the public sector to the private sector. These days high achievers are naturally drawn to the private sector with its higher salaries and fast tracks to the top. Political parties are left with a noxious mixture of hacks and fanatics. And the obvious way to solve the public sector’s leadership problems is to draft in more people from the “real world.”
There is certainly something in this: America, for example, has benefited from its ability to recruit mayors from the business world. But I suspect that the crisis that Kissinger diagnoses applies to the private sector as well as the public sector. The meritocratic problem is even more marked in business than it is in politics: Most senior businesspeople believe that they deserve their pay and perks because they work so hard and possess such rare talent. (The current vogue for corporate wokery seems to have done nothing to reduce CEO pay, let alone restore it to the more modest levels that prevailed in a more patrician age.) The decline of deep literacy is just as much a problem in the boardroom as in the stateroom: Business leaders are simply too overwhelmed by fast-changing data to stand back and look at the bigger picture. The problem is at its worst in Silicon Valley where — to judge by the pronouncements of many leading tech entrepreneurs — extraordinary power over the world’s future seems to be combined with an almost child-like understanding of the human condition.
There are lots of things that we can do to address the leadership crisis on our own accounts. Leaders and would-be leaders can make sure that they carve out time for serious reading or calm reflection: Even when he was running Microsoft Corp. from day-to-day, Bill Gates would retreat to an isolated cottage for a week and meditate on a big subject. Parents can prepare their children for the world by encouraging them to read great literature or, better still, commit some of it to memory. But individual action is unlikely ever to be enough given the size of the forces eroding the store of leadership qualities. We need to do more to protect society from the digital deluge — perhaps following Finland and requiring schools to teach children about fake news. We also need to add a little more old-fashioned conservatism to our educational systems — emphasizing the importance of duty and high culture as well as the claims of meritocracy, on the one hand, and social justice, on the other.
• What True Conservatives Should Care Most About: Tyler Cowen | 2022-07-25T08:43:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kissinger Knows Why the Global Leadership Deficit Is Getting Worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kissinger-knows-why-the-global-leadership-deficit-is-getting-worse/2022/07/25/98860aaa-0bf0-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kissinger-knows-why-the-global-leadership-deficit-is-getting-worse/2022/07/25/98860aaa-0bf0-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
BEIJING — Indonesian President Joko Widodo was heading to Beijing on Monday for a rare visit by a foreign leader under China’s strict COVID-19 protocols and ahead of what could be the first overseas trip by Chinese President Xi Jinping since the start of the pandemic more than two years ago. | 2022-07-25T08:43:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indonesia's Widodo to meet Xi on rare China trip before G20 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/indonesias-widodo-to-meet-xi-on-rare-china-trip-before-g20/2022/07/25/ae8125c4-0bf0-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/indonesias-widodo-to-meet-xi-on-rare-china-trip-before-g20/2022/07/25/ae8125c4-0bf0-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
LE CASTELLET, France — Defending Formula One champion Max Verstappen won the French Grand Prix on Sunday after Charles Leclerc crashed out as Ferrari’s woes resurfaced, falling 63 points behind the Red Bull driver in the championship.
EUGENE, Ore. — Sydney McLaughlin took the last victorious lap of an all-American world championships.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was inducted into the Hall of Fame as legions of fans cheered him.
PARIS — Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark won his first Tour de France title after coming out on top in a thrilling three-week duel with defending champion Tadej Pogacar. | 2022-07-25T08:43:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/07/25/bbe6a3c0-0bea-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/07/25/bbe6a3c0-0bea-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Jake Manna was installing solar panels at a home when a panicked mother ran by looking for her 5-year-old
Jake Manna, center, alongside Capt. James LeBretton, left, and Chief Dana Flynn of the Plymouth Police Department, received an award July 14 after he rescued a child who had gone missing in Plymouth, Mass. (Jason Higgins/Plymouth Police Department)
Jake Manna was on a job installing solar panels at a home when he saw a woman frantically run down the street.
“My special-needs daughter is missing! Have you seen a 5-year-old with dark hair, wearing a blue T-shirt and a diaper?” Manna recalled hearing the woman ask residents in the neighborhood, the Buttermilk Bay area of Plymouth, Mass., on July 13.
The autistic girl had apparently slipped away from her yard around noon, he said, and she had been missing for about 15 minutes. Neighbors who checked their home security camera footage reported that they had seen her skipping through their yards.
As Manna saw people on the street looking in their backyards and garages for the missing child, he stopped what he was doing and jumped in to help.
It occurred to him and a few others that the girl might have gone into a wooded area that surrounds the neighborhood.
“There are lots of trails, and nobody was looking there,” said Manna, 20, who is from Hanover, Mass., about 16 miles away.
He and a man who lives on the street decided to go into the forested area and split up to search for the girl, he said.
Manna walked past a “trail closed” sign and made his way down the path for about 10 or 15 minutes, looking left and right for any sign of the child. Near the end of the trail, he said, he caught a glimpse of water through the trees.
“I sprinted down to it and I saw there was a stream, and I saw a T-shirt and a diaper floating in it,” he said. “My heart dropped.”
Manna, a former lifeguard, said he thought the girl might have drowned. He ran down the stream to look for her and ended up in a marsh. There was a naked child splashing in it.
“She was playing in the water, and it was up to her waist,” he recalled. “I called out to her, but I didn’t want to scream, because I thought that would scare her. She was walking toward deeper water that was about 10 feet out, so I told her to stop.”
When the girl didn’t listen to him, Manna said, he quickly peeled off his shoes and socks and waded out to her. She was about 30 feet away, he said.
“It was a real muddy marsh — my feet started sinking into the bottom like [it was] quicksand,” he said. “When I reached her, I picked her up by the armpits, held her as high as I could and brought her back to land.”
The child didn’t cry or make a sound of any kind, Manna said.
The neighbor he had been searching with heard him calling out to the girl and hurried down the trail to help.
“I handed her to him and he held her like a baby and carried her back to the neighborhood,” said Manna, noting that somebody gave the girl a lifejacket and towel to wear while everyone waited for the mother to arrive.
“When the mom saw us, she ran to us, grabbed the girl and went to the ground with her to hug her for the longest time, probably 30 minutes,” he said. “She was pretty emotional, as you can imagine, and she was grateful we had found her.”
By this time, police had arrived, Manna said, so he returned to his job, where he was meeting with a home inspector.
“I was just really happy that I could help reunite the girl with her mom, and I figured that was it,” he said.
The child could have drowned if Manna hadn’t found her, said Capt. Jason Higgins of the Plymouth Police Department.
“She is autistic and nonverbal, and the marsh led to some deeper water,” he said. “The officers responding on the scene realized right away that Jake is a pretty special young man. He’d dropped what he was doing to go look for her.”
The day after the rescue, Plymouth police presented Manna with an appreciation certificate and a coin with the department’s insignia to thank him for his quick actions.
“If he didn’t pick that path and see the missing clothing, we hate to think about what the outcome would have been,” read a Plymouth police Facebook post about the rescue.
“That girl had a guardian angel yesterday … and his name was Jake,” Officer Vinnie Roth wrote on the Facebook post. He was one of the first officers to respond to the call in Buttermilk Bay.
The praise continued in Manna’s hometown, where he was honored by the Hanover Select Board on July 18 for getting the child to safety.
“Jake is a quiet and modest but confident young man,” Hanover Town Manager Joseph Colangelo said. “Everyone in Hanover is proud of him.”
Manna, a 2020 graduate of Hanover High School, worked for several years as a lifeguard at a nearby summer camp. As part of that job, he often encountered children with special needs, he said.
“I learned to be a little more patient and understanding,” Manna said. “I enjoyed working with them and kids of all kinds.”
“Sometimes, a child will have sensory issues with anything touching their skin,” he added. “That’s what this little girl’s mother said about her after she was found. She has a wristband monitor that she’s always tearing off.”
The mother requested that she and her daughter not be identified publicly. Manna said he hopes the mother is not too hard on herself.
“Things happen, and I’d hate for her to think it was her fault,” he said.
Police have found no evidence of parental neglect, Higgins said.
“Although the mom is not willing to talk [to the media], she is very thankful for Jake’s actions and the entire neighborhood’s actions,” he said. “She knows this might have ended differently if Jake hadn’t happened to find a correct path.”
Manna said he feels grateful that he happened to be paying attention on a hot summer day.
“I was at the right place at the right time,” he said. “If somebody was going to find her, I’m happy it was me.” | 2022-07-25T10:15:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jake Manna found autistic girl while on break from solar panel work - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/25/jake-manna-missing-autistism-girl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/25/jake-manna-missing-autistism-girl/ |
Companies worried about worker turnover could try baseball
At the turn of the 20th century, big business embraced ‘employee welfare work’ to keep people happy
Perspective by Jeffrey Smith
Jeffrey Smith is senior professor of history at Lindenwood University and author of “The Rural Cemetery Movement: Places of Paradox in Nineteenth-Century America.”
A job fair in Los Angeles last September. Thanks to the Great Resignation, companies are searching for ways to better retain workers. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
Over the past two years, the “Great Resignation” has left employers scrambling to figure out what to do about the high turnover of their workforces. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that voluntary resignations accounted for 25 percent of vacancies in 2021, with overall turnover a whopping 57 percent. It isn’t stopping, either. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index estimates that 2 in 5 workers globally will leave their jobs this year.
Many businesses are trying to figure out how to stem the tide of turnover and retain workers, just like companies as diverse as Goodyear, National Cash Register, Kellogg’s and Union Pacific did in the early 20th century. These companies understood that worker turnover undermined productivity, so they devised a solution called “employee welfare work” — and their solutions from over a century ago can help businesses today grapple with the expensive cost of employee turnover.
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In 1892, National Cash Register shipped $40,000 worth of cash registers to London, only to have all of them returned as defective. NCR President John H. Patterson was livid and moved his desk to the factory floor to try to figure out the problem. He quickly discovered that his factory was like all the others in the United States — hot, dark, loud, smoky and dangerous. He couldn’t work in that environment, leading him to realize that his employees couldn’t, either. Patterson quickly began formulating employee welfare work.
The plan evolved into a massive program to put sunlight in factories, feed hot lunches to workers, and create programs to build greater work spirit through spectatorship at company baseball games. Other companies jumped on the bandwagon to use welfare work to reduce turnover, fight unions and increase profits. Patterson once noted that “there is no charity in anything we do. Isn’t it just good business to lose three cents on a girl’s lunch and get back five cents’ worth of work?”
Goodyear President F.A. Seiberling agreed. He embraced employee welfarism with a wide-reaching program in Akron, Ohio, that included an improved working environment, a thrice-a-week employee newspaper, a housing development and even a company baseball team to make workers feel like part of the “Goodyear family.” Confronted with the same problems, his crosstown competitor Harvey Firestone followed suit.
