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Love both vintage and contemporary design? Here’s how to combine them.
By Marissa Hermanson
This Chevy Chase, Md., home features an area rug from Etsy and a map that clients of Heather Disabella had already purchased. (Reema Desai Boldes)
Vintage furniture and accessories can add personality, authenticity and a touch of sentimentality to any home. Reusing old pieces is also more eco-friendly than buying new. It’s no wonder secondhand pieces are having a moment.
“There’s always a way to tell a story in your home, and that’s what vintage pieces bring,” says Heather Disabella, an interior designer in the District. “That’s where you can be unique and different and set yourself apart from your neighbor’s house.”
Lorna Gross, an interior designer in North Bethesda, Md., agrees. “Some people say they don’t like antiques. I believe there is an antique era for everyone,” she says. “Everyone thinks of antiques as super ornate baroque and Renaissance, gold and heavily carved. Those in proportion work for some, and then for others, they like the clean lines of mid-century or art deco.”
But how can you incorporate older pieces in your home without making it feel like a fussy and dusty antique store or a disjointed mishmash of styles? We spoke with design experts from the D.C. area about how to blend old and new to get a look that is harmonious and reflects your individual style.
To make sure you’re creating more harmony than discord when mixing periods and styles, keep the big picture in mind. “It’s difficult for people, because they are approaching it one item at a time and not how all the items play together,” says Lisa Shaffer, owner of the D.C. design firm Lisa & Leroy.
A vision board can help you see how contemporary pieces look when paired with something older. Disabella recommends using Google Slides to compile personal snapshots and images pulled from websites.
It’s also important that the antiques speak to the vernacular of the home. “The architecture of the home should be influencing the interior design,” Shaffer says. If it’s a turn-of-the-century structure, include furnishings and decor from that era, but don’t go overboard; create a mix. For instance, Shaffer loves pairing vintage dining chairs with a new table, or vice versa. “The tension between the two can create such interest,” she says.
To get started, Shaffer says, pick two eras that you love, then mix in pieces from those periods with your existing furnishings. She likes combining pieces with sleek postmodern lines and those with intricate elements to create contrast.
You don’t want to lay it on too thick, though, and make your home feel disjointed and chaotic. Your eye won’t know where to go if you have too many statement pieces competing for your attention. Disabella says there should be at least one element of vintage in each room, creating a focal point. “If there’s too many of those things, it’s not special anymore, and then it’s just a house filled with junk,” she says.
Gross takes a mathematical approach when blending styles, so she strikes the right balance. To start, she recommends using a 90/10 or 80/20 ratio of new to old. “I don’t exceed a 70/30 mix if I want that space to appear fresh and current,” she says.
Sticking to a cohesive color palette also helps marry the old and new, Gross says. For case goods, such as dressers, bookcases and buffets, that means making sure the wood tone and stain are in the same family. For upholstery, cover sofas and chairs in a fabric that relates to the room. “That’s the way to pull it in and give it a sense of belonging,” she says.
And although family heirlooms have sentimental value, they may be hard to incorporate if they don’t fit your style. In that case, Gross recommends reimagining the piece. If it’s a buffet, she says, top it with contemporary objets d’art, candlesticks or ginger jars, or update the hardware with something more modern. “Put [something new] on a piece that is 150 years old, and then it’s brought up to current times,” she says.
Shaffer likes to use vintage buffets, dressers and nightstands when furnishing clients’ homes. She particularly gravitates toward pieces marked by notable designers and manufacturers — such as Henredon, Hickory Chair, or Milo Baughman for Thayer Coggin — because that shows quality construction. “I want it to last another 50, 60, 100 years,” she says.
If you’re not ready to invest in bigger items, start small and layer in pieces as your budget allows and as you get a sense of what you like. Rugs, artwork, decorative objects and accent furniture (think side tables) are great starting points.
For accessories, Shaffer favors small statement pieces, such as Stiffel lamps and brass candlesticks. Gross enjoys accent tables, namely a good martini table. And Disabella likes chairs. “One of the easiest things is a cool chair, whether it be some old dining chair or something simple with a nice, weathered look to it, because a chair can be used in almost any room as an accent or a plant stand, or in a guest room as a place for bags to be set on,” she says.
Some furnishings are best purchased new rather than vintage, though. Antique upholstery, for instance, can be hard to work with. A new sofa with firm cushions and pristine fabric outshines an old, dusty, worn-in couch that smells like mothballs. “A lot of people struggle with upholstery,” Shaffer says. “You have to do something with it. They’ll pick a vintage sofa and put a very historical pattern on it, and then they get stuck.”
Antique lighting, although beautiful, also can be difficult to work with, because it may need some elbow grease and rewiring to get it functioning again. But when you find a great piece, it can be worth the effort. Gross fell in love with the bronze and frosted glass on an octagonal art deco fixture made in the 1930s in France. She had it replicated, so she could use it in a room where she needed more than one fixture. “The design was so perfect, and I couldn’t find anything out there like it,” she says.
In the end, it’s all about finding those types of pieces: the ones that you connect with on a deeper level. “Have fun and enjoy the hunt, and there’s no wrong decision,” Disabella says. “If something speaks to you, that’s all you need, and you work around that and figure out how to make it sing.”
Marissa Hermanson is a writer in Richmond. | 2022-07-26T12:33:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tips for combining antiques with modern pieces in your home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/07/26/vintage-antiques-contemporary-design/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/07/26/vintage-antiques-contemporary-design/ |
Jonathan Banks of ‘Better Call Saul’ explains Mike’s saving grace
Jonathan Banks plays Mike in “Better Call Saul.” (Bryce Duffy/Contour/Getty Images)
Jonathan Banks, 75, is a veteran actor who stars as Mike Ehrmantraut in “Breaking Bad” and its prequel, “Better Call Saul,” which airs its final episode Aug. 15. Banks was born in Washington and grew up in Chillum Heights, Md. He now lives in Los Angeles.
I need to sort of start off with a confession, which is that I’ve watched all of “Better Call Saul” and loved your character and everything you did with him. But I’ve only watched one episode of “Breaking Bad.”
Really? [Laughs.] How about that. Oh my God.
It’s a pretty embarrassing admission.
No, I think it’s kind of cool, actually
I watched the first episode and just thought: Man, I can’t handle this.
Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Trust me. “Breaking Bad” only gets better.
The amazing thing about Mike and the way you play him is that he’s both this lovable, adoring grandfather and this surly, stone-cold —
Killer. Yup.
How do you pull that off?
Well, historically, people have been pulling it off forever. Including, you know — Putin’s probably great with his grandkids. Well, I doubt that. No, I mean, again, the ability of people to divorce themselves from the crimes that they commit. As far as Mike is concerned, I really love that character. And the only saving grace in his mind, the way I played it, the only decent thing about him is that he loves his granddaughter. He doesn’t forgive himself for his son’s death. He’s the cause of it. All the stupid platitudes that you can say about, you know, he’s moving ahead or blah, blah, blah. No. You’re responsible for your son’s death; you don’t move ahead.
It’s true, we’re all complicated. But you bring that to the screen in a way that just resonated with so many viewers who love that character.
Well, I love that character. That broken, broken character. You know, you wake up in the middle of the night with regrets for things that you did, you know, in junior high school, for Christ’s sakes, or earlier — throughout a lifetime and you can’t change it. I’m a hypocrite in the sense that, yes, I do move ahead. I, Jonathan Banks, at least try to move ahead from things that there’s no way I can change now.
Your portrayal of Mike is steady and unbothered, and it really balances out the frantic energy that Bob Odenkirk brings to Saul. I wondered if that extends off the set as well?
Bobby always has something going on. He’s going to write a book. He’s got to do this. He’s going to do that. He’s always got something going on. You could sit me down by the Reflecting Pool on a bench, and I would be content there all day long. [Laughs.] That is my energy. I could be content there all day.
Bob Odenkirk on the final season of “Better Call Saul” and his new memoir, “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama”
You were born in D.C. and grew up in Chillum, Md. Do you get back here often?
Most everybody has passed away in my family. I still have friends there that, you know, I certainly stay in contact with. Literally my diaper buddy, our mothers met when we were in the old steel strollers on Legation Road, he’s six months older than I am, but we still commiserate.
I’m sure when you do get back here, the city just seems transformed from what you remember growing up.
When I would come back I always used to stay at the Hotel Washington. Because when I was 10 or 11 that’s where I would get off the streetcar, go in and sit in the lobby, and I’d wait for my mother to get off work. But yes, I do recognize the town because my love affair with that city is between the Capitol and the Lincoln and Arlington Cemetery. My mom was a single mom, and we didn’t have a lot. And she kept trying to do better for us. Kept going to school, got her teaching degree, retired as a college professor. And she had started out in life at 15 on her own working as a housekeeper. So she was a lot to live up to.
But every night of the year almost there is something at your disposal that’s free in Washington, D.C. And if you have somebody who exposes you to it, begrudgingly or not as a little kid, eventually you have a massive appreciation for it. So I love that city. You get lost in the Smithsonian. And I don’t think there’s ever been a time, if I’ve had the time to walk around, that I still don’t go in and read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.
When making “Better Call Saul” did knowing what happened to Mike make things more difficult or easier for you as an actor?
My approach to it was that Mike at that point has no idea. I think what possibly made it easier to is that Mike doesn’t give a damn about himself anymore. His son’s death is a shroud that’s all over him. When his son died, Mike’s soul was lost. I think Mike fully expects that he’s going to die somewhere at some point in the end. And it’s relief to him. He’s staying alive because of the debt he owes his son to take care of his granddaughter.
You did so much before both of these shows. And now there are YouTube compilations of Jonathan Banks characters over the years. Have you dug into any of those?
No. Never seen them.
What do you make of your career?
My wife doesn’t like it when I use the term “journeyman,” but I’m very proud of that term. I’m a working stiff, and I like to look at myself that way. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate great art or what I judged to be or see as great art, great performances. But I know whence I came.
As “Better Call Saul” ends, are you nostalgic for your time with the show and “Breaking Bad,” or are you just moving on?
It couldn’t have been better, but no. When something’s done it’s done. I will always feel good about it. What a great experience. And it’s time to move on. Now I’m about to go off to Berlin until January, where I’m doing a new show for Apple with Noomi Rapace, from “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
Is it sweeter having this success now than it would have been at the beginning?
I don’t think I’d trade anything. It is what it is. I’ll tell you what’s hard, Joe, is I really can’t completely comprehend how lucky I am. I can’t really take it in. And I think the older you get, the more you realize: Oh my God, we’re all in this together, and we’re all very similar. And you see the pain that’s going on in this world and you think: How did I get this lucky?
Mark Esper on Trump: ‘There were a lot of bad ideas being proposed’ | 2022-07-26T12:33:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jonathan Banks of ‘Better Call Saul’ explains Mike’s saving grace - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/26/better-call-saul-breaking-bad-mike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/26/better-call-saul-breaking-bad-mike/ |
Anees wants to bring everyone back to summer camp for his debut tour
By Zainab Mudallal
Northern Virginia native Anees started his career as a lawyer, then music became his outlet. (Issa Kaddissi)
You may recognize 29-year-old Anees from his TikTok or Instagram videos performing or freestyling from his car, particularly when Justin Bieber crashed one of his live streams. Or, more recently, you might have seen him performing his hit song “Sun and Moon” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The Arab American artist is known for his genre-defying, uplifting sound and mood-lifting, soulful lyrics about love and self-care — a breath of fresh air in a world that can be hard on us. The former lawyer turned singer-songwriter from Northern Virginia just embarked on his first tour, with a closing date at the Howard Theatre on July 29.
“Every single person should be doing the thing that makes them feel alive, and this is it for me,” he said in a Zoom interview from his same car. We talked about his background, favorite artists and what the Summer Camp Tour means to him.
Q: What made you want to start your music career?
A: I grew up in an ecosystem of music. My parents played a wide range of music. So subconsciously, music was always woven into the fabric of my life. But I never believed that it was a career path just because nobody ever told me that it could be. I went and studied other things and became very depressed, especially when I went to law school. And then I got to my lowest point, which was graduating law school and becoming a lawyer. I absolutely hated it, and music was my outlet from depression. What started as my therapy eventually became my career.
Q: You’re Arab American, and in our culture, there are often three paths that are laid out: becoming a doctor, engineer or lawyer. Did that play a part of why you became a lawyer, and how did that affect your transition to music?
A: My family was very supportive; they didn’t pressure me at all. I think what led me to pursue a more traditional path wasn’t a traditional upbringing, but it was the school system. The school system doesn’t encourage you to do arts. I also think when you come from an Arab American background, the generation above you was in survival mode. So you inherit traces of that mentality. They survive so that we could do something that isn’t just to put the money on the table, but to make our hearts feel alive. Once I had that reckoning moment, I started being happy every day.
Q: You were on Jimmy Kimmel recently. How was that experience?
A: That was a dream come true. And it’s one of those blessings that you don’t question. The truth is, it’s a blur. You get up there, you perform. You come home and you fly home. And you fall asleep. And you wake up and you’re like, did that really happen? Just to think that the same car I’m sitting in right now having this conversation with you, six months ago I created that song right here in this seat, and then to see that within half a year, I was able to go on one of the biggest stages in the planet and sing it to the world, it’s crazy.
Q: What are your ultimate goals as a musician? What do you want to use your platform for?
A: It may sound corny, but it’s just to have inner peace and to wake up every day feeling more excited than I was the last day. There’s nothing inside of me that gets excited by a Grammy Award or a certain number of followers or streams. I mean, that stuff is all very cool. And it can absolutely change your life. But really, I just want to be able to make art every day and have people connect with it.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration for your music?
A: My inspirations for the music that I make are typically the people that I love the most. If I’m writing a love song, it’s obviously about my wife and my relationship with her. Even the songs that aren’t super lovey-dovey, like the more introspective songs like my song “Leave Me,” might come across as a sad song to people, but it’s me reflecting on how I feel about myself when I’m not the best husband that I can be. And my relationship with myself. Because self-love is just as important, if not more important than love for other people.
Q: Who are some of your favorite artists?
A: DMX. Lauryn Hill. Ed Sheeran. John Mayer. And just to be spicy, we’ll throw in Rex Orange County.
Q: Let’s talk about your first tour. So how do you feel about it?
A: This is the most exciting part of my career because for years, I have entertained my community of people through a screen. But music is meant to be experienced. And now I get to go from city to city to city to city and see people, look them in the eyes, experience the emotion in the same room with them. I feel like when we go on tour, we’re going to have that same magical connection that I felt growing up going to summer camp.
Q: Hence the name, the Summer Camp Tour.
A: That’s why we named it that. I want every day on tour to feel like it’s the first night of summer camp. Because I remember as a kid when you’d show up for that first night, you’d have this sense of hope and relief knowing you were about to have an experience that was going to remind you of all the things you love most. And I want people to feel that exact same way for three hours when they come to my show. And the show at Howard Theatre is the final show on tour, and it’s my birthday show. Unlike the other dates, we’re going to do a late show. The last song will be past midnight, on the 30th of July, bringing in my 30th birthday.
Q: Do you have any favorite memories of the DMV or any favorite spots that you like to frequent while you’re here?
A: What I love most about this area is how diverse it is. I think that’s something I took for granted as a kid growing up that in this area; you got every color, every sound, every flavor. It’s really like a melting pot, and I think that informed my life views and allowed me to be a better artist by allowing me to communicate a message that connected to a wider range of human beings. Another beautiful thing about this area is our parks. I’m a nature guy. I go to Algonkian Park, Great Falls Park, Riverbend Park. Those are just places where I find my center. I’m very proud to bring people here. And whenever I go to LA, people are like, when are you going to move here? And I always tell them I’m not.
July 29 at 10:30 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. thehowardtheatre.com. $27. | 2022-07-26T12:33:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anees interview: Summer Camp Tour - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/26/anees-dc-summer-camp-tour/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/26/anees-dc-summer-camp-tour/ |
Med students walk out mid-ceremony to protest speaker’s antiabortion views
The incident at the University of Michigan became the latest example of clashes over abortion stances
Incoming University of Michigan medical students walked out of a keynote speech by Kristin Collier at the school's white-coat ceremony on July 24. (Video: Brendan Scorpio)
Each member of the incoming class had their own calculus about whether to stay seated during the keynote address by Kristin Collier, an openly antiabortion health provider, or join fellow students in a peaceful protest. When the day came, about 70 people quietly rose from their seats and walked out as Collier took the stage — a show of dissent one month after Roe v. Wade was overturned. A clip of the walkout quickly went viral, with one video viewed more than 15 million times by Tuesday morning.
For some conservatives, the walkout was the latest example of “cancel culture” on university campuses. For others, it was a welcome sign of young people standing up for a procedure now severely restricted in some states.
“We saw an opportunity to utilize our positions as future physicians to advocate for and stand in solidarity with individuals whose rights to bodily autonomy and medical care are endangered,” the organizers said in a statement to The Washington Post.
A University of Michigan spokesperson said in a statement that Collier, the director of the medical school’s health, spirituality and religion program, had been selected to give the keynote address “based on nominations and voting by ... medical students, house officers and faculty.”
Collier, who has taught at the University of Michigan for 17 years, did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. The university spokesperson said Collier is not speaking to the press.
In a June interview with the Catholic newsletter the Pillar, Collier detailed her “conversion to a pro-life person” after years of being secular and staunchly “pro-choice.” A month earlier, she posted on Twitter that she “can’t not lament the violence directed at my prenatal sisters in the act of abortion, done in the name of autonomy.”
In her Sunday address, Collier urged students to “get to know your patients as human beings, not just as their scans, labs, chemistry and data.” While she didn’t explicitly mention abortion, she appeared to address the controversy by saying, “I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks.”
“We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur,” she continued. “And I hope that for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters most — coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families with the goal of welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exists on this earth.”
One student told The Post that after the Dobbs decision, having a speaker who has expressed antiabortion views “felt inappropriate and like a slap in the face.”
“She can hold whatever opinion ... but I think the professional sphere is where one needs to be objective, especially as health-care providers,” added the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns over backlash to the walkout.
Before the ceremony, the students created a poll to gauge whether to take action. When about 91 percent of respondents said they were either against or strongly against having Collier speak, according to the organizers, they created a petition to have her removed as the keynote. They also proposed having a conversation with Collier at a later date — just not during a ceremony considered a rite of passage in their field of study.
University officials, however, stood by their decision. Collier “never planned to address a divisive topic” during the ceremony, the statement read.
“The University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs,” it added.
As students prepared for the white-coat ritual, some were planning their protest. They wore pins with abortion rights slogans to the ceremony, recited an added line about patients’ rights to their statement of ideals and then eventually walked out.
“You could tell there was this overwhelming sense of pride in the air. They didn’t know each other before, but there was this sort of big breath of relief when everyone got outside and they were able to stand together in solidarity,” said Brendan Scorpio, a Detroit-based social organizer who attended the ceremony and posted the clip of the walkout. “It was a very meaningful, powerful moment.”
A large group of students just walked out of Notre Dame's commencement during VP Mike Pence's address. #ND2017 pic.twitter.com/g3dCuqPbXg
— WNDU (@WNDU) May 21, 2017
The debate surrounding Collier’s speech is preceded by decades of culture clashes on university campuses, said Peter Cajka, who teaches in the department of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. The University of Michigan was known for the student activism it sparked in the 1960s.
“These culture-war-type debates at universities erupted in the ’60s as the university became a more political space,” Cajka said.
More recently, students at Boston University left an April lecture featuring a conservative political commentator, the school’s newspaper reported. In 2017, graduating seniors at Notre Dame walked out of their commencement ceremony as Vice President Mike Pence delivered an address.
But Cajka sees a switch in the clashes occurring on campuses today. Politics are bleeding into areas that were historically apolitical, such as medicine, technology and science, he said. The catalyst of these protests often boils down to speakers seemingly embodying “the politics people are pushing against at times when said politics are at an issue.”
“Without the Dobbs decision, does this speech even matter? No,” he said of Collier’s keynote. “Because this person who’s pro-life, well that’s normally just an opinion. But now it seems like it has or represents some political power.”
Michigan is among the handful of Midwestern states that still protect access to abortion, though the procedure is subject to some restrictions.
Its flagship university and medical center “remain committed to providing high quality, safe reproductive care for patients,” the University of Michigan said. | 2022-07-26T12:33:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Michigan students stage walk-out over speaker’s antiabortion views - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/michigan-medical-students-abortion-walkout/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/michigan-medical-students-abortion-walkout/ |
FILE - Jack Harlow arrives wearing a Lil Nas X shirt at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 26, 2022, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Kendrick Lamar, Lil Nas X and Harlow are top contenders with seven nominations at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, MTV announced Tuesday, July 26, 2022. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-07-26T12:33:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jack Harlow, Lil Nas X, Kendrick Lamar top MTV VMA nominees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kendrick-lamar-lil-nas-x-jack-harlow-top-mtv-vma-nominees/2022/07/26/d40f12f4-0cdd-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kendrick-lamar-lil-nas-x-jack-harlow-top-mtv-vma-nominees/2022/07/26/d40f12f4-0cdd-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
By LaVonne Roberts
Jenna Knauss, a 35-year-old mother of twin 9-year-old girls, says she came up with “every excuse in the book” when trying to reduce household waste. “I think I can speak for most parents when I say that my biggest fear was adding one more thing to our already busy lives,” the Lenox, Mass. psychotherapist says. “Life is hard enough — we are just one family — don’t we have enough on our plates?”
But after taking a hard look at her complacency, Knauss realized she needed to take action. “I felt like a hypocrite talking about my worries about the future of our environment in conversations with my children but continuing to put off measurable change,” Knauss says. “So I decided to take action by showing how to reduce household waste rather than just telling my kids.”
She and her family have specifically been focusing on how much food they waste.
The average American family creates about 18 pounds of trash daily, most of which could be recycled but isn’t. That amounts to 6,570 pounds of household waste per family annually, with more than 24 percent of the garbage in landfills being wasted food.
You may not be able to save the planet single-handedly. But making a conscious effort to reduce not only helps the Earth but teaches children the importance of what we consume and how we dispose of it. While the climate crisis can feel almost impossible to reverse, reducing food waste at home as a family can be a great place to try to help.
Food waste is an issue
“There’s no question that the most significant area for improvement when it comes to eliminating waste is food,” says Christopher Wharton, an assistant dean of innovation and strategic initiatives at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions.
In fact, in America, we throw out about a third of the food we produce, says Katharine Hayhoe, the Nature Conservancy’s chief scientist. “As it decays, it produces so many heat-trapping gasses that if global food waste were its own country, it would be the fourth-biggest emitter in the world.”
Hayhoe suggests a simple shift: “If you can, shop more often, buy less and plan ahead, so you waste less.”
In 2021, the city of Phoenix collaborated with Wharton on a study to reduce food waste in alignment with their goal to become a Zero Waste city by 2050. Wharton discovered there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to limiting waste, and encourages people to try whatever works for them. “People care about behavior changes in different ways and for different reasons,” Wharton says.
He and his team began by telling study participants that U.S. households create 45 million tons of food waste annually. For the study, more than 60 households received food-grade scales and clear plastic bins for weighing and food waste collection. Households weighed their food waste weekly and reported back to researchers, who then offered tips on how the participants could reduce waste each week.
The study’s results revealed that participating families reduced food waste by more than 25 percent. Wanting to share what they learned, Wharton offered his tips on ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation website.
What Is a zero-waste lifestyle, and how can we live it?
One method of reducing our carbon footprint is to adopt what is called a zero-waste lifestyle. This doesn’t mean we create no waste at all — that’s impossible. But instead, it’s a way to think about and reduce consumption and waste in landfills.
“Trying to live a zero-waste life while simultaneously raising a family can feel impossible, but it’s not,” says Anita Vandyke, an environmentalist and author of “A Zero Waste Life” and “A Zero Waste Family.” “Being a zero-waste family is about doing what you can when you can.”
Radically reducing waste doesn’t happen overnight, but we can reduce our carbon footprint by making a few changes. Knowing parents are constantly juggling their children’s needs, work and money, Vandyke wrote “A Zero Waste Family” not to add guilt but to offer lessons she learned while navigating motherhood. When it comes to food and the packaging that comes with it, for instance, she suggests families shop smarter by scouring the supermarket’s outer aisles and bulk stores for package-free food. Globally, packaging is the largest source of plastic waste. Containers and packaging alone account for 23 percent of material in landfills in the United States.
Vandyke also suggests families compost together and set up a system that works for them. This might be as simple as contributing to a compost bin in a community garden or making your own. Websites such as Litterless show where you can compost. Today, more than 200 U.S. cities have curbside composting programs. California and Vermont, which have made composting mandatory, point out to residents that farms using compost can grow up to 40 percent more food in times of drought.
Vandyke suggests everyone have a “portable kit,” where a reusable tote bag with a reusable water bottle, coffee cup, stainless steel straw, spork and a cloth napkin is readily available.
Shop differently
Where you shop can make a difference, too. Grahame Hubbard, a father of 13- and 14-year-old daughters, is acutely aware of the impact of household waste on the environment. “I grew up on a fishing boat in Australia, in a culture that didn’t waste anything. Plus, I was very aware of food shortage as a child,” Hubbard says, “so it’s important to me that my daughters don’t waste.”
When Hubbard’s daughters were younger, he shared with them that more than 40 percent of freshly packaged foods and farm produce around the world end up in a dumpster. At the same time, more than 800 million people worldwide don’t have enough food. That conversation prompted Hubbard and his family to search for companies that recycle food that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.
Hubbard and his family use ReGrained, a food company that “rescues grain from beer brewing and transforms it into a brownie mix,” he says. They also have a subscription with Misfits Market, which delivers organic produce that “isn’t as aesthetically appealing and might be tossed, which we plan our meals around.”
Empower your children
During the pandemic, Hubbard and his family left reusable cloth bags with handmade cards and daffodil bulbs on their neighbor’s doorsteps as gifts. Afterward, Hubbard, the owner of Plant Specialists, a Manhattan landscape design firm, donated flowers, herbs and potato vines, which he and his daughters helped plant in their neighbors’ planter boxes using local compost. “The gesture really built a community and offered my girls a sense of agency,” he says, noting the neighbors became more interested in composting. “I couldn’t help thinking, this could be such a better place if we could just get people excited about composting and gardening.”
Knauss found that modeling environmentally friendly behavior has empowered her children to understand the impact of their actions. “Too often, we think we have to hide our imperfections or feelings from our children,” Knauss says. “I shared that I wasn’t quite sure how to approach such a huge problem and that it can feel overwhelming. Then, I invited them to problem-solve as a family.”
Knauss’s family created a challenge to reduce waste further. “We decided to weigh our food waste before and after we started to measure progress,” Knauss says. “Now, our conversations revolve around what we need versus what we want and how we’ll celebrate milestones with experiences rather than possessions.”
LaVonne Roberts is a freelance journalist covering health, science and technology. | 2022-07-26T12:33:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How families can waste less food - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/07/26/family-food-waste-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/07/26/family-food-waste-climate/ |
The Proud Boys and the Base are now illegal in New Zealand
Designating these two white-supremacist groups as terrorist organizations will have global consequences
Analysis by Brian J. Phillips
A pro-Trump mob approaches the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
New Zealand recently designated two U.S. far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Base, as terrorist organizations. This puts them in the same category as groups such as the Islamic State and makes it a crime for any New Zealander to support or join the group.
In doing so, New Zealand joins a growing trend of Western governments taking far-right violence more seriously. New Zealand’s actions may seem small, but they overlap other actions that make it harder for far-right groups to operate and fundraise around the globe.
How ‘great replacement’ theory led to the Buffalo shooting
What does this designation mean?
Terrorist designation, also called proscription, is a policy used by many countries to declare organizations as serious threats to security. The United States, for example, has a list of 68 officially designated foreign terrorist organizations, along with other lists of individual terrorists and related entities.
The New Zealand list, like those of other countries, makes it a criminal act to belong or provide support to listed groups, even by donating online. New Zealanders can face up to 14 years in prison for providing funding to a terrorist entity.
Why were these groups designated?
Countries regularly add and, less frequently, remove groups from their lists as they get more information about threats. My research with Mirna El-Masri into six countries’ terrorist lists found that Islamist groups have been the most likely to be designated in recent decades. This is consistent with other work showing that (Western) governments and publics have been less likely to consider white supremacists terrorists than other violent individuals or groups.
But some Western countries have been changing that recently. Last year, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom added the Base to their terrorist lists. Canada also designated the Proud Boys and other far-right groups. In designating the Proud Boys and the Base, New Zealand has followed that pattern.
Why would New Zealand have designated these groups, given that the Proud Boys or the Base do not seem to be operating in the country? Most likely, it’s because New Zealand has been on high alert against right-wing violence since a 2019 white-supremacist shooting that killed 51 people in Christchurch mosques. The shooter drew on propaganda from other countries, and inspired other extremists, like the U.S. gunman who attacked an El Paso Walmart later the same year, killing 20 people.
In other words, the government is recognizing that the growing right-wing violence in Western countries has global causes and consequences. Both designated groups operate in many countries. The Base is a white-supremacist network with global ties. New Zealand’s case for designating the Proud Boys mentions the group’s transnational presence and its organized involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Although the Proud Boys claim not to be racist, they advocate what they call “Western chauvinism.” Members of the group appeared prominently at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Consequently, they are considered broadly part of the same racist, transnational, far-right movement as the Base.
How will this affect the two groups outside the country?
Despite New Zealand’s population of only 5 million and its physical isolation from most developed nations, its designations can have important consequences.
The Proud Boys and the Base rely on online support, including donations. Groups that depend on donations are more likely to be affected by terrorist designations. As the Christchurch shooting showed, New Zealand has far-right sympathizers, some of whom might have helped finance the Proud Boys or the Base. The designations make such potential donations a serious crime, which could discourage them. Further, when one country designates a group, other countries often follow suit. The more countries that list a group, the more likely it is that others do, too. That could hurt fundraising even more.
But donations are just the beginning. Designations can actually lead to fewer attacks, my research suggests, specifically among the military allies of the designating country. That’s because international cooperation is essential in global counterterrorism. When one country designates a terrorist group, it collects more information that it can then pass along to those allies — like the United States.
In other words, New Zealand’s designations may be important in the growing effort to fight the financing and operations of far-right extremist organizations.
Brian J. Phillips is a reader (associate professor) in the department of government at the University of Essex, and a co-author of “Insurgent Terrorism” (Oxford University Press, 2022). | 2022-07-26T12:34:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Proud Boys and the Base are now illegal in New Zealand - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/white-supremacist-terrorist-groups-new-zealand/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/white-supremacist-terrorist-groups-new-zealand/ |
Wind energy in the Gulf gets an unlikely fan: The oil industry
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Are you a congressional staffer who peacefully protested inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday? We want to hear from you! Email maxine.joselow@washpost.com.
Support for President Biden's plan to open up the Gulf of Mexico to offshore wind development is coming from a surprising place: the oil and gas industry in the region.
The fossil fuel industry has loudly criticized many of Biden's climate and energy policies, including his plan for offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters over the next five years. But the sector sees an opportunity for workers with experience on offshore drilling rigs to transfer their skills to offshore wind farms, according to interviews with industry officials.
“We're all for wind energy in the Gulf,” said Mike Moncla, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, a trade association representing more than 1,100 independent producers and service companies in the state.
“Putting in platforms and using crew boats — those things are definitely transferrable” from offshore drilling platforms to offshore wind turbines, Moncla said.
Daniel Hogan, president and chief operating officer of Werrus AquaMarine, which owns four oil and gas blocks in the Gulf of Mexico, agreed.
“In the oil and gas business, we do a lot of things that are very similar to what can be done in the offshore wind business,” said Hogan, who recently launched Southern Wind Offshore, which has bid for blocks in Louisiana state waters where it hopes to erect wind turbines.
Biden announced the plan to open up more than 700,000 acres in the Gulf to commercial wind farms during a speech last week in Somerset, Mass.
The wind energy areas in the Gulf have the potential to power more than 3 million homes, according to administration officials.
One area is off Galveston, Tex., and another is near Lake Charles, La.
The Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is accepting public comments on the proposed wind energy areas until Aug. 19, spokesman John Filostrat said in an email.
Blown away by similarities
Hogan said he sees the following similarities between working on an offshore drilling rig and an offshore wind farm:
Safety: Engineers working on offshore oil platforms must complete rigorous safety training, particularly after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The training helps them understand how to build structures that can withstand strong waves, wind and hurricanes. The same knowledge could be applied to installing towering turbines.
Vessels: Specialized boats are designed to carry workers and cargo to offshore drilling platforms. The same vessels could be used for offshore turbines, especially considering the Jones Act, a 1920 law that restricts water transportation of cargo between U.S. ports to ships that are U.S.-owned, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-registered and U.S.-built.
Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group that represents both the offshore oil and wind industries, cited even more overlapping roles.
“Steel fabricators, heavy lift vessel operators, marine construction firms, subsea engineers, seismic surveyors, and a host of other jobs and businesses that are integral to Gulf of Mexico oil and gas development are also building out American offshore wind,” Milito said in an email. “There is a reason the first U.S.-built offshore wind substation is being constructed in Ingleside, Texas.”
Bipartisan backing on the Hill
Far from the Gulf, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have voiced bipartisan backing for offshore wind development in the region.
In 2019, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) sent a letter to then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt expressing support for not only the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, but also possible future offshore wind projects in the Gulf.
“Louisiana and Gulf Coast companies that have decades of experience working in the Gulf of Mexico are eager to make needed investments to support this project and future offshore wind energy projects,” the senators wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.
The letter was signed by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), whose state has set an ambitious goal of generating 5 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035. (Biden has set a nationwide target of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.)
However, Kennedy spokeswoman Jess Andrews said the senator is currently more focused on unleashing domestic fossil fuel production.
“The senator has always taken an all-of-the-above approach to energy,” Andrews said in an email. “While this can include supporting certain reliable wind energy options, the most important thing this administration can do right now to lower inflation and support jobs is tap Louisiana’s robust supplies of natural gas and oil. As long as the president wages war on the most reliable energy sources our country has to offer, Americans and Louisianians will suffer.”
Six House staffers arrested while staging climate protest in Schumer's office
Six House staffers were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Monday for refusing to leave the office of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), where they urged him to continue negotiations on a climate spending package that has been all but killed by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Jacob Knutson reports for Axios.
The peaceful protest was unusual because congressional aides typically remain out of the public eye. It came after more than 200 staffers anonymously signed a letter this month urging their bosses to take swift action on climate legislation.
Philip Bennett, a staffer for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and president of the Congressional Workers Union
Omar wrote on Twitter that she was “proud” of the staffers, while Khanna tweeted that he stood “in solidarity” with them.
Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he previously said he wants to continue pursuing climate legislation, including potentially through a second round of budget reconciliation this fall.
Energy Department announces environmental justice efforts
The Energy Department on Monday announced that 146 programs will support President Biden's Justice40 Initiative, which seeks to deliver at least 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate-related investments to disadvantaged communities.
The covered programs include:
$5 billion worth of grants to enhance the resilience of the electric grid and reduce the risk of power lines falling during extreme weather events.
The $3.5 billion Weatherization Assistance Program, which seeks to increase the energy efficiency of homes owned or occupied by low-income individuals.
The Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program, which can guarantee up to $2 billion in loans to Native American tribes to support energy development projects and activities.
Many of Energy's environmental justice efforts are being led by Shalanda Baker, whom the Senate recently confirmed to lead the agency's Office of Minority Economic Impact.
“We have millions of people around the country who have been suffering from an energy system that has been harming them,” Baker said in an interview with The Climate 202 on Monday. “And we now have an extraordinary opportunity to do something that has never been done before, and to deliver on a promise that the president made on Day One.”
Climate change is putting national parks in peril
Climate change is posing an increased threat to the country’s treasured national parks as events such as wildfires, torrential rainfall and rising temperatures occur more frequently and intensely. According to a recent study, 223 national parks — more than half of all parks in the Lower 48 — are at risk, Salwan Georges, Julie Vitkovskaya and Joshua Partlow report for The Post.
In June, historic floods at Yellowstone National Park swept away a key road, cutting off the town of Gardiner, Mont., from critical infrastructure, contaminating water supplies and restricting access to tourism dollars just as the summer season began. It could take three to five years to rebuild the roadway that connects the town to the northern entrance of the park, costing roughly $1 billion.