These companies met others on baseball fields in a league they organized that spanned at least two other states. The brick stadium where the Firestone Non-Skids played (named for the company’s first treaded tires, “non-skids”) seated 4,500 cheering workers, and it still stands in front of the old company headquarters. The idea was that when employees sat in the stands and cheered for the company, they’d be more loyal, and as a result, they were encouraged to do so. Goodyear told workers in 1920, for example, that attending the games alone wasn’t enough; “moral support, organized cheering, [and] boosting 24 hours a day” were critical as well.
The quality of baseball had to be good enough to attract these fans, though. In rising industrial cities like Akron and Michigan’s Flint and Grand Rapids, where there were no professional teams, fans typically watched amateur clubs compete. Industrial teams played as part of that environment, and so increasingly, companies hired men who were good baseball players. During World War I, Frank Stefko remembered hearing from a fellow soldier, Glenn “Speed” Bosworth, that Goodyear was hiring ballplayers in Akron, so after the war, he traveled to the Rubber City from Scranton, Pa. The personnel office said the company didn’t have openings until he mentioned Bosworth’s message. “Oh, you’re the ballplayer!” They hired him on the spot.
Rooting for the company team, usually named for a product — the Firestone Non-Skids squared off against teams such as the Kellogg’s Corn Flakers and Flint Buicks — was a crucial component of building a positive culture with loyal workers who stayed at their jobs and didn’t join unions. By and large, these programs succeeded in reducing turnover and stemming unionization efforts, at least according to management reporting to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is no evidence that workers were opposed to any of these efforts, from free lunches to baseball teams. In a way, companies were trying to “out-union” unions by rendering them unnecessary. The fact that unions seldom formed in companies with strong welfare programs suggests that bread-and-butter issues such as wages or job security did not suffer, at least in the eyes of workers.
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Henry Ford took another approach to improve his business by providing a higher standard of living for his workers. At that time, Ford’s moving assembly line reduced the time to build a Model T from more than 12 hours to just 93 minutes, but there was a catch. Jobs like putting doors on Fords all day were mind-numbingly monotonous — so much so that workers left in droves. By the end of 1913, the company’s turnover rate was a staggering 370 percent. Ford’s response was to start paying every worker a minimum of $5 a day, more than double their current pay.
But such benefits came with strings attached. He also imposed lifestyle conditions on workers — don’t drink or abuse family members, keep the house neat and clean, save money. Ford’s approach was much more invasive than welfare work programs. Ford operatives visited workers’ homes to ensure they were living the kind of lives Henry Ford expected.
Welfare work programs, on the other hand, were strictly voluntary. Workers could use the company lunchroom, read the company newspaper and attend baseball games if they wished, or they could simply ignore these efforts. The programs were generally popular — for example, Firestone Stadium seated more than 4,500 spectators, suggesting that attendance at baseball games could be several thousand workers.
As companies cut operating costs during the Great Depression, many of the perks of welfare work were reduced, including industrial baseball teams, which were replaced by intracompany softball teams. In fact, when companies such as tire and rubber manufacturers cut back on these programs and reduced workers’ hours during the Depression, workers turned to unions to negotiate both the wages and benefits they had come to expect. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration supported these efforts with legislation such as the 1935 Wagner Act — also known as the National Labor Relations Act — which led to the creation of the powerful Congress of Industrial Organizations union.
In the decades after World War II, some aspects of welfare work returned. The employee newsletter and cafeteria (or lunchroom) even became part of union negotiations in many cases. New programs reflected the values and tastes of postwar suburban workers during the era of the baby boom, such as family-oriented company picnics or special company days at amusement parks or baseball games. Like NCR’s Patterson and others, companies sponsored such activities to build a sense of loyalty and camaraderie among employees to retain them.
Today, companies are also experimenting with ways to boost worker welfare in the context of the Great Resignation. Baseball spectatorship has been replaced by team-building activities that include workplace climbing walls, wine-tasting events, table tennis, family picnics, free lunches and special doughnut days. At the turn of the last century, employers experimented to identify which perks resonated with workers. While the jury is still out on whether such programs will be successful today, companies are following in the footsteps of NCR, Goodyear and Kellogg’s in experimenting with programs that employees find meaningful and useful — enough so to stay in their jobs. | 2022-07-25T10:15:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Companies worried about worker turnover could try baseball - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/25/companies-worried-about-worker-turnover-could-try-baseball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/25/companies-worried-about-worker-turnover-could-try-baseball/ |
The HIV rights activist whose work can guide the abortion rights movement
Laws limiting abortion rights and criminalizing HIV make it hard for the same women to access basic health care
Perspective by Brendan McHugh
Brendan McHugh is a San Francisco based writer and public historian who has written for Catapult, KQED, The Bold Italic, JSTOR Daily News, Contingent Magazine and others.
People rally in support of abortion rights on July 2 in Kansas City, Mo. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade means that in 17 states with trigger bans, abortion is already illegal or will soon be. And while abortion rights activists are often understandably laser-focused on fighting these laws, they might look to another area of the law to provide ideas, tactics and strategy.
That’s because those 17 states also all have dangerous HIV statutes on their books that either criminalize or regulate acts that may expose someone to HIV. These laws are steeped in nonscientific and outdated understandings of HIV and disproportionately target communities of color. Frequently, they are disingenuously passed as measures that protect women, while specifically targeting sex workers.
While the two areas of policy are often different, both have a shared effect: They make it harder for poor, marginalized women to access basic health care. Tracing their overlapping histories can therefore help guide the abortion rights movement moving forward.
Abortion rights activists seeking to legally challenge the trigger bans in these states can learn from the recent successes of HIV groups like Colorado’s Positive Women’s Network and its allies. In 2018, they successfully overhauled punitive laws targeting HIV-positive sex workers. Positive Women’s Network’s success is part of a longer history of activism by HIV-positive women, such as Carla Abbotts, whose story sits at the intersection of HIV and reproductive rights. Abbotts recognized that activism in both areas was crucial to securing basic health care for women. Her activism can help guide today’s efforts to dismantle draconian laws and inform future coalitions.
Originally from New Jersey, Abbotts was working as a bookkeeper in San Francisco in the 1980s. She socialized with the artistic sex-positive alternative underground subculture thriving in the city, which included comic artists and DJs. A former IV-drug user, Abbotts’s recovery journey led her to being active in the support group Narcotics Anonymous. Her first brush with activism was suing the Free Pregnancy Center, a San Francisco crisis center, in 1986. Her lawsuit became part of a larger challenge to pregnancy crisis centers by feminist activists, and her story was covered in newspapers and magazines across the United States. Abbotts launched her lawsuit shortly before her own HIV diagnosis.
Abbotts then told parts of her story in her own voice in San Francisco’s alternative underground art scene and nightlife. She collaborated with artist Dori Seda for a 1987 comic anthology issue titled, “Door of Deception … or Right to Lie.” In the autobiographical comic, Abbotts, suspecting she is pregnant, finds the Free Pregnancy Center in the San Francisco Yellow Pages, where it is advertised as a walk-in clinic providing free pregnancy tests and birth control. She makes an appointment and, upon arrival in her best clothes with a container of urine ready for her test, the thought bubble over her head reads, “For the worst, I decided to look my best.”
The comic reflected the real-world encounter she had at this center. Unknown to Abbotts, the center had a reputation for misleading young women about their health-care options. Abbotts recalled the first sign of trouble when the clinic nurse asked about her religious background. After the pregnancy test, the nurse insisted she watch a slide show while waiting for her results. The slides featured images of a trash can piled high with dead fetuses, women fatally injured by their abortions and dying by suicide afterward. Furious, Abbotts shut off the projector and told the bewildered nurse, “You’re lucky I didn’t throw it out the window!”
After Abbotts learned she was pregnant, the nurse proceeded to pressure her about adoption. Abbotts stormed out of the clinic and went to the Better Business Bureau to find a way to put a stop to the way the clinic was misleading women seeking abortion services. She was linked up with a feminist lawyer who helped file suit and Abbotts eventually got access to the abortion and care she needed.
Her lawsuit targeted the center and its funder, the Pearson Foundation. Through the Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights, the lawsuit successfully barred the pregnancy center from falsely advertising itself and limited the Pearson Foundation’s ability to fund such clinics. Abbotts confessed, “I never thought I’d end up doing something like this!”
By then, however, she was dealing with AIDS and declining health. In the late 1980s, AZT was the only available treatment for HIV. Her doctor suggested she join the Phase I Dextran Sulfate trials. A few years later, she also enrolled in the Phase 1 CD-4 clinical trials. Abbotts counted herself lucky to be on both trials even as the results proved disheartening.
Abbotts was the only HIV-positive woman enrolled in both clinical trials. The gay men she met while undergoing the trials were well networked with services and care. At this time, San Francisco’s HIV/AIDS care served gay men almost exclusively. It was often justified by noting there were so few positive women in the city. Many doctors did not understand, however, that AIDS manifested differently with women. Additionally, HIV-positive women had only one support group that was specifically for them in the late 1980s.
Abbotts grew increasingly frustrated with the power struggles with her doctors over her treatments. Dextran made her sicker and the doctors at first ignored her complaints. CD-4 initially boosted her energy but quickly proved to be ineffective. She also had to find a new primary-care provider every time a trial ended.
But Abbotts’s connections to gay men, and her observations about the disparities in care, gave her the motivation to create health-care support for HIV-positive women. She joined the Women’s AIDS Network and became one of the first HIV-positive women to serve on its board. She began speaking publicly and sharing her experiences as an HIV-positive woman more frequently.
Activists, namely those involved with the direct-action group Act Up, helped fight for HIV-positive women to be recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and included on trials beginning in the late 1980s. But Abbotts used her own experience to raise even more questions about the inequities of access and treatment, and helped push AIDS activists to think broadly about health care. She forced them to ask: How much good could clinical trials even do if women’s basic health-care needs weren’t met to begin with?
“Before you can even think about a clinical trial,” Abbotts wrote to her fellow HIV-positive women, “the basics need to be met. They must not take the place of a woman’s primary care.”
Her health stabilized as her trials — both the lawsuit and the clinical ones — concluded. But it wasn’t from the treatments. Abbotts saw the importance of getting women information about their health — whether it be about abortion or HIV. She worked hard to get women the necessary information about their bodies to help make the best life decisions for themselves. Abbotts continued to advocate for herself and other HIV-positive women until her death in 1999 at age 40.
Abbotts’s story sheds light on how HIV-positive women advocated for themselves when they were often ignored. Even today, HIV-positive women, particularly women of color, continue to be underrepresented in clinical trials. Alongside HIV criminalization bills, these women risk further marginalization and less access to health care due to antiabortion laws.
Activists like Abbotts, who bridged their experiences of reproductive health with conversations around HIV care, show us how these ideas touch on some of the same areas and affect overlapping populations. As such, efforts to expand access to abortion will achieve more if they address the larger arena of health care for women and other people with uteruses — whether they are HIV-positive or negative. | 2022-07-25T10:15:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The HIV rights activist whose work can guide the abortion rights movement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/25/hiv-rights-activist-whose-work-can-guide-abortion-rights-movement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/25/hiv-rights-activist-whose-work-can-guide-abortion-rights-movement/ |
By Joanna Slater
Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) enters the Capitol on July 15. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
BUFFALO — Standing at a lectern in late May, Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) took a piece of paper from the inner pocket of his dark blue jacket.
He hadn’t discussed what he was about to do with anyone — not his staff and not his wife.
Jacobs began speaking quickly, with conviction. In the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., he would support a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, he said. He would also push to raise the minimum age to purchase certain weapons to 21.
Afterward, Jacobs called a senior Republican leader in New York. Jacobs thanked him for his support over the years, then said, only half in jest: “I think I just committed political suicide.”
Jacobs, a first-term member of Congress who represents a district near Buffalo, would become a cautionary tale about the politics of guns in the Republican Party. Officials who had endorsed Jacobs swiftly withdrew their support. Gun rights groups accused him of betrayal. Donald Trump Jr. said Jacobs had “caved to the gun-grabbers.”
A week after his news conference, Jacobs announced he would not seek reelection.
In a recent interview at his district office in Williamsville, N.Y., Jacobs said he did not regret his change of heart, although he felt bad for blindsiding his colleagues.
“Somebody said, ‘Chris, it’s a profile in courage,’ ” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s also a profile in unemployment.’ ”
Jacobs, 55, represents an increasingly rare brand of politician — moderate in ideology and willing to change his mind. He criticized both parties for enforcing conformity in their ranks. “You can’t stray from an orthodoxy,” he said. For Republicans, that issue is guns, he said, and for Democrats, it is abortion.
Jacobs’s political bombshell can be traced, in part, to his deep ties to Buffalo. Although Jacobs was born in New York City, where his father was working a physician, he has spent most of his life in the state’s second-largest city on the shores of Lake Erie.
He belongs to one of Buffalo’s most prominent families, known for its wealth and civic mindedness. His uncle, Jeremy Jacobs Sr., is the billionaire chairman of Delaware North, a sports concession and casino business.
On May 14, Jacobs was with his family — his wife, Martina, his two young daughters and his mother — watching a performance of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” at his nephew’s school about a mile from the Tops supermarket. The office for his real estate company is even closer to the market.
He was walking out of the performance when he learned about the racist attack at the grocery store. Ten people were killed during the shooting in a predominantly Black neighborhood. “It was a beautiful Saturday,” he said. “And then I got the text — this awful, unimaginable, evil thing happened.”
The next day, Jacobs called Kinzer Pointer, a pastor on Buffalo’s East Side he has known for nearly two decades. The men first met when they were running for seats on the Buffalo school board in 2004. They spent weeks together collecting signatures outdoors in frigid February weather, Pointer said.
The two friends spoke for more than an hour. One of the 10 victims, Katherine Massey, had been a fixture at school board meetings. They talked about the suffering in the community and what could be done. Pointer said he urged Jacobs to support restrictions on guns, with an important caveat. “If you do this,” Pointer told him, “you’re going to be crucified.” At the end of the conversation, Pointer said a prayer.
Five days later, Jacobs read out the names of the Buffalo victims on the House floor. “I have thought of little else since this carnage occurred,” he said.
People later asked Pointer whether he was surprised that Jacobs defied his party’s position on guns. “I simply said no,” Pointer said. “That’s the Chris Jacobs I know.”
Buffalo's East Side was a food desert. The shooting made things worse.
As a young man, Jacobs left Buffalo to study history at Boston College. He spent several years in Washington working for Jack Kemp, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H.W. Bush.
When Jacobs returned home for law school, he briefly registered as a Democrat, frustrated that Republicans weren’t doing more to reach out to minority voters.
He switched his party registration back to Republican a couple of years later, having concluded that Democratic policies fostered dependency rather than empowerment.
Jacobs served on the Buffalo school board for seven years, founded one of the city’s first charter schools and helped start a charity that awards scholarships to low-income children to attend private schools.
He went on to win election as Erie County Clerk, the first Republican to occupy the post in 40 years and a role that gave him responsibility for issuing gun permits. Then he became a New York state senator. In 2020, he ran for Congress with President Donald Trump’s endorsement, winning a special election to replace Republican Rep. Chris Collins, who resigned amid a scandal. The New York Republican Committee identified Jacobs as a “rising star.”
Jacobs is not a gun owner but considers himself a strong proponent of the Second Amendment. As Erie County Clerk, he worked to streamline the process of granting gun permits. While in Congress, he co-sponsored bills that would have watered down New York’s strict gun laws. He was repeatedly endorsed by gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association.
After the Buffalo shooting, he began talking to gun-rights advocates he admired. But their rationales for rejecting firearm restrictions increasingly rang hollow, Jacobs said. An unwillingness to consider gun control measures as one way to prevent mass shootings is not “intellectually honest,” he said.
As he wrestled with what to do, Jacobs recalled an interaction he once had with a voter outside a polling station when he was running for New York state senate. A mother walked up to him and said, “Just keep us safe.” It stuck with him, he said.
Ten days after the shooting in Buffalo, a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas. That night, Jacobs looked down at his two daughters — 3 years old and six months old — as they slept. They could have been in that classroom, he thought.
When Jacobs abruptly announced his support for gun-control measures three days later, Republican officials were dumbfounded. Ralph Lorigo, the chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party, which backs Republican candidates, summoned Jacobs to his office.
Because of New York’s redistricting process, Jacobs was running in a newly drawn constituency that leaned even further Republican. Most of the people in the district “have a gun in their closet,” Lorigo said. Talking about a ban on assault-style weapons is a “non-starter.”
One senior Republican official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said he was “completely flabbergasted” by Jacobs’s announcement. The official said that his candidacy in a conservative district “became unviable.”
Gun rights groups were enraged. The leader of one group called Jacobs a “turncoat backstabber” and pledged to “go after him hard and fast.” Jacobs’s personal cellphone number was made public, and he received irate messages telling him to resign.
Jacobs maintains that he might have fended off a primary challenge but bowed out to avoid turning the race into a divisive referendum on guns. Instead, Jacobs wants to build trust in communities where guns are a way of life — trust that reasonable restrictions on firearms are possible without “eviscerating” the rights of gun owners.
Some of his constituents think he should have run. In early July, Jacobs and his wife met with Vietnam War veterans and their families at American Legion Post 431 in Springville, N.Y., a town of 4,000 people 30 miles south of Buffalo.
Otis Jones, one of the veterans honored at the ceremony, was disappointed when he heard Jacobs was ending his reelection bid. “If you believe in something, you fight ’til the end,” Jones said. “You don’t bow out because the odds are against you.”
Anthony Gioia, a Republican fundraiser and former ambassador to Malta who has known Jacobs and his family for years, expressed dismay at the way Jacobs became radioactive in his party.
“You would have thought he committed capital murder or something, that he dared say there should be some control on weapons,” Gioia said. “I’m a Republican, but I’m not a total NRA advocate.”
Jacobs was true to his word. In June, he was one of only five Republicans to vote for a measure that would prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines and raise the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic weapon to 21. The bill foundered in the Senate. Jacobs also supported the landmark bipartisan legislation that passed last month making modest changes to background checks.
Together with two Democrats, Jacobs introduced a measure to restrict the sale of body armor. The bill is named after Aaron Salter, the supermarket security guard in Buffalo whose shots were blocked by the gunman’s body armor. Salter was killed in the massacre.
When Jacobs’s term ends in January, he will return to his real estate company. He loved public service, he said, and had looked forward to the prospect of working with a Republican majority in Congress.
“Sometimes, there are decisions where you have to make a stand,” he said. “And I felt this was one.”
Justin Sondel contributed to this report. | 2022-07-25T10:15:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republican Chris Jacobs embraced gun control. It ended his political career. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/25/chris-jacobs-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/25/chris-jacobs-guns/ |
How the cyberwar between Iran and Israel has intensified
Three things to know about the not-so-covert cyber-operations between these two adversaries
Analysis by Gil Baram
In late June, Iran’s state-owned Khuzestan Steel Co. and two other steel companies were forced to halt production after suffering a cyberattack. A hacking group claimed responsibility on social media, saying it targeted Iran’s three biggest steel companies in response to the “aggression of the Islamic Republic.”
Israel’s defense secretary then ordered an investigation into leaked video showing the damage to the steel plants, citing “operational events in a manner that violates Israel’s ambiguity policy.” This incident came close on the heels of a statement by the Israeli Security Agency, or Shin Bet, claiming a May cyberoperation by Iran was intended to generate actions outside of the cyber-domain.
Both incidents show how the cyberconflict between the two countries has grown increasingly public in the past two years. While Israel traditionally sticks to ambiguous responses, these latest examples and others suggest that may be changing. Iran also broke its silence and chose to publicly discuss some of these incidents.
Why are Israel and Iran going public about these cyberoperations? Here are three things to know about the not-so-covert cyberconflict between Israel and Iran.
The Ukraine war has side effects on Middle East geopolitics
Cyber-actions are becoming less covert
Iran and Israel have long engaged in mutual offensive covert cyber-actions, although neither government took credit for them in public. More than a decade ago, Iranian officials discovered the Stuxnet malware in the uranium enrichment centrifuges in one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, marking the first public evidence of the use of cyberweapons against Iran. But the alleged cyberattacks and intrusions between Iran and Israel have intensified, gaining global attention and coverage, giving a new public dimension to the ongoing covert conflict.
Examples include an April 2020 attempt to breach Israel’s water and sewage infrastructure, a cyberattack on Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port in May 2020, cyberattacks on Iranian transportation systems in July 2021, a hack of an Israeli hosting company and leak of users’ personal information in October 2021, and a cyberattack disrupting gas stations across Iran the same month — and many more.
The long-running shadow conflict between Israel and Iran, in both the cyber realm and on the ground, landed in the spotlight last month with a comment from then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In an interview for the Economist addressing the shift in Israel’s strategy toward Iran, he said, “We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we’ve created a new equation by going for the head.”
What do Russia’s cyber moves mean for the Ukraine crisis?
What causes countries to abandon the advantages of the covert space and shift their cyberconflict into the public arena? In my research, I argue that choosing to make details public isn’t a binary political decision between revealing or concealing the attack. Instead, victims of a cyberattack might choose respond in a variety of ways, including complete silence, attributing the attack and assigning blame. Previous research theorized that strategies for the attacker, similarly, range from complete silence to claiming credit.
Both Israel and Iran have become noticeably more public about these attacks. For example, in April 2020, the Israel National Cyber Directorate confirmed an “attempted cyber-breach” of water command and control systems. Media reports pointed a finger at Iran, but Israeli officials didn’t comment.
In this event, Israel chose to publicize the attack without official public attribution. This strategy allowed Israel to stay ahead of the news cycle and set the public narrative — but also avoid greater humiliation in case Iran or a third party publicized the attack. At the same time, refraining from directly blaming Iran allowed Israel to minimize the risk of escalation. Iran remained silent, a strategy that also helped avoid escalation at the time.