Meanwhile, the Oak Fire — which has been raging near Yosemite National Park since Friday amid hot and dry conditions — quickly spread over more than 16,700 acres by Monday morning, becoming California’s largest blaze so far this season, Paulina Villegas reports for The Post. It has already threatened thousands of structures and put about 3,000 people under evacuation orders.
Clean energy deployment plunged in second quarter, report says
During the second quarter of this year, the U.S. clean energy industry saw a 55 percent drop in project installations compared with the same period in 2021, according to a quarterly market report released Tuesday by the American Clean Power Association, a trade group.
The decline marks the lowest quarter for clean energy capacity additions since the third quarter of 2019. It comes amid market head winds such as supply chain issues, policy inaction and inflation.
The report found that onshore wind installations were down 78 percent compared to the same period last year. Solar installations fell 53 percent compared to the same quarter in 2021, in part because of concerns over the Commerce Department’s investigation into solar panels assembled in four Southeast Asian nations.
Renewable energy projects also face uncertainty after clean energy tax credits were dropped from Democrats' budget reconciliation bill because of opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).
“Congressional inaction and uncertainty on long-term tax policy, tariff and trade restrictions, and transmission constraints all impact the demand for clean energy at a time when we need to be rapidly scaling up development,” American Clean Power Association CEO Heather Zichal said in a statement.
Russia's Gazprom to slash gas to Germany, squeezing European energy supplies
Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom on Monday said it will halve the amount of natural gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, which is still dependent on Russia for about a third of its supplies, worsening uncertainty among European nations trying to bolster energy supplies before winter, Loveday Morris reports for The Post.
By Wednesday, the main pipeline connecting Russia and Western Europe will operate at 20 percent of its capacity, down from 40 percent, because of issues with a turbine, according to Gazprom.
The cuts come after the pipeline's recent shutdown for routine maintenance. Although Russia turned the tap back on as scheduled Thursday, German officials have accused Moscow of using the repairs as an excuse to squeeze an already vulnerable Europe, causing prices to soar and giving the country leverage against nations backing Ukraine in the war.
Seaweed helps Maine lobstermen ride the storm of climate change — Kathy Gunst for The Post
Heat to wane in Northeast as Pacific Northwest prepares to roast — Matthew Cappucci for The Post
A Chinese artist fights pollution with rock music — Christian Shepherd and Vic Chiang for The Post
Greenland ice melt kicks into high gear — Andrew Freedman for Axios | 2022-07-26T12:34:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wind energy in the Gulf gets an unlikely fan: The oil industry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/wind-energy-gulf-gets-an-unlikely-fan-oil-industry/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/wind-energy-gulf-gets-an-unlikely-fan-oil-industry/ |
Josiah Gray is looking to rebound after the Dodgers roughed him up in late May. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
LOS ANGELES — A year ago, Josiah Gray could have seen the rest of his baseball life here, with the cotton candy sunsets and thumping bass at Dodger Stadium. He loves the ballpark’s sound system. The weather’s also decent, especially for a New York native who went to college near frigid Syracuse.
But at this level, the sport is a shrewd business. Gray, 24 and already traded twice, knows that well. So on Tuesday night, he will pitch against the Los Angeles Dodgers after debuting for them on July 20, 2021. Ten days later, he and catcher Keibert Ruiz were officially traded in a package for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner.
“It’s a weird feeling but a good feeling,” Gray said Monday from the visitors’ dugout. “Even though my time with the Dodgers was short, there’s a lot of fond memories. It’s where I grew up as a professional baseball player. That still means a lot.”
Gray’s team, the last-place Washington Nationals, will try to win three straight games for only the fourth time this season. They have yet to piece together a four-game winning streak. They are on the verge of selling again at the Aug. 2 trade deadline — and potentially dealing Juan Soto if their steep price is met. The Dodgers, by contrast, had taken eight straight before falling to Washington, 4-1, on Monday.
For Gray and Ruiz, that’s the difference 12 months can make. Gray, though, has something to prove after trying a bit too hard to do that this spring. Back in late May, he faced the Dodgers at Nationals Park and yielded seven runs on five hits and three homers. Following the lopsided loss, Gray admitted he “let the emotions get ahead of me and didn’t control them from the first pitch on.” He very badly wanted to show the Dodgers what they gave up. In turn, he was done in by Turner — one of the stars for whom he was traded — and a few former teammates.
“I have reflected on that start a bit,” Gray explained. “But it was really just a small blip in a long year. It’s out of the way, I took a lot and I’m glad I get to face them again. I think any competitor would be.”
“This go around, he knows even though he’s in Dodger Stadium, he has to control his emotions and get to the next pitch,” Nationals Manager Dave Martinez said Monday. “ … He’s been good and he’s been learning. So nothing changes.”
After wilting against the Dodgers, Gray posted a 1.24 ERA in his next five starts, the best stretch of his season. His three since, however, have been less sharp, amounting to 13 earned runs in 16⅔ innings. Gray is a flyball pitcher who is susceptible to home runs. The Dodgers’ lineup, tied for the fifth-highest home run rate in the majors and stacked with Turner, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy, are a good test.
The righty is at his best when his slider and curve are clicking. And for as much as the Dodgers mash, their on-base-plus-slugging percentage against sliders and curves is around the middle of the pack. Gray will have to give those pitches a chance by getting ahead with well-placed fastballs. Coming out of the all-star break, he’s rounding out the rotation because the Nationals are closely watching his innings.
He enters Tuesday at 92 after throwing 86⅓ last year. His career-high is 130 between three minor league levels in 2019. Gray, true to form, plans to pitch until the club decides he shouldn’t anymore.
“The math on all of that is so tough: how much should you increase per year, what’s too much, when’s a good time to scale back,” he said. “I know they’ll have their idea of what to do in the coming months and I’ll roll with whatever. But of course, everyone wants to keep pitching.”
When he was traded last year, the Dodgers were flying from San Francisco to Phoenix for a series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Gray saw reports of a blockbuster deal in the air and was notified of his inclusion when they landed. That night, he watched his old team face the Diamondbacks from the team hotel, thinking how odd it was to be in the same city as the Dodgers, but not in the dugout.
Then on Sunday, Gray left Phoenix with the Nationals and headed to where he pitched just eight innings last summer. The symmetry, however loose, had not crossed his mind until he was asked about it Monday. He’s long been trying to move on.
“There are always going to be those connections and small things that might make you remember,” Gray said. “But for me, I’m here and have a lot to accomplish with the Washington Nationals. That’s what’s on my mind.” | 2022-07-26T12:44:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Josiah Gray returns to where his major league career began - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/josiah-gray-returns-dodgers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/josiah-gray-returns-dodgers/ |
‘My Donkey, My Lover & I’: A good long walk with great company
Delightful French comedy follows a woman and her strong, silent companion as they make their way across the Cévennes
Review by Kristen Page-Kirby
Laure Calamy in “My Donkey, My Lover & I.” (Greenwich Entertainment)
“My Donkey, My Lover & I” was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Or, more accurately, its mountain setting was inspired by the hiking itinerary Stevenson wrote about in his 1879 memoir “Travels With a Donkey in the Cévennes.” Set in the present day, the French comedy by writer-director Caroline Vignal follows Antoinette (Laure Calamy, whose performance here garnered a César Award), a fourth-grade teacher in Paris who has made the unfortunate decision to become involved with Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe), the married father of one of her students. When vacation time arrives, Antoinette assumes they’ll spend some time together, but her lover informs her that he and his family will instead be going on a mountain trek. It will be Vladimir, his wife, his daughter and a donkey. Antoinette signs up for the same trip, planning to “accidentally” meet up with Vladimir somewhere on the trail.
Call it “Eat, Bray, Love.”
Antoinette is matched with Patrick, an ass who lives up to his name. Wily and stubborn, Patrick presents the greatest obstacle to hiking. When Antoinette wants to go, he wants to stop. When she wants to stop, he wants to run. As the trip progresses, however, Patrick becomes Antoinette’s four-legged therapist as she chats to him about Vladimir and other men, her life in general, and so on. You get the feeling that very few people have ever really listened to our protagonist, and the strong and silent Patrick — who seems to be almost all ears — is a good listener.
In the hands of any another actor, the role of Antoinette might have been a bit much. The character is a little too outgoing and takes a little too much satisfaction in wearing her heart on her sleeve. Yet Calamy makes Antoinette immensely likable from the get-go. Even as she dons a slinky gown for a school performance to catch Vladimir’s eye — a cringeworthy act of desperation — we see the underlying sweetness. Vignal’s wonderfully sly, episodic script almost plays like “The Odyssey,” as Antoinette encounters various people along the way, all of whom she can learn something from (although she often doesn’t).
The story is particularly good when it comes to introducing a series of male characters, each of whom we assume is going to be the one who will finally distract Antoinette from Vladimir. Instead, they’re often jerks of one ilk or another, and Antoinette has to handle them — sometimes learning to stand up for herself, sometimes learning to stand up for Patrick and sometimes both. The screenplay never gets bogged down by treacle, though, and even when Antoinette breaks down, it’s clear that she has built up enough strength to continue once she’s wiped away her tears. There are also moments of delightfully silly humor. (Did I mention that there’s a donkey in the movie?)
While this is the story of a woman on a hike, don’t expect “Wild.” The Cévennes itinerary isn’t exactly the Appalachian Trail, and Antoinette doesn’t have to face down any huge physical challenges. She doesn’t really even have to camp: Most evenings end with a prearranged meal and a bottle of wine at a cozy French inn. That’s excellent — for both Antoinette and the audience — because the relatively easy walk means that all the heroine needs to do is think and talk as she puts one foot in front of the other. It’s a pleasure to accompany her on this meditation on the go, if for no other reason than the gorgeous scenery. (Pro tip: Wait until the movie is over before pulling out your phone to Google “hiking through France.”) Vignal is just as adept at shooting tight shots as wide-open spaces. One particularly lovely scene features Antoinette riding Patrick through a French village at night, looking like a Virgin Mary who just stepped out of a Caravaggio painting.
A long walk with a good friend can fix a lot of things, even if — maybe especially if — that friend doesn’t say much, save for a few bleating screams. Taking this one with Antoinette and Patrick is refreshing, amusing and utterly enjoyable. With its easy pace and genial company, “My Donkey, My Lover & I” is a journey worth taking, even if, at the end of the day, there’s no cozy French inn waiting for you.
Unrated. At area theaters; available Aug. 30 on Amazon and Apple TV Plus. Contains coarse language, brief nudity, sexual situations and drinking. In French with subtitles. 97 minutes. | 2022-07-26T13:10:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'My Donkey, My Lover & I' is a delightfully different kind of road trip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/26/my-donkey-my-lover-i-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/26/my-donkey-my-lover-i-movie-review/ |
By Mary Ilyushina
This photo provided by NASA shows the International Space Station as seen from the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis in 2008. (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia on Tuesday announced it will withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) project after 2024, signaling an end of an era in one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Russia and the United States. | 2022-07-26T13:41:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia to withdraw from International Space Station - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/russia-withdraw-space-station/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/russia-withdraw-space-station/ |
Tales from the airplane-chartering gurus who help campaigns take off
(Joseph Rogers for The Washington Post)
If you’re running for president, you can get away with just about anything — say, refusing to release your tax returns or bragging about how you could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing any voters. Just don’t be a no-show for a campaign stop. Imagine the masses gathered for a rally whose headliner never materializes, or a camera panning across the debate stage and lingering on an empty lectern. Not a very presidential look.
“Missing an event is a travesty,” Jonathan Tasler, vice president of Advanced Aviation Team, told me. “You’ve got maybe tens of thousands of people who are accounting to see somebody, and now you’re not there? I mean, the level of disappointment is hard to compute. It is just a disaster in so many ways.”
Tasler would know; he’s been in the campaign charter industry for more than 20 years, starting with his dad back in 1988 at what would eventually be named Air Charter Team and now with Gregg Brunson-Pitts, AAT’s founder and chief executive. Charter companies manage relationships between campaigns and vendors who supply the transports — like a mash-up of a matchmaker, a wedding planner and a crisis counselor. They are the behind-the-scenes logistics obsessives without whom a person running for national office would never be able to get anywhere they needed to be.
Founded in 2015, AAT is possibly the biggest name in the national campaign charter circuit. In the past two presidential election cycles, FEC filings show, it has worked for the campaigns of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. The Biden campaign was far from the most glamorous operation, since it halted at the onset of the pandemic and had to get back off the ground (literally) so quickly that AAT barely had time to lock in a plane and slap a decent-looking Biden-Harris logo on the side.
“When you see the decal work on the Biden plane, it’s so basic,” says Tasler. “There was no time to do anything.” The interior remained untouched, a far cry from the more lavish setups Tasler has managed before. “Take it as it is because there’s no time to engineer anything differently.”
It’s a telling example of how these aesthetics wind up revealing something about the political moment. The Biden campaign’s no-frills plane was quite the contrast to the Boeing 757 that Tasler’s former company used for John Kerry in 2004, when there was no global pandemic. The plane had an onboard bar, two sleeper-swivel chairs that cost somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 each, and — this being the height of post-9/11 performative patriotism — what Tasler recalls as “the biggest American flag probably ever put on an aircraft” on both sides of the plane.
In 2016, Tasler picked up business from Bernie Sanders, whose schedulers he remembers as “disciplined and pleasant,” and Trump, whose campaign he worked with several times, first with Air Charter Team and later with AAT. Trump’s schedule was packed with events without regard for the intractable parameters of flight, like mandatory crew rest minimums, Tasler says. “A campaign very rarely fully understands how many parts are behind every schedule change,” he explains, though they do understand the stakes of getting where they need to go when they need to go there.
Brunson-Pitts started out in politics when he was still an undergrad at Bowling Green State University, interning in the scheduling office in George W. Bush’s White House. His first job out of college was with Bush’s 2004 campaign; after that victory, he landed in the White House Travel Office, where he eventually became director, coordinating the White House press charter, which flew in tandem with Air Force One on nearly every domestic and all international trips, carrying everyone (media, Secret Service, additional staff) who didn’t fit on the other plane. Brunson-Pitts later worked for a couple of air charter brokers, including Air Charter Team — the company started by Tasler’s father, Joe.
Joe Tasler was a former Navy pilot who’d flown in Vietnam and worked as head of charter sales for Continental Airlines. Before he set up his own shop, Tasler flew bands and sports teams with CSI Aviation Inc. — owned by Republican New Mexico politician Allen Weh and now best-known as the largest private contractor working with ICE Air, the aviation branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While working at CSI, the elder Tasler had a bit of an epiphany: Why not do campaign charters? His first big client: the George H.W. Bush-Dan Quayle ticket in ’88, for whom his company provided an American Trans Air Boeing 727. (He wasn’t exclusively in the politics scene: In one particularly memorable sequence, Tasler’s charters flew the cast of “Jurassic Park” when the actors needed to be evacuated from Hawaii after Hurricane Iniki hit.)
The Taslers booked George W. Bush’s presidential announcement tour out of Texas and, by 2004, scored contracts with a whole fleet of presidential hopefuls: John Edwards, Howard Dean and John Kerry. They subsequently worked with Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Barack Obama in 2012.
Air Charter Team had made it. (Perhaps the best sign of Air Charter Team’s bona fides was an appearance its logo made on a plane in an episode of “Veep.”) But the company struggled with a boom-bust cycle, making a killing in campaign years while lagging in the offseason, when campaign losers didn’t need to charter planes anymore. And though winners send the occasional surrogate out on a private charter, they’re otherwise covered by Air Force One. Joe Tasler died in 2015, and Jonathan closed the business four years later.
Meanwhile, Brunson-Pitts, with his husband’s encouragement, was building Advanced Aviation Team. A self-described “entrepreneurial spirit,” Brunson-Pitts spent a decade moonlighting as a SoulCycle instructor as he launched his new company from his kitchen counter.
The 2016 primary, with its plethora of candidates, “kept us pretty busy,” says Brunson-Pitts, who was able to hire some employees. Asked if the company would again fly Trump — whom he said the company flew “in a couple of instances,” and whose name he did not provide without prompting — or if there was anyone it wouldn’t fly, Brunson-Pitts cited Darth Vader as the sort of person AAT would not put on a plane. Good to know, but what about someone who says the 2020 election results weren’t legitimate? “I mean, it’s a good question,” said Tasler. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
Aside from determining whom exactly it would fly, AAT will have plenty of challenges as the midterms approach: “There are less aircraft available for charter on the market,” reports Brunson-Pitts. “And there’s a shortage of pilots and aircraft parts ... and prices are higher because of fuel [costs].”
Brunson-Pitts has noticed that the beginning of campaign season creeps earlier every cycle. But even though it might be good for business, he hopes things don’t keep trending too far in that direction. “I love what I do,” he told me, “but I don’t want to work 24/7, either.” Then, possibly thinking about the political exhaustion the rest of us feel, he added: “And maybe breaks are also nice for other people.”
Jessica M. Goldstein is a regular contributor to The Post’s Style section. | 2022-07-26T13:58:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tales from the airplane-chartering gurus who help campaigns take off - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/26/political-campaign-charter-flights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/26/political-campaign-charter-flights/ |
China targeted the Fed for more than a decade, Senate report finds
The campaign relied on both recruitment and intimidation to exact confidential information about U.S. economic policymaking from Federal Reserve employees.
A Senate report released Tuesday outlines China's decade-long campaign to infiltrate the Federal Reserve to gather confidential information about U.S. economic policymaking. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
The Chinese government waged a decade-long campaign to undermine the U.S. Federal Reserve and cajole its employees into revealing sensitive information about economic policymaking through both recruitment and intimidation, according to a Senate report released Tuesday.
The findings by Republican staff members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee allege that China exploited Fed employees’ openness to academic collaboration to establish long-standing relationships with people privy to nonpublic information about economic policy or interest rate changes. In some cases, Chinese officials resorted to threats and intimidation to exact desired information, at one point repeatedly detaining a Fed employee.
“China’s targeting of Federal Reserve officials appears rarely aimed at fostering legitimate collaboration, business arrangements, or research exchanges,” reads the report led by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “Rather, China’s efforts seem aimed at malicious, undisclosed, and illegal transfers of information that seek to undermine the United States.”
In a letter to Portman cited by the Wall Street Journal, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell acknowledged that some people might try to exploit the Fed’s vulnerabilities, but rejected assertions that a lack of rigor on the Fed’s part gave China an opening.
The report is based on a Federal Reserve counterintelligence analysis and related FBI investigation. Those inquiries found 13 people, representing eight of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, with connections to known Chinese talent recruitment programs known as the “P-Network.”
The report spelled out an aggressive campaign to elicit confidential information. One unnamed Fed employee was detained in Shanghai four times during a 2019 trip, during which Chinese officials threatened his family, told him his phone was being monitored and pressed him to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
In the first meeting, the worker was accused of crimes against China and ordered to “say good things about China” while in the United States. In a later meeting, officials plied him with liquor and told him he would have to “give economic advice about the Chinese and global economy” in regular meetings on future visits. The incident was reported to the FBI, according to the report.
Several Fed employees were found to have ties to China’s central bank, while others maintained close contacts with university-centered talent recruitment programs. Another U.S. employee corresponded with Chinese state-owned media.
It’s unclear whether the campaign yielded useful information, but there are indications that some Fed employees may have attempted to cooperate with Chinese authorities.
One Fed employee, who had access to Federal Reserve Board data, provided statistical modeling code to a Chinese University with ties to China’s central bank. Another repeatedly attempted to transfer “large volumes” of unspecified data to an external website.
One of the Fed employees attempted to cover their tracks by switching to different communications channels and changing email names after being confronted about suspicious activity. An analysis of this person’s browsing history showed searches for articles about economic espionage. This individual’s website password: “xijinping,” the general secretary of China’s Communist Party. | 2022-07-26T14:02:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Report details China's efforts to undermine Fed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/26/fed-china-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/26/fed-china-report/ |
Bond Investors Need to Liquidate China Evergrande Now
When it comes to collecting debt from distressed companies, a wait-and-see attitude will only end up with investors losing everything. That’s especially true with China’s real estate developers.
China Evergrande Group’s woes have been festering for more than a year. It was labeled a defaulter by international ratings agencies in December. Yet the developer still has not published a restructuring proposal. It has promised to release a preliminary plan by the end of July, but details will most likely be sparse.
The drawn-out restructuring process speaks to the complexity of the world’s most indebted developer, which has more than $300 billion in liabilities and $20 billion in dollar bonds alone. But it also underlines the false hope that foreign investors still hold.
Last month, one small offshore creditor filed a winding-up petition in Hong Kong against Evergrande. The developer managed to convince many bondholders to sign letters stating their opposition to the proposal.
Those investors made a mistake. Patience will only buy Evergrande time to arrange side deals, resulting in an even lower recovery rate for their investments. They need to seize the builder’s overseas assets as soon as possible.
It should be established by now that dollar bondholders can only recoup their losses from the developer’s offshore assets, which have dwindled to stakes in Hong Kong-listed Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd. and Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd., a fledgling electric-vehicle manufacturer. Last September, Evergrande sold its 19.9% stake in Shengjing Bank Co. for about 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion). In November, it divested its entire ownership in HengTen Networks Group Ltd., which operates an online streaming business, for HK$ 2.1 billion ($270 million).
But neither divestiture was a good deal for bondholders. With Shengjing Bank, a regional lender, there was no cash exchange. All net proceeds from the sale were used to settle the debts owed by Evergrande. Meanwhile, we don’t know what Evergrande did with the cash from the HengTen sale; its latest financial statements were dated June 2021.
So consider the scary possibility that Evergrande is more friendly to some creditors than others — a characteristic it demonstrated with the Shengjing deal. Suppose the developer owes a friend — let’s call him Simon — an unsecured loan with $1 billion face value, which is now priced at only $100 million in the marketplace. Evergrande could then sell Simon shares in its EV business worth $1 billion — even at a premium if it wants to, to make the deal look good on paper. But just like the Shengjing deal, Simon “demands that all net proceeds from the Disposal be applied to settle the relevant financial liabilities of the Group due to” him. In this scenario, Simon would have swapped $100 million worth of distressed debt for $1 billion worth of EV assets — all made possible because Evergrande is not yet liquidated.
I get it. With Evergrande’s bonds trading at less than 10 cents on a dollar, the losses are so extreme some investors are unwilling to confront the pain; some asset managers may not have enough provisions set aside for bloodshed of this scale. But what are they waiting for? To see the Chinese government somehow pay them off?
The recent mortgage boycotts in mainland China — with many aimed at unfinished homes Evergrande had sold — should dash that hope. In the event of a restructuring, households are most likely to be the first in line to get their money back, followed by suppliers, secured lenders, employees and tax authorities — all before covenant-lite bond holders — according to King & Capital Law Firm. Offshore dollar-bond investors are even further down the pecking order.
Evergrande is a prime example but not an exception. In the past year, 28 of China’s top 100 developers have defaulted or asked for repayment extensions. Across the board, there’s been no progress in restructuring. The lack of clarity on recovery perhaps helps explain why the offshore bond market has hit fresh lows, denting further foreign investors’ portfolio performance.
Foreign investors have been too soft on Evergrande. It’s time they exercise their rights, seize its overseas assets and liquidate the zombie developer.
• Hong Kong Has a Fix for China’s Mortgage Boycotts: Shuli Ren
• Homebuilders Hold Their Own in a Cooling Market: Conor Sen | 2022-07-26T14:03:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bond Investors Need to Liquidate China Evergrande Now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bond-investors-need-to-liquidatechina-evergrande-now/2022/07/26/cbc2da08-0cde-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bond-investors-need-to-liquidatechina-evergrande-now/2022/07/26/cbc2da08-0cde-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 20: Funeral director Peter DeLuca, owner of Greenwich Village Funeral Home, holds a cremation urn in the showroom of his funeral parlor on November 20, 2008 in New York City. New technologies, such as flat screen televisions for video memorials, ornate and even sports-team themed cremation urns are also slowly being introduced at funeral homes. Despite the currently languishing economy, the funeral home world is readying for an upswing nationally, as the recession-resistant business prepares for an expected rise in death rates as baby boomers start to reach old age in the coming decade. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chris Hondros/Getty Images North America)
The sale of caskets is a dying business.
More than 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19 since early 2020, but those excess deaths haven’t necessarily translated into a sustained spike in burial volumes. Nearly two-thirds of funeral homes that belong to the National Funeral Directors Association reported that the demand for cremation services had increased since the beginning of the pandemic. The statewide cremation rate in both New York — the first significant Covid hotspot — and Texas — which has had one of the highest Covid death totals in the US — jumped above 50% in 2021, according to the NFDA.
This is in line with the longer-term trend: Cremation began passing casket burials in popularity in the US in 2015, and preference for the practice has climbed steadily since then. By 2040, the NFDA projects that more than 78% of dead people in the US will be cremated, up from about 32% in 2005. The trade group expects all 50 states and the District of Columbia to favor cremation over traditional casket burials by 2035. Among the reasons for cremation’s growing popularity are the increasingly limited availability of land in cemeteries, concerns about the environmental impact of burials and embalming processes and cost. Cremations typically cost 40% less than funerals with burials, according to the NFDA.
The consumer’s financial gain is casket-makers’ long-term loss, however. Hillenbrand Inc. is the largest maker of caskets through its Batesville subsidiary, a business that traces its roots to the late 1800s. While Batesville benefited from a spike in demand for funerals during the pandemic and throws off a steady stream of cash, Hillenbrand has warned that its long-term margin trajectory slopes downward. Batesville sells cremation products such as urns, but it derives the majority of its revenue and profits from caskets. The company projects adjusted margins for the business based on adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization will drop to a range of 20% to 21% this fiscal year, roughly in line with 2019 levels but down from almost 26% last year.
That helps explain why Hillenbrand has said for years that it’s managing the Batesville business for cash and using that flow to fund acquisitions that will help transform it into a diversified industrial company. Hillenbrand has spent more than $3 billion on a string of manufacturing purchases over the past decade, including the $2 billion takeover in 2019 of Milacron Holdings Corp., a maker of engineered systems for plastics processing. Last week, Hillenbrand announced it would pay 572 million euros ($585 million) to acquire Linxis Group, a manufacturer of mixing, ingredient automation and portioning equipment for the food industry. In late June, Hillenbrand agreed to acquire Herbold Meckesheim GmbH — a German maker of recycling equipment — for 79 million euros.
With the industrial side of the company growing in scale and financial importance, the time is right for Hillenbrand to explore strategic alternatives for the Batesville casket unit, Chief Executive Officer Kim Ryan said in an interview. A financial buyer is more likely than a strategic one, considering Batesville and Matthews International Corp. already control about 80% of the US casket market between them, Sidoti & Co. analyst John Franzreb wrote in a report.
Putting trends in the death market to the side, one thing that’s particularly interesting about Hillenbrand’s transformation is that the company is essentially choosing to trade one level of diversification for another. The Batesville casket business has no real overlap with the industrial side of the company. This is the kind of old-school sprawl that has mostly been abandoned — even as modern-day conglomerates continue to not only exist but thrive. However, should Hillenbrand find a buyer for the Batesville business, it will still be diversified, just in a more focused and logical way. There are some clear similarities between equipment for plastics processing, food manufacturing, recycling and other factory floor uses: All entail highly engineered systems, and there’s overlap on production and commodity costs. But these are also unique end markets with slightly different financial profiles.
Read more: Covid Is Casting Conglomerates in a New Light: Brooke Sutherland
“The moves we’re making are into end markets that are particularly attractive for us but build upon the things that we do well as a company,” Ryan, the Hillenbrand CEO, said. The company is prioritizing growth opportunities with an eye toward creating a better balance in its bottom line through economic cycles, she said. This approach underscores a nuanced but important shift in how industrial companies think about their mix of businesses. It was only in 2019 that SPX Flow Inc. announced it would separate the parts of its business that sell pumps and valves to companies whose products require specific processes and ingredients (like a bottle of beer, a can of paint or an HVAC system) from the parts that sell pumps and valves to industries concerned with making sure oil or energy flows from point A to point B. Now, in addition to Hillenbrand, companies such as steelmaker Nucor Corp. are thinking about how to lean into one standard deviation of diversification to help improve their growth prospects. Nucor, which closed on its $3 billion purchase of garage door maker C.H.I Overhead Doors in June, last week reported record earnings for the first half of 2022.
Read more: Nucor Sees a Big Opening in Garage Doors: Brooke Sutherland
“If we don’t make investments outside of steelmaking, we’re not going to be talking about compound annual growth rate and we’re not going to trade at the valuation” the company deserves,” Nucor CEO Leon Topalian said in an interview. “The earnings potential is much higher.”
• Female CEOs Become Less Rare in Industrials: Brooke Sutherland | 2022-07-26T14:03:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Perishing Casket Sales Aren’t a Death Sentence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perishing-casket-sales-arent-a-death-sentence/2022/07/26/e075f706-0ce7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perishing-casket-sales-arent-a-death-sentence/2022/07/26/e075f706-0ce7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Myanmar junta defiantly defends executions, as U.S. pressures China to do more
Activists including Myanmar residents take part in a rally to protest Myanmar's junta execution of four prisoners, including a former lawmaker from Aung San Suu Kyi's party, outside the United Nations University in Tokyo on July 26, 2022. (Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images)
Myanmar’s military junta struck a defiant tone Tuesday after executing four pro-democracy activists days earlier, stating that it would not hesitate to repeat the actions, while the United States called on China to exert more political pressure on its neighbor.
“We had nothing personal with them,” military junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told a news conference in the capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday. “We proceeded with the laws to keep the stability of the country in line with the rule of law.”
Striking a defiant note, he said the four were sentenced legally by the courts, adding: “I will repeat that their acts should be sentenced to death again and again.”
Kyaw Min Yu, 51, also known as Ko Jimmy, rose to prominence in student uprisings in 1988 and had spent years in and out of prison for his activism. Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, was a hip-hop artist turned member of parliament who was widely admired among Myanmar’s youth. Two other men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, were also executed, state media reported — all were probably killed by hanging.
“Such reprehensible acts of violence and repression cannot be tolerated,” tweeted Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We remain committed to the people of Burma and their efforts to restore Burma’s path to democracy.”
The State Department went further, saying there could be “no business as usual” with the military junta which took power last year in a coup, after the “heinous acts.”
“Arguably, no country has the potential to influence the trajectory of Burma’s next steps more so than the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “The fact is that the regime has not faced the level of economic and in some cases diplomatic pressure that we would like to see. We are calling on countries around the world to do more. We will be doing more as well.”
He added that Blinken and his counterpart, China’s foreign minster Wang Yi, had discussed Myanmar during their meeting in Indonesia earlier this month.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also criticized the junta’s “illegitimate rule” and called the executions a “dark step backwards” for the country, which is home to some 55 million people.
“Clearly it is time for Burma’s neighbors to shoulder a larger burden,” he said in a statement. “It is Burma’s neighbors who have the most economic influence over the junta, and it is Burma’s neighbors who have the most at stake.”
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Monday that China “adheres to the principle of noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs.” He added, that all parties in Myanmar “should properly handle their differences and disagreements within the framework of the constitution and laws with an eye on the long-term interests of the country.”
Protests took place Tuesday outside Myanmar’s embassies in Bangkok and Tokyo. Human rights groups, the United Nations and foreign governments have also been swift in their condemnation of the executions.
In Asia, Malaysia called them a crime against humanity with Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah telling reporters Tuesday that the junta was “making a mockery” of a regional peace plan.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, also denounced the executions as “highly reprehensible.” It said the killings had been a setback to any dialogue between the junta and the opposition. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who chairs ASEAN, had previously urged Myanmar’s military leaders not to enforce the death sentences.
Leaders from the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the United Kingdom among others also issued a joint statement Monday condemning the executions and the regime’s “disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”
In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party said in a statement the four men had been killed in “cold blood” and accused the junta of committing “atrocities against the people of Myanmar.”
Myanmar’s military first seized power in 1962 but gradually loosened its grip in 2010, allowing for democratic elections and an influx of international companies. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy rose to power in 2015, but its rule was short-lived. The military violently reclaimed control in February 2021. Since then, more than 100 people have been sentenced to death and thousands jailed, including Suu Kyi, rights groups say.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in a statement Monday said the executions “mark a further deterioration of the already dire human rights environment in Myanmar.”
Cape Diamond, Rebecca Tan and Rachel Pannett contributed to this report. | 2022-07-26T14:05:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Myanmar's military defiant on execution of pro-democracy activists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/myanmar-military-execution-activists-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/myanmar-military-execution-activists-china/ |
A resident holds a placard reading ‘’MONUSCO get out without delay’’ as they protest against the United Nations peacekeeping force (MONUSCO) deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Goma, Monday, July 25, 2022. Demonstrators said they were protesting against the rise of insecurity and inaction of the UN in the region. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa) | 2022-07-26T14:05:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 5 killed, 50 injured in anti-UN protests in Congo's east - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/5-killed-50-injured-in-anti-un-protests-in-congos-east/2022/07/26/9efbd5de-0ce7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/5-killed-50-injured-in-anti-un-protests-in-congos-east/2022/07/26/9efbd5de-0ce7-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
A Croatian made ‘Nevera’ electric car drives on the newly built Peljesac Bridge in Komarna, southern Croatia, Monday, July 25, 2022. Croatia is marking the opening of a key and long-awaited bridge connecting two parts of the country’s Adriatic Sea coastline while bypassing a small part of Bosnia’s territory. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-07-26T14:05:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Croatia opens Adriatic coast bridge, linking divided region - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/croatia-opens-adriatic-coast-bridge-linking-divided-region/2022/07/26/5590d95c-0ce3-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/croatia-opens-adriatic-coast-bridge-linking-divided-region/2022/07/26/5590d95c-0ce3-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appears on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
As a civil trial begins Tuesday in Texas to determine how much Alex Jones owes in defamation damages to the parents of victims in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School after he falsely claimed the massacre was a “giant hoax,” unspecified medical problems could prevent the right-wing conspiracy theorist from being in the courthouse, according to his attorney.
During jury selection on Monday, Jones’s attorney, F. Andino Reynal, told the Austin courtroom that the founder of Infowars “has medical issues” that could keep him from showing up during parts of the trial, even though he “has no obligation to be here.”
“Alex, you may have noticed, is not here, like the plaintiffs,” said Reynal, according to the News-Times in Danbury, Conn. “He may not be here through parts of the trial.”
The defense attorney reiterated to KXAN in Austin after the jury selection was complete that he had spoken to Jones’s doctors and “made the decision that [Jones] shouldn’t be here.”
“He wants to be here,” Reynal said.
While Reynal did not specify what “medical issues” could prevent the 48-year-old from attending the trial in person, Jones, who has already lost several defamation lawsuits related to his Sandy Hook falsehoods, has previously blamed stress and cardiovascular effects from his coronavirus infection for missing depositions in the Connecticut trial last year. Jones has also faced daily fines of $25,000 from a Connecticut judge for failing to show up for court-ordered depositions in March.
Reynal did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday.
Mark Bankston, an attorney for the families suing Jones, also did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. Bankston told the Associated Press that the families were “very glad the day is here” to begin the trial.
“We’re looking forward to telling our clients’ story,” Bankston said.
Jones faces another possible financial blow years after he said the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history — in which 26 people were killed in Newtown, Conn., 20 of them young children — was a “false flag” operation carried out by “crisis actors.” While Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting took place and blamed his false claims on “a form of psychosis,” he has been banned from major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Spotify for violating their hate speech policies. He also placed his conspiracy website, Infowars, into bankruptcy protection before the Texas trial was initially set to begin in April.
Infowars, run by Alex Jones, files for bankruptcy protection
Judges in Connecticut and Texas have found Jones liable for damages in lawsuits stemming from his false claims. In default judgments against Jones and Infowars last October, District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., ruled that Jones did not comply with court orders to give information in a pair of 2018 lawsuits brought against him by the families of two children killed in the 2012 massacre. Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims.
Alex Jones must pay damages to Sandy Hook families after calling shooting a ‘giant hoax,’ judge rules
“An escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse,” Gamble wrote last year.
Gamble’s 2021 rulings related to two 2018 lawsuits filed by Sandy Hook parents Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, who lost their 6-year-old son, Noah, and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was also killed in the shooting. Pozner and De La Rosa said they have faced emotional distress and have been harassed for years by Infowars fans who have followed Jones’s lead and falsely claimed that the shooting was staged.
Jones acknowledged on his Infowars website earlier this year that he had missed pretrial depositions for the 2021 trial in Connecticut, citing health reasons related to covid-19. The Food and Drug Administration and health experts have blasted Jones for promoting and selling products on his website that he falsely claimed would “boost your immune system” against the virus.
Jurors in Austin, where Infowars is headquartered, will not hear evidence about the defamation claims but instead determine how much in compensatory and punitive damages Jones must pay the victims’ families. While Jones has claimed in court filing that he has a net worth of negative $20 million, attorneys for the Sandy Hook families have pointed to records showing that Jones’s Infowars store made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018.
Among those expected to testify Tuesday are Daria Karpova, a producer at Infowars, and Daniel Jewiss, who was the lead investigator of the Sandy Hook shooting for the Connecticut State Police. Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of Jesse Lewis, are also expected to testify during the trial.
Gamble, the judge presiding over the case, said the trial is expected to last two weeks. She urged jurors not to read or watch any of the news related to Jones or the case, according to the News-Times.
“We want a trial based only on the evidence presented in court,” she said. | 2022-07-26T14:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Jones might miss Sandy Hook defamation trial in Texas due to 'medical issues' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-trial-texas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-trial-texas/ |
What if the Supreme Court had term limits from the beginning?
The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on July 25. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
In the past half-century, the Supreme Court has never been viewed with as much skepticism as it is now. Gallup polling, stretching back to the ruling in Roe v. Wade, shows that American confidence in the institution is at a low, with only 25 percent of Americans expressing that view. That’s largely because of a significant dip in confidence among Democrats, only 1 in 8 of whom now say they have confidence in the court.
Unsurprisingly, this decline in confidence has overlapped with calls to reform the court. In a new poll from the Associated Press, for example, two-thirds of Americans indicated support for instituting term limits for Supreme Court justices. It’s an idea backed by 4 in 5 Democrats — and a majority of Republicans.
In its report on the poll, the Associated Press focused in part on concerns about the ages of the justices. It’s certainly fair to question the extent to which elderly jurists largely segmented off from society can effectively reflect the views of the population, should that be the goal. But it is worth remembering that part of the reason leaders in American institutions are trending older is that America itself is trending older as the baby boom continues to shift into retirement age.
This idea that there should be term limits on Supreme Court justices isn’t a new one. Last year, a group of Democratic legislators in the House introduced a bill that would lead to such a limit, forcing justices to retire after 18 years on the bench.
The question, then, is what such a restriction might look like. If we imposed such a limit, how might it affect the actual composition of the court? Beyond just implementing a boundary that many Americans support, would it shift the constitution of the court’s members significantly?
We can only approximate an answer to that question … but let’s.
The two-party era of American politics began at around the time of the Civil War. If we look at the appointments to the court since then, it looks like this, with appointees indicated with dots colored according to the nominating president.
(That little wiggle shifting over to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicates the elevation of William Rehnquist from associate justice to chief justice in 1986.)
You’ll notice that justices’ terms vary widely in duration. But there are dozens who served longer than 18 years. So let’s just cut those off — chop! — and see what happens. Below we show the initial appointments in each seat since 1860 but truncating a justice’s tenure after 18 years. From that point on, we introduce a new justice every 18 years.
The result is periods in which the density of Republican appointees is far lower, as in the 1920s and 1930s. Jimmy Carter, who had no Supreme Court vacancies to fill, suddenly gets two. Other than that, though? The change often isn’t really that significant.
You’ll notice that this includes a massive, dealbreaking caveat: It doesn’t account for deaths (which might presumably occur less often with a younger bench) or resignations … which would occur a lot. After all, if you’re a conservative jurist who is termed out in the next couple of years, you’d be more likely to resign during the tenure of a Republican president than stick around and potentially see your seat filled by a Democrat. It’s hard to account for this sort of gamesmanship in our scenario, but it’s certainly something that would reshape what the court looks like.
(For the purposes of this thought experiment, we are also discounting the possibility of a hostile Senate holding the seat open for a president from their party, because what are the odds something like that could happen?)
There’s another wrinkle worth considering here. Introducing term limits might boot older judges from the court … but it would also reduce the impulse to appoint young justices. Donald Trump nominated Brett M. Kavanaugh at 53 and Amy Coney Barrett at 48 with the transparent goal of assuring they could remain as conservative voices on the court for decades to come. If no justice could serve longer than 18 years, such an impulse would be dampened.
The lesson here is, for Democrats, an unsatisfying one. The central factor in determining the constitution of the court is the occupant of the White House. In both the actual and theoretical scenarios of what the court could look like above, the 1940s are heavily blue because Democrats controlled the White House for two decades. The reason Republican appointees have a six-justice majority on the court now is that Trump was elected in 2016.
Americans support reforming the Supreme Court. But for Democrats to have seen a significant improvement in their representation in that chamber, a more important reform would have been one targeting the electoral college. | 2022-07-26T14:46:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What if the Supreme Court had term limits from the beginning? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/what-if-supreme-court-had-term-limits-beginning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/what-if-supreme-court-had-term-limits-beginning/ |
This photo provided by American Airlines shows the left wingtip damage and portion of distance remaining marker support structure lodge in wingtip that was damaged during an accident on April 10, 2019. Federal investigators say a mistake by the captain of an American Airlines flight caused the plane’s wing to clip the ground during takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2019. The National Transportation Safety Board says the captain applied too much rudder power to offset a crosswind, causing the plane to veer to the left and nearly leave the runway. (American Airlines via AP) (Uncredited/American Airlines) | 2022-07-26T15:35:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Investigators blame American Airlines pilot for bad takeoff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/investigators-blame-american-airlines-pilot-for-bad-takeoff/2022/07/26/4d61df34-0cf1-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/investigators-blame-american-airlines-pilot-for-bad-takeoff/2022/07/26/4d61df34-0cf1-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
John Ward, left, and a firefighter help Lynn Hartke wade through floodwater in St. Louis on Tuesday. (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP)
Torrential downpours sparked flash flooding in St. Louis and surrounding areas on Tuesday, stranding residents in their cars and homes as the amount of rain shattered a record set more than a century ago.
The city had received more than 8 inches of rain as of 7 a.m. local time, the most ever recorded there in a calendar day and more than an inch over the record of 6.85 inches set in August 1915, when remnants of the hurricane in Galveston, Tex., passed through the area.
Some areas on the northwest side of St. Louis received more than 10 inches of rain in six hours overnight — an event with a 0.1 percent chance of happening in a given year. The heaviest rain had moved off to the northeast by 8 a.m., but downpours continued to affect the city.
Emergency workers were responding to numerous reports of drivers whose cars were submerged in the flooding. On one block in the western part of the city, the St. Louis Fire Department said, it had used an inflatable boat to rescue six people and six dogs trapped in about 18 homes amid severe flooding.
Videos shared on social media showed many roads completely inaccessible. Parts of two major highways, Interstate 70 and Interstate 170, were closed because of the flooding, the Missouri Department of Transportation said.
St. Louis County emergency officials urged residents not to travel and said they had set up a shelter for displaced people.
“Exercise extreme caution,” St. Louis firefighter Garon Patrick Mosby said in a video shared on Twitter. “We are being overrun here.”
Extreme precipitation events have increased substantially over the past century and are tied to warming from human-caused climate change. The heaviest such events increased by 42 percent in the Midwest between 1901 and 2016, with additional increases expected as the climate continues to warm, according to the U.S. government’s National Climate Assessment.
The rain in St. Louis began late Monday as thunderstorms formed along a west-to-east line, repeatedly passing over the city like train cars on a track into Tuesday morning. The National Weather Service warned of “life threatening flash flooding” just after 2 a.m. and later declared a flash flood emergency, its most serious flood alert. By then, 3 to 6 inches of rain had fallen and high water was “threatening houses” while vehicles were submerged in high water, according to the Weather Service.
“This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION,” it warned. “SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”
The thunderstorms formed along the northern periphery of a heat dome sprawled over the south-central states, responsible in recent days for record-high temperatures in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. St. Louis was situated in the turbulent transition zone between that oppressive heat and cooler weather entering the Upper Midwest from Canada.
On Tuesday, the Weather Service declared the area from eastern Missouri to central West Virginia under an elevated risk for excessive rainfall, with the greatest risk from the St. Louis area through southern Illinois and into southwest Indiana. That risk is forecast to shift into the area from southeast Missouri through West Virginia on Wednesday and Thursday. | 2022-07-26T15:36:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historic St. Louis flash flooding strands residents, closes roads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/st-louis-flooding-historic-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/st-louis-flooding-historic-record/ |
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Justice Department on July 20. (Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images)
For weeks, members of the House Jan. 6 select committee have expressed concern — if not alarm — that the Justice Department had not interviewed many key witnesses involved in the coup attempt. Public criticism of the department’s pace intensified, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to state that the department would not conduct its investigation in public and that “no person is above the law.”
That wasn’t enough to quell concerns, but a new development should go a long way to satisfy Garland’s critics: ABC News reported on Monday that Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and Greg Jacob, Pence’s former chief counsel, were recently summoned to testify before a federal grand jury. The news signals that the Justice Department has begun looking into the nonviolent efforts to overturn the election, including the pressure campaign against Pence.
One might attribute the testimony by high-level Pence staffers to the multi-front pressure on the Justice Department. The Jan. 6 committee has revealed one shocking fact after another suggesting that defeated former president Donald Trump was in the thick of conspiracies to defraud the United States and obstruct the counting of electoral votes. There has been a notable shift in thinking among legal and pundit circles, from “it would be risky to prosecute Trump” to “it would be risky not to prosecute him.” Former Justice Department attorneys and respected constitutional scholars implored Garland to pick up the pace.
Then again, maybe the timing for high-level officials’ appearance to provide testimony before a federal grand jury was only coincidental. Investigators had already seized the phone of John Eastman, chief architect of the coup plot, and raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official whom Trump tried to appoint as acting attorney general. In other words, the Justice Department had already indicated it was moving toward the nonviolent aspects of the coup attempt.
Regardless, the Justice Department’s latest action, coupled with Garland’s public comments, suggests that the department might have switched to a higher gear in its investigation. It is now gathering people with direct knowledge of Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice president. Unlike the phony elector scheme, which has many potential targets (e.g., Eastman, Clark, the electors themselves), the only real target in the Pence pressure campaign would be Trump.
The grand jury differs from a congressional committee in at least two respects. First, it’s one thing to refuse to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee; it’s quite another to incur the wrath of a grand jury and risk criminal contempt. We will see whether the weak and inconsistent claims of executive privilege from former Trump officials (looking at you, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone) melt in the heat of the grand jury room. It will also be interesting to see whether the grand jury subpoenas Pence, for example, who has no legitimate privilege claim.
Second, prosecutors with the Justice Department have the power to grant immunity to those who cooperate, which the Jan. 6 committee cannot do. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows or Eastman might have powerful evidence that could further implicate Trump. (Given that Meadows reportedly communicated with the gang at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, Garland might be able to discover what ties, if any, the White House had to violent extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.) Dan Scavino, the former White House communications staffer whom the Jan. 6 committee cited for contempt of Congress, might be the sort of lower-level operative with eyewitness evidence against Trump.
However long it took, the Justice Department seems to be catching up to the Jan. 6 committee’s work. We don’t know how quickly indictments of top-level officials including Trump will arrive, if they arrive at all. (Speed is of the essence, given that Republicans might try to derail the probe if they win one or both houses in the midterms.) Nevertheless, Trump has reason to worry that he might face criminal liability in both in Fulton County, Ga., and in federal courts. | 2022-07-26T15:37:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Marc Short's grand jury testimony suggests DOJ is picking up the pace - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/marc-short-testimony-justice-department-picking-up-pace-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/marc-short-testimony-justice-department-picking-up-pace-jan-6/ |
There’s a German word for how others see the country’s gas crisis: Schadenfreude
If Germany had been nicer to Mediterranean countries when they needed help, they might be nicer now in return.
Analysis by Matthias Matthijs
Pipes at the landfall facilities of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)
Yesterday Germany got more bad news. The Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom cut down the gas supply that flows through its “Nord Stream 1” pipeline directly to Germany even further — to 20 percent of its total capacity. Gas prices surged. Germany, more than most other countries in the European Union (E.U.), relied on Russian fossil fuels for its energy needs. At the beginning of this year, just over half of its natural gas consumption was cheaply and reliably provided by Russia. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany started to wean itself off Russian energy. However, it still heavily depends on Russian gas for manufacturing and home heating.
But Germany has been getting less sympathy from southern countries in the E.U. than it would like. German politicians lectured these countries for their recklessness when they were dealing with the debt crisis in 2010-2012. Now these countries are lecturing back, pointing to Germany’s own reckless behavior in depending on Russia despite knowing that it was an untrustworthy autocratic country.
Europe is facing an energy crisis
The fear that Russia will turn off gas supplies has led to a political crisis. Germany and some other European countries suspect that Russian President Vladimir Putin will turn off the taps this winter, leaving them in the freezing cold.
The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, drew up emergency plans, including a possible 15 percent cut in gas consumption for all E.U. countries for the next two years, to share the pain. Member states just finished debating how to implement it.
Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg all supported the initial proposals, but it provoked protests from many other corners of Europe, including southern and Eastern Europe. Some of the protesting countries didn’t rely on Russian gas for energy. Others said that they couldn’t, because they weren’t properly connected to the European electricity grid.
Old fights reemerge
The Spanish minister for ecological transition, Teresa Ribera, said that the commission’s proposal was “not necessarily the most effective, the most efficient, nor the fairest.” She emphasized that “contrary to other countries, Spain hasn’t been living beyond its means in energy terms.”
Those were fighting words. Ribera was turning Germany’s decade-old criticism of Spain against it. As Kate McNamara and I have explained, back when southern E.U. member states were faced with financial crises in 2010-2012, Germany turned their dire situation into a “morality tale” of “Northern Saints” and “Southern Sinners.”
Back then, Germany and a few other northern countries claimed that southern European countries had been fiscally reckless and were now paying the price. Greece and other Mediterranean E.U. members had broken E.U. rules and lived beyond their means, racking up debt through unsustainable public spending. The rich northern countries refused to issue joint debt through Eurobonds, which would have shared the burden more equitably. Instead they bailed the Mediterranean countries out, but demanded harsh austerity measures in return.
The German finance minister at the time, Wolfgang Schäuble, became the face of the harsh medicine of austerity that debt-afflicted countries were forced to swallow. In 2017, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem doubled-down on that logic by claiming that southern European countries had “wasted money on alcohol and women.”
Now the tables have turned
Back then, Germany and other northern countries wanted to avoid “moral hazard.” In other words, they believed that giving easy money to southern European countries would just encourage them to behave badly again. Now southern European countries such as Spain and Portugal have turned that same logic against Germany and some of its “frugal” northern allies.
They point out that former German chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel’s policy of cozying up to Putin in return for cheap energy made Germany dependent on an authoritarian regime. Even worse, Germany’s highhanded behavior during the debt crisis was enabled by its economic success. The problem is that Germany’s export-led model of economic growth was only possible because of cheap energy from Russia.
Back then, Germany said that austerity had to come hard and fast if it was to result in real political change. Now influential Germans are saying that they want a gradual transition away from Russian energy to ease the political pain. Southern European countries, not unreasonably, see this as evidence of a hypocritical double standard.
When the E.U. energy ministers met, they watered down the commission’s controversial plans, providing exemptions for countries that don’t have gas or energy connections to the rest of the E.U., and for critical industries. There was little real solidarity, in part because southern European countries had little motivation to ride to Germany’s rescue.
As the Brookings Institution’s Constanze Stelzenmüller put it, Germany has “outsourced its security to the U.S., its export-led growth to China, and its energy needs to Russia.” Depending on other countries might have seemed reasonable in an earlier economic era, but it is a big source of risk for Germany today. If Germany wants to rebuild its growth model on a more sustainable footing, it is going to have to figure out what it needs to give to get more solidarity from its fellow E.U. member states.
Matthias Matthijs is associate professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. Follow him on Twitter @m2matthijs. | 2022-07-26T15:37:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spain has little sympathy for Germany's gas crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/germany-gazprom-spain-gas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/germany-gazprom-spain-gas/ |
Isabelle Khurshudyan
Grain storage facility outside Odessa, Ukraine, on July 25. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
ODESSA, Ukraine — Dmytro Podrezov’s booming logistics company once sent tens of thousands of tons of grain by ship each year from the port city of Odessa to customers around the world, but the war changed everything.
Ukraine’s priority is exporting the 20 million tons of grain from last year’s harvest that has been stuck in storage. Alternative routes — through river ports on the Danube or by rail or road to Poland — have created logistical headaches due to long queues and the high cost of fuel. With its Black Sea ports blockaded, Ukraine was exporting about 2 million tons of grain a month — about a third the amount of previous years, according to Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi.
“The demand is super high. Everybody in the chain — farmers, traders, producers — are eager to get some money into the country,” he said.
Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report. | 2022-07-26T16:46:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine grain deal hangs in the balance after Russian strike on Odessa port - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/ukraine-russia-grain-deal-strike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/ukraine-russia-grain-deal-strike/ |
The Cardinals stipulated in Kyler Murray's new contract that he will have to do four hours of “independent study” per week. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
The Arizona Cardinals seemingly cut short any contract drama they might have had with quarterback Kyler Murray last week by signing the two-time Pro Bowler to a new deal, one in which he will become one of the NFL’s highest-paid players. Rumors about discontent between quarterback and front office had been bubbling throughout the offseason, particularly after Murray’s agent released a statement to reporters in February that said “actions speak much louder than words in this volatile business” and that it was “simply up to the Cardinals to decide if they prioritize” Murray as their franchise quarterback.
But a clause in Murray’s new contract is causing a stir, because it mandates that the quarterback complete at least four hours of “independent study” each week during the season, preparation that goes beyond film sessions with his teammates at the Cardinals’ facility.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport got his hands on Murray’s contract and posted the clause on Twitter.
“‘Independent Study’ means Player studies the material provided to him by the Club in order to prepare for the Club’s next upcoming game, including without limitations any such material provided via an iPad or other electronic device,” the clause reads. “Time spent in mandatory meetings shall not constitute Independent Study.”
The clause goes on to say that Murray will not receive any credit if he “is not personally studying or watching the material while it is being displayed or played” or if he “is engaged in any other activity that may distract his attention (for example, watching television, playing video games or browsing the internet) while such material is being displayed or played.”
How the team will track Murray’s weekly homework is not detailed, though it does say that if Murray falls short of his weekly goals, he will be considered to be in default and the $230.5 million deal will be void.
While contract clauses that prohibit players from engaging in risky behavior — playing other contact sports, riding dangerous vehicles, etc. — are common, former Green Bay Packers front office executive Andrew Brandt said he’s never seen a homework stipulation in an NFL contract before.
The Cardinals may have been spurred to include the clause in Murray’s contract after he downplayed the importance of watching film in comments made to the New York Times in December.
“I think I was blessed with the cognitive skills to just go out there and just see it before it happens,” Murray said. “I’m not one of those guys that’s going to sit there and kill myself watching film. I don’t sit there for 24 hours and break down this team and that team and watch every game because, in my head, I see so much.”
Alternately, the Cardinals simply might think — especially considering the hefty salary they’re paying him — that watching more film will make Murray a better quarterback, particularly later in the season. The Cardinals have gone 15-8-1 in their first eight games of the season over Murray’s three years as their starting quarterback but have gone 7-15 in the second half of those seasons in games Murray started (he missed three second-half games last season with an ankle injury).
The New York Times story also relayed an anecdote about how Murray went home to play a Call of Duty video game after his signature moment as an NFL quarterback, his 43-yard “Hail Murray” touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins in November 2020 that gave Arizona a 32-30 win over the Buffalo Bills. New entries in the Call of Duty series are released in late October or early November, and Murray’s NFL numbers have followed a similar pattern after each new version has been released.
In games played before the annual Call of Duty release date over his career, Murray has averaged 22.5 fantasy points per game. In games played after the annual Call of Duty release date, Murray has averaged 17.4 fantasy points per game, a decline of 22.7 percent. | 2022-07-26T16:49:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyler Murray’s new deal includes four hours of mandated homework per week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/kyler-murray-cardinals-homework/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/kyler-murray-cardinals-homework/ |
Negative headlines have been piling up at 3M Co. for months over potentially mammoth legal liabilities, but it appeared as if the company had been mostly sitting on its hands, taking the hits and waiting out the long process of defending itself in the eyes of the courts and regulators. That changed on Tuesday: The industrial conglomerate announced plans to spin off its health-care unit and to put a business accused of selling faulty earplugs to the US military into bankruptcy in an attempt to ring-fence the burgeoning liabilities from the rest of its operations. From the perspective of investors, these moves are better than the inertia that’s prevailed until now, but they are far from a panacea.
First, some background: 3M acquired a manufacturer of a type of dual-ended earplugs — Aearo Technologies — in 2008 and continued to sell that product until it was discontinued in 2015. The sales pitch for the earplugs was that one end would block out as much sound as possible while the other would protect users from particularly loud noises, like explosions, and still allow them to have situational awareness and conversations with nearby counterparts — a feature that had obvious appeal to the military. Veterans have sued 3M, however, contending the company knowingly sold defective earplugs, leaving the soldiers with hearing loss and tinnitus. A growing number of them are winning their initial trials. Most recently, a jury in May awarded $77.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to a US army veteran in the largest payout to date for bellwether trials over the earplugs, bringing the total awarded damages for successful plaintiffs to about $300 million.
Read more: 3M Adds Another Legal Worry to Its Headaches: Brooke Sutherland
3M has said that the earplugs are safe and effective and that it was planning to appeal the cases it has lost. But there are 115,000 filed claims and an additional 120,000 sitting on an administrative docket as of June 30. Based on the verdicts to date, it’s possible to come up with astronomical estimates about 3M’s ultimate liability — numbers far in excess of its roughly $80 billion market value — should the legal process fail to go its way. More immediately, the earplug issue has become a significant drag on 3M’s share price, adding to concerns about a separate giant liability tied to legacy manufacturing of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and fueling the perception among investors that the stock is radioactive, though they did lift the price more than 6% on Tuesday.
So 3M will initiate Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for its Aearo Technologies subsidiary and seek court supervision to establish a trust that will use $1 billion of funding from 3M to “efficiently and equitably resolve all claims determined to be entitled to compensation.” 3M itself will not file for bankruptcy, and Aearo Technologies will indemnify it for obligations related to the claims, but the company will add money to the trust if required under the terms of the agreement.
The appeal of this arrangement for 3M is that the earplugs claims would be overseen by a bankruptcy judge and likely pushed toward a settlement faster than if they continue to be pursued under multidistrict litigation. (The earplug complaints, by the way, are the largest MDL in history, surpassing even asbestos). By separating out these headaches, 3M can theoretically limit claims on the rest of its assets and take advantage of the benefits of the bankruptcy system without having to blow up the equity value of the parent or kneecap its ability to conduct regular business in other units. A similar strategy has been used by Georgia-Pacific LLC and US subsidiaries of Trane Technologies Plc and Cie. de Saint-Gobain to isolate asbestos liabilities; most recently it was deployed by Johnson & Johnson to deal with litigation over talc in baby powder.
This structure — as one might imagine — is controversial and highly unpopular with personal injury claimants. Legal questions remain over its viability, and lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in the 3M earplug litigation said they intend to challenge the bankruptcy plan. “3M’s bankruptcy maneuver is further proof that they value their profits and stock price more than the well-being of veterans who fought and served our country,” Bryan Aylstock of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis, & Overholtz and Christopher Seeger of Seeger Weiss, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the earplug litigation, said in an e-mailed statement. “The trust to resolve earplug litigation claims is woefully underfunded and not the ‘efficient and equitable resolution’ that 3M is desperately pretending it is.”
Read more: 3M Is Adrift, and There’s No Easy Solution: Brooke Sutherland
Given the trend in judgments to date on earplug cases, the $1 billion in initial funding that 3M is committing to for the bankruptcy trust is indeed likely a starting point. Wolfe Research analyst Nigel Coe says a ballpark of $10 billion is more realistic — meaning that even if this ploy is successful, it won’t necessarily remove the overhang on 3M’s stock because investors will continue to debate the company’s ultimate funding obligations. To that end, 3M says it will load the health-care spinoff with debt worth as much as 3.5 times the business’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This is a fairly hefty burden and suggests the carveout will be used to raise cash for the parent company. 3M will also retain a nearly 20% stake in the new health-care spinoff that it can sell off over time.
The health-care unit has comparatively limited overlap with the rest of 3M, which has largely resisted the breakup trend that’s played out across the industrial sector because of the material science links between its businesses. The company announced in late December that it would carve out a chunk of the health-care unit by merging its food-safety division with Neogen Corp. through a tax-efficient reverse Morris trust transaction. That deal is expected to close on Sept. 1. Separating out health care helps to simplify the 3M story — and if there is anything this company needs, it’s a simpler story. But 3M’s stock wasn’t floundering because investors underappreciated the health-care assets. This carveout likely gives 3M more of a financial cushion to be aggressive in resolving the earplug issue. But the health-care unit was also meant to be an important driver of 3M’s future growth — at least that’s the argument the company made when it spent $6.7 billion to acquire wound-care company Acelity Inc. in 2019 in its largest ever acquisition.
Read more: 3M’s Biggest Deal Ever. What Could Go Wrong?: Brooke Sutherland
A standalone 3M health-care business is a more attractive asset for investors than a health-care unit buried in a diversified industrial company with two huge legal headaches. But it remains far from clear what the appeal is of the remaining 3M parent. Just in case there wasn’t enough 3M news on Tuesday, the company also announced lower earnings and sales guidance for 2022, citing a weaker macroeconomic environment and headwinds from the stronger US dollar. There remains no easy solution for 3M’s woes.
• 3M Is Adrift, and There’s No Easy Solution: Brooke Sutherland
• ‘Dark Waters,’ Chemicals and Conflicted Science: David Michaels
(Corrects the fifth paragraph to remove a reference to the “Texas Two-Step” maneuver. 3M says it is using a different legal process.) | 2022-07-26T17:06:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 3M’s Headaches Won’t Vanish With New Maneuvers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/3ms-headaches-wont-vanish-with-new-maneuvers/2022/07/26/69b12d8c-0d02-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/3ms-headaches-wont-vanish-with-new-maneuvers/2022/07/26/69b12d8c-0d02-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
The sitcom, which depicted an idyllic suburban American household, became a cultural touchstone of the baby boom generation
Members of the original cast of “Leave It to Beaver” — from left, Ken Osmond, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley and Jerry Mathers — reunited in 1982 for the filming of a TV special, “Still the Beaver.” (Wally Fong/AP)
“Leave It to Beaver,” airing from 1957 to 1963, depicted an idyllic suburban postwar American household and became a cultural touchstone of the baby boom generation. Hugh Beaumont was the handsome, ever-patient father, Ward Cleaver, and Barbara Billingsley played the glamorous and understanding matriarch, June, who vacuumed in high heels and always tucked her boys into their beds.
The sitcom began on CBS but appeared for most of its run on the third-place ABC network and never was a big ratings success. But thanks to its gentle, wry humor and an appealing ensemble cast, it thrived in syndication. The show lasted far longer than more popular family sitcoms of that era, including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best” and “The Donna Reed Show,” TV scholar Robert Thompson has noted.
With his light-brown hair, electric-blue eyes and the athletic build of a championship diver — which he was before joining the show — Mr. Dow was promoted as a teen heartthrob and received more than 1,000 fan letters a week at the sitcom’s peak. Years later, Mathers recalled Mr. Dow as much like his “cool” character: soft-spoken, suave and possessed of gymnastic skills that he showed off by walking up and down a flight of stairs on his hands.
Finding that options for a former child actor were limited, Mr. Dow was making a living on the dinner-theater circuit in the 1970s. One producer, mounting a Kansas City production of the swinging-bachelor farce “Boeing, Boeing,” had the idea of reuniting Mr. Dow and Mathers. To their shock, they met with packed and wildly enthusiastic audiences for weeks.
Referring to a popular police show, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I did one 'Adam-12’ — I think because I was the only actor in town at that time with short hair.”
Turning away from acting to focus on other art forms also helped. He had modest success as a sculptor, with work appearing in galleries and international exhibitions. Starting with “The New Leave It to Beaver” in 1988, Mr. Dow also began a career as a TV director, and his credits included episodes of “Babylon 5″ and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
“I could never understand the reaction that Jerry or I would get from people,” Mr. Dow told the Kansas City Star in 2003. “Then I was on a plane once and I walked by this guy, and he looked really familiar to me. I asked a stewardess, ‘Who’s that guy?' And she said, ‘Oh, that’s [Harlem Globetrotter] Meadowlark Lemon.' And the biggest smile came across my face.
“All of a sudden I realized what it is,” he continued. “I mean, I don’t know what it is — but it happened to me. I just got that warm feeling and smiled and thought, 'You know, that’s really cool.’ ” | 2022-07-26T17:08:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tony Dow, the all-American Wally on ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/tony-dow-leave-to-beaver-wally-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/tony-dow-leave-to-beaver-wally-dead/ |
Signs are displayed in the window at the Hope Clinic for Women, an abortion care provider in Granite City, Ill., on July 1. (Whitney Curtis for The Washington Post)
Coverage of the post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization landscape has rightly focused on the states that have banned or severely restricted abortion. There, the lives, health and futures of women are in peril.
But there’s another critical story underway: Large numbers of women are traveling to states where abortion is still legal. Clinics and doctors in those places are stressed to the breaking point and in need of help.
NPR reports, “Already, clinics in states like Colorado and Illinois, which have less restrictive laws, have been reporting an influx of patients from neighboring states.”
Multiple OB/GYN doctors and abortion researchers tell me that clinics in states such as New Mexico (servicing a wide swath of the Southwest) and Illinois (providing services for states such as Missouri and Tennessee) have patient loads that are three times what they were before Dobbs. Worse, wait times at clinics now can be weeks, meaning women who might have been able to obtain early-term medical abortions will need later-term abortion procedures. Some clinics are operating seven days a week with extended hours and still cannot keep up with the influx of patients.
This provides further proof that forced-birth policies are largely ineffective at reducing abortions; instead, they only add cruel burdens to women who must travel long distances for care. Abortion restrictions that Missouri put in place in recent years resulted in the number of abortions provided there dropping significantly between 2017 and 2020. “During the same period,” NPR reports, “the abortion rate for residents increased by 18% when out-of-state abortions were taken into account.”
For a long time, places where abortions remain accessible have been referred to as “havens.” But abortion providers have stopped using that term, which suggests these states are aberrations from the norm, rather than places that simply abide by medical standards of care.
Consider, for example, the case of a membrane rupture in the second trimester, which would make the fetus no longer viable. If this happens in a state that does not permit abortion, the woman — who is at risk of infection and hemorrhaging, but might not be in imminent risk of death — would have to wait for an appointment in another state and potentially travel long distances for an abortion. This is not a case of a woman in need of a “haven”; she is simply in need of medical care.
Telemedicine is only a partial solution. In Illinois, for example, a patient doesn’t need a preexisting relationship with a doctor to have a virtual visit. She can also receive a medical prescription via telemedicine. But the patient can only pick up the medicine at a pharmacy in the state, and the pharmacist can only ship it to an Illinois address or P.O. box. Melissa Grant, the chief operations officer of the abortion provider Carafem, told me that telemedicine appointments at her clinic in Skokie, Ill., have increased 20 percent compared to last year. In-person appointments, by contrast, have soared 130 percent.
The problem will get worse when injunctions on certain state bans lift or when state legislatures reduce access to abortions. Indiana’s legislature began its special session on Monday to consider a draconian ban that would prohibit all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or “substantial permanent impairment” to the life of the mother. (Moderate impairment is not enough, apparently.) Clinics there will likely need to send their own patients elsewhere soon.
Colleen McNicholas, a practicing OB/GYN who serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, tells me that abortion service providers are already overwhelmed. Only 11 of Illinois’s 102 counties have an abortion provider. In five of those counties, in-clinic procedures are not available; providers only offer medication abortion that is limited in its usage to the first 11 weeks of a pregnancy.
McNicholas told me that an estimated 14,000 additional patients are expected to seek abortion care in southern Illinois. If Indiana’s ban goes through, that number will rise. On average, $1,500 is needed to care for each patient, meaning the total funding needed to support abortion access in southern Illinois — including logistics, travel and child care — is $21 million.
States that still offer abortions might need to act to prevent forced-birth states from harassing doctors and patients who travel for care. For example, in New Mexico, the Associated Press reports, “Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order that prohibits cooperation with other states that might interfere with abortion access in New Mexico, declining to carry out any future arrest warrants from other states related to antiabortion provisions. The order also prohibits most New Mexico state employees from assisting other states in investigating or seeking sanctions against local abortion providers.” The governors in Maine and Nevada have issued similar orders.
Poor women and women of color will feel the brunt of new abortion bans. They will have to jump through hoops and often travel long distances. The result will be more sick women, more maternal deaths (during and immediately after pregnancy) and more forced births that women are economically, emotionally or physically unable to handle. As always, it is the most vulnerable women who will suffer the most. | 2022-07-26T17:08:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Clinics where abortion is legal are at a breaking point. They need help. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/abortion-clinics-breaking-point-need-help/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/abortion-clinics-breaking-point-need-help/ |
Jeanne Whalen
President Biden during a virtual meeting with CEOs and labor leaders to discuss the importance of passing the 'CHIPS Act" in the South Court Auditorium of the Executive Office Building on July 25. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The Senate voted Tuesday to advance a bill that would provide $52 billion in subsidies to domestic semiconductor manufacturers, as well as invest billions in science and technology innovation, in a bid to strengthen the United States’ competitiveness and self-reliance in what is seen as a keystone industry for economic and national security.
The legislation — which has been referred to as the “CHIPS Act” but which Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) dubbed the “Chips and Science” bill Tuesday — resembles the United States Innovation and Competition Act, the original form of the bill that cleared the Senate last year but ran aground in the House. On Tuesday morning, the Senate voted 64-32 to limit debate and move the bill toward a final vote. If the Senate passes the bill, as expected, it would then move to the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said it has the support for passage.
President Biden has said the chips funding legislation is one of the top priorities on his agenda, and he convened a virtual meeting Monday with a group of business and labor leaders to discuss the bill’s importance. Semiconductor chips are used many products, including vehicles and cellphones, medical equipment and military weapons, he said, and a shortage of chips during the coronavirus pandemic has caused price hikes and supply-chain issues in several industries.
“America invented semiconductors, but over the years, we let the manufacturing of those semiconductors get sent overseas,” Biden said. “And we saw that, during the pandemic, when our factories overseas that make these chips shut down … the global economy basically comes to a halt, driving up the costs for families all around the world but particularly here at home.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who has been spearheading the White House’s efforts to lobby for the bill, noted Monday that the United States used to make 40 percent of the world’s chips but now makes about 12 percent — and “essentially none of the leading-edge chips,” which come almost entirely from Taiwan. The United States has also invested “nearly nothing” in semiconductor manufacturing, she said, while China has invested $150 billion to build its own domestic capacity.
“It’s not possible to have a strong economy and a strong country if we don’t make things in America and certainly if we don’t make chips in America,” Raimondo said. “Right now, American chip manufacturers are finalizing their investment plans and … the chips funding will be the deciding factor on where those companies choose to expand. … We want them, we need them, to expand here in the United States.”
The Senate’s advancement of the bill Tuesday came after months of debate and setbacks, and was nearly hindered further by weather delays and the absence of several members who tested positive for the coronavirus recently. The cloture vote was originally scheduled for Monday but was moved after storms caused flight delays at Washington-area airports. On Tuesday, Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), who both tested positive for the coronavirus last week, returned to the Senate — masked — to vote to advance the bill.
Though there was bipartisan support in the Senate to advance the bill, several key Republican senators still voted no, including retiring Sens. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.). Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) also opposed advancing the bill, despite Lockheed Martin chief executive Jim Taiclet wholeheartedly endorsing the legislation in his meeting with Biden the day before, emphasizing that semiconductor chips are a critical component of Javelin missiles, which are manufactured in Alabama. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who voiced his opposition to the bill leading up to Tuesday’s vote, also voted against advancing the legislation. | 2022-07-26T17:08:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senate votes to advance $52 billion chips-funding bill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/senate-semiconductor-chips-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/senate-semiconductor-chips-bill/ |
A fan vote will decide the lyrics for Commanders’ slightly revised fight song
The Washington Commanders will debut a revamped fight song on Aug. 13. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The Washington Commanders’ new marching band will premiere the team’s new fight song on Aug. 13 during its first preseason game. The melody and lyrics will sound quite familiar.