A few weeks later, a cyberattack on the Shahid Rajaee port severely disrupted the movement of goods into the Iranian port for several days. Initially, Iran claimed the massive delays were caused by a technical malfunction, but officials later admitted the incident was the result of a cyberattack. Media reports quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying that many believed Israel was behind the attack.
Further declarations from both countries left little doubt about their intentions. Without directly mentioning Iran, the director of the Israel National Cyber Directorate said the events of April and May 2020 marked a “changing point in the history of modern cyberwarfare.” Iran, having publicly acknowledged the incident as a cyberattack, declared that it would not allow Israel to challenge it on the cyber-front.
What about international law?
International law sets down a minimum standard of responsible behavior that is binding on countries. Many countries — including Israel and Iran — agree that the general principles of international law based on the U.N. Charter also apply to cyberspace. However, there are various disagreements regarding the specific ways it should apply. For instance, Israel’s deputy attorney general said, “Israel considers that international law is applicable to cyberspace […] However, when seeking to apply particular legal rules to this domain, we are mindful of its unique features.”
One recent reference to international law in the context of government-sponsored cyberoperations came during the coronavirus pandemic, when the Netherlands declared that cyberattacks on the health-care sector, in many instances, constitute violations of international law.
Israel and Iran have shifted from traditional covertness and ambiguity to an increasingly public forum. Considering what has unfolded over the past two years, it appears the international community does not view these types of cyber-intrusions as crossing a certain threshold of violating international law, as no other country has addressed them. And the objectives of these cyberattacks have shifted from mostly defense targets to disruptions of critical infrastructure and civilian life. The greater the public exposure to these cyberattacks, the greater the risk that they could extend beyond cyberspace and influence other areas of this conflict, too.
Gil Baram is a Fulbright cybersecurity postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and an adjunct research fellow at the Center of Excellence for National Security at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research focuses on government decision-making during cyberattacks and strategic attribution-related policy. | 2022-07-25T10:16:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cyber attacks by Iran and Israel now target critical infrastructure. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/25/iran-israel-cyber-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/25/iran-israel-cyber-war/ |
Major publishers are suing the Internet Archive over an online book lending program. But the case has morphed into a bigger debate that could limit the ways libraries lend books online.
The organization, called the Internet Archive, agreed. While it traditionally loaned out its more than a million digital books one at a time to the public and through partnerships with libraries, it dropped that limit in what it described as a “National Emergency Library.”
Roughly two months later, major book publishers including Harper Collins sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement — saying its digital library initiative “grossly exceed” what libraries are allowed to do. A few months later, it reinstated lending limits, court documents show.
E-books at libraries are a huge hit, leading to long waits, reader hacks and worried publishers
Unlike physical books, which libraries often buy outright and lend to patrons one at a time until they’ve fallen apart, the process for digital books is typically different. Libraries usually rent eBooks from publishers, and can only loan them out a certain number of times — often a couple dozen — until they have to renew the license. Those licenses can cost four to five times as much as buying the book, sometimes straining library budgets.
Meanwhile, the Internet Archive and some others have pursued what’s dubbed controlled digital lending, in which they buy and scan copies of books they own and loan them out virtually to patrons one at a time, similar to physical books.
Terry Hart, the general counsel for the Association of American Publishers, said that controlled digital lending is a “made up doctrine,” and that the Internet Archive is using it to be “directly at odds” with copyright law.
“Legitimate libraries don’t engage in this,” he said. “This unlawful copying and distribution of other people’s stuff.”
Librarians and open-internet activists say it’s not, and stopping it is a way for publishers to assert control and fatten their pockets.
“What libraries do is they buy, preserve and lend,” Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, said in an interview. “Publishers are saying that you may not buy, you may not preserve and you may not lend except under exactly the circumstances that I tell you.”
Google Books ruling is a huge victory for online innovation
“Libraries regularly pay four to five times what consumers pay for the same eBooks and then are forced to rebuy the same titles every year,” said Ellen Paul, the executive director of Connecticut’s library consortium, in a statement earlier this year responding to a state bill aimed at bolstering state library budgets so they could afford to keep up with the rise in digital books.
“[It’s] costing taxpayers thousands of dollars over the life of a single eBook and making a robust eBook collection out of reach for many libraries,” she said.
The loaning of physical books takes place under the legal principle of first-sale doctrine, which limits the rights of content creators to control how their works are resold, Mehtab Khan, a resident fellow at the Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, says. But that principle does not apply to digital books, mainly because case law has not caught up with how digital books have changed the landscape of libraries and publishing, experts said.
The controlled digital lending legal theory, however, was created by Michelle Wu in the early 2000s. Wu, a librarian at the University of Houston at the time, saw floods destroy much of her library’s collection, and she sought to create a way to digitize and preserve the rest of the books under her purview.
Mary Rasenberger, the chief executive of the Authors Guild, said the Internet Archive’s attempts to scan and upload copies of books for free distribution using this theory is an attack on writers. “If you can just go and make your own copies [of books], you’re taking away income from authors,” she said.
“The libraries that raised me paid for their books,” Sandra Cisneros, the acclaimed author of “The House on Mango Street,” said in a statement in response to the legal case. “They never stole them.”
Ruling confirms e-book price-fixing by Apple
But Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the Internet Archive, said libraries are simply trying to do what they’ve done for “thousands of years,” and are not running afoul of any copyright laws by using controlled digital lending to make books available to the masses. She added that this is simply an attempt by publishers to grow their e-Book market and force libraries to pay costly licensing agreements that help a publisher’s bottom line.
“Publishers have historically always had a little anxiety around libraries and the sort of the sense that somehow libraries are invading [their] markets,” she said. “This is a very natural thing, but in fact, copyright law doesn’t work like that. You actually don’t get the unlimited ability to control just because you have copyright in a work.”
Library budgets are already tight, said Jennie Rose Halperin, the executive director of Library Futures, and this would trigger difficult decisions between spending money on re-licensing popular books or investing money into securing works that aren’t immediately popular, but important to preserve.
Additionally, libraries could become beholden to the whims of third-parties, who might decide not to carry books on queer rights, abortion or other sensitive political issues, if political pressure to ban them becomes hot, she said. It could create a situation where “what the general public reads and has access to will be decided upon by a corporation, not by individual community needs.”
She added that is beneficial to the United States to skew that balance in favor of giving people open access to material as much as possible. “It’s a value that we want to protect in a democratic society,” she said. | 2022-07-25T10:16:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Publishers are suing the Internet Archive over digital book lending - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/25/internet-archive-digital-lending-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/25/internet-archive-digital-lending-lawsuit/ |
Katori Hall, the creator of the superb Southern series, talks about ‘the hardest job’ she’s ever had: documenting the pandemic during the pandemic
Television critic |
“P-Valley” creator and showrunner Katori Hall filmed the second season while pregnant during the pandemic. (Mark Hill/Starz)
On most scripted television, the pandemic has run its course or never happened at all — a state of affairs that’s prompted much hand-wringing about how such depictions are distorting our perceptions of covid’s spread and aftermath.
But this summer has brought a striking exception — and arguably the first great series about how the country has changed since early 2020. Ignoring the ongoing global disruption “would have made everything easier,” says Katori Hall, the award-winning playwright turned TV showrunner who created the critically adored sleeper hit “P-Valley,” currently in its second season. But given that her drama focuses on Black working-class people in the South, she was struck by a sense of mission.
“Black history tends to be misrepresented, whether it’s in the media or in history books,” she told The Washington Post in a video interview. “I want people 10, 20 years from now to be able to look back at Season 2 of ‘P-Valley’ and have an honest, accurate articulation of what marginalized communities went through during the pandemic.”
That might make the Starz series sound like a bummer. But how could it be, when it’s a dense and sprawling workplace drama set at a legendary Mississippi strip club, filled with spiky women and queer folk, lush dialogue fleshed out by earthy slang and theatrical monologues, and some of the most eye-poppingly sexy and athletic dance sequences in pop culture today? (The secret to the latter, says Hall, is emphasizing “what a woman’s body can do and not necessarily how a woman’s body looks.”)
Growing up in Memphis, Hall, her high school’s first Black valedictorian, frequented strip clubs — performance-oriented spaces that she says, at least in the South, never felt like they were only for men. (She laughs recalling the dates she’s gone on with her husband at such clubs.) Many people don’t see stripping as an art form, but Hall calls its most accomplished practitioners “modern-day Josephine Bakers.” When she sees the highest-caliber dancers on the pole, “I’m seeing an Olympic-level sport. And, quite frankly, Broadway-level art at times.”
Hall doesn’t make the comparison glibly. When covid first forced shutdowns of live productions, she had two shows in the middle of their runs: the Tony-nominated Tina Turner musical “Tina” on Broadway (for which she co-wrote the book) and the off-Broadway, Pulitzer-winning play “The Hot Wing King” (currently playing at D.C.’s Studio Theatre). “As someone who is in a business based on gathering,” Hall said about the stage shows, “I really understood the economical impact and the soul impact of not being able to do your job.” She had little time to mourn. Learning how to be a pandemic showrunner was “the hardest job I have ever had to do in my entire life” — and she did it pregnant. Her 4-month-old infant, like herself, recently recovered from covid.
Review: ‘The Hot Wing King’ is somber and socially resonant while retaining its comedic zest
So how do you make art out of surviving the pandemic? The opening scene of Season 2 answers that with a wink — and soapy bubbles. An exhausted young father needing a break from family life steps out of his home, gets in the car and sees neon lights pointing toward “The Mercedes Experience.” It’s in a carwash, where his vehicle gets clean while things get dirty. A dancer in a glittery face mask with matching pasties gyrates some six feet away while other women in bikinis rub their sudsy sponges against his windows (or each other). Headliner Mercedes (Brandee Evans) finally appears, suggestively riding a detached carousel horse as a prelude before doing a split upside-down while the bottoms of her silver lamé boots shoot sparks. But because “P-Valley,” which began as a play, is about stripping as both spectacle and labor, we soon learn that the carwash is hardly keeping the dancers in the black, and Mercedes’s injured shoulder increasingly affects her ability to hold on to the pole on the horse.
Hall took inspiration from real-life clubs that had moved their shows outdoors when the virus hit. At the end of Season 1, the series’s central venue, the Pynk, had been saved from financial ruin by an 11th-hour cash infusion from a dancer-turned-majority owner, the mysterious Autumn (Elarica Johnson). But by the start of Season 2, most of that money had been spent keeping the club and its employees afloat, since “nonessential” small businesses were ineligible for government relief. When the lockdown is lifted in the town, there’s little cash left to meet the new public health requirements: HEPA filters, glass partitions, operations at 50 percent capacity.
One of “P-Valley’s” most compelling narrative strands — and where it diverges from most pop-cultural depictions of stripping — is its characterizations of the dancers as family and community members. Mercedes is helpless as her sister (Helen Goldsby), who lost her job during the pandemic, falls off the wagon without the structure of a 9 to 5 and becomes unable to care for Mercedes’s teenage daughter (Azaria Carter). The Pynk’s nonbinary mother hen and now minority owner, Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan), knows there’s no convincing their charmingly irascible roommate and grandmother (Loretta Devine) to take covid seriously. Season 2 has steadily foreshadowed the diabetic grande dame’s death, especially on Sunday’s episode, which found her wishing to reunite with her deceased loved ones.