On Tuesday, the Commanders unveiled two potential options for their new song, which will be a slightly tweaked version of the original “Hail to the Redskins.” In addition to “Commanders” replacing the retired team name in the new lyrics, the line “Sons of Wash-ing-ton” is now “All of Wash-ing-ton.”
The main change, though, is to the third line of the original song. “Braves on the warpath!” will be dropped in favor of either “Fight for our Commanders!” or “Leaders on a mission!,” with online fan voting at Commanders.com/HTTC determining the winner. The voting site features side-by-side images of the lyrics for the two options and audio of each version sung by members of the team’s Fan Ambassador Network. Fans may vote as often as they would like through Aug. 6.
(The words “Commanders” and “Fight” being repeated in both the opening stanza and refrain isn’t ideal, but “Leaders on a mission!” is too reminiscent of the Big Ten Conference’s ill-fated Leaders and Legends divisions for my taste, so the vote here is for Option 1.)
Band leader Barnee Breeskin composed Washington’s original fight song in 1937; silent film star Corinne Griffith, team founder George Preston Marshall’s wife, wrote the lyrics. The original line “Scalp ’em, swamp ’em — we will take ’em big score” was later changed to “Beat ’em, swamp ’em, touchdown — let the points soar!” Those amended lyrics will remain part of the new song, which was developed in collaboration with Breeskin’s son, David, and granddaughter, Maria Breeskin-McLain. David Breeskin will be honored at FedEx Field when the winning version of the song is first announced and performed by the band on Aug. 13.
“The fight song has gone through several revisions, not only melodically but also from a lyric perspective over the years,” Joey Colby-Begovich, the Commanders’ vice president of guest experience, said when the team first mentioned a “revamped arrangement” of the original fight song was in the works back in May.
According to team officials who were involved with the development of the new fight song, conversations with fans and Washington alumni over the past few months convinced them not to stray far from the original tune. In April, fans voted for HTTC over TakeCommand as the team’s official hashtag, a nod to the popular HTTR initialism associated with the name the team retired in 2020.
“Our first season as the Commanders is all about connecting our past and present and we are excited to work closely with fans to help bring back these traditions under a new banner and combine them with new traditions fans will help to create,” Commanders President Jason Wright said in a statement.
The Commanders also announced additional details of their season-long development of a mascot. The team will reveal mascot “category options” at its first preseason game, and invite fans to vote on those categories through Aug. 21. Renderings of mascots from the categories receiving the most votes will be unveiled at the team’s Week 3 home game against the Philadelphia Eagles, and another round of fan voting on those renderings will run through Sept. 27. The winning mascot will debut during the team’s final home game of the regular season on Jan. 1.
Team officials declined to elaborate on the category options being considered. | 2022-07-26T17:09:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders announce two options for revised fight song - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/commanders-fight-song-fan-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/commanders-fight-song-fan-vote/ |
In both cities, this Pacific Northwest heat wave could reach a historically long duration
High temperatures on Thursday as predicted by the Weather Service. (WeatherBell) (WeatherBell)
Nearly 40 million American are under heat alerts Tuesday as two zones of excessively high temperatures roast portions of the Lower 48. Parts of the Southern Plains from Texas to southern Missouri continue to cook, as they have most of the summer. But for the Pacific Northwest, the arrival of this sweltering heat is more of a shock after a relatively cool summer thus far.
Throughout the Pacific Northwest, temperatures are forecast to be the highest of the summer and aren’t predicted to drop until the weekend. In Seattle and Portland, this heat wave could approach records for longevity. Both cities are under excessive heat warnings until Thursday evening. Seattle may see the mercury hit 90 on four consecutive days through Friday, while Portland may get afternoon temperatures hovering near 100.
The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest comes a little over a year after all-time records were smashed in Seattle and Portland, with high temperatures of 108 and 116 degrees, respectively. That same event established an record high in Canada, where Lytton, British Columbia, soared to 121 degrees. The town burned to the ground the next day.
Forecasters in Seattle and Portland stressed that this year’s heat wave, while not nearly as intense as last year, is notable for its longevity.
“It’s the duration that’s really noteworthy for this event,” said Colby Neuman, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Portland. “The most consecutive days of 95 degrees at Portland on record is six, and we’ll certainly be in the running to approach, tie or exceed that record. The next few days, we’re going to be right around 100.”
“When we see highs up around 100, hospital visits with heat-related illnesses are definitely much higher than background levels,” Neuman said. “And with covid still being around, there’s a limit to the capacity of hospitals, and these events exacerbate that.”
Access to air conditioning is a complicating factor that amplifies risk in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and homeless. In Portland, 78 percent of households have air conditioning, but that number drops to 44 percent in Seattle.
Officially, the record longest duration for a heat wave in Seattle is five days, which occurred in both 2015 and 1981. That record won’t be beaten this time around.
A particular concern is elevated nighttime temperatures, which will keep dwellings without air-conditioning uncomfortably warm. Temperatures in Seattle briefly dipped below 70 Tuesday morning.
In Portland, the low temperature Tuesday was 69 degrees.
Through the end of the week, the most extreme heat is set to occur Thursday and Friday in eastern Washington, where highs could top 110 degrees, particularly in the lowlands of the Columbia River Basin.
Kennewick, Wash., about 50 miles east-southeast of Yakima, could climb to 112 degrees on Thursday and 110 on Friday. Yakima proper will flirt with 110 degrees Thursday before a relative easing to 108 on Friday and 105 for Saturday.
Temperatures in the 100-to-110-degree range will be common in interior and northern Oregon. Medford tied a record high of 107 degrees on Monday, while Dallesport, Wash., on the border with Oregon, soared to a record-tying 108. | 2022-07-26T17:41:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pacific Northwest heat wave: Temperatures to 110 in Oregon, Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/pacific-northwest-heatwave-seattle-portland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/pacific-northwest-heatwave-seattle-portland/ |
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the European Union drew up a plan to cut gas imports from Russia by two-thirds by the end of 2022. Russia, after suffering punishing sanctions, hit back, with President Vladimir Putin signing a decree demanding that all buyers from “unfriendly” countries pay in rubles starting from April. They would have to open special accounts with Russia’s Gazprombank JSC, in foreign currency and rubles, to handle their payments. Buyers in Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands refused to abide by the new terms and had their gas cut off. Later, Russia also slashed supplies via its biggest pipeline to the continent, cutting shipments even to those who found workarounds to the new payment order. As a result, customers in Germany, Italy, France and Austria didn’t get all the gas they asked for. In July, EU energy ministers reached a political agreement to cut their gas use by 15% through the winter of 2022/23. While the target was voluntary, it could become mandatory if an emergency arises.
With its vast Siberian fields, Russia has the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. It began exporting to Poland in the 1940s and laid pipelines in the 1960s to deliver fuel to and through satellite states of what was then the Soviet Union. Even at the height of the Cold War, deliveries were steady. But since the Soviet Union broke up, Moscow and Kyiv have quarreled over pipelines through Ukrainian territory, prompting Russian authorities to find other routes. Still, Europe has kept its vast dependency on Russian gas, which was often cheaper than alternatives, even when Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.
A supply crunch in 2021 offered an insight into Europe’s reliance on gas from Russia, with benchmark prices more than tripling. Stockpiles in the EU fell to a record low with heavy maintenance taking place in North Sea fields and supplies of liquefied natural gas redirected to meet soaring demand in Asia. In 2022, with Russian supplies under threat, European LNG imports were pushed to full throttle, domestic producers promised to keep output as high as possible and EU buyers tapped new supplies from Africa to Central Asia. Yet Russian volumes were still too large to fully replace in the short term. In mid-June, flows through the Nord Stream pipeline -- the biggest link from Russia to the EU -- fell by about 60%, with some utilities struggling to stay afloat and big industrial users considering energy saving measures. From late July supplies through Nord Stream were set to drop to around 20% of capacity, with Gazprom saying that a turbine due for maintenance would be taken out of service. But European politicians and Kremlin insiders see political motives in the move, as Russia retaliates against sanctions on the nation over its war in Ukraine.
The EU’s economic powerhouse used to rely on Russia for more than half of its gas and about a third of its oil. The dependency declined to 26% for gas and 12% for crude by the summer. The standoff with Moscow led Germany to double down on renewables and invest in LNG import facilities, but it will take years for those other sources to come online. In the meantime, the government was reviving heavily polluting coal plants and subsidizing purchases from alternative energy suppliers to offset the sharp drop in Russian gas imports.
About a third of Russian gas flowing to Europe normally passes through Ukraine. Supplies via the country were curbed after May 11 when a transit point was put out of service amid fighting in the eastern part of the country, and Russia refused to redirect flows, keeping transit via the nation limited. Prior to the cuts, Ukraine had been expecting to earn at least $7 billion from transit fees under a five-year transit deal in December 2019.
Outside supplies, mostly from Russia, Norway and Algeria, account for about 80% of the gas the EU consumes. Germany imports much of its gas via Nord Stream, a pipeline under the Baltic Sea which has been fully operational since 2012. (A further pipeline, Nord Stream 2, was completed in late 2021 but became entangled in politics and is now firmly on ice.) With Nord Stream’s flows persistently reduced, Germany and its allies have been bracing for the possibility that Putin could cut off flows for good. Belgium, Spain and Portugal face the problem of low storage capacity, as does the UK, which is no longer part of the bloc and closed its only big gas storage site. The continent has a mass of pipelines but many cross several borders, creating plenty of possible choke points, while some nations still lack connecting links. | 2022-07-26T18:38:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Europe Became So Dependent on Putin for Its Gas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-europe-became-so-dependent-on-putin-for-its-gas/2022/07/26/f8a95d16-0d07-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-europe-became-so-dependent-on-putin-for-its-gas/2022/07/26/f8a95d16-0d07-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot man in Gaithersburg is identified
A sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a man in Gaithersburg. (Omari Daniels/The Washington Post)
Authorities have identified the deputy sheriff who fatally shot a man in Montgomery County last Wednesday.
Deputy Domenic Mash of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office was identified by the Independent Investigations Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General as the one who fired his weapon in the incident outside of a home in Gaithersburg.
Deputy sheriff fatally shoots man in Gaithersburg
Marsh, a 9½-year veteran of the U.S. Marshals Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, shot and killed a man wanted by authorities after he crawled out of a window of an apartment at the 100 block of Garth Terrace, authorities said. The man charged at officers while wielding a knife, according to the county sheriff’s office.
The encounter stemmed from a 2020 home-invasion case, in which the victim pleaded guilty in 2021 and was later released. This May, the man did not appear for court for a matter related to his probation status, authorities said. Deputies arrested him, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Darren M. Popkin (D), and he was released with instructions to return to court in July.
When he failed to appear, according to the sheriff, the matter was turned over to the fugitive task force. About 7:30 a.m. last Wednesday, the officers first tried to find the man in Germantown, a search that led to them to an address in Gaithersburg.
Marsh’s rounds also hit another person who was with the victim. The second person suffered a leg wound and was later treated and released from a hospital, Popkin said last week.
Marsh was not wearing a body camera, as the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, run by the U.S. Marshals Service, does not equip its officers with such cameras. As Marsh is a member of the Marshals task force, the shooting is being investigated by the FBI, according to Popkin and to Shayne Buchwald, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Baltimore field office.
Authorities have not yet released the name of the victim who was killed.
Dan Morse contributed to this report. | 2022-07-26T18:38:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sheriff's office identifies deputy who fatally shot man in Gaithersburg - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/gaithersburg-deputy-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/gaithersburg-deputy-shooting/ |
Donald Trump’s policy agenda is now and will forever be nebulous
You can’t make a statue out of fog
Former president Donald Trump tosses hats into the crowd before addressing attendees during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit on July 23 in Tampa. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
On rare occasions, the site Axios breaks from its signature short-form, bullet-point style on news topics. It did so last week for a report focused on how Donald Trump might approach governance if reelected: shifting thousands of federal employees to a new employment status, making it easier for them to be fired … and replaced with loyalists.
The scheme would build on something Trump tried to implement at the end of his time in office. In October 2020, he signed an executive order creating “Schedule F” as an employment category from which people could be terminated largely at will. The last months of his presidency were marked by an effort to purge top-level teams of anyone not seen as loyal to Trump or his agenda. Schedule F would allow that effort to trickle throughout the executive branch.
Such a move would have a sweeping effect, upending long-standing tradition of separating politics from governance in favor of elevating federal officials with partisan loyalties — or creating a reason for officials to toe partisan lines. For Team Trump, of course, the idea was a simple one: The “swamp,” his pejorative term for D.C. officials, would be drained and replaced with outsiders, preferably from MAGAland.
Trump was expected to respond to the Axios report in a speech to the conservative group Turning Point USA this weekend. “With Schedule F, I took executive action to make it possible to fire federal employees who are bypassing our democracy to advance wokeism and corruption,” he was going to say, according to his prepared remarks.
And then he didn’t. Because, at the end of the day, the only policies Trump will tout are the ones he feels like touting that day. On the day of that speech, he wanted instead to talk about how the 2020 election that he lost was stolen. (It was not.)
It’s also because the only policy Trump will try to implement is the one that strikes his fancy at a given moment. If that’s Schedule F on some random day in May 2025, so be it. By now, though, one should not confuse “here is a thing Trump might do” with “Trump has a plan that he will enact.”
In August 2015, shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, he visited the Iowa State Fair. It’s a common destination for candidates, a place where they can delineate their campaign platforms to voters in the state that has long kicked off presidential contests.
This is not what Trump did. Trump took a few kids up in his Trump-branded helicopter, a bit of PR aimed at having fair attendees see his name flying overhead. He did a quick run through the fairgrounds, ate some pork, and left. No speech on the stage where candidates usually spoke; he was in the midst of a feud with the stage’s sponsor, the Des Moines Register.
In a brief huddle with reporters before the helicopter flights, though, Trump made obvious another reason he wasn’t going to outline detailed policy proposals: He didn’t have any.
“I don’t think the people care,” Trump said when a reporter asked about a promised immigration plan. “I think they trust me. I think they know I’m going to make good deals for them.” Those deals, in fact, were a reason Trump offered for not releasing lengthy policy proposals: The mechanics of dealmaking meant detailed plans were quickly scrapped.
He wasn’t wrong, of course. Most people don’t pore over lengthy white papers. But those documents do show voters two things: that a candidate has a policy agenda and that the agenda has been thought through. To the extent that Trump had a policy agenda, it was only loosely articulated. Policy proposals like those Republicans in Congress put in front of him as president became elements of his agenda only as long as he signed onto and promoted them. At times, policies would be elevated as part of his agenda only to be dropped by the wayside when political winds turned. (Is broad availability of vaccines still part of Trump’s agenda, for example?) When Trump ran for reelection, he was consistently disinterested in articulating any plans for what he would do over the following four years.
All of this is useful context for Trump’s return to Washington on Tuesday. The former president will be speaking at a conference hosted by the America First Policy Institute, an organization stood up as the formal nonprofit vehicle for converting contributions into policy proposals. As the Daily Beast reports, AFPI is not universally beloved in the MAGAverse, despite bearing Trump’s stamp of approval.
“People are thirsting for solutions,” one Trump ally told the outlet’s Zachary Petrizzo and Roger Sollenberger. But, as a critic put it, AFPI is “a mile wide and an inch deep, all sizzle and no substance” — suggesting that those seeking to slake their thirst may find the AFPI puddle frustrating.
As a purported font of Trumpian policy initiatives, the AFPI hits the mark, in that it doesn’t have much in terms of specifics. One of its feature areas is “environment,” for example, and the sum total of its “policy” section are: an op-ed about farming (in the context of the war in Ukraine), an op-ed excoriating a focus on environmental investing, a December amicus brief for a Supreme Court case that has since been decided and a 2021 call to oppose specific legislation co-authored with another group. It seems largely to be a depository for specific whims and frustrations.
Which, again: very Trumpian! Trump’s environmental policy is itself mostly grievance-based (windmills are ugly; showers should have more water pressure). But it is not the work product of what one might normally consider a “think tank.” The Daily Beast article depicts a group that’s quite similar to Trump’s post-election challenges, a robust mechanism for generating contributions that yields little in the way of results.
What Donald Trump wants from politics is simple. He wants the power to exact punishment on those he dislikes and to aid those he supports. Policy is a tool for this, but since his views on who deserves punishment or support fluctuate, there’s not much point in writing things down. Schedule F, for example, is a great idea for punishing opponents, but it would also involve two things that have flummoxed Trump in the past: intricate details and political blowback.
Should he run in 2024, Trump’s policy platform will be what it was in 2016 and 2020: He will do things people like. And, as in 2017 to 2020, we’ll have to see what that means on a given day. | 2022-07-26T18:38:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donald Trump’s policy agenda is now and will forever be nebulous - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/donald-trumps-policy-agenda-is-now-will-forever-be-nebulous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/donald-trumps-policy-agenda-is-now-will-forever-be-nebulous/ |
In this image from a Washington Metropolitan Police Department officer’s body-worn video camera, and contained in the statement of facts supporting an arrest warrant for Mark Ponder, Ponder strikes an officer with a pole on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Ponder, the man who attacked police officers with poles during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced to more than five years in prison on July 26, 2022. (Department of Justice via AP) (Uncredited/Department of Justice) | 2022-07-26T18:38:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man's 63-month prison term matches longest for Capitol riot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mans-63-month-prison-term-matches-longest-for-capitol-riot/2022/07/26/03ad08a8-0d07-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mans-63-month-prison-term-matches-longest-for-capitol-riot/2022/07/26/03ad08a8-0d07-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Live updates Women’s Euro 2022 semifinal pits England vs. Sweden
How they got here: England
What to Watch: English quality; Swedish set pieces
Defender Linda Sembrant (2R) nets the winner in Sweden's quarterfinal win over Belgium. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
England and Sweden will kick off the semifinal round of the Women’s Euro 2022 tournament Tuesday afternoon at Sheffield, England’s Bramall Lane. The Brits are not only the favorites to win Tuesday’s match, they’re favored to win the title, per DraftKings Sportsbook, which would be their first since the tournament’s inception in 1984. The Swedes, are the longest shot of the four remaining teams.
England will look to forwards Beth Mead and Alessia Russo, who have combined for eight goals in the tournament. Sweden has been stout on defense, though, allowing just two goals in its four Women’s Euro 2022 matches. The winner of Tuesday’s game will face the winner of Germany-France, which is set for Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time, in Sunday’s final at Wembley Stadium.
Follow along for live updates from the first Women’s Euro 2022 semifinal.
England goalkeeper Mary Earps doesn’t have a blemish on her stat sheet, having pitched four consecutive shutouts. On the other side of the field, Swedish keeper Hedvig Lindahl has also been stingy, with two straight clean sheets after allowing a goal apiece in each of Sweden’s first two matches.
Stinginess in goal aside, it could be tough for Sweden to slow down England’s attack. The Lionesses outscored their first three opponents in the tournament by a combined 14-0 before needing extra time in the quarterfinals to outlast Spain by a 2-1 margin. Sweden made it through to the quarters on the strength of two wins and a draw, then got a second-half injury time tally from defender Linda Sembrant to beat Belgium and advance to this matchup.
Tuesday evening’s forecast in Sheffield is unsettled, with early showers expected and temperatures dropping into the low-to-mid 50s. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on ESPN’s app and ESPN.com.
Host England swept through Group A of the tournament, winning games against Austria, Norway and Northern Ireland by a 14-0 margin — the widest of the group stage.
Spain, the team’s quarterfinal opponent, offered much greater resistance. Its 54th minute goal was the first allowed by England’s defense in 482 minutes of play. Spain held that advantage until the 84th minute, when England’s Ella Toone flicked the equalizer into the back of the net, setting up extra time. In the 96th minute, Georgia Stanway dribbled through the Spanish defense then rifled the game-winner from outside the box.
The Lionesses have never won UEFA women’s Euros, and face Sweden looking for their third finals appearance.
Despite England’s impressive depth and quality throughout the tournament, it is Sweden that enters Tuesday’s first semifinal as the No. 2 team in the world (England is ranked eighth).
This time last year, Sweden toppled the American women during Olympic group stage play. Stina Blackstenius, who scored a brace in the 2021 upset, has just one goal at Euros although she’s registered a tournament-high 9 shots on goal.
Sweden has been particularly dangerous from set pieces, scoring more set-piece goals than any other nation at this year’s tournament, excluding penalties.
England’s roster features two of the top three scorers in the competition, including tournament leader Beth Mead (5 goals). Alessia Russo, a former first-team all-American and ACC offensive player of the year at North Carolina, is tied for third with three goals.
Mead and teammate Fran Kirby top the assist leader board with 3 assists each, sharing the distinction with Sweden’s Kosovare Asllani.
Live updates: Women’s Euro 2022 semifinal pits England vs. Sweden | 2022-07-26T18:39:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women's Euro 2022: England vs. Sweden live score and updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/england-vs-sweden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/england-vs-sweden/ |
Liz Cambage terminated her contract with the Sparks on Tuesday. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP)
The Los Angeles Sparks and four-time WNBA all-star Liz Cambage have agreed to a contract divorce, the team announced on Tuesday. It marks the end of a five-month stint with the team, which signed Cambage as a free agent in February.
Cambage, a 6-foot-8 center from Australia, averaged 13.0 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 25 games with the Sparks.
“It is with support that we share Liz Cambage’s decision to terminate her contract with the organization,” said Sparks Managing Partner Eric Holoman in the team’s release. “We want what’s best for Liz and have agreed to part ways amicably. The Sparks remain excited about our core group and are focused on our run towards a 2022 playoff berth.”
The Sparks (12-15) are sitting at third place in the Western Conference and are led by interim coach Fred Williams. The team fired head coach Derek Fisher last month after struggling early in the season.
Before signing with the Sparks in February, Cambage expressed frustration with the league, leading to speculation that she might not have intended to return to the WNBA.
ahhh yes the @WNBA, where a head coach can get paid 4X the highest paid players super max contract. lmao and y’all think imma spend another season upgrading my seat on a flight to get to games out of my own pocket.
— Elizabeth Cambage (@ecambage) February 1, 2022
In a statement from the league announcing Cambage’s signing in February, Fisher said, “The Sparks organization is ecstatic to partner with a dynamic person and player in Liz Cambage who will elevate the franchise on and off the court. … The addition of Liz, along with our other offseason moves, puts us in a position to compete for a WNBA championship.”
Cambage, 30, played for the Las Vegas Aces in 2019 and 2021, where she averaged 15.9 and 14.2 points, respectively. She opted out of the pandemic-altered 2020 season.
She was drafted second overall in 2011 by the Tulsa Shock, which later moved to Dallas and rebranded as the Dallas Wings. She averaged 11.5 points and 4.7 rebounds in her 2011 all-star rookie campaign. Following the 2013 season, Cambage took a four-season hiatus from the WNBA before spending the 2018 season with the Wings, where she averaged a career-high 23.0 points and 9.7 rebounds.
Williams, now the interim coach of the Sparks, was the head coach of the Wings during the 2018 regular season.
Cambage has previously played for Australia’s national team, winning bronze at the 2012 Olympics in London.
While with the Australian national team last year in Las Vegas, Cambage was involved in an alleged altercation during a scrimmage against Nigeria’s women’s basketball team, though she later disputed those claims. Before the Tokyo Olympics, she announced a decision to withdraw from the Games, citing mental health reasons and the “bubble” nature of the Olympics.
Read more on the WNBA
Detained in Moscow: Brittney Griner will stand trial starting July 1 in Russia. The U.S. government is characterizing Griner’s arrest as a “wrongful detainment.” As the WNBA season continues, Griner’s absence should rattle the country, writes Jerry Brewer. Why do WNBA stars flock to Russia? It’s not just the money.
League growth strategy: As the WNBA looks to expand, players are hoping for owners who want to spend. The league added $75 million to its coffers through a capital raise. However, the lack of roster spots is an expanding problem.
Washington Mystics: Elena Delle Donne is competing against herself now.
Profile: Chiney Ogwumike is on a tireless quest to have it all. The Los Angeles Sparks forward and ESPN personality who just turned 30 has a checklist for her next 10 years that includes marriage, children and launching a media business.
Candace Buckner: “While men routinely coach women at basketball’s highest levels, the same opportunities do not exist, yet, in reverse.” | 2022-07-26T18:39:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cambage and the Sparks part ways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/liz-cambage-sparks-part-ways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/liz-cambage-sparks-part-ways/ |
The Notorious B.I.G. NFT drop is a mix of art and legalities. Is it the future or a hustle?
A sample of the images from the The Notorious B.IG. NFT drop. The rapper's estate says buying one is the truest way to participate in the creative process with the icon. (OneOf)
Maybe you wore out both discs of “Life After Death.”
Perhaps you couldn’t get enough of Sean Combs and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tribute at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame induction.
No matter how deep your connection to The Notorious B.I.G., the people in charge of the pioneering rapper’s estate think it can go even deeper. ‘Wait on a digital line to drop $100 on a piece of AI-generated art’ deeper.
On Tuesday afternoon the estate made available — first to a list of fans that have demonstrated their devotion and then to the general public — a 3,000-piece NFT collection that uses algorithms to resurrect the late icon’s signature looks. The Notorious NFT is dedicated to the proposition that keeping an artist alive is not so much about holding them in your heart as retaining them in your digital wallet.
To its backers, this offers an opportunity to communicate Biggie’s essence in a way even the most raw bootleg can’t — though as with so many things web3, far from everyone will see the upside.
"This is a chance to give fans a piece of his legacy instead of just pushing the legacy on them,” said Wayne Barrow, a longtime friend of the rapper who now helps manage his estate. “It’s what makes web3 great — you can participate instead of just purchasing what somebody’s selling.”
The big poppa of the drop, Barrow said, isn’t even the digital art. It’s membership in a collective that will be empowered to decide the fate of the “Fulton Street Freestyle” -- a famous bit of viral video in which a 17-year-old Christopher Wallace improvised lyrics on a Brooklyn streetcorner for adoring crowds.
The performance has never been licensed out. But the 3,000 NFT owners will get to vote on whether any paying entity that wants to use it as a sample or in other derivative works can do so. Members might even see some revenue from such a sale, though organizers say the details have yet to be worked out.
The drop is called “Sky’s The Limit,” a reference to Biggie’s posthumous 1997 hit about dreaming big — and a sly allusion to how far technology has come from the world of the song, in which he’s the only man around with a mobile phone.
Biggie died 25 years ago, of course, gunned down after an industry party in Los Angeles in the wake of a coastal-rap feud with Tupac Shakur, who’d been killed months earlier. The posthumous celebration — and market economy — kicked off almost immediately, with the “Life After Death” release going diamond (10 million copies).
It has barely slowed since, powering along with such events as a record $600,000 sale of that famous crown several years ago. To mark what would have been his 50th birthday this year, the Empire State Building lit up in Biggie colors while Combs’ record label released a deluxe box set of “Life After Death.”
But no commercialization seduces like a web3 commercialization. Barrow, entrepreneur Elliot Osagie and Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace a little while ago got together with OneOf, an NFT company advised by Quincy Jones that previously auctioned off an NFT of an unreleased Whitney Houston demo track.
For this, OneOf chose from a series of Biggie’s famous looks and adapted them for the NFT. It is a “generative drop,” which means an AI takes a handful of templates and makes small differences to spit out unique images — changing a background color, for example. There is no artist per se — organizers worked with the animation company Seriously Fun.
To determine who gets first crack, a two-hour pre-sale “allow list” was put together from fans who submitted testaments to their devotion. Backers say they wanted to avoid too many speculators who will later drive the price up, but acknowledge that this is almost inevitable (and, perhaps, desirable).
Organizers say that even simple images, like Biggie holding a bag of cash, comes with commentary befitting his music.
“Every single item has a story and it’s often not the story people understand,” said Christopher Sealey, OneOf’s creative director. “We have one with Biggie holding a bag of cash, and the reason we included it is not because he was talking about about money but because if you talk to his neighbors even now then they'll all say how generous he was in the community.”
Voletta Wallace called the NFT a chance “to memorialize my son Christopher." It will give fans “an opportunity to participate in and honor their love of him and his music," she said in an earlier statement.
OneOf’s Whitney Houston demo sold for nearly $1 million to a single buyer. Grimes also sold a collection for nearly $6 million, only to see it later plunge in value. At $100 a pop, this will generate $300,000 — less money and, maybe, less problems.
Not that all musician NFT’s take off right away. Embattled singer Chris Brown saw just 3 percent of his collection sold a week after release last month. (Sealey and Barrow say they expect the Biggie NFT to sell out within minutes.)
The NFT release is related to an effort called “The Brook,” a so-called Biggie “metaverse” in which people can assume avatars and move around the world conjured by his songs. It might strike users as either the future or a new participatory storytelling or a brand overkill that erodes the purity that made so many people fall in love with an artist in the first place.
Sealey said he believes the Biggie drop shows a way forward and keeps true to hip-hop’s roots. “The entire essence of hip-hop is remixing culture," he said. “We’re giving fans creative control over the most famous freestyle of all time."
Tech tools like digital watermarking, AI art and the uniting ethos of the blockchain, he said, goes well beyond re-releasing albums to remaking an artist’s work in the present tense.
“This isn’t a posthumous drop,” Sealey said. "It brings everything to the here and now.” | 2022-07-26T18:39:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Notorious B.I.G. NFT dropped 25 years after his death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/26/notorious-big-nft-issued/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/26/notorious-big-nft-issued/ |
Overbooking leads some airlines to offer thousands of dollars to volunteers who are willing to reschedule
It’s a story that has become more common at airports: After you show up, get through security and walk to your assigned gate, you hear an announcement that the airline is looking for volunteers to give up their seats. If you’re unlucky, you find out you’re getting “bumped” from the flight because the airline overbooked.
Airlines beset by labor shortages have struggled to keep up with summer travel demand, leading to an unusually high number of cancellations, delays and disappearing luggage. More people are also getting bumped: According to a consumer report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the rate of passengers who were involuntarily denied boarding in the first quarter of 2022 was 0.44 per 10,000 passengers, which is more than five times greater than the 2021 figure (0.08) and bigger than the pre-pandemic rate of 0.32 in the same period of 2019.
Flexible travelers can use these situations to their advantage. Passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight from Michigan to Minnesota reported the carrier was offering $10,000 for them to rebook. A few weeks ago, a woman on a flight from New York to Florida said she accepted a $3,000 offer from Delta to get off the plane.
If you were counting on getting to your destination on time, the bumping experience can be frustrating and confusing. Because the situation can be inevitable, we asked experts to explain why airlines ask passengers to sit out flights and what to do if it happens to you.
Are airlines allowed to deny boarding if a passenger wants to fly?
Do airlines have to pay passengers if they involuntarily deny boarding?
How much money can passengers request for their seat?
What should you ask when you’re negotiating? | 2022-07-26T18:39:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know if an airline wants to bump you from a flight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/airline-compensation-bump-passengers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/airline-compensation-bump-passengers/ |
We must contain monkeypox before it becomes a broader threat
People hold signs during a rally on July 18 to demand that the federal government respond quickly to a recent monkeypox outbreak in San Francisco. (Marlena Sloss/For The Washington Post)
Most Americans do not have to worry about contracting monkeypox right now. But we cannot discount the possibility that it becomes a broader threat. That’s why the World Health Organization was right to declare the disease a global health emergency and why containing it must be a top priority for the Biden administration.
Monkeypox is very different from the coronavirus. Unlike the coronavirus, which is an extremely contagious respiratory pathogen, monkeypox is primarily transmitted through prolonged skin-to-skin contact. You are highly unlikely to contract monkeypox by dining in the same restaurant or working in the same office as an infected person; transmission occurs through intimate contact such as hugging, kissing and sexual intercourse. Bed linens and towels used by someone with active lesions can also harbor the virus, making household members vulnerable to infection.
The nature of transmission means that monkeypox won’t spread like wildfire the way that covid-19 has. We also have a vaccine that works against monkeypox after someone has been exposed, which is not the case for the coronavirus. If you’ve been exposed to covid-19, there’s nothing you can do other than wait to test positive. But if you’re exposed to monkeypox, getting the vaccine — if done shortly after exposure — could prevent you from developing the disease.
Moreover, while the coronavirus spread rapidly across every demographic, monkeypox is still overwhelmingly limited to one group of individuals: men who have sex with men. The largest study of cases to date, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examined 528 recent infections across 16 countries and found that nearly all of them — 98 percent — were gay or bisexual men. Ninety-five percent were linked to sexual contact.
As a result, those who should be on high alert for monkeypox are men who have sex with men and who have multiple or anonymous sex partners. Those eligible should seek the vaccine and try to reduce high-risk activities before vaccination. Clinicians should have a low threshold for testing for monkeypox. The study found that some patients presented with only a single lesion, often in the oral, anal or genital areas, and 29 percent were diagnosed at the same time with a sexually transmitted infection. That means monkeypox can look like herpes or syphilis and that having another infection doesn’t rule out monkeypox.
Those not in this high-risk group do not need to seek the monkeypox vaccine or change their daily lives to avoid this virus yet. But public-health officials must urgently ramp up their efforts because an infectious disease that begins in one community almost certainly won’t stay there. Already, there are cases of monkeypox reported in women, though, due to the lack of timely data reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the exact numbers are unknown. At least two children in the United States have been diagnosed with monkeypox, including a toddler in California.
The CDC says these cases in women and children are all direct contacts of infected men who have sex with men. So far, no one in the United States has died from monkeypox, though some have been hospitalized and many reported extreme pain from their lesions.
We don’t know if these survival statistics will hold up if monkeypox spreads to the wider population. Based on the experiences of countries where the virus has been endemic, monkeypox is particularly dangerous in pregnant women and young children. It could also pose a significant threat to people with immunosuppression and other severe underlying medical conditions. Preventing this virus from taking hold and spreading broadly must be a top focus.
The Biden administration has said that it will procure many more monkeypox vaccine doses. This is important, though I worry that it won’t be able to obtain the number of shots needed quickly enough. While the CDC estimates that 1.5 million Americans are eligible, so far only 300,000 doses of the two-dose vaccine have been shipped. The CDC should prioritize first vaccine doses so more people can have some protection faster. To better ration limited vaccines, we also need to understand the degree of protection against monkeypox among older individuals who were previously vaccinated against smallpox.
Federal health officials must also broaden testing. Testing capacity has been steadily increasing, though it remains limited to symptomatic individuals who have active lesions. A preprint study from Belgium showed asymptomatic infections are possible, though we don't know if asymptomatic transmission can occur. The United States must institute broad screening of high-risk individuals to detect cases early, identify contacts and stop the chains of transmission with vaccination.
Unlike covid-19, which was a novel disease when it first arrived in the United States, monkeypox has been around and studied for decades. We have all the tools to stop this virus from becoming yet another serious illness that Americans have to contend with in perpetuity. | 2022-07-26T18:40:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We must contain monkeypox before it becomes a broader threat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/biden-administration-must-contain-monkeypox-before-it-becomes-broader-threat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/biden-administration-must-contain-monkeypox-before-it-becomes-broader-threat/ |
The brutal end of German illusions about energy from Russia
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Berlin in 2012. (Markus Schreiber/AP)
James Kirchick is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age.”
Russia’s state-controlled gas provider, Gazprom, has just announced that it is cutting down to 20 percent of capacity the amount of natural gas it delivers to Germany through the main pipeline connecting both countries. Whatever pretext Moscow might offer for the move, the real reason is clear to all: Russia is retaliating for E.U. sanctions levied because of its war against Ukraine. “Russia is blackmailing us,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen complained. “Russia is using energy as a weapon.”
Von der Leyen made her announcement as if it were news. But it’s not — not to anyone who’s been paying attention over the past two decades. Using energy as a political weapon is hardly a novel tactic for Russian President Vladimir Putin. That Europe faces an energy crisis because of Russian energy blackmail, then, is just as predictable as Russia’s atrocious conduct in its war on Ukraine.
It did not have to be this way. Led by the continent’s biggest and richest power, Germany, Europe had plenty of time to avoid the unenviable predicament in which it now finds itself. The European energy dilemma is the result of three interrelated illusions: that dependence on Russian gas was worth whatever (minor) risks it entailed, that the supplier of that gas was a partner rather than an adversary, and that conventional war on the continent was a thing of the past.