Hall is fully aware that, when it comes to entertainment, most people want to “escape” or “forget” our pandemic reality. And two years ago, when she and her writers were conceptualizing the season, it seemed reasonable to wonder if the virus might be vanquished by the time the show returned. But Hall, who took to heart Nina Simone’s dictate for artists to reflect their times, was willing to risk covid fatigue. “I just felt like I wouldn’t be the artist that I know I’ve always wanted to be if I did not articulate this moment in history,” she said. And even if a cure for covid was on the way, the disease’s fallout would still be ongoing, especially for people of color. “For Black and Brown communities,” she thought, “it won’t be over in two years because the impact of having to stop and pause and have so many of us die, actually die? The reverberations of that is going to be felt for a lifetime.”
“P-Valley” is also the rare series to dramatize a warning that was often circulated in the media at the start of quarantine, but seldom addressed since: a spike in domestic violence and child abuse. Though the show has no shortage of dark storylines, its most tragic tend to revolve around Keyshawn (Shannon Thornton), a breakout star from the Pynk with sharp entrepreneurial instincts and a huge social media following. Once social distancing begins, her online clout turns into a double-edged sword, as it allows her to financially sustain her live-in boyfriend Derrick (Jordan M. Cox) and their two young children, but also becomes the excuse with which he refuses to let her leave the house. When Keyshawn finally persuades him to let her go on a brief tour — a venture she hopes will help with her burgeoning endorsement deals — the strain of caring for a toddler and a baby on his own proves too much for Derrick to handle.
“P-Valley” straddles the line between the soapy and the realistically eventful, given its milieu of economic precarity. The show admires stripping’s creative potential and muscular vigor, but evinces doubt that the work can launch dancers out of poverty or social stigma in the long run. Even a well-paid star like Mercedes has seen her efforts to go legit by opening a dance studio for girls continuously derailed.
But the show’s hard-bitten survivors are so admirably tough that some viewers have apparently lost sympathy for “weaker” characters like Keyshawn, who has remained trapped in her relationship with Derrick. “What’s been interesting is that we’ve seen a lot of our audience members get frustrated with seeing her being in lockdown with her partner,” Hall observes. “But that is what happened to millions of women around the world.” She’s also noticed that some fans refuse to acknowledge the prostitution that Mercedes undertakes to pay the bills as such. “They are calling it a financial relationship because [she and the clients] have conversations,” Hall says. “A lot of women take on emotional labor within their [sex] work that I don’t think a lot of people are aware of.”
At the pandemic’s height, Hall moved from New York to Atlanta, where the series is filmed. The South is “the center of my writing universe,” she says. “It’s important to have the rhythms in my ear.” Still, it was difficult to shoot in Georgia, where mask-wearing off-set “could be nonexistent.” Despite shifting safety protocols, Hall, who was expecting throughout production, felt the least anxious on set, where she knew cast and crew were tested multiple times a week.
“It’s basically all the things you’re not supposed to do during a pandemic,” she says of shooting the scenes with sex, makeouts, crowds and lap dances. But even more challenging than keeping people physically safe was grappling with the mental toll that the virus took on cast and crew. Many knew people who died, of covid or other causes. “You begin to be very careful how you use your time, because the dash between your birth day and your death day seems like it gets smaller during a pandemic,” says Hall. The set teemed with individual existential reckonings, and the person in charge of it all could only be grateful that people kept coming back to work. “Doing a show that was reflecting what we were going through in the real world,” Hall says, “it sometimes felt like we couldn’t get an escape from the thing.”
But she’s glad they all pushed through. “We were able to put our frustrations in the art and articulate an authentic experience for our viewers,” she says, “because we literally were going through it day by day.” | 2022-07-25T10:16:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘P-Valley,’ a drama about strippers, is TV’s best depiction of covid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/07/25/p-valley-drama-about-strippers-is-tvs-best-depiction-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/07/25/p-valley-drama-about-strippers-is-tvs-best-depiction-covid/ |
Federal Reserve interest rate hikes mean bigger debt burdens for poor countries. Can economic policymakers prevent a crisis?
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen arrives at a meeting of economic officials from the Group of 20 nations in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, on July 15, 2022. As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, developing nations’ borrowing costs will rise — potentially triggering serious financial and political problems around the globe. (Sonny Tumbelaka/Pool/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
SEOUL — U.S. officials are still scrambling to contain the highest inflation the United States has seen in decades. But the world’s leading economic policymakers see another reason to worry ahead: Poorer economies could be swamped as the Federal Reserve tries to rein in U.S. prices.
During an 11-day swing through Asia this month, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and her counterparts from wealthy nations in Europe and elsewhere made clear that they are beginning to grapple with how to mitigate the economic shock waves hitting low- and middle-income countries — in part because of tighter financial conditions in the rich countries.
How U.S. and other Western policymakers respond could have major political and economic consequences, internationally and domestically. American exports could be imperiled if foreign markets deteriorate, and a global economic slowdown would threaten the U.S. recovery. Biden administration officials face questions about how aggressively to respond to these challenges. Yellen, for instance, is pushing China to allow nations in crisis to reduce what they owe to Beijing. But administration officials are also set to reject calls from other Democrats to back the disbursement of additional aid through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), action that would need the support of the United States.
Asked about high levels of government debt in the developing world, Yellen told reporters last week that tighter monetary policy “can make those debt problems, which already are very severe, more difficult.” Her comments were later echoed at meetings of the Group of 20 finance ministers in Indonesia by Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the IMF, which provides emergency financing. The European Central Bank’s surprise decision on Thursday to increase its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point — the first such move in 11 years — could lead to poorer nations’ currencies losing even more value.
“With tightening financial conditions,” Georgieva said, “the debt service burden is a harsh — and for some countries, unbearable — burden.”
Countries considered emerging markets — typically defined by having some level of economic development but not yet “advanced” wealth — are already under the most pressure they’ve faced in roughly 30 years, many economists say. About 60 percent of poor countries are “in debt distress or at high risk” of it, the World Bank has said. Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia’s finance minister, warned at the opening of the G-20 of a “triple threat” facing the developing world: soaring inflation, the covid pandemic and the effects of the war in Ukraine. Already, the number of people worldwide who are hungry has exploded from 135 million to 276 million this year alone, a trend that is part of the deteriorating financial conditions in much of the world, she said.
“Every day, there’s something. Every day, there’s more news about developing economies’ debt stress, downgrades of global economic growth, and increases in poverty and hunger,” said Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
Poorer nations often borrow in U.S. dollars, both to help pay for imports that they cannot otherwise produce and to bolster the international credibility of their banking reserves. One downside is that “dollar-denominated debt” makes these countries vulnerable to fluctuations in the value of the American currency, changes that are beyond their control. When the Federal Reserve raises the interest rate, the dollar becomes more expensive relative to other currencies. This makes borrowing countries’ debt payments more costly.
The challenge is made more acute by the latest inflation report showing that prices in the United States rose at a red-hot rate of 9.1 percent in June; that report came out while Yellen was meeting with financial officials in Asia. The June report is expected to spur the central bank to hike rates even more aggressively when the bank’s leaders meet Wednesday. That in turn will make things even worse for low-income countries.
Yellen pointed out to reporters that a stronger dollar could have some upside for poorer countries’ economies, by making their exports to the United States cheaper and more attractive for U.S. consumers. And many analysts point out that emerging markets are, in general, in much stronger positions than they were during the liquidity crises of the 1980s in Asia and Latin America, which were triggered by the Fed’s massive rate hikes then.
But danger signs are emerging in many parts of the world. Between the beginning of the pandemic and now, the average ratio of public debt to gross domestic product in the developing world went from 52 percent to a record 67 percent, Weisbrot said. Some economists point to the revolt this month in Sri Lanka as evidence of the financial threat to emerging markets, although that country is in many ways vexed by idiosyncratic domestic challenges unrelated to the broader landscape.
One step that is getting new urgency is an attempt to push China into implementing a global agreement to provide relief to deeply indebted countries.
While in Japan earlier on her trip, Yellen criticized China for resisting the attempts of lower-income countries to renegotiate their repayment obligations. As countries faced debt stress during the pandemic, the G-20 nations in 2020 agreed in principle to a “Common Framework” meant to create new rules for restructuring sovereign debt when it becomes clear that it cannot be repaid. But as countries such as Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia have petitioned for help under the revamped guidelines, China has balked at implementation.
That reluctance has made U.S. and IMF officials increasingly exasperated. Briefing reporters in Indonesia ahead of talks, Treasury officials said they are emphasizing to China that it is in that country’s interest to accept the revamped debt terms — because if the debtor countries’ economies collapse, China is even less likely to recover its loans. South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana raised the issue with Yellen in Indonesia, according to his spokesperson.
Yellen told reporters last week that it was “quite frustrating” that China had not cooperated with debt restructuring efforts. Later, in Indonesia, she again pressed China: “More needs to be done to help the most vulnerable. … A key objective of this trip is to push G-20 creditors, including China, to finalize debt restructurings for developing countries now facing debt distress.”
The United States faces its own pressure to relieve the debt burdens of countries in distress. The African Union, which represents more than 50 nations, has called for another allocation of “Special Drawing Rights,” an IMF-run program that provides emergency capital to countries in need. Roughly four dozen congressional Democrats have also called for the administration to lead a disbursal of these drawing rights, similar to the $650 billion issued last year for pandemic assistance, arguing that economic conditions are more difficult now than they were then.
But the Treasury Department said in a statement that the administration does not support such a move, instead pointing to a smaller effort to offer loans on the basis of existing drawing rights. Republican lawmakers have characterized the IMF funds as a form of unwarranted economic aid that enriches the United States’ geopolitical foes. Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) recently told Bloomberg News that such aid is a “giveaway to wealthy countries and rogue regimes” such as China, Russia and Iran. The Treasury statement said the United States might be open to supporting another allocation if global conditions change.
As the dollar rises, Treasury and IMF officials are also left trying to figure out how to respond to the sinking value of emerging market currencies.
Traditionally, the United States and its allies have largely discouraged nations’ attempts to manipulate their currency’s value in attempt to gain commercial advantages, which is done by trading substantial amounts of the currency on international exchanges, artificially altering the market. Countries are similarly discouraged from imposing “capital controls” — legal limits on investor funds flowing outward — because those measures are regarded as inefficient and only likely to prolong nations’ underlying economic dysfunction.
In Nua Dusa at the G-20 meeting, however, Yellen emphasized increased flexibility in allowing these tactics. She stressed that such interventions should be extremely rare and used only in certain circumstances, when all other options had been exhausted. She backed new guidance from the IMF that embraces what defenders say is a more nuanced approach to such maneuvers.
That revised prescription may be soon put to the test. With the Fed dramatically increasing the strength of the U.S. dollar, countries could within months find themselves wrestling with a massive flight of investment toward the U.S. dollar. The Biden administration will face pressure to help craft the response to an unprecedented set of economic challenges.
“Even with sound fundamentals and strong institutions, financial flows can be volatile,” Yellen said. “… It can be beneficial to add to the playbook a wider set of policy tools.” | 2022-07-25T10:16:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poorer nations could suffer from U.S. efforts to slow inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/25/federal-reserve-interest-developing-markets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/25/federal-reserve-interest-developing-markets/ |
Man dies in crash involving three vehicles in Montgomery County
A Metro bus, a van and a car were involved in a crash in Montgomery County that left a man dead, police said. (iStock)
A man is dead after a crash involving a bus, a car and a van in Montgomery County.
Local police said the incident happened around 8:52 p.m. Sunday near the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and Lockwood Drive in the White Oak area.
The driver of the van was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. His name was not immediately released, pending the notification of his family.
No details on the cause of the crash were immediately disclosed. Montgomery County police said in a statement that the driver of the car was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. The Metro bus driver was not hurt, and neither were the passengers who were on the bus at the time of the crash. | 2022-07-25T11:44:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man dies after crash involving car, van and Metro bus in MD - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/25/man-dies-in-montgomery-county-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/25/man-dies-in-montgomery-county-crash/ |
Does Instagram have a problem with Iranian dissidents?
By Masih Alinejad
Women walk in Tehran on July 12. (Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, author and women’s rights campaigner. She hosts “Tablet,” a talk show on Voice of America’s Persian service.
On July 17, Instagram restricted my access. I still don’t understand why.
What did I do wrong? I still don’t know. Instagram didn’t initially offer any explanation. I might guess that my offense was giving voice to the voiceless in Iran. My 7 million followers on Instagram make for a powerful platform.
On July 12, Iranian women had staged a day of action to challenge the Islamic republic’s National Day of Hijab and Chastity, set up to reinforce the country’s harsh law on forced veiling. Over the next days, I posted many videos on my social media feeds showing women defying the regime’s official dress code.
There were confrontations between these women and the morality police and security forces. In one video from July 16, a hijab-wearing woman films a bareheaded woman on a bus, warning that she will send the recording to the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another woman on the bus films her in return.
“I know you are filming me now to send it to Masih Alinejad. She cannot do anything to me. But the Revolutionary Guards will destroy you,” says the traditionally attired woman. One of the other female passengers retorts, “I’ll send my video to the whole world.” Other passengers stop the bus and push out the veiled harasser. (The woman who refused to wear the hijab was later arrested.)
That video — which I shared — went viral on social media; it was viewed 2.5 million times on Instagram and more than 1 million times on Twitter. It shows how many women are resisting forced Islamization.
A day later, I suddenly received a message from Instagram informing me that it had restricted my access: “We limit how often you can do certain things on Instagram to protect our community.” For a full day, I wasn’t able to use Instagram Live. There was no further explanation or appeals process. “Tell us if you think we made a mistake,” the note concluded, offering two options, “Tell us” and “OK.”
So I clicked on “Tell us.” I got a pop-up window that said: “Thank you, your response has been recorded.”
(Asked to comment, an Instagram representative said the restriction “was placed on Masih’s account incorrectly because of a technical issue,” explaining that the platform automatically issues restrictions “when our systems detect spammy behavior.” The representative added: “It is against our policies to take action on accounts at the request of the Iranian government.”)
Since launching the “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign (1 million followers) against compulsory hijab on Facebook and Instagram in 2014, I have been targeted by the Iranian regime for my activities. I spent months in multiple safe houses last year after the FBI foiled a plot by Iranian agents to kidnap me in New York and whisk me back to Iran. On all my social media platforms, I am targeted by cyberbullies, fake accounts spreading false narratives, and even troll accounts impersonating my page.
But now I also feel targeted by the social media platforms. Earlier this year, I met some fellow Iranians who said they couldn’t find me on Instagram. Odd but true! Despite my officially verified account and millions of followers, I was invisible to the network’s search engines. If you typed my name in the search box, more than 50 accounts popped up — but none was mine. (By comparison, when my husband, a Led Zeppelin fan, typed in “Jimmy P,” the verified account of Jimmy Page came up immediately.)
This was not some random glitch. To me, it seemed that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make me unfindable on Instagram.
I managed to complain to Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta, which owns Instagram. The company fixed the problem after a week, but no one ever explained how it was possible for this to have happened in the first place. (The Instagram representative said there have been “instances where we’ve removed content from [my] account in error, mistakenly believing they broke our rules."
I’m glad Instagram has admitted its mistakes. Technical issues happen; social media restrictions aren’t necessarily proof of censorship or nefarious influence. But there’s a troubling pattern here. Why did the system restrict my account right at the moment when I was about to promote a protest against compulsory hijab? If algorithms have the power to restrict accounts, can the Iranian regime game those systems in its own favor?
And then there’s the human factor. Many Iranians have been accusing Instagram and Facebook content moderators of deleting or censoring accounts that track the regime’s human rights abuses. In May, Iran International blamed Instagram for removing images of security forces beating protesters and firing tear gas into crowds.
Meanwhile, whistleblowers who had worked for Telus International, a company hired by Instagram to monitor content, claimed that Iranian agents have offered as much as $10,000 to delete and censor accounts (including mine) that report on human rights violations. (Telus International told the BBC that it believed the accusations were false “but that it took them very seriously and had launched an investigation into their merits.” In its statement to The Post, Instagram also said it has seen no evidence for the claims but is investigating as well.)
Last week, when security forces stormed the houses of the activist group Mothers for Justice, they warned members of the group to stop using Instagram to speak up about the killing of their children. That tells you everything you need to know about Instagram’s importance as a means for creating open discussion in Iran.
Social media gives ordinary people a chance to push back against the lies of authoritarian regimes such as Iran’s. Social media companies should not be doing the work of authoritarian governments. They should be helping to spread the truth. | 2022-07-25T11:44:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Does Instagram have a problem with Iranian dissidents? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/masih-alinejad-instagram-restrictions-iran/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/masih-alinejad-instagram-restrictions-iran/ |
The Uvalde paradox: So many police, so little protection
By Christy E. Lopez
A makeshift memorial honoring the shooting victims at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex. (Eric Gay/AP)
The recent report on the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting persuasively recounts “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by law enforcement during the response. But Uvalde raises a broader question about policing in America: How is it possible that we have so many instances of police being overly aggressive and unnecessarily violent, yet police in Uvalde failed to act with the decisiveness and force necessary to save lives?
The answer involves a paradox. We rely too heavily on policing to do too many things, which means that our system under-protects even as it over-polices.
The disastrous response at Robb Elementary cannot be explained away as the fault of a particularly bad police department. Twenty-three agencies, from every level of government, responded: municipal, county, state, federal, school and fire; in total, there were 376 law enforcement officers on the scene. The report found that none of the agencies followed active-shooter protocols, meaning all the officers stood by for too long, while children and their teachers might have bled to death.
Meanwhile, the sheer number of agencies and officers likely contributed to the failure to establish a clear chain of command, resulting in “chaos.” As the report put it: “We must not delude ourselves into a false sense of security by believing that ‘this would not happen where we live.’ ”
Eugene Robinson: America is resigned to mass shootings — but not to police who fail to act
Rather, Uvalde offers a dramatic illustration of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of American policing. “Police officers see danger and run to meet it, knowing the cost and stepping forward to pay it,” the report states at the outset — and then proceeds to contradict this lofty assertion.
To be sure, countless police officers perform bravely every day. Even though my career has focused on police misconduct, I count many officers among the most self-sacrificing, caring people I know. But I have learned also that this is despite, not because of, the dominant dynamics in policing.
Long before Uvalde, there have been complaints that even when on-scene, police do not always intervene to prevent ongoing assaults. Indeed, in a 2005 case, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court explicitly excused police who failed to perform their central duty — intervening to prevent violence. In Castle Rock, Jessica Gonzales sued police for failing to enforce a restraining order, resulting in the murder of her three young daughters by her estranged husband. The court ruled that the restraining order did not constitute the “property interest” necessary to create a police duty to protect. Thus, alongside opinions facilitating police violence, the court has given the police permission to do nothing, arguably even in school shootings such as the one in Uvalde.
But what has fueled the over-policing/under-protection dynamic even more than this legal backdrop is the impossibly broad a set of responsibilities we have given police. The vast majority of what we ask of police does not involve intervening to prevent violence. Instead, we’ve mostly tasked police with filling in for the social safety net we’ve cut to bits — to deal with the fallout of addiction or respond to people in mental health crisis. We’ve even directed police to focus on goals that can run counter to public safety, such as revenue generation, or that could readily be done by non-police, such as traffic enforcement.
Cartoon by Michael de Adder: 377 good guys with a gun
So if it seemed that the officers on the scene in Uvalde were not particularly primed to intercede to prevent violence, that is our fault as much as theirs. We have allowed policing to drift too far from what should be its core role. We know from past school shootings what this means: The people who sign up to be school police aren’t actually signing up to confront armed gunmen, and they don’t always do so when the need arises.
If we want a policing system that protects children from violence, in our schools or in our neighborhoods, we need to stop using police to do so much that has so little to do with preventing violence. Focusing police on this core function would make it feasible to select for policing only those special individuals who are able to show great restraint even as they are ready to give their lives for a stranger on any given workday. We might not be able fill the current ranks of about a million officers if we elevate entry criteria in this way, but, as Uvalde underscores, in policing, quality is more important than quantity.
We also need to be more judicious in how we direct police to prevent violence. The Texas legislative report found that “less-serious” school alerts of “bailouts” (people fleeing car crashes caused by high-speed law enforcement pursuits of suspected undocumented immigrants) diluted the significance of such alerts and “dampened” the response of both law enforcement and educators to the genuine emergency of an active shooter. In other words, too much policing can contribute to under-protection, as policing develops a “boy who cried wolf” quality.
Rethinking the role of police in public safety is often discussed as necessary to reduce the harms of over-policing. Uvalde is an illustration of the corollary to that proposition: Fewer police with a more focused role might provide better protection from violence to the communities they serve. | 2022-07-25T11:44:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Uvalde shows we have too many police asked to do too much - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/uvalde-report-police-violence-prevention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/uvalde-report-police-violence-prevention/ |
Vladimir Kara-Murza from jail: I still intend to vote — and say no to the war
Vladimir Kara-Murza awaits a ruling in Basmanny district court in Moscow on June 8. (Darya Kornilova) (Darya Kornilova)
PRETRIAL DETENTION CENTER 5, Moscow — One morning last week, the prison guard called my name through the cell door: “Be ready in 10 minutes. There’s a commission to see you.”
There are many inspections that pass through this prison, but this one was different. Sitting at the center of a long table and flanked by the prison warden and other uniformed officials was Tatyana Potyaeva, the human rights ombudswoman for the city of Moscow. “Quite a few people have inquired about you,” she said. Looking through her folder, she mentioned Natalia Solzhenitsyna, the widow of Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as well as Dmitry Muratov, editor of the now-closed Novaya Gazeta newspaper and co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. “So I wanted to see how you were.”