For years, German politicians routinely deflected criticism of Nord Stream by stating that their hands were tied. The pipeline was a “commercial project,” they insisted, over which the German government exercised no control. But increasing European dependence on Russian gas at the expense of other sources has always entailed a political dimension, especially in Germany. No one forced Berlin to shutter its nuclear energy sector in a fit of characteristically German panic in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Unlike the island nation of Japan, Germany sits in the middle of a continent, safe from the earthquake-induced tsunamis of the sort that destroyed the Fukushima plant. Thanks to then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hasty decision to phase out nuclear energy by the end of 2022 by the time Putin decided to wage energy war against Europe, Germany was even more addicted to Russian gas.
Belying their excuse that Nord Stream 2 exists beyond the reach of politics, the German political establishment fell under the spell of another illusion, which was that the project represented the apotheosis of Russia’s integration with the West. A mere week after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the chief executive of German industrial giant Siemens visited Moscow, where he spoke of the first armed seizure of territory on European soil since World War II as mere “short-term turbulence” in an otherwise constructive relationship. A few months later, then-foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to endorse an “economic-political” partnership between Moscow and the European Union.
Plans for a second Nord Stream pipeline proceeded despite the threat of sanctions from the Trump administration. Last February, nearly 80 years after his country’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Steinmeier (now Germany’s president) defended Nord Stream 2 as “one of the last bridges between Russia and Europe,” imbuing the enterprise with the moral gravity Germany usually reserves for initiatives related to postwar reconciliation. Only after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the pipeline put on hold.
Europe would not be facing an energy crisis today had more of its leaders seen through the third and final illusion, that of a continent blessed with perpetual peace. Putin’s belief that he could subjugate Ukraine — the precipitating cause of the imminent energy crisis — owes a great deal to Western Europe’s lackluster military support for its embattled neighbor as well as its own anemic defense outlays. NATO’s refusal, at the behest of France and Germany, to provide Georgia and Ukraine with pathways to membership in 2008 sent Putin a greenlight to invade both countries. The decrepit state of European militaries, Germany’s in particular, similarly signaled a lack of seriousness about defending the continent from Russian predation.
Western European leaders were warned repeatedly as to the nature of their illusions, no more forcefully than by Eastern Europeans. As early as 2006, Poland’s defense minister compared Nord Stream to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which infamously divided the nations of Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Three years later, in response to the Obama administration’s ill-fated “reset” with Moscow, a group of distinguished Central and Eastern European statesmen issued an open letter, declaring that “Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.” Their admonitions went unheeded.
If Germans find themselves shivering more than usual this winter, they have no one to blame but themselves. | 2022-07-26T18:40:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The brutal end of German illusions about energy from Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/germany-end-illusions-russia-energy-blackmail-gazprom-natural-gas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/germany-end-illusions-russia-energy-blackmail-gazprom-natural-gas/ |
An envelope containing a 2020 Census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. (Paul Sancya/AP)
The Trump administration engaged in a years-long, multi-pronged effort to sabotage the U.S. census, largely centered on adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 count. A new report, released last week by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, paints a grim picture of what was happening behind the scenes.
The newly released documents undercut the Trump administration’s repeated claims that the citizenship question had nothing to do with apportionment. The Constitution plainly states: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.”
At the time, then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other officials offered various unconvincing justifications for adding the question, most frequently that it would help enforce the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court blocked the move, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. calling the rationale “contrived.” The House report reinforces that conclusion.
Though the question was ultimately not included, the lengthy and public battle over it appears to have been enough: The Census Bureau reported that Black, Hispanic and Native Americans were undercounted at higher levels in 2020 compared with 2010 — Hispanics by a statistically significant amount — while White and Asian Americans were overcounted. Never mind that this might have backfired on Republicans, with the bureau reporting it significantly undercounted populations in Florida and Texas — red states with large minority communities — and overcounted populations in blue states such as Rhode Island and Minnesota. The accuracy of the census depends in no small part on its credibility, which has been severely damaged.
The next census is in 2030, but — given the scale of the undertaking and importance of the results — Congress should work quickly to insulate it from political interference. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, would do just that. The Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act would restrict the number of political appointees at the Census Bureau, bar the removal of a bureau director without just cause and require new questions to be submitted to Congress ahead of time. It would also mandate new questions be “researched, tested and certified” by the commerce secretary and “evaluated by the Government Accountability Office.”
Though it was not able to implement its most drastic plans, the Trump administration’s assault on the integrity of the census should be an urgent warning. Too much rests on the decennial count to allow it to be exploited for partisan gain. | 2022-07-26T18:40:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Trump administration’s assault on the census must not happen again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/trump-assault-census-must-not-happen-again/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/trump-assault-census-must-not-happen-again/ |
By Emily Giambalvo
Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren spoke publicly for the first time about the conference adding Southern California and UCLA in 2024. (Darron Cummings/AP)
INDIANAPOLIS — Less than a month after his conference sparked a seismic shift in college sports, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren pledged to continue to be “bold” and “aggressive” in how the league navigates a rapidly changing landscape. Warren’s most significant and stunning move in that effort came in late June when he welcomed UCLA and Southern California to the conference, beginning in the 2024 season — a decision that proved financial gains trump geography in this era of realignment. And Warren didn’t discount the possibility of future expansion.
Warren, speaking publicly for the first time since the Big Ten announced its newest members, now leads a Midwest-rooted conference that extended to the East Coast with the additions of Rutgers and Maryland in 2014 and will now stretch across four time zones to Los Angeles. He wants the Big Ten to stay relevant and embrace change, and he’s now poised to have a 16-team league that can rival the mighty SEC. The other conferences, meanwhile, are left wondering what’s next as these two powers separate themselves from the rest.
“The Big Ten Conference will not languish in bureaucracy,” Warren said at the league’s media days Tuesday morning. “We will be innovative, we will be creative, we'll be bold, we'll be strong, we'll be powerful, and we'll be direct to make sure we can prioritize what's important to our student-athletes, what's important to our fans, what's important to our member institutions, what's important to our partners as we help shape and direct the future of college athletics.”
The massive market of Los Angeles is poised to make the Big Ten’s upcoming media rights deal even more lucrative than the $1 billion annual price tag the conference had been reportedly set to attract before the announcement of its newest members. Warren acknowledged Tuesday that the addition of UCLA and USC “will allow us to be even bolder when it comes to corporate partnership and activation.”
Conference leaders unveiled last year an alliance between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12, touting trust and a shared vision for the future of college sports. That forged bond — not held together by a contract, the need for which was shrugged off by those administrators at the time — came in the wake of Oklahoma and Texas announcing their intention to jump from the Big 12 to the SEC. The Big Ten quickly followed suit a year later by adding two major programs — and doing so before the conference had finished finalizing that media rights deal. Warren said the new agreement is expected to be complete soon, but he would not disclose specific figures.
The Big Ten’s future, Warren said, “may include future expansion, but it will be done for the right reasons at the right time.”
He added: “We will not expand just to expand. It will be strategic, it will add additional value to our conference, and it will provide a platform to even have our student-athletes be put on a larger platform so they can build their careers.”
UCLA and USC will join the conference as full members, Warren said. Those schools will receive a full share of revenue from the start — unlike other recent additions Maryland, Rutgers and Nebraska, which initially received only a partial share after joining the conference.
Warren lauded the value of USC and UCLA, referencing media partners and a large Big Ten alumni base in Los Angeles. With late kickoffs on the West Coast, the conference’s television programming will now last all day and into the night.
As Warren, whose tenure as commissioner began in 2020, interviewed for the job, he said he had already begun considering expansion and studied schools across the country. Two years in as the leader of the Big Ten, he said, “We had to be forward-thinking as far as what we needed to do.”
The Big Ten’s expansion will send teams on long trips to Los Angeles, and UCLA and USC will have frequent flights to the Midwest. The SEC’s expansion, on the other hand, kept the conference’s schools confined to contiguous states. The Big Ten’s huge footprint could be particularly cumbersome for sports programs that compete multiple times per week, but Warren downplayed concerns about how this could affect athletes academically, focusing on the what he called the “opportunities” of a conference that stretches across the country and how the conference has two years to work through these scheduling challenges.
“It is what it is,” said Maryland Coach Michael Locksley, whose team will travel more than 2,600 miles to Los Angeles. “For us, we’ll play the games that end up on our schedule. We’ll manage it and come up with a way to hopefully allow us and get out there to play our best. But great to have those two storied programs come to the Big Ten.”
This jarring new footprint of the Big Ten came as a byproduct of what should be a massive financial windfall for the conference and the schools. And that ensures they can weather a changing environment.
When Warren attended law school at Notre Dame, he said he’d drive from Chicago to South Bend, Ind., and see a Sears Roebuck building alongside the highway. He remembers as a child picking out birthday gifts from the department store’s catalogues — now a relic of the past.
“I don’t want to be Sears and Roebuck,” Warren said. “ … I want to make decisions that, when we look back 30 years from now, people will say that the Big Ten Conference was ahead of the curve in making these decisions.” | 2022-07-26T18:40:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kevin Warren says Big Ten may not be done expanding - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/kevin-warren-big-ten-expansion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/kevin-warren-big-ten-expansion/ |
A buoy lays on cracked earth at Lake Mead, Nev. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
A third set of human remains was recovered from Lake Mead on Monday, thanks to a drought that has pushed the water level at the largest reservoir in the United States to an unprecedented low.
National Park Service rangers responded to a report of human remains discovered around 4:30 p.m. at Swim Beach at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the agency said in a news release. The medical examiner’s office in Clark County, Nev., is expected to determine the cause of death, according to the Park Service. No details have been publicly released regarding the identity of the victim or when the person might have died.
“Park rangers are on scene and have set a perimeter to recover the remains,” the agency said.
It’s at least the third time human remains have been recovered from Lake Mead in recent months, following two discoveries less than a week apart in May.
The water levels at Lake Mead are the lowest they’ve been since the reservoir near Las Vegas was filled for the first time in April 1937 as Hoover Dam, then called Boulder Dam, harnessed the Colorado River, according to NASA. Satellite images released by NASA last week show how the reservoir on the Nevada-Arizona border, which is now 27 percent full, is nearly unrecognizable, compared with how it looked in the past two decades.
The reservoir is at top capacity when water levels reach 1,229 feet above sea level, but it is considered full at 1,219.6 feet, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The reservoir last hit that top capacity in 1999, according to NASA.
As of Tuesday, Lake Mead was about 1,040 feet above sea level.
In the West, the summer’s hot and dry weather has fueled drought and fire in all parts of the region. The effects of climate change were apparent last week as a stretch of the Rio Grande near Albuquerque that supplies farmers with water and habitat for an array of aquatic life is drying up.
“In the last 1,200 years, we haven’t seen a period as dry as right now,” Ann Willis, a researcher at the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California at Davis, told The Washington Post last month. “We’re really hitting new lows in terms of how extreme the conditions are.”
The drought has affected the fifth-most visited park in the country in more ways than one. The lake supplies electricity to 350,000 homes, and is also a significant source of irrigation and drinking water to about 25 million people across the Southwest.
While Lake Mead National Recreation Area touts on its website how it “offers Joshua trees, slot canyons and night skies illuminated by the Milky Way,” the park has also had to contend with challenges such as previously sunken boats now exposed in the low water levels.
But the multiple discoveries of human remains at the park has captured headlines in recent months.
On May 1, the remains of a person who died an estimated 40 years ago were discovered in a corroding barrel. Lt. Ray Spencer, of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said at the time that investigators think the person was a murder victim who died of a gunshot wound. Authorities believe the person was killed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, based on clothing and footwear found with the body, according to a statement provided to The Post in May.
Receding waters of Lake Mead uncover a body. Police expect to find more.
Spencer told CBS affiliate KLAS-TV in May that there would probably be more such discoveries.
“There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” he said.
#BREAKING: The body found in a barrel at Lake Mead may have been underwater for as long as four decades and more bodies are likely to appear as the lake recedes due to severe drought, Las Vegas Metro police tell the @8NewsNow I-Team. https://t.co/LhYkciIJDO #8NN
— David Charns (@davidcharns) May 2, 2022
Spencer was right. Six days later, human skeletal remains were discovered at Callville Bay at the park, according to the Park Service.
Authorities have not released any additional details regarding the identities of the victims. | 2022-07-26T19:48:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lake Mead rangers recover third set of human remains as West drought crushes Nevada reservoir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/lake-mead-human-remains-drought/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/26/lake-mead-human-remains-drought/ |
National Guard member sought out extremists, planned attack on police
Francis P. Harker was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison
A former National Guard member who admitted in pleading guilty to a weapons charge that he sought out violent extremists and discussed a potential attack on Virginia Beach police was sentenced Monday to four years and nine months in prison.
Francis P. Harker, 22, of Norfolk, pleaded guilty to possessing several firearms while he was regularly using LSD and other drugs. He was sentenced Monday based on that offense, but prosecutors said it was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
A backpack in Harker’s car trunk contained ingredients for Molotov cocktails, prosecutors said, and Harker “admitted to interacting online with members of a group called ‘The Base,’ ” a violent white-supremacist and anti-government group.
A magistrate judge found in November that Harker “traveled to Colorado to meet with the leader of a violent extremist group,” but the group is not named in court records.
Pentagon updates rules to address extremism in the military
Harker’s public defenders said he was “vulnerable and isolated,” suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and drug addiction, and was interested in white supremacism for the shock value and not out of ideological conviction. They had requested a sentence of three years in prison.
“His drug use, along with his untreated ADHD, caused Mr. Harker to delve deeper and deeper into a fringe ideology and make increasingly warped decisions, culminating with the choices leading to this prosecution,” his attorneys said in a sentencing brief.
Authorities said they found messages and images in which Harker threatened violence, praised Hitler or disparaged Blacks, including one blood-spattered image with the phrase “Rape the Cops.”
Harker and another man, who is not named in court documents, vented online in June 2020 about curfews and roadblocks in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to documents filed with Harker’s plea.
The other man shared a diagram showing how he might trap and kill police officers in Virginia Beach, and said he was about to go “full Dorner,” referring to Christopher Dorner, who killed three law enforcement officers and another victim in California in 2013, according to plea documents.
Harker said it would be “manageable” to interrupt an “unjust stop” by police, adding that the other man’s plan looked “good” and that the “fact that vehicles won't be able to negotiate the terrain is really good,” according to his plea.
The FBI searched Harker’s home in November and found a rifle, a Glock and a semiautomatic rifle, along with LSD and other drugs. Prosecutors said Harker bought the semiautomatic rifle on the same day in June 2020 in which he discussed the attack on Virginia Beach police with the online associate.
“He engaged in numerous other activities on the Internet involving violent, racially-motivated extremism, particularly focused against law enforcement officers,” prosecutors said of Harker in a sentencing memo. “And while employed in the National Guard, he stole blank COVID-19 vaccination cards and mailed them to associates.”
Harker joined the Virginia National Guard in 2018 and was discharged last year because of the case against him, his attorneys said in a court filing. | 2022-07-26T19:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | National Guard member sought out extremists, planned attack on police - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/national-guard-attack-police-extremism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/national-guard-attack-police-extremism/ |
An 11-year-old driving a car hit a child in Southeast D.C., police say
The 7-year-old victim suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to police
An 11-year-old boy driving a car lost control of the vehicle in a parking lot and struck and seriously injured a 7-year-old boy Monday night in Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police.
Police said the 11-year-old was unable to press the brake of the 2020 Kia Optima before striking the young victim and then hitting a curb. The victim’s injuries were not believed to be life-threatening, according to police.
The driver ran from the crash in the 1800 block of Mississippi Avenue SE but was later identified, according to police. Authorities said they are conferring with the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, which handles juvenile criminal matters, to decide whether to take the boy into custody and charge him.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment.
The crash in the District came one day after police in Howard County, Md., said a 12-year-old girl who was driving a vehicle was killed when she veered off a road in Columbia and struck a tree. A passenger who police said lives in the girl’s household was injured.
D.C. police said the crash on Monday occurred about 7:50 p.m. near Oxon Run park, close to the border with Maryland. The identities of the people involved were not made public because they are juveniles.
Police would not say how the youth obtained the vehicle or got it started.
The area where the crash occurred is lined with homes on one side of the street and a private school, and a 16-acre town hall and recreation campus on the other. That campus includes playgrounds, theaters and other cultural facilities.
It could not be determined where either child had been before the crash. | 2022-07-26T20:12:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An 11-year-old driving a car hit a child in Southeast D.C., police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/child-driver-dc-car-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/child-driver-dc-car-crash/ |
Benghazi attacker’s punishment was ‘unreasonably low,’ court finds
The finding from an appeals court was part of Ahmed Abu Khattala’s effort to have his conviction overturned
Fire damage in the villa in which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens suffered the asphyxiation that killed him at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. (Michael Birnbaum/The Washington Post)
A Libyan militia leader involved in the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Libya was given an “unreasonably low” sentence, and his case must be sent back to a lower court for a new punishment, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Ahmed Abu Khattala was found guilty in a 2017 trial in D.C. federal court of engaging in terrorism, joining the Benghazi assault armed with a semiautomatic weapon and putting lives in danger through destruction of U.S. property. But jurors were not convinced he had any involvement in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the three other Americans who died in the attack. He was acquitted on all but four out of 24 charges.
Khattala appealed his convictions, saying the evidence was flawed, the verdict inconsistent and the prosecutor’s closing argument prejudicial. The panel of appellate judges dismissed those claims, instead finding that Khattala — referred to in court filings as Khatallah — was rightly found guilty and that his 22-year prison sentence was “shockingly low and unsupportable.”
The fact that Khattala, 51, was acquitted of the most serious charges against him did not merit such a departure from federal guidelines recommending 30 years to life, the unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said.
“Those contemplating attacks on the United States, its official properties, and (most importantly) its personnel must know they will face severe consequences if apprehended and convicted,” the court wrote. “Their leaders even more so.”
Khattala, who was captured by U.S. Special Forces in 2014, was the first person convicted in the attacks. A close ally, Mustafa al-Imam, was subsequently convicted of similar charges and sentenced to 19½ years in prison.
The court agreed with Khattala that an assistant U.S. attorney gave a closing argument that was “plainly improper and unbefitting a federal prosecutor” by personalizing the crime as “attacking us” and “ours” while denigrating agreed-upon descriptions of classified evidence as unreliable “words on a piece of paper.” The government called the remarks “a small fraction of a lengthy trial,” without arguing their propriety.
“We expect better from an attorney representing the United States,” the appellate court said. But the judges said that the “misconduct” did not merit a new trial given that “on the charges for which he was convicted, the case against Khatallah was not close.”
Khattala was filmed entering a building on the U.S. compound, armed with an AK-47 rifle just before midnight on Sept. 11, 2021 — about two hours after the initial assault and half an hour before militants gained entry to the adjacent CIA facility. When he exited, he was seen gesturing for others to follow him. Armed men linked to Khattala and his militia were seen pouring gasoline, setting fires and entering buildings on the mission grounds. Phone records show he was in touch with some of them before, during and after the attack. He admitted to the FBI that he was on the scene after the breach.
When he sentenced Khattala in 2018, Judge Christopher R. Cooper said he was “somewhat reluctantly” concluding that the militant was found guilty of “essentially a property crime.” Jurors, he said, had rejected evidence that Khattala was involved in either the fire at the mission’s main residential facility, where Stevens and State Department Foreign Service officer Sean Smith died of smoke inhalation, or the later attack on an adjacent CIA facility where security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by mortar fire.
Three Libyan witnesses testified that Khattala’s role was more extensive, including stockpiling weapons, mortar rounds and a shoulder-launched missile, and seeking armored vehicles in advance of an attack he intended to result in American deaths. But a juror said in an interview with The Washington Post after the trial that this testimony was undermined by the cooperators’ antipathy toward Khattala and millions in payment from the United States for their help.
To consider conduct on which Khattala was acquitted, Cooper found, would tell the jurors “that I really didn’t mean what I told them about the importance and the sanctity of jury service.”
The appeals court said that while Cooper “retains the discretion to vary upward or downward” from sentencing guidelines, including “to discount acquitted conduct,” the judge “abused [his] discretion” by “imposing a sentence both lower than the minimum that would be appropriate in light of the jury’s acquittals and far lower than could be justified on this record.” | 2022-07-26T20:12:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abu Khattala sentence in Benghazi terror plot too low, court says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/khattala-benghazi-sentence-terrorism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/khattala-benghazi-sentence-terrorism/ |
Biden hailed Yemen truce in Saudi visit, but war is far from over
A mother holds her injured daughter at a hospital on July 24 after the shelling of a residential neighborhood in Yemen's third-largest city of Taiz. The shelling, which killed a boy, occurred as U.N. officials are trying to extend a four-month truce in Yemen. (Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP/Getty Images)
President Biden hailed his visit to Saudi Arabia last week, pushing back against criticism of his smiling sit-downs with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other autocrats while citing progress toward ending the Persian Gulf kingdom’s war in Yemen.
The president described success in securing a Saudi commitment to extending a nearly four-month U.N.-mediated truce — a deal that has yielded the longest pause in fighting since a Saudi-led military coalition entered the conflict in 2015 — as one example of what he called “active, principled American leadership” in the Middle East.
But with that truce set to expire on Aug. 2, warring parties appear far apart, Western nations’ leverage over Iranian-backed Houthi rebels remains slim and a political solution to the conflict is not on the horizon — intensifying questions about whether the U.S.-backed peace effort can succeed.
The stakes are perilously high. While the existing truce has halted most of the airstrikes and other violent acts that have killed thousands of civilians, a surge in global food prices caused by the war in Ukraine has deepened Yemen’s slow-building humanitarian catastrophe, thrusting tens of thousands into famine-like conditions.
A Ramadan truce in Yemen offers civilians respite, but no certainty
And in Yemen’s fragile state, every violation of the truce adds to worries of a sudden, violent collapse. On Sunday, Houthi shelling of a neighborhood in Taiz, a flash point city, raised such fears. The shelling killed at least one boy and injured 11 other children, most under the age of 10, according to the United Nations and Mwatana, a human rights group.
Pictures of wounded children and their bloodied sandals circulated on the internet, causing outrage and prompting a stern condemnation from the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who brokered the truce and is now trying to negotiate an expanded version.
Ahead of Biden’s talks with Arab leaders in the Saudi city of Jiddah, human rights advocates urged him to press the Saudi crown prince over what U.S. intelligence agencies said was his role in the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, along with the kingdom’s record of harassing and jailing dissidents.
Some critics derided the White House’s attempt in the lead-up to Biden’s visit to highlight its effort to end the war — which has included an 18-month, behind-the-scenes diplomatic push — as a fig leaf for a visit that was aimed chiefly at healing a rift with gulf nations and boosting global oil supplies.
One official with a nongovernmental group, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said the administration failed to publicly acknowledge Saudi Arabia’s role in the war and its record of bombing Yemeni civilians.
“They’re instrumentalizing the Yemen war to brandish Saudi Arabia’s human rights file, which fails both Yemen and the human rights agenda,” the official said.
The conflict began in 2014, when the Houthis, a militant group from northern Yemen that had fought several wars against the central government, seized control of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened the next year, aiming to defeat the Houthis and restore the country’s deposed president.
Within a few years, the war settled into a bloody stalemate between the Houthis and Saudi-backed forces, leaving Yemen’s nearly 30 million people at the mercy of multiple deadly perils: from airstrikes, shelling, land mines, hunger and poverty. The truce announced in April was the first since 2016, and was accompanied by the resignation of Yemen’s Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, widely viewed as a remote leader and an obstacle to a settlement of the conflict.
A senior State Department official, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the talks had succeeded in securing an explicit commitment from Saudi leaders — expressed privately to the visiting American delegation — that the kingdom would support a truce extension of six months, something diplomats believe is crucial to give them space to forge a lasting political settlement.
Biden “wanted to walk away from these meetings with a lot of things, but one of which was to feel very solid that the Saudis are committed,” the official said. “The point we made was not only to renew the truce but to build on it.”
But diplomats and analysts said it is unlikely Saudi Arabia would have needed much American prodding. The kingdom concluded some time ago that it needed to extricate itself from the war — a quagmire for the Saudis that hasn’t managed to leave the Houthis defeated, or even weakened, and has led to years of criticism over the kingdom’s human rights record.
Extending the truce provided the Saudis with something they desperately wanted: a pause in cross-border Houthi missile and drone attacks that have also targeted the UAE, Saudi Arabia’s partner in a military coalition fighting the Houthis.
Yemen’s Houthi militants launch new attack on UAE as conflict widens
“The war exhausted them economically and politically,” said Maysaa Shuja al-Deen, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, referring to the Saudis. The crown prince, she added, “wants to discuss any subject other than Yemen.”
Yemen experts attribute the truce, first announced in April and extended for another two months in June, to Saudi Arabia’s changing calculations as well as those of the Houthis, who struggled before the truce to capture the strategic city of Marib.
The truce resulted in several notable achievements, including an increase of fuel shipments to the Houthi-controlled Hodeida port; the reopening of the airport in Sanaa to limited international flights; and dramatic decreases in civilian casualties and displacement as a result of violence.
“The truce has been transformational for Yemen. It has made a tangible difference to people’s lives,” Grundberg said in a statement this month.
But there have been several stumbling blocks, including a refusal by the Houthis to reopen roads through Taiz province, which has made traveling across Yemen time-consuming and dangerous.
Egypt, one of two countries that allows international flights from Sanaa, has so far refused to accept more than one flight during the truce, leading Biden to personally appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to allow more, two people familiar with the matter said. There is also an effort underway to expand the list of destinations from Sanaa.
Just after Biden’s Jiddah talks, Houthi officials said they had rejected a further truce extension, calling the arrangement “disappointing.” Officials said they hoped they would eventually accept extending the truce, but perhaps not for as long a period as the United Nations and the Biden administration have sought.
As the wrangling continues, “everyone is talking about truce and not political settlement,” Shuja al-Deen said. A political process promises to be far more complex, given fractures that have emerged from the long conflict and pessimism that the Houthis will make any concessions, given the power and the territory they have acquired.
And it was far from clear that the United States had the appetite to wrestle with those complexities, Shuja al-Deen said.
“For them, Yemen is the south of Saudi Arabia.” The United States could use its influence to pressure Saudi Arabia and the UAE to aid Yemen in the postwar era, by rebuilding infrastructure they had helped destroy, she said. But the Americans had “no leverage over the Houthis.”
U.S. officials say they have held direct and indirect talks with Houthi counterparts, and that they eventually hope to include Iran, which they say continues to provide arms and support to the Houthis, in the peace process. They note that Tehran has twice issued statements of support about the truce.
“There will probably come a time when it would be appropriate to include them,” the State Department official said. But, he added, “I don’t think anybody is convinced that this is the time.”
“If you can extend and expand the truce I think that would really give us faith that the conflict parties are really seeing this as the moment in the war” to begin sketching out a longer-term solution, the official said.
According to a new analysis from the U.N. World Food Program, more than half of Yemenis are expected to be food-insecure in the coming months, including more than 160,000 people facing “famine-like conditions.” But the agency, facing a surge in commodity prices due in part to the war in Ukraine, has already cut food rations for Yemenis because of funding shortfalls.
Before the war, import-dependent Yemen bought more than 30 percent of its wheat from Ukraine, and another significant share from Russia, according to aid groups.
While Yemeni traders used to be able to purchase a ton of unmilled Ukrainian wheat for $240, the groups say, their next best option now was Australian wheat at $470 a ton. That has already translated into high bread prices and smaller portions.
While a new U.N.-brokered deal to resume shipments of blockaded Ukrainian grain, announced Friday, could help ease the supply crunch, that won’t occur immediately. Less than a day after the deal was announced in Istanbul, Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian port of Odessa, threatening the agreement.
Scott Paul, senior manager of humanitarian policy at Oxfam America, said the response to deepening crisis in Yemen was inadequate.
“Donors need to step up their contributions now, and the parties to the conflict need to renew the truce and make sure it delivers even more relief in its next phase as part of a path towards sustainable peace,” he said. | 2022-07-26T20:12:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden hailed Yemen truce in Saudi, but the war is far from over - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/biden-yemen-truce-saudi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/biden-yemen-truce-saudi/ |
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer speaks at a news conference on July 19 in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The deal Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) seems to have struck with swing voting Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) primarily involves a popular bill to let Medicare negotiate the prices of a select set of drugs — thereby driving down costs. The legislation is both a political and a policy win for the party. Better yet, it saves money that can be directed into other programs so that, with the blessing of the chamber’s parliamentarian, the provisions together can bypass a filibuster. So far, Democrats look likely to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for at least two years, preventing a spike in health-insurance premiums that could push millions off the exchanges.
All this is more than welcome: It’s essential. The only problem is that, while the extended ACA subsidies will help low- to middle-income Americans stay insured, the poorest might end up left in the lurch. That’s because in 12 states that have refused to adopt the landmark law’s Medicaid expansion, an estimated 2.2 million people, mostly of color, languish in the so-called coverage gap: eligible neither for Medicaid nor for subsidies in the ACA marketplace. Build Back Better as originally envisioned sought to fix this fault by letting people in non-expansion states enroll in subsidized plans after all, but the provision has fallen by the wayside. This means that the reconciliation package Democrats are now teeing up would continue to assist those above the poverty line in purchasing coverage, but stick those below the poverty line with an impossible bill.
Congress can still solve the issue. The numbers need to add up to satisfy Mr. Manchin, who wants to put much of the savings achieved through the prescription drug plan toward reducing the deficit. Another provision from the former Build Back Better to beef up the Internal Revenue Service’s auditing capabilities could raise some revenue without the inflationary blowback that so worries the West Virginian senator by pushing wealthy people to pay legally owed taxes — and is worthwhile on the merits, too. But advocates argue that the math could work even without the added dollars from such a reform.
This is likely the last chance lawmakers have to stop what’s already a tragedy from causing any more harm, and taking any more lives. Democrats, with leadership from a White House that says it’s devoted to the country’s most vulnerable, can’t afford to miss it. The nation’s poorest citizens can afford it even less. | 2022-07-26T20:13:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Close the Medicaid coverage gap, Congress. This is your last chance. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/close-medicaid-coverage-gap/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/close-medicaid-coverage-gap/ |
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) at a news conference in Washington pn June 24. (Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post)
Since April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, have bused more than 5,000 undocumented immigrants to the nation’s capital to score political points against the Biden administration’s immigration policies. The governors have bragged that giving Washington a taste of the problems border communities confront would unnerve “big city East Coast mayors.” But far from being overwhelmed, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has largely sat on her hands, arguing that the migrants are a federal issue. That inaction further victimizes vulnerable people and fuels the success of Mr. Abbott and Mr. Ducey’s political stunt. It’s time for Ms. Bowser to provide more concrete leadership.
For months, the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network — volunteers working for free outside of their day jobs — and a shifting patchwork of nonprofits have supported arriving migrants on their own initiative. But in recent weeks, The Post’s Vanessa G. Sánchez reported, the number of buses has increased, exhausting the ability of the mutual aid network and nonprofits to support the arrivals. When volunteers, their limited capacity stretched even thinner by coronavirus exposures, didn’t show up two weeks ago to greet the buses at Union Station for the first time since the buses started arriving, there was a flurry of media attention and calls by D.C. council members to use city contingency funds, among other requests. The mayor doubled down on her stance that this is “a federal issue that demands a federal response.”
Ms. Bowser is not wrong in arguing that federal help is needed, and the District gets credit for facilitating a conversation between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and SAMU First Response, an international humanitarian nonprofit, that resulted in a grant to support about half of the arriving migrants. But even with federal assistance, the D.C. government needs to play a role. Volunteers estimate that 10 to 15 percent of migrants arriving in D.C. stay in the area; the rest leave within a few days to their intended destination. Brownsville, Tex., is an example of how another city serves as a migrant way station: the municipal government there runs a migrant processing center, partners with local nonprofits for staffing and material needs and uses FEMA funding to cover operations.
Ms. Bowser’s administration could replicate that approach. It could direct D.C. staff to assist the organizations already supporting migrants. It could apply for FEMA funding, while considering calls by council members to draw from the city’s $500 million budget surplus for fiscal year 2022. It could find a place close to Union Station as a respite center for arriving migrants, along with providing covid-19 testing, masks and isolation spaces. Since April, Ms. Bowser has been relying on unpaid labor and donations from local residents to help arriving migrants. They can’t — and shouldn’t — continue to do government’s job.
Mr. Abbott has said he is busing migrants to D.C. because he wants “to take the border to Joe Biden.” Mr. Abbott and Mr. Ducey hope to cause trouble, to make it seem like migrants inevitably lead to chaos and thus compel the federal government to pass more draconian border policies. The District government’s inaction, and local aid groups being overwhelmed as a result, threatens to create a narrative of crisis that plays into the hand of the Republican governors. But it doesn’t have to be like this: By implementing humane and effective programs, D.C. could model immigration solutions. The city should waste no time in acting. | 2022-07-26T20:13:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Bowser must take action on migrant buses coming to Washington D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/migrant-buses-washington-dc-bowser/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/migrant-buses-washington-dc-bowser/ |
The Catholic Church can do more to address crimes against Indigenous Peoples
Pope Francis arrives at the Commonwealth Stadium to celebrate mass Edmonton, Canada on July 26. (Gregorio Borgia/AP)
Emily Riddle is a writer, public library worker and editor in Edmonton, Alberta. She is Nehiyaw and a member of the Alexander First Nation. She is also on the board of advisers for the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-led think tank based out of Toronto Metropolitan University.
The Catholic church will not lead our healing — but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a responsibility.
I know a number of survivors for whom the Pope’s apology was incredibly meaningful. I know others who would have preferred the Pope not visit our land and were triggered by his presence here.
I am part of the first generation in my family to not be sent to residential schools or imprisoned by the child welfare system. But today there are more Indigenous children in the child welfare system than there ever were in residential schools (less than 8 percent of Canadian children under age 15 are Indigenous, but Indigenous youths make up more than half the children under 15 in foster care).
An important step would be returning land the Roman Catholic Church owns in Canada to Indigenous peoples. One of the Roman Catholic Church’s legacies is the Doctrine of Discovery, which for centuries has relied on papal bulls from the 1400s to justify stripping Indigenous peoples from their lands because they are not considered fully human. The Pope did not mention this in his apology, nor did he rescind these papal decrees.
The Catholic Church should also fund efforts to revitalize and teach our languages. Children who attended residential schools in Canada were not allowed to speak their Indigenous language, and many were physically punished if they did. All the Indigenous languages spoken in Canada are considered to be in danger of disappearing. We need support to ensure our languages, which hold our worldviews, continue to survive.
Pope Francis’s visit came in response to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which was organized by residential school survivors. One of their calls to action urged the Pope to “issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”
But of the 94 calls to action, only 12 have been completed.
Though the Pope promised an investigation and assistance for survivors for the traumas they suffered, the Catholic Church should start by paying the full $25 million they committed to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement of 2006. At this time, they have contributed under $4 million.
Many children did not survive residential schools. We know from testimonies shared by survivors through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse were rampant at these institutions. Last summer 215 unmarked graves were identified at the Kamloops residential school through ground penetrating radar. There are many who deny the existence of these graves. Non-Indigenous people in Canada must help us battle against this denialism.
For (Nehiyaw) Plains Cree people like me, children are sacred, lent to us from the Creator. These sacred beings were stolen from us and taught to hate their own culture. The work to ensure all our children are honored and connected to their culture will continue long after the Pope has left our land. We will continue to call for the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and the return of our lands. We will continue to advocate for justice for children in the child welfare system. The Pope’s visit is an important day in our history, but there is much work still to be done. | 2022-07-26T20:13:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Pope can do more to address crimes against Indigenous People - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/pope-canada-residential-schools-more-the-catholic-church-can-do/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/pope-canada-residential-schools-more-the-catholic-church-can-do/ |
The triumph and tragedy of the Senate’s electoral count reform
The U.S. Capitol in June 2021. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Democracy usually means that the side that wins a majority gets to govern, but that principle goes into limbo in contested elections. It’s no use saying the majority rules if both sides are claiming to be the majority. There needs to be some higher authority that can resolve election disputes — identifying the true majority so it can legitimately take power. Who should this authority be?
The Senate’s new legislation reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887 grapples with this dilemma. Aimed at preventing a repeat of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6 riot, the bipartisan bill streamlines the process by which presidential elections are certified.
Of course, the legislation wouldn’t prevent partisans from claiming they won elections they lost. Instead, it would change the authority in charge of settling those claims. The current ECA provides a role for state politicians and members of Congress in resolving contested presidential elections. The reform bill would cut elected politicians out of the process, transferring most of the power to courts — and especially the Supreme Court.
That’s right: To protect democracy, ECA reform would shrink the authority of the democratic branches of government and expand the authority of the least democratic branch. The bill deserves to pass. But the fact that it’s necessary shows that America’s self-governing capacities have diminished, and there will be more trouble ahead.
Some history helps explain how we got here. The 1876 election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden was contested in several states. Congress charged a commission with ten of its members plus five Supreme Court justices to resolve the disputes. The commission sided with Hayes in 8-to-7 party-line votes.
That bitter experience led to the ECA. John J. Ingalls, a senator from Kansas, said in 1886 that the electoral commission of the previous decade was “a contrivance that will never be repeated in our politics. It was a device that was favored by each party in the belief that it would cheat the other, and it resulted ... in defrauding both.”
So Congress created a new “contrivance.” There would be no more commissions. Instead, under the ECA, disputed elections would be resolved by the political process. If state officials disagreed about which presidential candidate won their state, it would be up to the majority of the House and Senate to decide, under a circuitous procedure, which electors to count.
Today’s Senate’s reformers want to eliminate these opportunities for mischief in the states and Congress, which Trump tried to exploit. What authority do they turn to instead? The justices of the Supreme Court, whom Congress deliberately sidelined in the 1887 law.
Under the Senate’s proposed reform, each state could submit only one slate of electors, certified by the governor. If there’s a dispute about which candidate won the state, the bill provides for a panel of three federal judges to review the certification under an “expedited procedure,” with appeals “heard directly by the Supreme Court.” The justices have the last word: “The determination of Federal courts,” the legislation says, “shall be conclusive.”
Or would it be? The pattern of close elections in the 21st century (not just 2020 but also 2016, 2004 and 2000) is that they are doubted and delegitimized by the losing side. At the same time, the Democratic Party and liberal intellectuals have launched a political assault on the Supreme Court — and judicial review itself — as undemocratic and illegitimate. See where this is going?
Let’s say Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor who pushed Trump’s stolen-election fictions, wins this November. And let’s say the Pennsylvania presidential contest in 2024 is close but contested, with some ballots arriving late. If the Democratic candidate won, the reformed ECA would strengthen the judicial check on Mastriano’s ability to defy the evidence and certify Republican electors instead.
But what if the Republican won, Mastriano correctly certified GOP electors against a Democratic challenge — and an ideologically divided Supreme Court affirmed his certification? Al Gore urged his supporters to accept the Supreme Court’s decision ending Florida’s recount in 2000, but progressive candidates in the post-Trump era might instead tell supporters to take to the streets.
The original ECA was crafted as the country emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction, and it functioned, despite its flaws, through the 20th century. But the baseline level of political consensus that made this possible is disappearing, and the Senate’s reform envisions courts shielding post-election processes from political passions.
If the reform passes, this will be an achievement. But it shouldn’t obscure the fact that even the most elegantly designed rules are insufficient to guarantee that the voluntary rotation of power in a polarizing country. Any process can be circumvented, any institution defied, if the stakes are made to appear high enough — and the next constitutional crisis might come from a different direction than the Senate’s bipartisan reformers had in mind. | 2022-07-26T20:13:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The triumph and tragedy of the Senate’s electoral count reform - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/senate-electoral-count-act-pluses-minuses/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/senate-electoral-count-act-pluses-minuses/ |
President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on the economy and inflation
With inflation at a 40-year high, the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates even as the economy shows signs of slowing. On Tuesday, August 2 at 1:00 p.m. ET, Loretta J. Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, joins Washington Post global economics correspondent David J. Lynch to discuss the Fed’s plan to tamp down on inflation and the concerns that it could induce a recession.
President & CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland | 2022-07-26T20:15:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on the economy and inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/02/president-federal-reserve-bank-cleveland-economy-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/02/president-federal-reserve-bank-cleveland-economy-inflation/ |
BOGOTA, Colombia — Violence is increasing in many rural areas of Colombia despite a 2016 peace deal between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the United Nations Human Rights Office said in a report. It called on the government to boost rural development and take steps to encourage members of Colombia’s remaining illegal groups to demobilize. | 2022-07-26T20:15:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN: Violence rising in rural Colombia despite peace deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-violence-rising-in-rural-colombia-despite-peace-deal/2022/07/26/fa073ff6-0d17-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-violence-rising-in-rural-colombia-despite-peace-deal/2022/07/26/fa073ff6-0d17-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Erica Ahdoot, executive director of Horton’s Kids, a D.C. nonprofit that helps kids graduate from high school and prepare for life, recently co-authored an opinion piece for The Washington Post about curbing gun violence. Reader response was spirited to say the least. Many commenters disagreed with the authors’ main point: Violence is a symptom of systemic racism, inequality and poverty.
Opinion: To stop gun violence, we need to fight systemic injustice
“Decades of chronic disinvestment and systemic racism have resulted in endemic gun violence,” wrote Ahdoot and two Horton’s Kids colleagues, Shandell Richards and Brad Sickels. “In D.C., most gun violence is tightly concentrated among a small number of very high-risk individuals who share a common set of risk factors. Chief among them are poverty and the lack of a social safety net.”
I thought their opinion was on point. Since civil discourse on such issues is all but impossible these days, I asked Ahdoot for her take on some of the comments.
Here’s a view that seemed widely held among the commenters:
“Millions of whites, Hispanics, Asians and others grew up in grinding poverty in America, often facing discrimination, and didn’t feel the need to knock over a 7-11, jack a car or deal drugs on the corner,” one wrote.
It should go without saying that millions and millions of Black people haven’t felt the need to knock over a 7-Eleven either, or commit any other crime. But such misperceptions are part of the problem that should be dealt with, not ignored. Also, the notion persists that poverty and discrimination experienced by Whites, and others, were as bad as slavery, which lasted 246 years, and Jim Crow segregation, which lasted another 100 years.
Ahdoot graciously responded to the commenters when I asked.
“America is unique in the world, given how it was founded. The centuries of slavery, oppression, explicit and internalized racism, and the resulting chaos and enduring inequities,” she said. “This is a First World country that promises opportunity for all. And yet, within its own boundaries, what is happening is so unbelievably unjust, unfair and so traumatic that it has really impacted how people are able to cope and even who they see as the enemy.”
For too many young Black men, that enemy is most often perceived as another young Black man, like himself. No offense is necessary. Sometimes just a wrong look is enough to trigger a shooting. Such is the effect of internalized racism, Ahdoot said, and exacerbated by crowding poor Black people into isolated economic deserts.
D.C. has one of the widest racial wealth and income gaps in the country. So, even when low-income Blacks do end up residing close to, say, wealthy people who are gentrifying the city, they still end up alienated and living in another world.
Horton’s Kids was founded 33 years ago. For the past three decades, the organization has been helping support the academic and social development of families in two of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods: Wellington Park and Stanton Oaks in Ward 8. Located in Southeast Washington, that ward accounted for 62 percent of the city’s 220 homicides last year. Of the 120 killings so far this year, at least 43 have occurred in the ward.
Another commenter wrote:
“Shootings are due to a ‘few’ people among the many, the article claims, who are poor and poorly educated and suffer ‘systemic racism.’ So, what makes these people different from those who live in similar environments but don't go around shooting others?”
Ahdoot, whose work includes providing therapy for traumatized families, has spent 25 years developing programs that nurture the hidden personal assets that often make the difference between success and failure.
“For each individual, there are protective factors — a unique kind of personal disposition — that we bring when we come into the world,” she said. “They help to buffer us from things that for others with a different disposition might seem insurmountable. These assets need to be brought out by a family member or a friend or someone who comes along and, for whatever reason — because of their friendship, a sense of connection, out of love — helps that person take the next step or just keep moving.”
Among her previous jobs was executive director of a New York City-based academic nonprofit, Groundwork. That organization was founded by Richard Buery Jr., who in February replaced Wes Moore as executive director of the poverty-fighting nonprofit, the Robin Hood Foundation.
Moore recently won the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial primary, which means he could become the state’s first Black governor. He has written a book, “The Other Wes Moore,” about two young men with the same name from impoverished backgrounds. One becomes a Rhodes scholar and his party’s nominee; the other goes to prison.
The book lays out in compelling terms how that happened — and what must be done to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity. Or, as Moore put it on his campaign literature: “Leave No One Behind.”
Commenters wondered if Horton’s Kids was having any successes. The answer is plenty, but not nearly enough. The scramble for resources is relentless, Ahdoot said. The group’s annual fundraiser, Home Runs for Horton’s Kids, will be Wednesday at Nationals Park from 6-9 p.m. Guests will have exclusive access to the baseball park for batting practice, pitching competition, a carnival and other activities.
To end gun violence, commenters offered myriad suggestions: Ban guns, stop playing rap music, stop glorifying the “thug life.” Don’t have a baby that you can’t afford. Celebrate marriage, support two-parent households. End corporal punishment. Behave.
As Ahdoot sees it, piecemeal approaches to the problem don’t work.
“We have to address the underlying issues,” she said, “do the things that people refuse to believe can be done — end poverty, end racism, stop the injustice.”
That would mean the end of fear as we know it. And who would need to carry a gun then? | 2022-07-26T20:34:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | End racism, poverty and injustice. Watch the guns disappear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/guns-racism-poverty-injustice-black-homicides-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/guns-racism-poverty-injustice-black-homicides-dc/ |
Why do people believe the ‘big lie’? Because Americans don’t trust the media.
President Donald Trump talks with members of the media outside the White House on Oct. 30, 2020. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) says Donald Trump is “preying on [the] patriotism” of his supporters by continuing to falsely assert that he won the 2020 election. It is true that millions of good, decent, patriotic Americans believe the former president’s claims that the election was stolen, despite the fact that Trump lost more than 60 cases in state and federal courts — including before judges and justices he had appointed — and the fact that his own attorney general, William P. Barr, says that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the election outcome.
So why do so many Americans believe him? Because they don’t trust the media — and with good reason.
In 1977, Gallup found that 72 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust and confidence in the news media. But this month, Gallup found that just 16 percent of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, and just 11 percent have confidence in television news. This collapse in confidence stretches across ideological lines but is most pronounced on the right. Just 5 percent of Republicans said they had confidence in newspapers (compared to 35 percent of Democrats) while just 8 percent of Republicans had confidence in TV news (compared to 20 percent of Democrats).
Public trust is crumbling, in large part, because of a growing perception of media bias. According to a Pew Research Center survey published this month, 76 percent of Americans believe the media should strive to give equal coverage to all sides of an issue. But a 55 percent majority of journalists disagree. The disdain for evenhanded reporting is even worse among younger journalists and those from left-leaning outlets: 63 percent of reporters ages 18 to 29 say both sides do not deserve equal coverage, as do 69 percent of journalists who say their outlet’s audience leans left. By contrast, 57 percent of reporters who say their outlet has a right-leaning audience think the profession should strive for equal coverage.
“What’s happened is there’s a younger generation of journalists … who think their job is to be subjective,” says Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush and author of the new book “Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong ― and Just Doesn’t Care.” “They don’t believe in objectivity. They don’t believe in two sides. They believe that their side, particularly on social issues and on racial matters, is the only right side.”
Erik Wemple: Shocker! Almost no one trusts TV news.
Half the country is keenly aware that they are routinely looked down on by much of the media, Fleischer says. He notes that a 2019 Pew Research Center study found that the only majority group of Americans who say the press understands them is college-educated Democrats. By contrast, 73 percent of Republicans, and 62 percent of all respondents with a high-school diploma or less, say they do not. “So, what you have is a group of college-educated Democrat voters — the mainstream media — telling stories and reporting news only for fellow college-educated Democrats,” Fleischer says.
Marc A. Thiessen: Why do people believe the ‘big lie’? Because Americans don’t trust the media. | 2022-07-26T21:24:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why do people believe the ‘big lie’? Because Americans don’t trust the media. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/big-lie-perceptions-skewed-media-bias-against-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/big-lie-perceptions-skewed-media-bias-against-trump/ |
The EPA wasn’t stripped of power
Thomas Geoghegan’s July 24 Outlook essay, “When the court shrinks the administrative state, it puts Congress out of work,” was well intentioned, but the conclusion was wide of the mark.
The Environmental Protection Agency case at issue has been widely misinterpreted by many lawyers and pundits, including Mr. Geoghegan. This EPA case is a simple, straightforward statutory construction case, which federal courts, including the Supreme Court, examine easily and routinely every term.
The court examined the governing EPA authorizing statute enacted years ago by Congress. An agency such as the EPA is circumscribed by its governing statute and its legislative history, if necessary. Here, the court did not “shrink the administrative state,” nor did it “put Congress out of work.”
To the contrary, the administration can simply submit Clean Air Act legislation to Congress giving the EPA the regulatory authority it claims it needs. Of course, the legislative process is linear and often unpredictable. Suffice to say, in this election year, Congress has plenty of work to do, including Clean Air Act amendments, if that is what the leadership and the administration decide.
Mr. Geoghegan might be confused by this statutory construction case and the court’s precedents by the Chevron deference, by which the court defers to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute, assuming compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act. Such deference appears to this writer to be increasingly disfavored under the court’s recent rulings and dissents.
Frederick H. Graefe, Bethesda | 2022-07-26T21:24:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The EPA wasn’t stripped of power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/epa-wasnt-stripped-power/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/epa-wasnt-stripped-power/ |
Investigate the Secret Service
(Michael de Adder/The Washington Post)
Bravo to Michael de Adder for his disturbing July 22 political cartoon depicting Secret Service agents surrounding and defensively blocking access to a cellphone with text messages. I am appalled at the news from the Secret Service agency that it “lost” text messages of its agents from Jan. 5 to Jan. 6, 2021. Those messages are critical for accounting for what happened during their agents’ protection of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during the violent insurrection.
All agents who exchanged those texts should testify before Congress about the contents. Agency leadership should testify under oath about what seems to be extremely suspect circumstances that led to those deletions.
Why is the Secret Service being allowed to investigate itself? There must be an independent investigation of whether there was a coverup, especially considering the seemingly too-close relationship between Mr. Trump and Robert Engel, his lead Secret Service agent, and Tony Ornato, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and former Secret Service buddy from Mr. Ornato’s presidential protection detail days.
When I heard the chilling recordings of Mr. Pence’s Secret Service agents screaming that the mob was in the Capitol, fearing for their lives and for the life of Mr. Pence, I was shocked to think that anyone from their agency might have deliberately deleted texts to protect a president who placed their own brave colleagues and our vice president in danger. We must do whatever is needed to get to the truth about this.
Veronica Clarke, Ellicott City
Regarding the deletion of texts by the Secret Service and Michael de Adder’s July 22 editorial cartoon, one is reminded of the famous line from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”:
“To lose one ... may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
In the case of the Secret Service, for one member to have his or her texts deleted may be regarded as a misfortune; to have so many members of the service have their texts deleted looks like a deliberate attempt to hide their contents.
Alan Kolnik, North Bethesda | 2022-07-26T21:24:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Investigate the Secret Service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/investigate-secret-service/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/investigate-secret-service/ |
How to stop Trump’s sneak attack on the civil service
By Gerald E. Connolly
The White House, as seen from the Washington Monument, in January 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat, represents Virginia’s 11th Congressional District in the House of Representatives and is the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subcommittee on government operations.
Americans should be horrified to learn there is an active plot by a former political leader, twice impeached, to remove people he regards as his political opponents from the civil service. It’s almost too crazy to fathom in our democratic form of government. Removing policy experts because they don’t bend to a president’s will?
A report by Jonathan Swan of Axios has confirmed my worst suspicions: Donald Trump is planning, were he to be reelected as president, to replace vast swaths of government experts with his own army of tens of thousands of loyalists.
This is a direct threat to democracy and the rule of law. The only reason for Trump to do this is to make it easier to fire federal employees who dare to disagree with him.
Trump’s plan is about far more than ordinary political differences Republicans might have with some federal workers. Trump has shown he has no regard for the law when it threatens his power. He pressured his own vice president to overturn a presidential election. Now, if he gets a second term, he would seek the power to fire federal employees who won’t do his bidding.
Jonathan V. Last was right to allude to Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban when he wrote in the Bulwark: “This is no joke. Say hello to American Orbanism.”
Congress must step up. As the Jan. 6 committee has demonstrated, we need more guardrails to protect against threats to our democracy, not fewer.
Trump already tried this once before. On Oct. 21, 2020, he signed Executive Order 13957 creating Schedule F in the excepted service — jobs in the federal government that, for various reasons, are excluded from certain fundamental civil-service protections. This executive order, which President Biden rescinded, would have undermined the merit system principles of our federal workforce by requiring agency heads to reclassify an estimated 50,000 “policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions to a newly created Schedule F category of federal employees that removed their due process rights and civil service protections.
Efforts to overhaul the civil service without seeking congressional support are nearly unprecedented. Since the end of the spoils system in 1883, administrations have established an excepted service schedule only five times.
These excepted service categories are created for positions that require unique hiring or operating rules, such as for positions of a short-term political nature or positions in remote areas or where there’s a critical hiring need so great that competitive civil service rules cannot apply.
Our federal workforce consists of roughly 2 million federal employees hired based on their acumen, and they work each day for the American people — serving in myriad capacities to improve this nation and America’s posture abroad. These impartial civil servants research vaccines, help families in the wake of hurricanes and deadly fires, and inspect our food to ensure they are free of disease. They deserve protection from political interference from a president who would place preserving his power above following the law.
Congress must assert itself and ensure no future president can repeat what Trump has already tried to do once, and now is reportedly planning to do again. For nearly two years, I have been trying to warn congressional leadership that protecting our 139-year, merit-based, civil service is fundamental to protecting our democracy.
That is why I have introduced the Preventing a Patronage System Act. The bipartisan legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), was passed by the House this month but has yet to be taken up by the Senate. It would secure the civil service and protect federal employees from losing statutory and constitutional job protections. Our bill would prevent any position in the competitive service — the jobs that are protected by merit-based civil service rules — from being reclassified to an excepted service schedule that was created after Sept. 30, 2020.
It would also limit federal employee reclassifications to the five excepted service schedules currently in use and would block any reclassifications of federal employees to Schedule F pursuant to the executive order signed on Oct. 21, 2020.
There are a lot of lessons to learn from Trump’s assault on our democracy and governance norms. Protecting our civil service needs to be top among them. | 2022-07-26T21:25:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How to stop Trump's Schedule F sneak attack on the civil service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/trump-schedule-f-civil-service/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/26/trump-schedule-f-civil-service/ |
Prince George’s schools will be mask-optional for 2022-2023
District was the last in Maryland to retain its mask mandate
Students on the first day of school last year at Laurel's Deerfield Run Elementary in Prince George's County. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Prince George’s County Public Schools will head into the upcoming school year with a mask-optional policy.
The public school system of about 128,000 students was the last in Maryland to keep a mask requirement in place, even as other jurisdictions dropped them earlier in the spring. Its neighbor, Montgomery County Public Schools, dropped a systemwide mask mandate in March.
The new policy for Prince George’s went into effect July 1. The updated Students Rights and Responsibilities Handbook addressing the policy change reads: “The mask-optional policy enables individuals to choose whether to wear a mask in schools and offices. This decision is personal; students and staff are asked to respect the choices of others.” Parents were also notified in a newsletter the following week.
The decision comes as some school systems have considered reviving their mask mandates as coronavirus variants have led to rising case numbers.
Montgomery County Board of Education drops mask mandate for schools
WTOP was the first to report on the policy change.
Prince George’s has taken the most cautious approach to combating the virus among school systems across the D.C. region. The county was severely affected by the virus, with the second-most reported deaths in Maryland. It was the last school system in the state to return to in-person instruction.
This year, when the omicron variant hit regional schools hard, Prince George’s chose to extend its winter break beyond any other school system’s to slow the spread of the virus. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the State Board of Education weighed in on the move, but school system leaders argued that the extension was critical after consulting with the local health department.
Covid-19 is ravaging one of the country’s wealthiest black counties
The new policy notes that mask-wearing rules could change based on guidance from local or state health officials, or if there is additional guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. | 2022-07-26T21:33:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George's drops its school mask mandate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/26/prince-georges-schools-will-be-mask-optional-2022-2023/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/26/prince-georges-schools-will-be-mask-optional-2022-2023/ |
D.C. man is 2nd to receive longest sentence in Jan. 6 police assault
Mark K. Ponder, 56, was handed a 63-month prison term for attacking police in the Capitol riot
Mark Ponder strikes an officer with a pole at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Justice Department/AP)
A District man who assaulted three police officers and shattered a riot shield with a pole was sentenced to 63 months in prison Tuesday, matching the longest sentence handed down to a defendant convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Mark K. Ponder, 56, admitted to fighting with police in video-recorded confrontations between 2:31 p.m. and 2:48 p.m. that day in the area of the lower west terrace of the Capitol, which was overrun by a violent mob angered by President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Ponder pleaded guilty April 22 to one count of assaulting an officer using a dangerous weapon.
“He was leading the charge,” U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said, reciting at sentencing how Ponder smashed a thin pole against an officer’s riot shield so hard that the pole broke and the shield shattered, then found a thicker pole, colored red, white and blue, and resumed fighting.
“He wasn’t defending himself or anybody else. He was attempting to injure those officers, and we are lucky [someone] was not killed with the force Mr. Ponder is swinging those poles,” the judge said.
Chutkan in December handed down a similar 63-month sentence to Robert S. Palmer, 54, of Largo, Fla., who joined the front of the mob and hurled a fire extinguisher, plank and pole at police.
Like Palmer, Ponder was “part of a group who, when they couldn’t get what they wanted, decided they were going to take it. And they were going to take it with violence,” Chutkan said, saying they felt entitled “to attack law enforcement officers who were just doing their jobs.”
Ponder has a right to his political beliefs, the judge said, but in this case he participated with violent extremists in a riot that “exposed — and maybe caused — cracks in our democracy.”
Chutkan has emerged as the toughest sentencing judge in Capitol riot cases and exceeded prosecutors’ request to sentence Ponder to five years in prison, the low end of a federal advisory sentencing range of 57 to 71 months, in keeping with a plea deal.
More than 840 suspects have been charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Here's a breakdown of charges, convictions and sentences
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn P. Bond said a five-year term was justified by the seriousness of the offense as well as by Ponder’s return to the scene at 4 and 5 p.m. after he was tackled, handcuffed and then told to leave by police because officers needed to reinforce other parts of the Capitol complex.
“Even after the first three assaults, he had a big opportunity to stop and leave the Capitol,” Bond said. “The fact that Mr. Ponder just kept going, even when he an opportunity to choose a different course, he doesn’t back off, and we think that supports our request.”
Former U.S. Capitol Police sergeant Aquilino Gonell gave an in-person victim impact statement, telling the court as one of the officers struck by Ponder that there is “no doubt” he understood he was hitting police officers and “had the will and the intent to continue doing harm.”
U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell was among the first to testify to the Jan. 6 panel last July. He has attended the committee’s meetings ever since. (Video: The Washington Post)
The former sergeant said that he took early retirement as a result of the attack, that he was left with mental and physical injuries and that “my family has suffered, emotionally and financially.” Gonell told Chutkan that Ponder’s claim that he got “caught up” in the violence “is BS, and please don’t fall for it.”
“He has changed my life,” said Gonell, a 16-year police veteran who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq.
Gonell op-ed: The government we defended last Jan. 6 has a duty to hold all the perpetrators accountable
Ponder asked for mercy, saying that while like Palmer he had a criminal history, he was a “changed person for the last 12 years” since his release from prison after convictions for bank and armed robbery.
“I never meant for this to happen. I went there with the intention of going on a peaceful protest,” Ponder said. But he said that he “wasn’t thinking” after he was pepper-sprayed by police, and after the tension and anger in the crowd stoked by the former president erupted into “chaos.”
“I’m not saying I’m completely innocent of this — I am not. I’m extremely sorry for what happened to this officer and all the other officers that day,” Ponder told the judge. “I’m not asking for justice … I’m asking for mercy.”
Defense attorney Joseph R. Conte added that Ponder, a lifelong resident of the Washington area, overcame a crack cocaine addiction and before Jan. 6 had no contact with police since his incarceration. Ponder was the product of a broken home and suffered abuse as a child “as severe as any I’ve seen in my career,” Conte said, to which Chutkan responded, “I don’t disagree.”
The judge waived any fine and said she would recommend that Ponder be allowed to serve his sentence near Washington, saying she hoped the defendant “will be able to get mental health treatment and counseling and be able to live the rest of his life without getting into trouble with law enforcement.” | 2022-07-26T21:42:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mark Ponder sentenced to 63 months for attacking police on Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/ponder-sentencing-jan6-prison/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/ponder-sentencing-jan6-prison/ |
Key Dems want DHS inspector general removed from Secret Service probe
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, gives opening remarks at the committee's first public hearing on June 9, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
A pair of key congressional Democrats called on Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside from his office’s investigation into the Secret Service on Tuesday, saying the Trump appointee waited months to alert lawmakers that the agency had erased text messages from around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who heads the House committee that oversees inspectors general, and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Jan. 6 committee and the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a joint letter expressing “grave concerns” about Cuffari’s failure to promptly alert Congress that the Secret Service’s texts had been erased. They asked the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent entity in the executive branch, to appoint another inspector general to handle the Secret Service probe.
“Inspector General Cuffari is required by law to ‘immediately’ report problems or abuses that are ‘particularly serious or flagrant,’” they wrote. “Yet, Inspector General Cuffari failed to provide adequate or timely notice that the Secret Service had refused for months to comply with DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) requests for information related to the January 6 attack and failed to notify Congress after DHS OIG learned that the Secret Service had erased text messages related to this matter.
Cuffari and the council did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter, which was sent to Cuffari and to Allison Lerner, the council’s chair.
The letter comes days after Cuffari opened a criminal investigation into the Secret Service’s allegedly missing texts. He sent a letter to Congress this month accusing the agency of erasing text messages from the time around the assault on the Capitol and after he asked for them for his own investigation.
The Secret Service has denied maliciously erasing messages and said the deletions were part of a preplanned technology shift.
The Secret Service’s text messages could offer a window into the actions of former president Donald Trump as his supporters ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and endangered Vice President Mike Pence and many others.
The National Archives and Records Administration and others have raised questions about the Service’s handling of federal records. Agents, like the rest of the federal government, are required to upload their text messages and other federal records under the decades-old Federal Records Act. | 2022-07-26T21:43:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key Dems want DHS Inspector General removed from Secret Service probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/homeland-security-cuffari/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/homeland-security-cuffari/ |
This Monday, July 25, 2022, image taken from a surveillance video posted on YouTube and provided by the San Rafael Police Department shows a subject who forced entry into the corporate office of Johnny Doughnuts in San Rafael. The burglar had to double back to the scene of the crime, the corporate office of a the San Francisco Bay Area doughnut company – this week because he forgot his keys. Police are asking for the public’s help in identification. (San Rafael Police Department via AP) (Uncredited/San Rafael Police Department) | 2022-07-26T21:43:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police: California burglar forgot keys inside crime scene - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-california-burglar-forgot-keys-inside-crime-scene/2022/07/26/bfcff9b4-0d2a-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-california-burglar-forgot-keys-inside-crime-scene/2022/07/26/bfcff9b4-0d2a-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
The 2020 fraud hunt: Among the biggest wastes of time in U.S. history
Pro-Trump protesters allege voter fraud at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Elections Center in Phoenix on Nov. 7, 2020. (Caitlin O'Hara for The Washington Post)
It was an NPR story that pushed me over the edge.
The report, published last week, detailed an effort in Colorado to go door-to-door interviewing voters about the ballots they cast in November 2020, 20 months before. The point of that exercise was to somehow prove that rampant fraud had occurred in the state during that year’s election — a state won by Joe Biden after having voted for each of the previous three Democratic presidential candidates. But the canvassers interviewing residents in various parts of the state were clearly acting from a belief that something untoward had happened, echoing a theme elevated by Biden’s opponent in that election even to this day.
The chance that the canvassers find even one example of voter fraud are low; that they will uncover a rampant campaign of fraud substantial enough to call the results into question lies somewhere near “a guy in Denver being hit a meteorite from the Alpha Centauri” in the universe’s book of statistical probabilities. Yet they persist.
According to a report published by the group conducting the canvas, the group had knocked on 10,000 doors in four counties by March. It was that number, to be specific, that spawned this article. Assuming it’s accurate (which I would recommend against, for reasons that will shortly become apparent), it represents a scale of human energy and time that’s hard to grasp in the abstract.
So let’s conduct a little thought experiment. Imagine trying to speak with people in 20 different households in your neighborhood. Perhaps you live in an apartment building, in which knocking on 20 doors, waiting for a response and talking to those who answer might take about 15 minutes. After all, lots of people aren’t home or won’t answer their doors. If you live in a more suburban area, it will take longer, getting to different houses and engaging in similar conversations. Let’s say 30 minutes, minimum.
To contact 10,000 doors in that latter scenario, we’re talking about 250 hours of time. In the apartment building example, it’s half as much — only 5.2 solid days of walking and knocking.
And for what? To learn that most people aren’t home or don’t want to talk to you about their vote — or that, yes, they voted, why do you ask?
This is just one small facet of the effort of uncover purported fraud in the 2020 presidential election, an effort that I feel comfortable describing as one of the biggest wastes of time and money in American history.
Consider that similar efforts to uncover fraud using the same mechanism have occurred in other states. Pennsylvania, more than once. Washington. North Carolina. Even in Otero County, N.M., where Donald Trump won with more than 60 percent of the vote, a fervent supporter of Trump helped convince county leaders to invest in an audit of results and a canvas — neither of which yielded anything fruitful. That didn’t stop the county from trying to block its 2022 primary results out of concern that the taint of fraud might somehow have lingered. Only intervention from the state moved those results forward.
That’s the other part of these efforts, of course: the response. People walking from door to door wasting their own time is one thing. Wasting the time of public officials, governmental resources and the courts to try to prove Donald Trump right in his futile effort to blame fraud on his loss.
To some extent, this happens in many elections. There are often court cases that are never going to go anywhere. There are often audits that are doomed from the outset. In the weeks after 2020, there were more than normal: more than 60 cases filed by Trump’s campaign and his allies, recounts in a number of states, including several in Georgia alone. At most, Trump netted a handful more votes. The results were not affected in any significant way. In many elections, there are also a number of isolated examples of voter fraud, as there were after 2020. Those, too, are almost never enough to affect the outcome, as they weren’t in the most recent presidential contest.
Even ignoring that baseline of normal fruitless expenditures of energy, the aftermath of 2020 has seen an enormous waste of time and money.
Let’s look at the most obvious waste of time and money, the “audit” of the results in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Millions of dollars were spent in a five-month effort to dig up any possible dirt on the composition of the vote there in the 2020 contest. Scores of people were involved in the audit effort, dedicating hours to poring over ballots and searching for hints of bamboo, among other things. Every single ballot was examined and recounted. When the audit was concluded, the results were unchanged.
But the waste continued. There was a lengthy hearing involving members of the state legislature and various parties that had participated in the effort, all of whom spent hours cobbling together explanations of what they found. The county was repeatedly forced to rebut nonsensical claims from the “auditors,” and participated in an hours-long hearing explaining why the elements of the election presented as dubious were, in fact, well within the range of normal activity.
The result? No change to the election.
The media, of course, spent a great deal of time covering the audit and its components, as it has the effort to prove “fraud” more broadly. Since Election Day in 2020, for example, there have been more than 21,000 15-second cable-news segments on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC mentioning fraud in the context of an election. That’s about 225 solid days of coverage across those three networks in which fraud was discussed. That’s just three television networks and doesn’t include, say, newspapers.
Then there’s the fraud-conspiracy circuit. Otero County’s review of its election results was triggered after a public hearing featuring a man named David Clements, who insisted that investigating fraud would be fruitful. A review conducted by NPR found that Clements had participated in 63 events in 25 states aimed largely at elevating false or unfounded claims about fraud. He was one of four individuals who alone had participated in 308 events in 45 states over that period. Figure each event was at least an hour and (for the sake of a quick calculation) attracted 100 attendees and that’s more than 30,000 hours of time wasted by attendees — excluding travel time, etc. More than 1,280 24-hour days of time wasted at these events.
Among the four men included in NPR’s analysis is one worthy of mentioning separately: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Lindell was at 44 events in 19 states, part of his robust effort to prove the election from Trump stolen. It has included the production and release of a series of films purporting to show rampant fraud (without success) and innumerable media appearances.
Last August, Lindell engaged in a particularly wasteful waste of time, a “cyber symposium” held in South Dakota at which he promised attendees that he would offer up proof of foreign interference in the 2020 vote count. He did not.
What he did do is bring maybe 100 or 200 people to South Dakota for three days of discussion about voter fraud, much of which involved his sitting onstage riffing about things. It was covered live by a right-wing media service with, at one point, tens of thousand of people wasting their time by watching remotely. A number of news outlets stuck around long enough to learn that nothing new would be revealed; others wrote debunks of Lindell’s claims off the remote stream.
A few months ago, the index of wastes of time got a new entrant: the release of the film “2000 Mules” by Trump ally Dinesh D’Souza. The film purports to show evidence of an effort to collect and submit illegal ballots during the 2020 election, though it completely fails in that task (showing precisely zero demonstrable instances of illegal voting).
Making the movie itself involved a decent amount of time and money, certainly. But consider the amount of time and money wasted in actually watching it. At launch, streaming it cost almost $30, though that’s now been reduced slightly. Salem Media Group, an executive producer on the film, claims that 1 million people watched “2000 Mules” by May 12, another claim that might be taken with a grain of salt. But if that number is accurate as of today, that means 90 million minutes of time spent watching D’Souza’s utterly unconvincing film. That’s the equivalent of 171 full years of human life.
That’s just the actual watching of the film. The group that provided D’Souza with the data around which he centers the film is called True the Vote. Its leaders have offered testimony before multiple state legislative bodies, including in Wisconsin and Arizona. Its focus on proving alleged fraud predates 2020, but “2000 Mules” has injected True the Vote’s rhetoric broadly into the right-wing political conversation. Earlier this month, True the Vote’s leaders attended a conference of conservative law enforcement officials where fraud was a central topic. A number of the sheriffs in attendance indicated that they had or would make uprooting purported fraud a central component of their work — almost certainly meaning more wasted money and time.
There is no evidence of any significant fraud in any recent national election, 2020 or otherwise. There was no reason to think the 2020 contest would be tainted by fraud even at the time. That so many people have spent so much time trying to prove that fraud occurred without success only reinforces that the initial skepticism with which fraud claims were treated was the proper position.
Yet some continue to spend time and energy pointing out the ongoing lack of evidence. Officials at the state level (as in Michigan) have invested hours and enormous cost reinforcing the security of their elections. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post have written dozens of articles debunking these claims; PolitiFact has written even more.
Earlier this month, one of the most robust efforts to pick apart Trump’s false fraud claims was published by a group of long-standing voices within the Republican and conservative political universe. Over the span of 70 pages, the group elevates and then dismantles a flurry of claims made by Trump’s allies, mostly ones raised during the immediate post-election effort to win cases in court. It is thorough, detailed, nonpartisan — and an expenditure of time and money that does little more than reinforce that understood reality is indeed reality. In other words, it’s a huge investment of time that should not have had to have been invested.
An email to the group that produced the report asking how much time and energy went into its creation was not returned by the time of publication. Fair enough. We’ve all wasted more than enough resources on this nonsense already. | 2022-07-26T21:43:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 2020 fraud hunt: Among the biggest wastes of time in U.S. history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/2020-fraud-hunt-among-biggest-wastes-time-us-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/2020-fraud-hunt-among-biggest-wastes-time-us-history/ |
FILE - In this image provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, centre, and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson walk on the square where damaged Russian military vehicles are displayed in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, June 17, 2022. British Prime Minister Johnson has presented Ukrainian President Zelenskyy with the Sir Winston Churchill Leadership Award, drawing comparisons between the two leaders in times of crises. Zelenskyy accepted the award by video link Tuesday, July 26, 2022, during a ceremony at Johnson’s London office. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File) (Uncredited/Ukrainian Presidential Press Office) | 2022-07-26T21:46:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK's Johnson gives Churchill award to Ukraine's Zelenskyy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/uks-johnson-gives-churchill-award-to-ukraines-zelenskyy/2022/07/26/cc93e51e-0d27-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/uks-johnson-gives-churchill-award-to-ukraines-zelenskyy/2022/07/26/cc93e51e-0d27-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Nada Surf is back. Why are they playing for free outdoors in Herndon?