I was fine, I said, as I do to every visiting commission — adding that my only complaint was over being imprisoned for my political views in the first place. My conditions are okay. I know they must certainly be better than what my grandfather experienced when he was arrested on “anti-Soviet” charges in 1937 before being sent to the gulag. He survived that (and went on to serve in World War II, earning some of the highest military decorations). I can certainly survive this.
I did have one request for the ombudswoman, though. On Sept. 11, Moscow will hold municipal elections for some 1,400 district council seats across the city. Until I am convicted, I still enjoy my voting rights. The prison where I am held is only a 40-minute drive from my home and my polling place in downtown Moscow — so I said I wanted to exercise my right to vote. The ombudswoman promised to look into it.
“Voting rights,” of course, is a difficult phrase in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For years, our elections have been deprived of any real meaning. Politicians who posed a genuine challenge to the Kremlin have been murdered, imprisoned or pushed into exile. Some opposition parties have been banned. Independent media outlets have been shut down. And, on top of all that, the authorities have introduced a variety of electoral “reforms” that are clearly designed to allow manipulation of the results.
But even when your vote does not affect the results, it’s still important to express your voice. Years ago, I visited the former Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, Germany, which now houses a museum of national socialism. Among its exhibits is a ballot from one of the many plebiscites held in 1930s Germany to demonstrate universal support for the Führer. Someone had carefully put a cross next to the word “Nein” — “No.” I remember looking at that ballot and thinking that, even though the person who used it might not have changed the course of history, he or she took a step to reject the crimes committed with the complicity of the supportive or silent majority.
Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, more than 16,380 Russians have been detained at antiwar protests across the country. More than 2,400 have been charged with administrative offenses for speaking out against the war. Dozens, including me, have been arrested under a new Criminal Code clause that penalizes public opposition to the war by up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced municipal lawmaker Alexei Gorinov to seven years in prison for denouncing the war on Ukraine at his district council meeting. In the same period since the start of the war, some 150,000 people have chosen to simply flee Russia.
But there are many more people in this country who oppose Putin’s war on Ukraine — yet aren’t prepared to risk years in prison by speaking out publicly. (The situation that, I believe, would be true of most societies.) And that is why September’s elections matter. Residents of the capital will have a chance to take a stand on the situation just an hour’s flight away from Moscow, where cities continue to be bombed and people continue to die every day as a result of Putin’s imperial ambitions. Putin’s own United Russia party has placed support for the war — still euphemistically referred to by the state media as a “special military operation” — at the center of its municipal campaign platform. Meanwhile, the so-called official opposition parties, such as the Communists or Just Russia, seem to be competing to show who can be the loudest at expressing support.
The one exception is Yabloko, Russia’s veteran liberal party. It has managed to retain access to the ballot in Moscow, and it opposes Putin’s war on Ukraine. Some of its leading members, including journalist and historian Lev Shlosberg and Moscow municipal lawmaker Andrei Morev, have been fined for making public antiwar statements. In September, Yabloko will be fielding candidates across Moscow, and even though they won’t be able to say much because of the new laws criminalizing antiwar speech, the party’s stance is well known. “Our stand for peace is a matter of principle,” said Maxim Kruglov, a member of the Moscow City Duma and Yabloko’s campaign coordinator. The word “peace” is still legal in Russia, at least for now.
In a few weeks, Muscovites will get a rare chance to say “no” to dictatorship and aggression, as that anonymous German did with their ballot. I may have few rights in a Russian prison, but that is one I am certainly intending to exercise.
The U.S.-Russia conflict is heating up — in cyberspace | 2022-07-25T11:44:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Vladimir Kara-Murza: I intend to vote against the war on Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/vladimir-kara-murza-prison-moscow-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/vladimir-kara-murza-prison-moscow-election/ |
Like it or not, we live in a globalized economy. How you define or measure globalization can vary, but it tends to just mean greater financial integration among countries, as well as more political cooperation, immigration and trade of goods and services. In all these domains, globalization has been on the rise until recently.
But if you look closely at the index, there is a slowdown in the pace of globalization during the last decade. It peaked in 2008 if you measure it as trade as a percent of GDP.
Inflation Rages Because Globalization Is Fading: Stephen Mihm
The US Can’t Beat China If It Is Scared of Trade: Mihir Sharma
Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Just More Global Now: Wang Huiyao | 2022-07-25T11:48:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Globalization Is Just Getting Started - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/globalization-is-just-getting-started/2022/07/25/bd1b4d30-0c09-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/globalization-is-just-getting-started/2022/07/25/bd1b4d30-0c09-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Companies have always had a role in space exploration. The early accomplishments of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, including the Apollo moon landings, depended on private aerospace contractors. Later, companies came to dominate the design and operation of communication and other types of commercial satellites.
But exploration for exploration’s sake has remained an activity that wealthy countries pursue for prestige, glory and military advantage rather than for profit.
The problem is that exploration and science is sometimes too difficult and expensive to justify the pursuit of glory. For most of the space age, Mars has been that kind of destination, foiling around half of all missions hoping to land or orbit on it and its moons.
In the early 2000s, Musk famously began branching out from pioneering electric cars and started looking into NASA’s plans for sending people to Mars. When he found that there were none, he began laying the groundwork for SpaceX. Musk’s — and SpaceX’s — stated long-term goal is to make “humanity multiplanetary.”
To get there, SpaceX and its engineers have tried to lower the cost of getting into space by developing reusable rocket systems. They’ve succeeded better than anyone could have imagined.
In 2011, a kilogram of cargo launched on the NASA Space Shuttle cost around $30,000; today, one kilogram of payload launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket costs around $1,200. Lower costs have not only expanded the market for launch services beyond governments and the biggest corporations, they’ve also enabled Musk to add a note of practicality to his grand dreams of Mars.
In April of 2016, SpaceX announced plans to send a spacecraft without a crew to the Martian surface as soon as 2018. The plan sounded plausible; both the rocket and the landing craft were in advanced stages of development (and both have since launched). The mission would be financed by SpaceX and Musk, with operational and technical support from NASA, but no money.
The plan turned out to be politically and financially untenable, and Musk canceled it just over a year after the initial announcement. In its place, he announced a new Mars mission architecture, highlighted by the development of a reusable spacecraft dubbed Starship, which SpaceX describes as the “most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.” Starship is expected to perform its first orbital test flight soon, but there’s been no announced timeline for travel beyond Earth.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for a commercial mission to Mars. Over the two decades since SpaceX was founded, the global space sector has grown into a $447 billion industry (it was worth $162 billion in 2005), with at least 20 companies capable of satellite and orbital launches. As the number of companies grow, so too do entrepreneurship and expertise. And some of that expertise strikes out on its own.
Tom Mueller is one of those entrepreneurs. In 2002, he was SpaceX employee No. 1, and over an 18-year career he played the crucial role in developing engines and propulsion systems for the company’s rockets and spacecraft. After retiring, he indulged his passion for race cars until founding Impulse Space last year. The firm is focused on building sustainable propulsion systems to move objects already in space, from satellites to space junk.
It’s the kind of brash ambition that made SpaceX a success, so it shouldn’t come as a total surprise that Mueller is seeking to beat his former boss to Mars. Impulse Space’s partner in the venture is Relativity Space Inc., a 7-year-old company that plans to use 3D printing to make reusable launch vehicles.
Like Impulse, Relativity has SpaceX DNA; its vice president of engineering and manufacturing, Zach Dunn, worked under Mueller for years. Last year, he approached Mueller about putting together a mission that would draw attention to its new rocket, which is intended to compete directly against SpaceX.
Will it work? The architecture of the Mars mission utilizes the innovative capabilities of both companies, while also relying on NASA for safe entry into the Martian atmosphere. (NASA landed a rover there last year.) If the effort succeeds, NASA and other companies are likely to embrace the opportunity to pay for transport on future missions.
That’s a space race worth cheering about. Government-run space programs continue to advance science and engineering around the world. But the future of space exploration will be defined by fast-moving private companies in competition with each other. The race to put the first commercial rocket on Mars doesn’t have the same allure as sending the first human to the moon. But the achievement would be just as important to the development of a multiplanetary species. Let the best rocket win.
• Branson Vs. Bezos: Who Really Wins This Space Race?: Chris Bryant
• Elon Musk Leaves Vladimir Putin Stranded on Earth: Clara Ferreira Marques
• Space Travel Is a Business Now. That’s Good.: Michael R. Strain | 2022-07-25T11:48:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Space Race the World Needs Is Finally Starting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-space-race-the-world-needs-is-finally-starting/2022/07/25/ee38130e-0c0d-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-space-race-the-world-needs-is-finally-starting/2022/07/25/ee38130e-0c0d-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
How Eaton D.C.’s Claudia Watts would spend a perfect day in D.C.
One of Claudia Watts’s favorite things about her job as director of culture at Eaton D.C. is getting to promote the work of local artists. Over the past two years, Watts, 33, has rotated seven shows, including the first D.C. exhibitions for painter Lindsay Adams and photographer Kyna Uwaeme, through the boutique hotel and cultural hub on K Street NW. “I have a passion for elevating the profile of D.C. as a place for artists and creatives,” she says. “Eaton gave me a really great canvas to promote our local talent.”
Watts, who grew up in Baltimore County, came to D.C. to study at Howard University, where her mother and younger brother also went to school. She spent four years working as a marketing manager at the Anacostia Community Museum and credits much of her career success to working under the leadership of museum director Lori Yarrish, who died in 2018. “She taught me the importance of always reaching a hand back to help the next person, having your team’s back, making sure people know you appreciate them,” Watts says. “She also always said to know what you want and have a plan. And to always expand, do more and see more so I didn’t get pigeonholed.”
In the coming weeks, Watts will leave her role at Eaton to attend American University as a fellow with the Alper Initiative, a program rooted in promoting an understanding and appreciation of the region’s art and artists from the past, present and future. While pursuing her master’s in art history, Watts will curate, write and consult on arts-based projects in the area.
Watts, who spent years living in the Takoma and H Street NE neighborhoods, recently relocated back to Baltimore. She returns to D.C. for her dream day and spends it mostly on foot, taking in city staples and making memories on the Potomac River with close friends.
I think that the perfect day in D.C. is a Sunday, and it starts at Maketto. I would get an iced Americano; it would be half water and half oat milk. I used to go there almost every morning, have my coffee and take a selfie in the giant mirror.
I love food, and there is no better place for someone who loves food than a city with all the different food experiences. After coffee, I would have to have some sort of brunch situation. I would probably go to Eastern Market and just peruse everything, look at the people, smell the shea butters and pick up some fresh flowers. Then I would head to Le Diplomate and have a nice French brunch. I would order a glass of champagne and the warm shrimp salad.
I really love just walking around D.C. in general, so after brunch I would go for a walk. I would probably go over to the drum circle in Malcom X Park [also known as Meridian Hill Park]; that’s always the best. I have so many great memories there. After the drum circle, I would make my way over to the Georgetown waterfront to meet friends for a boat day. We would start in Georgetown and then go all the way to the waterfront in Alexandria and then come back.