Alternative rock band Nada Surf plays the Music at Arrowbrook Center free outdoor concert series in Herndon on July 30. (Jess Lomas)
When Nada Surf last visited Washington in January 2020, the band headlined the Black Cat. Previous tours saw them atop bills at 9:30 Club and U Street Music Hall. But when Nada Surf takes the stage Saturday night to finish a four-date mini-tour of the United States, it will be on an AstroTurf soccer field in Herndon.
The free 90-minute outdoor show, part of the Music at Arrowbrook Park summer concert series, is something that Nada Surf does “very, very rarely,” singer and guitarist Matthew Caws says. During a recent interview from his home in Cambridge, England, he recalled performing a free public gig in Paris years ago as part of the countrywide Fête de la Musique celebration, but “I’m thrilled that they want us to do it,” he says. “I mean, how great to play in a park like that, and just to play for free? I’m psyched.”
In fact, the organizers of the 10-year-old concert series — which features such familiar artists as Scythian, who kicked off the series July 9, and dieselbilly guitarist Bill Kirchen, who visits Aug. 20 — call Nada Surf a band “whom we have tried to book for many years.” Casual music fans will remember the alternative rock group for “Popular,” a maddeningly catchy, grunge-adjacent song that felt inescapable back in the summer of 1996, thanks in part to its MTV Buzz Bin video. In the ensuing decades, however, the band has built a solid fan base on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to a catalogue of smart, tuneful power-pop in the vein of Teenage Fanclub or early Weezer — singalong indie rock songs where introspective lyrics share space with jangling guitars and massive hooks.
The band’s ninth album, “Never Not Together,” was released in February 2020, less than two weeks after that Black Cat show. Four American and European tours had been planned to support that record, Caws says, but after fits and false starts, the band got back on the road in 2021. Their most recent tours, which started in May, included playing festivals in France, the Netherlands and Austria, as well as clubs from Paris to Vienna. “There’s been a lot of joy,” Caws says. “The audiences have been really generous and warm.”
Some of that could be a reaction to the music: “Never Not Together” finds the band at its most philosophical, examining relationships, contemplating how to move on from disappointment and, on the sprawling “Mathilde,” how toxic masculinity is shaped in childhood. During the album highlight “Something I Should Do,” a peppy tune laden with chiming guitars and woozy keyboards, there’s an extended, unexpected spoken-word segment — Caws calls it “a long, kind of ranty section” that bears repeated listening — where the singer declines to beat himself up in song (“I’ve done plenty of that”), name-drops the Dutch tulip bubble and Haight-Ashbury, and reminds listeners “empathy is good, lack of empathy is bad.” At recent shows, the band has been beginning encores with “Just Wait,” an atmospheric slow-burner that counsels anyone feeling stressed or overwhelmed, “You’re gonna be just fine / It might take some time / But you gotta know it’s gonna be okay,” amid gentle background “ooohs”. “We’re generally pointed in a positive and helpful direction,” Caws says, “and that I think sometimes that’s even more necessary or useful. Maybe that’s contributed to the good feeling at the concerts.”
After this weekend, the band will scatter again, at least until October, when they’ll reconvene in Spain, where bassist and band co-founder Daniel Lorca lives, to work on material for the band’s 10th album, followed by a tour of the U.K. and Europe.
Caws knows there are plenty of music fans who haven’t tracked the band’s career in the decades since “Popular” and still think of the band as one-hit wonders, but he says that “there’s nothing you can do but just play the songs.” At a recent festival in the Netherlands, he explains, the band tried to recast the set list for a general audience, instead of its usual fans, and “just played rockers the whole time. We took out pretty much anything slow or midtempo and pensive. You figure, for a big audience, just play hard and fast and loud. But after the show, I thought, maybe I have to remember that people like you for who you are, not for a first impression.”
In the future, he says, “I might try to resist that and keep pieces of different aspects of the band. Just do what you do and be yourself, and that'll work if it works.”
Performing Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Arrowbrook Centre Park, 2351 Field Point Rd., Herndon. fairfaxcounty.gov/parks. Free. | 2022-07-26T22:26:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nada Surf wraps up its American tour with a free concert in Herndon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/26/nada-surf-free-concert-va/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/26/nada-surf-free-concert-va/ |
Kyaw Min Yu, widely known internationally as Ko Jimmy, and his wife, Nilar Thein, in background, after being released from a prison on Jan. 13, 2012, in Yangon, Myanmar. (AP)
Kyaw Min Yu, a pro-democracy leader and writer in Myanmar widely known as Ko Jimmy, who rose to prominence in 1988 during protests that helped galvanize political forces opposing military-led regimes for decades to come, was executed with three other activists. He was 53.
Myanmar’s military regime announced that it recently carried out the death sentences, but did not specify when the executions took place at the Insein Prison in Yangon. The junta was strongly denounced by rights groups and governments around the world. But the country’s rulers remained defiant as they seek to crush dissent and political allies of ousted civilian leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Ko Jimmy had been in activism the longest among the group put to death, possibly hanged but authorities did not immediately confirm the execution method. Also killed was former hip-hop artist Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, who became a parliament member and top aide to Suu Kyi.
In 1988, Ko Jimmy was studying physics at Rangoon Arts & Sciences University, now the University of Yangon, as protests flared around the country after a snap decision by the ruling party that made many bank notes worthless. After the unrest forced the resignation of strongman Gen. Ne Win that July, student groups set plans for a major demonstration calling for greater freedoms under the brutal one-party state.
While jailed from 2007 to 2012, he drafted a novel “The Moon in Inle Lake,” a story about an official facing quandaries about state power and policies as he falls for a woman with a business and political background near Myanmar’s picturesque Inle Lake. “For me it’s art that makes my life tolerable,” Ko Jimmy said at the book launch in 2012 in Yangon. “I sang and wrote poetry when my life was rough in prison.”
He also did translations of books censored by Myanmar’s regime including Dan Brown’s bestsellers “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons.”
Ko Jimmy’s wife and former jailed political activist, Nilar Thein, denied the allegations against her husband. Following a closed trial, he was sentenced to death in January.
Ko Jimmy was born Feb. 13, 1969, in Myanmar’s eastern Shan state, which includes Inle Lake.
The 1988 protests were crushed after about five weeks with a military coup. Ko Jimmy was arrested and sentenced in 1989 and sentenced to hard labor.
Word reached Ko Jimmy one day in prison about a new inmate, Nilar Thein, who turned out to be the same student in the school uniform he saw in the crowd. He asked a guard if he could send her a message.
“She was very lonely, very lonely,” he said in the 2014 interview.
There were both released in 2004 and soon married. Their daughter Phyu Nay Kyi Min Yu, whom they nicknamed “Sunshine,” was born just months before 2007’s “Saffron revolution,” widespread protests led by Buddhist monks after fuel prices nearly doubled.
Ko Jimmy and his wife joined the marches. He was arrested during a bloody backlash by authorities. His wife went into hiding with their infant daughter, but was tracked down in 2008. She was jailed and the girl was raised by a grandmother until the couple was pardoned in a 2012 amnesty.
Since early 2021, Ko Jimmy constantly shifted locations to avoid authorities. During his arrest in October, he was injured trying to scale a fence topped with barbed wire, his wife said. | 2022-07-26T22:52:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyaw Min Yu, Myanmar activist known as Ko Jimmy, executed at 53 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/ko-jimmy-myanmar-executed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/ko-jimmy-myanmar-executed/ |
A day-care provider is accused of wounding her husband, who has been charged with sexually abusing children in her care
A man who police say was shot by his wife in a D.C. hotel last week, prompting a brief barricade situation, has been charged with sexually abusing children at his wife’s Maryland day-care center, according to authorities.
James S. Weems Jr., 57, a former Baltimore police officer, and his wife, Shanteari Weems, 50, owner of Lil Kidz Kastle day-care center in Baltimore County, were in an eighth-floor room at the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel in Southwest Washington when the shooting occurred Thursday night, D.C. police said.
In a court affidavit, investigators said Shanteari Weems told them she and her husband, of Randallstown, Md., got in a heated argument over complaints that he had sexually abused children at her day-care facility.
Woman charged in hotel shooting told police victim was child molester
On Tuesday, Baltimore County police said they obtained an arrest warrant for James Weems charging him with 13 sex crimes related to the abuse of “at least three children” at Lil Kidz Kastle.
James Weems remains hospitalized in the District with two gunshots wounds that are not considered life-threatening, according to D.C. police. They said he is now considered a fugitive from justice in Maryland and has been placed under guard at the hospital.
Meanwhile, Shanteari Weems is being held in the D.C. jail, charged with assault with intent to kill her husband and several handgun offenses. She has pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court and is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing Friday.
One of her lawyers, Tony N. Garcia, said in an interview Tuesday that Shanteari Weems contends she shot her husband in self-defense after their argument “turned violent” and he “started coming toward her.”
Baltimore police said James Weems was an officer in the city from 1996 to 2005 and subsequently was a “contract specialist” for the department until 2008, doing administrative work. He has not yet appeared in court and it is unclear whether he has an attorney. Effort to reach relatives of James Weems were unsuccessful.
D.C. police said they were called to the Mandarin Oriental, in the 1300 block of Maryland Avenue SW, shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday for a report of gunshots in Room 853. When patrol officers in the hallway asked Shanteari Weems “to come out of the room so officers could assist the person shot,” the affidavit says, she “began making statements like ‘I’m going to kill myself.’”
The standoff lasted less than an hour, police said.
When officers asked her to “verify if there was a person shot inside,” she referred to her husband by an expletive and said, “He’s a child molester,” according to the affidavit. James Weems then yelled that he had been shot in the head and leg, and his wife responded, ‘Shut the f--- up, I will kill you,’” the affidavit says. It says officers then “moved to make entry” and took Shanteari Weems into custody.
Joy Lepola-Stewart, a Baltimore County police spokeswoman, said Tuesday that detectives began investigating James Weems this month “after allegations surfaced that Weems sexually abused at least three children while working” at Lil Kidz Kastle. She said the arrest warrant includes “multiple charges” of sexual abuse of a minor and second-, third- and fourth-degree sex offense. It is unclear when the alleged abused occurred.
In a police interview, Shanteari Weems said she drove to Washington from her Baltimore County home on July 20, the day before the shooting, “to meet with her husband” of five years at the hotel, according to the affidavit. It says Weems told police that she had “received multiple messages and phone calls from parents and teachers” about sexual abuse at the day-care center.
Her lawyer, Garcia, said Shanteari Weems had “built her business from scratch,” starting in the early 2000s, and that the allegations of sexual abuse by her husband “were pretty earth-shattering.” Garcia said his client decided to drive to Washington to discuss the matter with her husband, who was staying at the Mandarin Oriental in connection with his security work.
According to the affidavit, Shanteari Weems told D.C. police that on Thursday, “the conversation escalated into a full-blown argument” and “at some point in the argument, her husband stood up and started towards her,” so she shot him.
Police found two handguns in the room along with a notebook in which Shanteari Weems had written that she intended to shoot her husband to make him suffer, but not kill him, and that she wanted him to be exposed as a child molester, according to the affidavit.
Garcia said one of the handguns belonged to his client, who is licensed to carry it in Maryland, and the other belonged to James Weems. As for the notes, which possibly indicate that the shooting was planned, Garcia said, “We’re still gathering information.” | 2022-07-26T22:56:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man shot over child molestation allegations is charged with sex abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/mandarin-shooting-child-sex-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/mandarin-shooting-child-sex-abuse/ |
‘Black Panther’ sequel: A rebuke of misogyny and racism in 2 minutes
The second installment of "Black Panther" sees Wakanda dealing with the loss of Chadwick Boseman while searching for its new Black Panther. (Video: Marvel Entertainment)
The movie is the sequel to the 2018 superhero blockbuster that turned its lead actor Chadwick Boseman into a pop culture icon shortly before his death at 43. For anyone who revels in comic book deep dives, the brief glimpse at the upcoming movie is rich with references to characters’ backstories, their possible nemeses and successors. It’s also a reminder of a fictional country in which Blackness is the norm, the standard as well as an emblem of success and power.
Those two minutes of impressionistic storytelling are also a brief respite and an alluring rebuke to a kind of sordid misogyny and inflammatory ignorance that has become a rallying cry for some conservatives and extremists. The trailer is pop culture at its most powerful and provocative: It’s manipulating our common knowledge to suggest alternate narratives; and they are irresistible.
There’s a lot bearing down on Black women and women in general — on a lot of folks, really. In this little dollop of a distraction, there’s no coarse lawmaker making his case for leadership by characterizing his opponents as fat and ugly and comparing them inexplicably to “a thumb.” That’s what Republican congressman Matt Gaetz (Fla.) recently did during a speech to young conservatives in which he attacked women marching in support of abortion rights. The Republican lawmaker has a history of provocative language and so his comments, while extreme even for him, were not out of character. They simply add to the corrosive atmosphere of our times.
In the trailer, women are seemingly in full control of their destiny and that’s a fine bit of popcorn storytelling to distract from the reality that our interconnected freedoms are under stress. In a speech to the NAACP this month, Vice President Harris noted that in her Venn diagram of states restricting abortion rights and those that are tightening access to the polls, 10 are doing both, which means that even as the matter of abortion access is being left to state lawmakers to decide, it’s becoming more challenging for citizens to have a say in the laws of their state.
For a few minutes, a Black worldview is writ large, not as an addendum to a more central narrative and not as a subject of controversy or suspicion or lawsuits. It isn’t a theory that’s a subject of debate. It isn’t one of many stories. It’s the only story and it promises to be a sweeping one filled with compelling characters, towering personalities and feats of bravery in devotion to home — which is to say, it’s a story of patriotism.
This little trailer of Ryan Coogler’s film wouldn’t be that memorable if so many real-life extremists weren’t intent on hoisting themselves up on the backs of others. It wouldn’t feel like a serenade to Black women, thick women, athletic women, unsmiling women, nonfeminine women if so many judgmental people didn’t insist on defining womanhood on their terms rather than leaving that description up to the individual.
The teaser uses music as both a source of emotional connection and as a mnemonic device. “No Woman, No Cry” is a soothing song of 1970s vintage. It recognizes sadness. It allows for fragility but refuses despair. It merges into “Alright,” the Kendrick Lamar song that became an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement. The music evokes history, continuity and fight. It evokes an arc, not necessarily of justices, but of determination.
Harry Styles gets all the applause
There are times when pop culture feels like it’s making light of serious issues, when it exacerbates a problem instead of contributing to a remedy, when it celebrates selfishness when generosity is what’s desperately needed. But occasionally, pop culture has a moment when it seems to take stock of everything — or everything simply seeps into a creative endeavor. And instead of it becoming a mirror of our times, it becomes a window that looks out onto a fanciful alternative, a more openhearted future. | 2022-07-26T23:05:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Black Panther’ sequel: A rebuke of misogyny and racism in 2 minutes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/black-panther-sequel-rebuke-misogyny-racism-2-minutes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/26/black-panther-sequel-rebuke-misogyny-racism-2-minutes/ |
15 killed, 50 injured in anti-U.N. violence
At least 15 people were killed and about 50 wounded on the second day of demonstrations against the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern cities of Goma and Butembo on Tuesday, authorities said.
The dead included protesters and U.N. personnel as crowds attacked U.N. sites.
The protests were called by a faction of the ruling party’s youth wing that accuses the U.N. mission, MONUSCO, of failing to protect civilians against militia violence.
The demonstrations began Monday, with hundreds of people attacking and looting a U.N. warehouse in Goma to demand that the mission leave the country. They flared again Tuesday and spread to Butembo, about 125 miles north of Goma.
“Mobs are throwing stones and petrol bombs, breaking into bases, looting and vandalizing, and setting facilities on fire,” deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said in New York.
One peacekeeper and two U.N. police personnel were killed when their base in Butembo was attacked, the U.N. spokesman said. Butembo’s police chief said seven civilians were killed when the peacekeepers retaliated.
A Reuters reporter in Goma said peacekeepers fired tear gas and live bullets at the crowd, killing two and wounding at least two.
Verdict overturned in Briton's antiquities case
A retired British geologist sentenced to 15 years over antiquities smuggling in Iraq may soon go free after a Baghdad court overturned his conviction, his family and attorney said Tuesday.
Baghdad’s Court of Cassation, or appeals court, overturned the verdict against Jim Fitton, 66, his attorney Thair Soud told the Associated Press. The decision was made on the basis of an appeal filed by Soud shortly after Fitton was convicted.
Fitton’s release date was not immediately known, but Soud said his client should be freed soon pending paperwork.
Fitton drew international attention last month after his conviction for picking up shards of pottery from an archaeological site in southern Iraq.
Some of the pieces he picked up were no larger than a fingernail, he later told the criminal court.
He was arrested in March at Baghdad’s airport and sentenced in June.
Documents posted to the judiciary website said the appeals court found that Fitton’s trial judges had made mistakes and that key circumstantial evidence had been overlooked, including Fitton’s unfamiliarity with local laws. It also noted that the areas where he had picked up the pieces were unguarded.
Fitton had made no attempt to hide the items at the airport, the court said. Based on this, it found that he harbored no criminal intent to smuggle antiquities and ordered his immediate release, according to the documents.
Gang accused of setting Haiti courthouse on fire: Suspected gang members set fire to a courthouse near Haiti's capital in the latest incident targeting the country's crumbling judicial system. The fire occurred in a region controlled by the 400 Mawozo gang, blamed in the killing of a police inspector on Sunday in a church in Croix-des-Bouquets and later setting the building on fire. The courthouse fire occurred a month after another gang raided the Court of First Instance in Port-au-Prince. The gang retains control of a portion of that courthouse.
German woman jailed for taking son to Syria to join ISIS: A German woman was convicted of membership in the Islamic State and other offenses for traveling to Syria with her young son to join the militant group. She was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison. The Düsseldorf state court found that the defendant traveled to Syria in 2015 with her son, then 5, without the knowledge of his father. It found that she ran the household there while her new husband fought for the group. The defendant, who had two more children in Syria, surrendered to Kurdish forces in 2019 and was repatriated to Germany with her children in October.
28 dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor: At least 28 people died and 60 became ill from drinking altered liquor in western India, officials said. A senior official said the deaths occurred in Gujarat state, where the manufacture, sale and consumption of liquor are prohibited. The state's police chief said several suspected bootleggers have been detained. Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India. | 2022-07-26T23:05:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 26, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-26-2022/2022/07/26/84a82744-0cee-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-26-2022/2022/07/26/84a82744-0cee-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html |
Many elements of the sprawling Jan. 6 criminal investigation have remained under wraps. But in recent weeks the public pace of the work has increased, with a fresh round of subpoenas, search warrants and interviews. Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and lawyer, Greg Jacob, appeared before the grand jury in downtown Washington in recent days, according to the people familiar with the investigation. | 2022-07-26T23:05:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump conduct, conversations part of Justice Dept. investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/trump-justice-investigation-january-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/trump-justice-investigation-january-6/ |
This company helps small businesses offer abortion travel coverage
TriNet, an HR and payroll services company, found a way to help smaller employers assist workers with reproductive care and family planning in the wake of the Dobbs decision
Abortion rights activists rally at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis on June 25 after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Aj Mast/AP)
Within an hour after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, TriNet, an HR and payroll services company working with small and midsize businesses, found itself bombarded with calls from worried employees and employers wondering how they would be affected.
So TriNet created a benefits product that will allow its customers to offer tax-free reimbursement for out-of-state medical travel, including for abortion. The product will be available to some 610,000 employees of TriNet clients and their dependents. Employees will be able to access it regardless of whether they are enrolled in their employer’s health plan.
“Everyone wants to be compliant with the laws, but there are various ways you can react to what’s going on around you in the macro environment,” said Samantha Wellington, TriNet’s executive vice president of business affairs and chief legal officer. “Every step you take says a lot about you as an employer.”
Disney, Target, Netflix, JPMorgan Chase and other major corporations were quick to announce that their health-care plans would cover travel for abortion after the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
With operations throughout the country, bigger companies were accustomed to juggling jurisdictions, and the nature of self-insured health plans, favored by many large employers, means they are not regulated by states. Many of these companies already covered medical travel, including travel for abortion, through their plans.
But for smaller employers, the calculations are more complicated. They have fewer resources and they tend to have fully insured health-care plans, in which insurance companies assume financial responsibility for claims. Those plans are subject to state insurance laws, which could limit their ability to cover travel costs for an abortion in states that have restrictions or bans.
And while more than 100 large companies have taken public action in response to abortion bans — from covering abortion travel to donating to organizations that fight for reproductive rights — only half as many companies with fewer than 500 employees have taken similar measures, according to a tracker by Rhia Ventures, an investment fund focused on reproductive rights.
And yet they account for a large share of U.S. employers: Out of roughly 32.6 million businesses in the United States, fewer than 21,000 have 500 or more employees, according to the Small Business & Entreprenuership Council.
TriNet was able to respond quickly to the challenges presented by the Dobbs decision because of its “deep expertise” in benefits design and “the types of products and offerings that small and medium-sized businesses need to be relevant as an employer in today’s marketplace,” Wellington said. And the company’s scaled service model enables TriNet to quickly deploy new products.
In addition to travel reimbursement for medical care, TriNet is offering its 23,000 customers the opportunity to assist employees with adoption travel expenses. TriNet will act as the plan administrator, processing claims and handling reimbursement payments, which allows employees seeking assistance to remain anonymous to their employers.
The anonymity element is critical as companies helping employees seek abortion care out-of-state could be at risk of criminal liability in Texas, Missouri and several other states seeking to target those who “aid and abet” abortion.
“From a customer perspective, they’re able to say, ‘We don’t have that data,’” Wellington said.
Derek Steer, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Mode, a data analysis software company, was one of the first customers to reach out to TriNet after the Dobbs decision. With 58 of Mode’s 250 workers in states that have already enacted or are moving toward abortion bans, Steer knew employees would want solutions.
“We’re at a time now where people expect their companies to do a lot for them,” Steer said. “At times when they feel like the government has failed them, they look to businesses.”
Securing anonymity needed to be a top priority if the company pursued a travel benefit, he said. But as a small company, “that is something that is logistically almost impossible for us to do,” Steer said. “Without the help of someone like TriNet, I don’t know that we’d be able to achieve the same type of program that people are looking for.”
Steer said he sees this benefit as a way to protect the health and safety of his employees by ensuring equal access to medical care. Offering attractive benefits also helps smaller companies like Mode keep up with the fierce competition for talent, he noted.
“Part of getting the best talent is about being a leading employer in terms of the benefits we offer, but it’s increasingly becoming about being an employer that is willing to take a stand on key issues that people care about,” Steer said. “This is one such instance where we can do right by our team and in doing so, be an attractive place for those folks to work, especially when their alternatives are some of these big companies with a lot of resources.” | 2022-07-26T23:05:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TriNet is helping small businesses offer abortion travel coverage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/26/abortion-travel-coverage-small-business/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/26/abortion-travel-coverage-small-business/ |
The Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would enshrine the right to same-sex and interracial marriage in federal law, is only four short pages long. Yet in the week since the House passed the measure on a bipartisan vote and Democratic leaders indicated they planned to put it on the Senate floor, few Republican senators have found the time to read it — or so they said Tuesday.
“Haven’t read it,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.).
“We’re still looking at it,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
“I’m not going to comment on it in terms of how I’m going to vote until I see the bill — if it does get a vote,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.).
The reality is, senators have little trouble understanding what the bill does: It repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and requires states to extend “full faith and credit” to any marriage between two people, regardless of the “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals” — mirroring the action that the Supreme Court took in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriages nationally.
“Most of our members are going to say: Why are we having this vote right now when nobody’s talking about it?” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate GOP leader. “It seems like the Democrats are using it as a distraction.”
But in the eyes of Democrats, writing same-sex marriage into federal law became much more than a political stunt with last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion that had stood since the Roe v. Wade decision 49 years ago. Like the rights to interracial and same-sex marriage, the federal abortion right had been grounded in the constitutional theory of substantive due process that recognizes “unenumerated” rights such as the right to privacy.
While the controlling opinion of the court last month held that the abortion ruling should not “cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas did precisely that — calling on the high court to “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including Obergefell and Griswold v. Connecticut, which protected access to contraception, and Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated state sodomy laws.
“We’re in the post-Roe world, where marriage equality, contraceptive freedoms — it’s all on the table as far as the Supreme Court’s concerned,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “And this issue in particular is on the right-wing majority’s hit list. So as inconceivable as overturning Roe was just a year ago, this one has to be regarded as in jeopardy.”
A handful of Senate Republicans have already indicated that they are on board with the effort, including Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Thom Tillis (N.C.). A fifth Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), said last week that he had “no reason to oppose” the measure, while also accusing Democrats of “creating a state of fear over an issue in order to further divide Americans for their political benefit.”
That is five more Republicans than supported Democrats’ efforts earlier this year to codify Roe ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling. But Democrats will need at least 10 to join them to vault a filibuster.
Dozens of Republicans are expected to oppose the measure if it is brought up for a vote. Among those who said Tuesday that they would have no qualms in voting “no” was Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), who said in a statement that the bill constituted “an attempt by Democrats to score political points by manufacturing hysteria and panic, in addition to escalating their ongoing attacks against the Court.”
But many are simply not taking a position. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is leading the wait-and-see parade, telling reporters Tuesday that he would continue to keep his powder dry until Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) schedules a vote. Asked about his position on the bill, McConnell said, “I’m not going to make an observation about that until the issue is actually brought up in the Senate.”
That posture has been comfortable for many Republicans this week: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said she was “hearing from both sides on the issue” and remained undecided. “I’ll see if it comes up, and then I’ll make a decision,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), while Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) declined to state his position, noting, “I don’t know whether we’re voting on that or not.”
Behind the scenes, those senators are being lobbied by some of their colleagues, including Collins, Portman and Tillis, as well as the two Democratic senators who are openly members of the LGBTQ community, Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).
“We’re just trying to work through it,” said Tillis. “At the end of the day, the members have to make their own decisions, but in my opinion, it’s very much unlike the bill that Sen. Schumer put on the floor for codifying Roe v. Wade. … This is a sincere codification of current law.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are under pressure from elements of their political coalition who are urging them to stand fast against the bill. A letter sent Tuesday to McConnell, signed by leaders of the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and dozens of other social conservative organizations and institutions, said the measure would “endanger people of faith” and have the effect of “silencing those with the long-held conviction that marriage between one man and one woman is essential to human flourishing.”
“It has little to do with protecting rights; its text betrays an intent to stigmatize and take rights away — especially those belonging to people of faith,” said the letter, which was first reported by Politico.
The religious right’s biggest ally in its quest to stop the bill from advancing might be an impending legislative pileup in the Senate, as well as a spate of health-related absences that could keep the Senate from mustering the 60 votes necessary to beat a filibuster. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) is recovering from hip-replacement surgery, while Murkowski and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) have tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days.
“We are working real hard to get 10 Republican senators,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday. “Between that and the illnesses, we’re not there yet.” He did not list the same-sex marriage bill among his top priorities for action before the Senate begins its summer recess next week, instead listing bills to boost research and development investment, lower prescription drug prices and improve veterans’ health care.
Baldwin said Tuesday that the bill is “gaining more support each day” but that the absences are a concern.
“We’ll do it when we have the votes and the time,” she said, adding, “I would not be surprised if we have significantly more in the end [than those who are] making a public commitment at this point.”
But Democrats’ insistence on waiting for sufficient GOP support to hold a vote amid Republicans’ reticence to publicly embrace the legislation has created a Catch-22 for the time being. “My assumption is it certainly doesn’t happen until they’re convinced they’ve got 10 Republicans,” said Thune, who has opposed same-sex marriage in the past but has not taken a position on the Respect for Marriage Act.
“I think a number of them are hoping it will just go away,” Blumenthal said, recounting his own conversations with Republicans. “But when push comes to shove … I think if you put it on the floor today, it would pass. What I’m hearing is, ‘You know, our base is tough on this issue, but how can we possibly defy history?’ ” | 2022-07-26T23:13:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republicans stay mum as Senate pushes toward same-sex marriage vote - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/republicans-same-sex-marriage-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/republicans-same-sex-marriage-vote/ |
FILE - Residents line up to be tested for COVID-19 in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province on Aug. 3, 2021. Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold – further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab. The research was published online Tuesday, July 26, 2022, by the journal Science. (Chinatopix via AP, File) (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | 2022-07-26T23:14:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/new-studies-bolster-theory-coronavirus-emerged-from-the-wild/2022/07/26/5f34f55c-0d2d-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/new-studies-bolster-theory-coronavirus-emerged-from-the-wild/2022/07/26/5f34f55c-0d2d-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
FARGO, N.D. — North Dakota’s only abortion clinic is preparing for what could be its final day of performing procedures, with a trigger ban due to take effect Thursday that will likely force patients to travel hundreds of miles to receive care pending the clinic’s relocation across the border to Minnesota. | 2022-07-26T23:14:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Dakota abortion clinic prepares for likely final day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/north-dakota-abortion-clinic-prepares-for-likely-final-day/2022/07/26/546daaca-0d31-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/north-dakota-abortion-clinic-prepares-for-likely-final-day/2022/07/26/546daaca-0d31-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Actor Paul Sorvino in 1976, when he directed a short-lived Broadway play called “Wheelbarrow Closers.” He was best known for playing mob boss Paulie Cicero in the 1990 movie “Goodfellas.” (AP)
Three days before he was supposed to start shooting “Goodfellas,” filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s 1990 account of friendship, betrayal, jealousy and addiction in the New York City mob, actor Paul Sorvino was ready to quit. “Get me out,” he told his manager in a desperate phone call. “I’m going to ruin this great man’s picture, and I’m going to ruin myself.”
Mr. Sorvino had been cast as the stately but menacing mob boss Paulie Cicero, a character based on convicted mobster Paul Vario, and was having trouble with the role. Like Paulie, he was an Italian American from Brooklyn; he felt he understood the character’s speech and mannerisms, including the loving way he treated low-level gangsters like Henry Hill, the film’s protagonist (played by Ray Liotta). But he was struggling to find “that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness” that allowed Paulie to order a hit on a longtime friend or associate.
He wasn’t sure he would ever find it. Then, soon after he called his manager, he went to adjust his tie. “I looked in the mirror and literally jumped back a foot,” he later told the New York Times. “I saw a look I’d never seen, something in my eyes that alarmed me. A deadly soulless look in my eyes that scared me and was overwhelmingly threatening. And I looked to the heavens and said, ‘You’ve found it.’ ”
Mr. Sorvino, a would-be opera singer who also sculpted and wrote poetry, went on to deliver one of the most gripping performances of his career, alongside co-stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Liotta, who died in May at 67.
As Paulie, Mr. Sorvino never used a phone, stayed away from group conversations, instructed a philandering Henry to return to his wife and introduced millions of viewers to an unusual system for slicing garlic: using a razor blade to cut it so fine that it liquefies in the pan. “It’s a very good system,” Henry explains in a voice-over.
Mr. Sorvino was 83 when he died July 25 at a hospital in Jacksonville, Fla. His death was confirmed by his publicist, Roger Neal, who said Mr. Sorvino had health problems in recent years but did not give a specific cause.
Based on a nonfiction book by Nicholas Pileggi, “Goodfellas” received six Academy Award nominations and launched Mr. Sorvino to a new level of fame, helping him land a starring role on “Law & Order’s” early seasons as a police detective, Sgt. Phil Cerreta.
The burly, 6-foot-3 Mr. Sorvino had long played characters on both sides of the law, including Al Pacino’s overworked police supervisor in “Cruising” (1980) and the villainous, wide-mouthed gangster Lips Manlis in “Dick Tracy” (1990), directed by his friend Warren Beatty. He later played heavies in Disney’s “The Rocketeer” (1991), Sydney Pollack’s “The Firm” (1993) and two recent seasons of “Godfather of Harlem,” an Epix crime drama starring Forest Whitaker.
But those roles — elevated by the angry glower or deadly stare he would give to a co-star — were just one aspect of a wide-ranging career that included more than 170 movie and TV credits, as well as a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for starring in “That Championship Season,” a tragicomic play by Jason Miller.
“It’s almost my later goal in life to disabuse people of the notion that I’m a slow-moving, heavy-lidded thug,” Mr. Sorvino told Orlando Weekly in 2014. Interviewed by the Times in 2006, he remarked that while “everyone thinks I’m a mobster, I think of myself as a warrior-poet” — as well as a singer, a role that he further inhabited after making his New York City Opera debut later that year.
On-screen, Mr. Sorvino showed his range while playing a sentimental newspaper columnist in “Slow Dancing in the Big City” (1978), a deaf lawyer in the TV movie “Dummy” (1979), left-wing political activist Louis C. Fraina in Beatty’s “Reds” (1981), diplomat Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” (1995) and Juliet’s father in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” (1996).
He also served as a mentor for his daughter Mira Sorvino, who followed him into show business and won an Oscar for her supporting role in “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995). “When you give me this award, you honor my father, Paul Sorvino, who has taught me everything I know about acting,” she said at the awards ceremony, as the camera found Mr. Sorvino in the audience. Lifting his arms to his face, he burst into tears.
The youngest of three sons, Paul Anthony Sorvino was born in Brooklyn on April 13, 1939, and grew up in the borough’s Bensonhurst neighborhood. His father was a garment factory foreman, and his mother was a piano teacher. From a young age, he was drawn to performing, cracking up classmates at Lafayette High School and dreaming of a career as a singer or actor.
“When I was around 3, I’d be hollering for attention and the neighbors would ask, ‘Why is Paul crying?’ Mama would tell them, ‘He’s not crying, he’s performing,’ ” Mr. Sorvino told the Times. Decades later, he still remembered the lines from his first performance, a kindergarten play: “I am Paul Oatmeal, true of heart and true of soul. Put me in your breakfast bowl.”
While listening to recordings by operatic tenors like Mario Lanza and Enrico Caruso, he started to develop his voice, learning to overcome severe asthma. He sang at bingo games, nightclubs and summer resorts in the “minestrone belt” of the Catskills, and supported himself by waiting tables, mixing cocktails at private parties and selling dictionaries door-to-door. By his early 20s he had shifted his focus to acting, winning a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his teachers included Sanford Meisner.
For years, he found it difficult to get work. “I had confidence in my ability, and I was angry as hell when other people didn’t recognize it,” he recalled. “Like I’d be acting my heart out at a reading only to be stopped halfway through with a ‘Thank you very much. Next?’ That kind of rejection unstrung me. I’d storm into the wings wanting to punch somebody.”
Therapy helped, he said, but for a time he simply gave up acting altogether, quitting the business to join a New York advertising agency. He rose from copy writer to vice president but was miserable. With encouragement from his wife, Lorraine Davis, he returned to show business, making his Broadway debut in 1964 in the musical comedy “Bajour.”
In 1971, Mr. Sorvino appeared in the heroin-addiction movie “The Panic in Needle Park” with Pacino and played Joseph Bologna’s father in the film comedy “Made for Each Other.” He was younger than his on-screen son, but his performance impressed Miller, the playwright, leading to his audition for “That Championship Season.”
Set at a reunion of former high school basketball players with their coach, the play won a Pulitzer Prize and ran for 700 performances on Broadway. The cast was roundly praised for its ensemble work, but Mr. Sorvino was singled out by several critics for the physicality of his performance as Phil Romano, a debauched, Porsche-driving mining executive who is having an affair with the wife of one of his old teammates.
He reprised the role for a 1982 film adaptation, which also starred Robert Mitchum and Martin Sheen, and directed a 1999 made-for-TV adaptation, this time playing the basketball team’s thunderous old coach.
Mr. Sorvino’s marriages to Davis and Vanessa Arico ended in divorce. In 2014, he married Dee Dee Benkie, a Republican political strategist whom he met in a Fox News green room when they were both appearing on the talk show “Your World With Neil Cavuto.”
After they eloped at Lincoln Center in New York, she launched an acting career, often working with her husband. “Any movie or TV show he did, she had a role,” said his publicist, Neal. The couple split their time between Los Angeles, New York City, Jacksonville, Fla., and Madison, Ind.
In addition to his wife, survivors include three children from his first marriage, Mira, Amanda and Michael Sorvino; a brother; and five grandchildren.