After the boat ride, it’s time to head to dinner. I’d go to Shoto with Mykel Konohia and Patrick Burns; they are two of my favorite people and dinner dates. I’d order the premium omakase. Why not experience a little culinary delight? One of my favorite art forms and love languages.
After dinner, I would end the night with a solo cocktail at Copycat Co. I love the bartenders there, I love all of the drinks and I love the music. They would make me an off-menu cocktail, and that’s how I would end my day. | 2022-07-25T11:48:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Eaton D.C.’s Claudia Watts would spend a perfect day in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/25/claudia-watts-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/25/claudia-watts-dream-day/ |
Rare medical book collection tracks tangled history of women’s health
These antique tomes at Second Story Books in D.C. cover gynecology, obstetrics and other fields of women’s health. (Second Story Books)
Women’s health makes headlines in 2022. But it took centuries for the medical profession to characterize and understand reproduction, menstruation and childbirth.
That bumpy history is captured in a new display of antique books at Second Story Books in D.C. The rare volumes — all on view, for sale and available to handle — track centuries of evolving knowledge in the fields of gynecology, obstetrics and more.
Featuring 93 books on women’s health, the collection showcases how early physicians thought about female anatomy, reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth.
Most were written by men, but one 1833 volume on maladies of the uterus was penned by Marie-Anne Victoire Gillain Boivin, a French midwife-turned-obstetrician who helped pioneer the field of obstetrics, invented an early speculum and was among the first to listen to the fetal heartbeat with a stethoscope.
The most valuable book in the collection is A.B. Granville’s 1834 “Graphic Illustrations of Abortion and the Diseases of Menstruation.” A prolific researcher who campaigned against midwives in an attempt to bring pregnancy and childbirth under the control of physicians, Granville wrote extensively about conception and pregnancy in a time of high maternal and infant mortality.
The book contains striking color illustrations of fetuses and uteruses at all stages of development and pregnancy — the consequences of what Granville called “morbid menstruation.”
At the time, the term “abortion” included miscarriage. But Granville also helped women end their pregnancies by administering herbs such as savin in his private practice.
The books come from the collection of the late Milford “Mickey” Foxwell Jr., a physician who became a clinician and educator at the University of Maryland and served as its medical school’s admissions director. A dissecting laboratory at the university bears his name.
Foxwell was a connoisseur of medical history, and his books document the profession’s evolving knowledge about the human body. Second Story Books is selling more than 2,000 of Foxwell’s books from the 17th through 20th centuries. | 2022-07-25T11:48:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rare medical book collection tracks tangled history of women’s health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/25/womens-health-library-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/25/womens-health-library-sale/ |
U.S. shark mania began with this attack more than a century ago
A great white shark swims approximately 50 yards off the coast of the Cape Cod National Sea Shore in Massachusetts on July 15, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images)
The shark mania that grips the country each summer began July 1, 1916, when a young stockbroker from Philadelphia headed into the surf at Beach Haven, N.J. Before then, there wasn’t much fear about attacks from the deep among the innocents at the Jersey Shore.
That all changed when Charles Vansant, a 25-year-old taking the first swim of his summer vacation, struck out into the mild surf. What unfolded over the next dozen days would leave five swimmers dead or maimed and the East Coast terrified, sparking a presidential intervention and “a war on sharks” that continues to this day.
An increasing number of shark attacks have been reported along parts of the northeast U.S. coast in recent years, including a spate of attacks earlier this month off Long Island. And this is Shark Week, which heightens interest in the deadly fish each year. But it’s nothing like the frenzy that was kicked off more than a century ago in New Jersey.
“It was the Titanic of shark attacks,” said Richard Fernicola, a New Jersey physician and author of “Twelve Days of Terror,” an account of what became known as the Matawan Man-Eater.
Only a few people on the beach noticed Vansant increasingly frantic in the water, thinking he was calling to the dog he had been swimming with. But by the time lifeguards carried him ashore, a crowd, including his parents, watched as he bled out onto the sand.
When Julia Child worked for a spy agency fighting sharks
Less than a week later, a hotel worker named Charles Bruder was swimming with friends at nearby Spring Lake when he was repeatedly pulled, shrieking, under the surface as beachgoers screamed for help. When two lifeguards pulled him into their boat, his legs were both severed below the knee. He died minutes later.
Then came July 12. In the little town of Matawan, 11 miles inland on the tidal currents of Matawan Creek, all was calm despite the growing disquiet at the shore. Biologists had largely dismissed the first attacks as flukes, and in any case sharks were all but unknown in those brackish waters. When a fishing captain named Thomas Cottrell saw a menacing form glide under a town bridge, his frantic alarm was dismissed by the local police chief. In frustration, Cottrell literally ran through the streets warning passersby to avoid the water.
But he just missed crossing paths with a group of young workers from a basket factory who had been given the sweltering afternoon off for a swim. One them, an 11-year-old apprentice named Lester Stillwell, waded into the creek and had just shouted “Hey fellas, watch me float!” when his friends saw a dark form surge toward him. He gave a gurgled scream and was pulled into a crimson bloom of churning water.
His friends, still naked from skinny-dipping, ran through the town shouting “Shark! Shark! A shark got Lester,” Fernicola said. A crowd gathered and a group of young men began to swim warily in the shallows, hoping to find a sign of the boy’s body. One of them, a tall tailor named Stanley Fisher, dove deeper than the rest. With Lester’s parents standing with the throng of onlookers, he made a final dive, staying down a long time. Finally, he broke the surface. According to some witnesses, he had the boy’s shredded body in hand. Others said they didn’t see him holding anything. But everyone agreed on what happened next.
Adult-film actress Stormy Daniels said she watched “Shark Week” with President Trump. Here’s what “Shark Week” is all about. (Video: Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
Nearly the entire town was watching as Fisher, struggling to get his footing in the mud, was slammed from his right. They saw the massive shark pull him down, spin him around and chew great chunks of his flesh. They said Fisher, an athlete, fought like a wild man, punching and kicking the dark beast in a cloud of blood and water. But the shark only let go when frantic rescuers in a boat beat him with an oar. When they pulled Fisher out, little was left of his right thigh. The doctor estimated that 10 pounds of flesh been torn away.
“It was just bone,” Fernicola said. “Scratched bone.”
Fisher lived about two hours. By the time he died, the shark had taken yet another victim. Joseph Dunn, a 12-year-old visitor from New York City, was swimming downstream in the creek, oblivious to the pandemonium a few miles inland. Just yards from the dock ladder he felt a rough raking along his leg and then a vicious grip on it. His brother and a friend grabbed him and pulled, feeling the shark tug the other way. But the animal released his grip and they got Dunn ashore, his leg in tatters. He alone would live.
The reaction was huge and national. Shark panic descended on most of the Eastern Seaboard. Cash rewards were offered for sharks. Beach-town mayors had their waters encircled with fences and netting. Lifeguards were given shotguns and harpoons and long lines baited with dead lambs.
President Woodrow Wilson, a former New Jersey governor who was running for reelection that summer, convened an emergency meeting of his cabinet and dispatched a Coast Guard cutter to “fish for the monsters.”
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“U. S. War on Sharks,” a front-page headline in The Washington Post declared on July 15, 1916. The following day, The Post reported “Schools of Man-Eaters Seen in Long Island Sound,” while assuring readers in a separate story that the Potomac was shark free.
In New Jersey, hunters dynamited the waters around Matawan to wreak as much damage as possible.
“They wanted to kill as many sharks as they could but quickly figured out that was futile,” Fernicola said.
Many sharks were caught. Researchers disagree on what species of shark was most likely responsible for the attacks, but a juvenile great white was taken two days after the Matawan deaths with 15 pounds of human remains in its stomach.
It took weeks for swimmers to go back into the water. But with 1917 came World War I, and America’s shark fever faded.
Although shark attacks are rare, the virus was planted. It flared again with the gruesome tales of shark feeding frenzies in the Pacific during World War II. And then, following the publication of Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel depicting the terrorizing of a coastal New England resort, those “Jaws” would never again loosen their grip on the country’s summer psyche.
A version of this story was originally published on May 31, 2017. | 2022-07-25T11:48:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matawan Man-Eater shark attack in New Jersey kicked off frenzy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/25/us-shark-mania-began-with-this-attack-more-than-century-ago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/25/us-shark-mania-began-with-this-attack-more-than-century-ago/ |
Monday briefing: A big week for the U.S. economy; monkeypox global health emergency; President Biden’s health; and more
This will be another big week for economic news.
On Wednesday: The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, is expected to raise interest rates for the fourth time this year. This is one of its main tools to fight rising prices.
On Thursday: The GDP report will tell us whether the U.S. economy grew or shrank over the past three months.
Why this matters: Policymakers are trying to bring prices down by cooling the economy — but without causing a recession. The GDP report will provide another snapshot of how that’s going.
The WHO declared monkeypox a global health emergency this weekend.
Why? More than 16,800 cases of the virus, which causes lesions and rashes, have been reported this year, with at least 2,890 in the U.S.
What this does: It puts pressure on countries to take action and should lead to more funding.
What else to know: Experts are concerned because it’s spreading in new ways. In the past, monkeypox spread through contact with animals; this time, it’s concentrated among men who have sex with men.
President Biden’s covid symptoms improved over the weekend.
The latest: Biden, 79, still had a sore throat — an “encouraging” sign that “his body is clearing the virus,” his doctor said yesterday.
What else to know: The president, who tested positive Thursday, probably has the BA.5 omicron variant, his doctor said. No close contacts have tested positive.
Ukraine is pushing forward with grain exports despite an attack in Odessa.
What happened: Russia launched a missile strike on the port city less than 24 hours after signing a deal to guarantee safe passage from Odessa and two other ports.
What it means: Resuming exports — and easing worldwide shortages — will not be easy, and the attack raises questions about Russia’s commitment to the agreement.
A boat of Haitian migrants trying to get to the U.S. capsized yesterday.
What to know: At least 17 people died, and more are missing. Twenty-five have been rescued; as many as 60 were on the boat when it left the Bahamas.
This is the latest tragedy involving migrants trying to reach the U.S. Last month, the bodies of 46 migrants were found in a truck in Texas, the deadliest incident of its kind in U.S. history.
The Jan. 6 committee wants to speak to the wife of a Supreme Court justice.
Why? Ginni Thomas, who is married to Justice Clarence Thomas, tried to push the White House to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The House panel investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol could try to force Thomas to testify, a committee member said yesterday.
A huge wildfire is burning outside Yosemite National Park in California.
The Oak Fire began Friday and, as of yesterday afternoon, had burned more than 14,500 acres. Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate.
What else to know: It’s California’s peak fire season, which climate change is making longer and more intense.
And now … as you start wading through emails today: We have tips to make managing your work inbox a little easier. | 2022-07-25T11:49:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Monday, July 25 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/07/25/what-to-know-for-july-25/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/07/25/what-to-know-for-july-25/ |
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