Explaining his childhood desire to become an actor, Mr. Sorvino told the Times in 1977, “It seemed the surest way to express my feelings, and I always had a tremendous need to do that, to have a communion with other people.”
“A lot of people become actors for the wrong reasons,” he added. “They seek the applause to make up for a lack of love. But I see acting as a sharing of love, a giving for the love of giving. The getting part of it is just the frosting on the cake.” | 2022-07-27T00:23:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Sorvino, a ‘made man’ from ‘Goodfellas,’ dies at 83 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/goodfellas-actor-paul-sorvino-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/goodfellas-actor-paul-sorvino-dead/ |
Top Biden administration official suggests Beijing is pursuing policy of intimidation as it rewrites regional status quo
Visitors file past Chinese military aircraft during an exhibition last year in Zhuhai. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
A senior Pentagon official on Tuesday warned of an unprecedented spike in “direct, aggressive, unsafe” behavior by China against U.S. and partner military forces in the skies above the South China Sea, predicting the trend would probably worsen as Beijing works to expand its regional dominance.
Ely Ratner, the Defense Department’s assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs, characterized the encounters as a campaign of “coercion and harassment” that has escalated dramatically over the past five years. He accused the Chinese military of assorted misconduct, including aircraft intercepts at dangerously close range and the release of objects into the air that could compromise a plane’s engine.
The flurry of activity “looks like a pattern and a policy,” Ratner said, “and not just a decision by an individual pilot.”
Ratner’s remarks, made during a conference in Washington organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, marked the latest in a series of pointed statements from the Biden administration underscoring the erosion of U.S.-China relations. Last month, speaking at the Shangri La Dialogue, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also warned that China’s moves toward regional dominance were becoming more “coercive and aggressive.”
A focal point is Washington’s material support for Taiwan, including of its defense sector, and looming suspicion that Beijing, emboldened by Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, intends to move militarily against the government in Taipei.
Biden takes aggressive posture toward China on Asia trip
China, Ratner said, is using “military intimidation and force” in a bid to disrupt the region’s status quo. It’s a marked departure from Beijing’s long-practiced strategy of securing assets and influence through economic and diplomatic coercion, he said.
By and large, the trend has been observed mostly in the air, Ratner said, noting that he expects that could change.
“We haven’t seen a similar trend on the water yet, but my suspicion would be that’s coming,” he added. The United States, he said, has no intention of scaling back “freedom of navigation operations,” in which naval vessels pass through international waters in the region. He called the patrols “critical to enforcing the rules-based international order.”
In recent months, Canada and Australia both have accused Beijing of dangerous maneuvers to intimidate their pilots during routine flights. U.S. officials have not disclosed many more details to buttress their claims, Ratner acknowledged, saying he was working to declassify the data on China’s recent intercepts to illustrate the trend more substantively.
Some in Washington see a growing urgency around the issue, particularly in light of the complexities underpinning the United States’ relationship with Taiwan.
Washington’s approach has been governed since 1979 by the Taiwan Relations Act, which states in part that U.S. policy is to provide Taiwan with defensive arms and help to maintain its ability to resist any threat to its security — without expressly committing to come to the island’s defense should China attack. The administration has taken pains to preserve that strategic ambiguity, pulling back on President Biden’s recent statements that the United States would respond “militarily” should Beijing attempt to seize control of the island.
Tensions spiked this month after Beijing threatened consequences if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) followed through with a visit to Taiwan in August, pledging to take “strong measures” in response. Though delegations of lawmakers make trips to Taiwan periodically, Pelosi would be the first House speaker to make such a visit since Newt Gingrich in 1997.
Biden said last week that “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now” for Pelosi to visit Taiwan, fearing Beijing could use the VIP visit — as speaker, she is third in line for the presidency — to ignite a wider conflict.
Pelosi has appeared undeterred, however, and has received uncommon support from Republicans, including former president Donald Trump’s last Senate-confirmed defense secretary, who during a speaking engagement Tuesday played down China’s rhetoric in response to Pelosi’s planned visit and warned that allowing “another county to dictate where U.S. officials travel” would set a poor precedent.
“We should not take all these declarations and proclamations from Beijing too seriously,” Mark T. Esper said. “Do we honestly think they’re going to start a war or do something because the speaker of the House travels to Taipei? … If we allow Beijing to start dictating who can or cannot travel, then where does that end?”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that Biden expects to speak this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders, he said, would probably discuss Taiwan, Ukraine and how the countries are managing economic competition.
Biden, Kirby said, “wants to make sure that the lines of communication with President Xi on all the issues — whether they’re issues we agree on, or issues where we have significant difficulties — that they can still pick up the phone and talk to one another candidly and forthrightly.”
Anxiety over when and how Beijing might force a functional reunification of Taiwan with mainland China also is helping to drive initiatives to make the United States less dependent on exports from the island.
On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a bill that would direct $52 billion toward subsidizing production of semiconductors. The United States is largely dependent on Taiwanese exports for the chips that are integral to the functioning of electronic and computing equipment, and has lagged behind China in investing in a homegrown industry.
The legislation is expected to secure enough votes in the Senate and House to be signed into law.
Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. | 2022-07-27T00:23:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pentagon calls out China’s military threats as Taiwan tensions worsen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/us-china-military-intercepts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/us-china-military-intercepts/ |
Julio Jones, left, set records over 10 seasons in Atlanta before he was traded to Tennessee last year. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Tom Brady has lost a couple of prominent pass-catchers from last year’s Buccaneers team, but the Tampa Bay quarterback is getting a big-name addition to his receiving corps.
According to multiple reports Tuesday, the Buccaneers are signing Julio Jones, a seven-time Pro Bowl selection with the Atlanta Falcons who spent last season playing for the Tennessee Titans. In addition to veteran depth, the 33-year-old wide receiver could provide some immediate help to Tampa Bay as fellow wideout Chris Godwin continues to recover from a torn knee ligament.
A spokesman for the Buccaneers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news about Jones arrived the same day that Godwin was reportedly cleared for training camp without needing to be placed on the physically unable to perform list. That bodes well for Godwin’s ability to contribute early in the season, but given that he underwent knee surgery in January, the Buccaneers may want to bring him along slowly. The team also has a healthy Mike Evans, a four-time Pro Bowler, on hand to lead the receiving group, and it signed another former Falcon, wide receiver Russell Gage, in March.
More recently, Tampa Bay added free agent tight end Kyle Rudolph not long after Rob Gronkowski, one of Brady’s all-time favorite targets, confirmed his retirement. Talented but mercurial wide receiver Antonio Brown was released by the Bucs in January, following a meltdown during a game against the New York Jets.
It remains to be seen how much help Jones can offer Tampa Bay, on the heels of a brief but disappointing stint with Tennessee, which traded a pair of draft picks to Atlanta for him in June 2021. Jones’s lone season with the Titans was marred by injury, and over 10 games he accumulated career lows in catches (31), yards (434) and touchdowns (one). It was the second straight year in which injuries kept Jones from playing far less than a full season, after he appeared in just nine games for the Falcons in 2020.
Chase Young, rehabbing a torn ACL, will start training camp on the sideline
In those final games with Atlanta, however, Jones posted strong numbers in yards per reception (15.1), yards per target (11.3) and yards per game (85.7). That offers cause for hope that he still has enough left in the tank to pose a problem for opposing defenses.
Jones was a major thorn in Tampa Bay’s side while he was a member of the Falcons. Over 16 games against the Buccaneers, he racked up the most receiving yards (1,841) by any opponent, tied for the most receptions (114) and posted the second-most touchdown catches (11, per ESPN). Brady likely has fonder memories of competing against Jones, given the latter was a member of the Atlanta squad that infamously blew a 28-3 lead to Brady’s New England Patriots in Super Bowl 51.
The sixth overall pick in the 2011 draft out of Alabama, following a blockbuster trade between the Falcons and Cleveland Browns, Jones immediately justified the investment. He notched 959 receiving yards as a rookie and in 2014 embarked on a six-year stretch in which he never caught fewer than 83 passes for 1,394 yards. Jones is the NFL’s all-time leader in receiving yards per game (91.9) and Atlanta’s career leader in catches (848) and yards (12,896).
The Titans released Jones in March in a move that cleared salary cap space for them and made him a free agent. | 2022-07-27T00:40:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Julio Jones set to join Tom Brady's Tampa Bay Buccaneers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/julio-jones-tampa-bay-buccaneers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/26/julio-jones-tampa-bay-buccaneers/ |
Global Central Banking Goes on Trial. In Australia
Philip Lowe, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), on a camera viewfinder while speaking during an event in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Lowe reiterated that Australians should be prepared for further interest-rate increases, while emphasizing that future policy moves will be shaped by incoming economic data. (Bloomberg)
Calling it the trial of the decade might be only a slight exaggeration. For the next nine months, big themes in global central banking will be raked over in the first independent review of the Reserve Bank of Australia in at least a generation. A revered institution during the country’s long run without recession, the RBA has fallen from its pedestal. Like its peers, the bank is wrestling with the costs of ultra-easy money and is taking fire for missing the inflationary pressures building through the past year.
Some key concepts in monetary policy will be scrutinized, and some overdue questions posed about central bank boards and their role. Do these powerful authorities say too little or overshare? Are the right people sitting around the table when decisions are made? Did officials do the right thing in taking out vast insurance against catastrophic outcomes at the onset of the pandemic and then stick with them too long? Expect tough questions about whether inflation targets with a “2” in them — holy writ in global policy the past few decades — do their job. The government also wants a deep dive into the bank’s culture and recruitment, a nod to critiques that the bank is far too insular.
The review by an outside panel, unveiled by Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers last week, has a mandate to dig deep. Terms of reference are broad: the bank’s performance, its inflation target, governance and communications. It will inevitably become a de-facto referendum on the recent price surges and the rapid hikes in interest rates.
By implication, many central banks will be in the dock. Let’s not pretend the RBA is unique: It has mostly been in step with the global mainstream. In the years leading up to Covid, for example, Governor Philip Lowe fretted about inflation being too low, not too high. Officials undershot their 2-3% target for years. That’s just the sort of angst that wracked the Federal Reserve and led to the launch in 2020 of a new policy framework in the US that let rates stay lower for longer — ironically just as the seeds of the recent inflation spiral were being sown. The European Central Bank overhauled its approach last year to achieve the same result.
Yes, the RBA had an enviable record in that Australia went three decades without recession. That superlative, lauded the world over, masked some important misgivings that top officials had about where the economy was headed and what to do about it. Quantitative easing got a careful even look before Covid. While local, the panel may as well be doing a report card on Jay Powell and Christine Lagarde.
Lowe is braced for some kind of knuckle rap. In what was likely an effort to get ahead of the review, the bank undertook its own examination of totemic pandemic measures: efforts to cap the yield on three-year government debt and bond-buying under QE. Released last month, the first results offered a dash of humility. Officials conceded they stuck with the yield ceiling too long and suffered “some reputational damage” when it was removed. Lowe says he welcomes the public discussion that the review will bring, though he would almost certainly have preferred the appraisal — if it was to be external — to be overseen by Treasury.
While there are no current RBA or Treasury insiders, the three people on the panel aren’t economic bomb-throwers, either: Carolyn Wilkins, a former Bank of Canada deputy governor, Renee Fry-McKibbin, a professor at the Australian National University, and Gordon de Brouwer, a senior civil servant. Lowe has emphasized in recent public remarks that the reviews by the Fed and ECB recommended more flexible inflation targets, of the kind the RBA already has. That’s true as far as it goes, but that isn’t a great distance. Those two assessments were driven internally — not imposed by the politicians as this one is — and didn’t place a broad array of central bank activities under the microscope. Criticism is mounting across the Tasman Sea as well; the Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced an internal policy review on Tuesday.
Lowe acknowledges that some insurance taken out against a truly dire and long-lasting slump may have contributed to escalating inflation. He isn’t overly repentant, though — the doctrine of risk management in central banking owes much to the Alan Greenspan era at the Fed. One mistake that does hang over Lowe and has been used as a battering ram by his critics is forward guidance. Even in late 2021, he was saying interest rates might not need to rise until 2024. They were hiked by a quarter-point in May, a step Lowe called “business as usual,” only to change tack a month later with a 50 basis-point hike, followed by another in July. Forward guidance, pioneered by Greenspan and turned into an art form by Ben Bernanke after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, has arguably outlived its usefulness. Lowe was unconvinced that high inflation would have staying power. That has more than a whiff of Jay Powell’s infamous prediction last year that price hikes would prove “transitory.”
The RBA has lost its perch as the premier institution. For decades, it wasn’t seriously questioned as the country basked — slumbered might be a better term — in a long boom. Now it’s open season. But don’t expect the ensuing debate to stay in the southwest corner of the Pacific. | 2022-07-27T00:45:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Global Central Banking Goes on Trial. In Australia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/global-central-banking-goes-on-trial-in-australia/2022/07/26/7d874370-0d37-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/global-central-banking-goes-on-trial-in-australia/2022/07/26/7d874370-0d37-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
A constellation of think tanks, political committees and other Trump supporters are already working on a government-in-waiting if he wins reelection in 2024
Former president Donald Trump speaks during the America First Agenda Summit on July 26 in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Former president Donald Trump returned to Washington Tuesday for the first time since leaving office to deliver a dystopian speech that encouraged “tough,” “nasty” and “mean” new responses to violent crime and the forcible relocation of homeless people to quickly-built tent cities in the suburbs.
The address — dripping with violent imagery of “streets riddled with needles and soaked with the blood of innocent victims,” death penalty sentences for drug dealers and detailed tales of rape and murder — marked a return to the shocking rhetoric that Trump deployed in his 2016 campaign, as he considers launching another presidential bid as early as this fall.
Before Trump arrived to cap off a two-day policy event by the America First Policy Institute, a new think tank he has helped to fund, President Biden pointed out that Trump had played a central role in fomenting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and refused to immediately ask his supporters to stop attacking police.
The AFPI event served as a public rebranding effort of sorts for Republican-backed policies, as a wide array of conservative stalwarts including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) all appeared under Trump’s “America First” banner. Event organizers made clear they saw “America First” as a rising identity for policies such as civil service reform, private-sector health-care reform and expanded fossil fuel development.
Taken together, the apparatus of Republican groups are laying plans to transform the federal government, slashing the administrative power of agencies, making it easier to fire career civil employees, cutting the roster of those working for the government and vetting a generation of new loyalists to take positions to enact conservative change.
One of several Trump-inspired think tanks founded since the 2020 election, AFPI was created by the group’s president, Brooke Rollins, and former White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow using a policy plan that the two officials had initially drafted on the assumption that Trump would win reelection. The group, which does not disclose its donors, has an annual budget of $25 million and 150 people on the payroll.
“This is in a sense an administration in exile,” Gingrich said of the eight former Cabinet-level Trump officials and nine former senior White House officials who attended the event.
Kudlow said that the group did not plan to formally back any candidate in 2024 — and that Trump was not directly involved, though some of the group’s leaders still talk to Trump.
“We’re developing and expanding ideas and issues that we know work,” he said. “It’s all about issues and ideas and trying to get our country back on track.”
AFPI has also launched an effort to vet potential political appointees for the next Republican to win the White House, parallel to separate undertakings by the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Partnership Institute, a group led by former senator Jim DeMint and former congressman Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s last chief of staff.
Meadows has told others he is working with Trump advisers to make sure Trump has a team around him that is sufficiently loyal to him and his agenda. He did not respond to a request for comment. Meadows is not as close with Trump as he once was, according to advisers, who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.
Donald Trump looks to a fall launch for his 2024 campaign, potentially upending midterms
Russell T. Vought — Trump’s former budget director who played a role in Trump’s 2019 impeachment by holding up aid to Ukraine — is working with a separate group of former aides, the Center for Renewing America, to make recommendations on how to slim down government agencies, make “classification reforms” and strip away some of their powers.
“The paradigms have to shift. Our goal is to take on the deep state in the national security state and even some in the domestic agencies,” Vought said. “There are ones that are more problematic than others.”
Vought is working with former Trump national security official Kash Patel, former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark — who is under federal investigation for his role in attempting to overturn the election — and former Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, among others, to put together such plans. “We will put out documents as we are ready to do so,” Vought said, adding that it would be before 2024.
Vought had been key to civil service reclassification work, creating a new Schedule F in the final months of the administration that would make it easier for presidents to remake the staffing of the federal government. “You have to have the know-how or the courage to actually change an agency,” Vought said.
It is unclear if Trump would even take up the recommendations, advisers said. But two advisers said that he liked the idea of campaigning on his old “Drain the Swamp” slogan and that it would give him things to talk about, these people said. Axios reported in detail last week about some of the efforts of Trump allies.
“Our democracy is based on the principle that the most important infrastructure we have, the federal government, is dedicated to the public good and not to the political leader of the day,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a group that support civil servants.
“The civil service cannot affirmatively resist,” said David Bernhardt, the former interior secretary under Trump, during the session Monday. “If you are going to engage in subterfuge or workarounds, there cannot be no accountability for that.”
During his time in the White House, Trump complained repeatedly about not being able to find the right people to carry out his wishes, or demonstrate sufficient loyalty. His presidency was marked by dozens of advisers, chiefs of staff and agency officials who he cast aside after they refused to do his bidding, often for ethical or legal reasons — including former FBI director James B. Comey, former attorney general Jeff Sessions and former vice president Mike Pence, to name just a few. He still complains about a range of former officials at Mar-a-Lago and says the next term will have to have “better people,” one aide said.
Pence seeks distance from Trump as he considers 2024 run
“I have heard President Trump say that his biggest regret was not having the personnel and the team ready on day one,” Rollins said before the event began. “What we are trying to achieve is, what is the long-term goal? How are we going to play offense and I do think our side has never really been ready for that opportunity.”
There is some concern among Trump advisers that because he was so frustrated with facing two impeachment trials and advisers that were not totally loyal to him, he would pick unqualified “toadies” for key picks, in the words of one adviser. This person said there was great concern in Trump’s orbit in the last few months of his presidency, when he elevated a range of controversial or unqualified people to key positions.
Among the other groups angling for Trump’s favor is the America First Legal Foundation, founded by former speechwriter Stephen Miller, and the American Cornerstone Institute, founded by former housing secretary Ben Carson.
Trump, however, does not regularly talk with many of the architects of the personnel plans, such as Meadows and Vought. “He is supportive of them helping him find good people, I’m sure, but he’s not involved in it,” said a top adviser.
Pence, who is positioning himself to possibly challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination, has a separate group, Advancing American Freedom, which has released its own policy framework and has scheduled time for Pence to speak at the Heritage Foundation.
“Heritage has to work harder because there are multiple people and organizations that have their own agendas,” said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which has drafted plans for incoming Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election. “I am not complaining. I think that is a good thing.”
Whether the groups will come together on a unified plan for the next Republican presidential nominee remains an open question. Many of the intramural divisions among Trump’s advisers remain. Some Republicans have grown annoyed that money is being siphoned off that could help Republicans win in 2022 to groups such as AFPI and Save America, the president’s PAC. AFPI is just a “place for Trump administration officials to make money,” said one prominent Republican.
Peter Navarro, a former assistant to President Trump who worked on trade policy, published an article before the AFPI event telling Trump to cancel his appearance and denouncing the group as a “Trojan Horse” filled with “grifters” using “the Trump good name to raise money to engineer their ‘Trumpism without Trump’ coup” within the Republican Party.
Just what those policies would be, in specifics, remains a work in progress. Most of the panel discussions at AFPI avoided detailed policy ideas, with participants preferring instead to denounce Democratic ideas and offer bromides. A panel on economic policy revealed splits inside the organization, between Kudlow and former Trump trade representative Robert E. Lighthizer, over the wisdom of a bipartisan bill moving through Congress to subsidize the American computer chip industry.
“If you are in a knife fight for your life, you don’t go and then use the Marquess of Queensbury rule book,” Lighthizer said, referencing 19th-century British boxing guidelines.
Others have welcomed the shift in conservative thinking that followed Trump’s election in 2016, toward policies specifically aimed at helping working-class voters, with less concerns about deficits and more openness to trade tariffs and industrial policy.
“The fact that it has any conservative support signals movement in that direction,” said Oren Cass, the executive director of American Compass, of the computer chip subsidy bill in Congress.
Trump did not weigh into the weeds of ideological policy debates Tuesday. Instead, he signaled that he once again sees an opportunity to disrupt the political world by embracing the themes of grievance, fear and anger that helped him rise to power.
“Never forget everything this corrupt establishment is doing to me is all about preserving their power and control over the American people. They want to damage you in any form,” Trump said, prompting the crowd to chant “four more years.”
The latest: Justice Department investigating Trump’s actions in Jan. 6 criminal probe
11:45 PMThis just in: Biden, Xi to speak Thursday
11:42 PMThe latest: Key Democrats want DHS inspector general off Secret Service probe
10:29 PMAnalysis: An intriguing new detail on Trump’s ‘fake’ electors found in new emails | 2022-07-27T00:45:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Trump delivers D.C. speech, his allies prepare for a second term - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/trump-second-term-plan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/26/trump-second-term-plan/ |
A security guard asks journalists to clear the road on Jan. 31, 2020, after a convoy carrying a World Health Organization team entered the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
“Everything upstream of this — which animals, where did they come from, how it’s all connected — is completely unknown at this stage,” Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, said in a media briefing Tuesday.
A natural origin of the pandemic — a “zoonosis” — has long been a favored theory among scientists for the simple reason that most pandemics, including the SARS coronavirus outbreak of 2002-2003, have started that way. Andersen and his colleagues believe multiple lines of evidence, including the clustering of early cases of covid-19 around the market, make a market origin not only a likely scenario but the only one that fits the data.
The “lab leak” conjecture was initially dismissed in most mainstream media as a conspiracy theory. There are numerous lab leak scenarios, and many have focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a major research center that studies coronaviruses.
In May 2021, the journal Science published a letter from 18 scientists calling for an investigation into the virus’s origin that would include exploration of the lab leak theory. Soon after that, President Biden asked his intelligence agencies to investigate all possible origins of the pandemic. The review concluded that the virus was not an engineered bioweapon, but otherwise failed to reach a conclusion about where it came from.
Among the scientists who signed the letter to Science was Michael Worobey, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Arizona who felt the lab leak thesis deserved attention even if it wasn’t the most likely origin. But Worobey soon became convinced that the virus came out of the market. Worobey is the lead author of the new paper that contends the market was the pandemic’s epicenter.
The researchers scoured data about the earliest patients, many of whom had direct links to the market or lived nearby. The geography of early community spread showed infections radiating outward from the vicinity of the market, Worobey said: “It’s an insane bull’s eye.”
“The virus started spreading in people who worked at the market, but then started spreading in the surrounding local community as vendors went to local shops, and infected people who worked in those shops,” Worobey suggested.
Worobey is not new to this issue. Last year, he wrote a “Perspective” article in Science that said the geographical clustering of cases in and around the market could not be explained away as “ascertainment bias,” meaning the clustering was not simply the result of investigators knocking on doors in that area after the market outbreak was detected.
He believes any alternative scenario — such as a lab leak — is implausible.
“If others want to argue with that, they’re now essentially taking a pseudoscientific approach,” Worobey said in an interview Tuesday. “Even though you don’t have the smoking gun of, ‘Yes we’ve sampled the raccoon dog with the virus in December,’ when you put it all together, it’s the only theory that actually explains all the data.”
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of one of the new papers, said in an email that she agreed with Worobey: “There is no alternative explanation that fits the facts, so anyone trying to come up with one will have to become adept at willful ignorance, a logical contortionist, or simply a fabulist.”
The contention by the authors of a natural origin of the pandemic is not new: The same two papers in an earlier form were posted online in February on a “preprint” site. But at that point, they existed in peer-review limbo — something that could be reported in a news story but lacking the stature of studies that have survived scrutiny by knowledgeable outsiders and journal editors.
The argument for a market origin also relies on Chinese data that may be unreliable, Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, said in an interview earlier this year. He said he feel the data are “inconclusive.”
“I feel the data released by the Chinese government should be treated with a healthy grain of salt,” Bloom said.
There is no proof that the virus or its immediate ancestor was in any laboratory before the outbreak in Wuhan. But the ongoing mystery of the pandemic’s origin has called attention to the kind of research on viruses — including “gain of function” experiments — that some critics say is too risky. The U.S. National Institutes of Health, immersed in the controversy because it helped fund some research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, this year said it was reviewing its policies for ensuring laboratory safety and security.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who favors a laboratory origin explanation, said at an April 30 rally in Kentucky that if Republicans take power in the Senate after the midterm elections, he will use subpoena power to “get to the bottom of where this virus came from.”
Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, heads a commission sponsored by the Lancet journal expected to produce a report this fall on the pandemic, including the origin of the virus. He recently co-authored an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for a probe of the pandemic origin through a “bipartisan congressional inquiry with full investigative powers.”
On Tuesday, after Science published the two papers, Sachs said in an email that he still favors the lab leak theory: “The two competing hypotheses, natural spillover and laboratory creation, are both viable. They should be compared directly against each other. In my view, the laboratory creation hypothesis is the more straightforward and more credible.”
The new papers do not declare “case closed” but are useful, noted David Relman, a professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford University who was among the signers of the 2021 letter to Science calling for a probe of all possible pandemic origins. He said he would like to see a similarly thorough forensic study of the lab leak hypothesis.
“I don’t think we can say that we now know that it started here. I think we can say that something interesting happened in this part of the city,” Relman said. “We don’t have any [coronavirus] positive animals at the market.”
“It’s not a formal proof, again, but it is so strong in my opinion that any other views, a lab leak for example, would have to be able to explain all of this evidence,” he said. “It’s just not possible.” | 2022-07-27T00:45:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scientists hone argument that coronavirus came from Wuhan market - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/26/coronavirus-origin-wuhan-market/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/26/coronavirus-origin-wuhan-market/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in positive territory in new VCU poll
RICHMOND — More Virginians approve of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s job performance than disapprove, according to a new poll that also found strong support for the gas-tax holiday that the Republican proposed but Democrats thwarted.
Six months into Youngkin’s term, 49 percent of Virginians approve of the way the political newcomer is governing the state, while 38 percent disapprove, according to the Commonwealth Poll conducted by the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Fifty-eight percent support Youngkin’s proposal to suspend the state gas tax for three months, an initiative that Democrats blocked in the state Senate.
Opinions were evenly split on eliminating the 1.5 percent state grocery tax. The General Assembly agreed to do away with that tax this year, while resisting Youngkin’s call to scrap an additional 1 percent levy imposed by cities and counties.
“The responses in the poll suggest what I have always stated: The people are always ahead of the leaders,” former governor L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, said in a written statement issued with the poll results. He attributed the public support for tax relief as “a direct response to rising inflation.”
Virginia General Assembly gives Youngkin mixed results on budget
The poll also found that 79 percent of Virginians support efforts supported by Youngkin and the General Assembly to increase funding at historically Black colleges and universities. Fifty-five percent support efforts to expand lab schools in the state.
For many decades, state law allowed those K-12 schools to be established in partnership with public four-year colleges and universities with teacher-training programs. A budget compromise hashed out by a bipartisan group of legislators and passed by the General Assembly in June includes $100 million for those schools.
The legislature also approved Youngkin’s budget amendment to allow private, nonprofit institutions of higher learning and those without teacher-training programs to participate. But Senate Democrats blocked his effort to add to the $100 million by diverting per-pupil funding from traditional public schools to lab schools.
The poll surveyed 813 Virginia adults on landlines and mobile phones between June 30 and July 9. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.81 percent. | 2022-07-27T01:02:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's approval at 49 percent in new poll - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/youngkin-virginia-governor-poll/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/youngkin-virginia-governor-poll/ |
The former CNN host, who was fired in December, is joining the upstart channel NewsNation in prime time this fall
Chris Cuomo is coming back to television. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images/Warner Media)
Television news veteran Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in December, is headed back to cable news this fall as the host of his own show on the much smaller NewsNation network.
Cuomo’s new hour-long show will air in prime time, as did his CNN show, which ran every weekday from 2018 until last winter, when he exited the network amid an ethics controversy.
“Cuomo Primetime” was the top-rated program on CNN in both 2019 and 2020. Its former star will be moving to a network that is still trying to build an audience that can compete with the standard-bearers in cable news. While Cuomo’s CNN show averaged 2 million nightly viewers in 2020, his last full year on the network, NewsNation reportedly averaged only 46,000 viewers in prime time last year. (A NewsNation spokesperson said the network does not release ratings information.)
NewsNation was launched in September 2020 by Nexstar Media Group, which owns and operates local television stations around the country. The new channel, which replaced WGN America on the cable dial, launched with the goal of providing down-the-middle, unbiased news reporting and analysis. Other anchors include Dan Abrams, a friend of Cuomo, former CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield, former Fox News journalist Leland Vittert and former ABC News journalist Adrienne Bankert. Nexstar executive Sean Compton said adding Cuomo “will further our efforts to continue to ensure fairness and transparency in our news reporting and talk shows.”
Cuomo’s downfall at CNN was swift and abrupt. At the end of November, the network suspended hum indefinitely after documents released by the New York attorney general’s office detailed his efforts to help his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, fend off allegations of sexual misconduct. He was fired a few days later, after CNN management decided that Cuomo had mislead the network — and then-President Jeff Zucker — about the extent of his assistance to his brother, including the revelation that he had placed calls to journalists regarding the timing of forthcoming stories about his brother’s conduct with women.
Zucker himself was pushed out a few months later, with some CNN employees placing the blame on Cuomo.
Cuomo has maintained all along that he did not mislead anyone about the help he was giving his brother. In an interview with Abrams on Tuesday night, during which Cuomo’s new show was announced, he claimed that he “never lied” and kept “no secrets” with CNN leadership. He also said he didn’t directly call journalists with the goal of affecting coverage of his brother.
Asked by Abrams if he’s a victim of “cancel culture,” Cuomo said he doesn’t “feel sorry for [himself]” and is not a victim.
Cuomo was also asked about an allegation of sexual misconduct made by a former colleague earlier in his career, which he has previously denied through a spokesperson.
Because Cuomo felt that he had been unfairly terminated, he filed an arbitration claim seeking $125 million in compensation from the company in March. Cuomo’s lawyers argued that “CNN’s calculated efforts to tar and feather him” left him “untouchable in the world of broadcast journalism” and denied him millions in future earnings. That pending litigation prevented him from answering some of Abrams’ questions, he said.
Cuomo recently launched a podcast called the “Chris Cuomo Project.” In his inaugural episode, he said he didn’t want to re-litigate the controversy with his brother or trash his old network.
“I really do regret how everything ended, but I will never regret helping my family,” he said. “As for CNN, I will never be a hater. CNN has great people. CNN has a great purpose. And I wish them all the best, and I miss so many of the people there. But, it’s time for me to move on, and I believe I can be more than I ever was before.” | 2022-07-27T02:16:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Cuomo is returning to cable news, but on a much smaller channel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/26/cuomo-newsnation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/26/cuomo-newsnation/ |
Woman found slain in Northeast D.C., police say
Victim was found in the North Michigan Park area
A woman was found fatally shot Tuesday in Northeast Washington, and a person has been taken into custody in connection with the death, D.C. police said.
The woman was found after police were called shortly after 5 a.m. to check on someone at an address in the 1600 block of Webster Street NE, said Officer Hugh Carew, a police spokesman.
Late Tuesday, Officer Sean Hickman, another police spokesman, said an arrest had been made, but details were not immediately available.
The address is in the North Michigan Park area, a neighborhood that includes private houses and religious institutions. | 2022-07-27T03:00:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman killed in Northeast D.C., police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/woman-shot-killed-northeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/26/woman-shot-killed-northeast-dc/ |
David Trimble, peacemaker in Northern Ireland, dies at 77
The Protestant politician shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the Irish Troubles
David Trimble attends an Ulster Unionist Party meeting in Belfast amid negotiations of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. (Reuters)
David Trimble, a leading Protestant politician in Northern Ireland who set aside his hard-line stance to become a key negotiator in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, an accord that ended the decades of sectarian violence known as the Troubles and brought him a share of the Nobel Peace Prize, died July 25 at a hospital in Belfast. He was 77.
The Ulster Unionist Party, which Mr. Trimble led from 1995 to 2005, announced his death but did not cite a specific cause.
Mr. Trimble was the inaugural holder of the office of first minister of Northern Ireland, a position created — along with the coequal rank of deputy first minister — in the power-sharing agreement between British loyalists and Irish republicans established under the Good Friday Agreement. The two groups had been engaged in an often violent conflict since the late 1960s, when the Troubles began.
Loyalists, or unionists, were largely Protestant and wished for Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. Irish republicans, also known as nationalists, drew mainly from the region’s Catholic minority and argued for an independent, united Ireland. The struggle between the two factions resulted in more than 3,500 deaths, as Northern Ireland endured years of bombings, shootings and unrest that at times appeared intractable.
Mr. Trimble, a law professor and nonpracticing barrister in Belfast, had grown up in a Presbyterian family and initially aligned himself with the unyielding Vanguard movement, which has been described by the Guardian as an “extreme unionist grouping.”
During the Persian Gulf War, Mr. Trimble likened the Republic of Ireland’s claims on Northern Ireland to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s attempt to overtake Kuwait. Once, after a march through a Catholic neighborhood near Belfast, Mr. Trimble danced a jig with the Rev. Ian Paisley, a Protestant minister whose fiery rhetoric had long fueled anti-Catholic sentiment and violence in Northern Ireland.
“I would personally draw the line at violence and terrorism,” the Independent quoted Mr. Trimble as saying. “But if we are talking about a campaign that involves demonstrations and so on, then a certain amount of violence may be inescapable.”
Over time, however, Mr. Trimble moderated his views and he found a new political home in the more mainstream Ulster Unionist Party in the late 1970s. He began a political rise, winning election to the British Parliament in 1990. To the amazement of many observers of the political turmoil in Northern Ireland, he became a principal figure in a peace process that he had once opposed.
“Ulster Unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island, built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics,” Mr. Trimble later said, reflecting on the view he came to hold. “And northern nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down.”
Other key participants in the Northern Ireland peace process included John Hume, a Catholic politician who led the Social Democratic and Labour Party; Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army; and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine), who helped broker the Good Friday Agreement as a special envoy under President Bill Clinton.
The 1998 Nobel Peace Prize ultimately went to Hume and Mr. Trimble. (Hume died in 2020.)
That mutual confidence at times appeared tenuous, as Mr. Trimble faced criticism from within his party for his role in the peace process. He lost his seat in parliament in 2005, prompting the Guardian to report that “the center dropped out of Northern Ireland politics.” Mr. Trimble became a member of the House of Lords in 2006 and joined the Conservative Party the following year.
“David faced huge challenges when he led the Ulster Unionist Party in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations and persuaded his party to sign on for it,” Adams said after Mr. Trimble’s death in a statement cited by the Associated Press.
“While we held fundamentally different political opinions on the way forward nonetheless I believe he was committed to making the peace process work,” Adams went on. “David’s contribution to the Good Friday Agreement and to the quarter century of relative peace that followed cannot be underestimated.”
William David Trimble was born in Bangor, a seaside resort town near Belfast, on Oct. 15, 1944. His parents worked in the civil service.
Mr. Trimble studied law at Queen’s University in Belfast, where he graduated in 1968 and remained as a lecturer into the early years of his political career.
His first marriage, to Heather McComb, ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Daphne Orr. Besides his wife, survivors include their four children: Richard, Victoria, Nicholas and Sarah.
In his Nobel lecture, Mr. Trimble declared himself “personally and perhaps culturally conditioned to be skeptical of speeches which are full of sound and fury, idealistic in intention, but impossible of implementation.”
“I resist the kind of rhetoric which substitutes vapor for vision,” he continued. “Instinctively, I identify with the person who said that when he heard a politician talk of his vision, he recommended him to consult an optician!”
“Politics can be likened to driving at night over unfamiliar hills and mountains,” Mr. Trimble observed. “We should be encouraged by having come so far, and face into the next hill, rather than the mountain beyond. It is not that the mountain is not in my mind, but the hill has to be climbed first. | 2022-07-27T03:26:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Trimble, architect of Good Friday pact in Northern Ireland, dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/david-trimble-northern-ireland-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/26/david-trimble-northern-ireland-dead/ |
Ask Amy: My brother constantly brags about his wealth
I was two years younger, a year ahead in school, bolder and more fearless than him in every way. Mom made it a competition between us to help him overcome his fears. She fueled it until she died.
My brother and I are now in our late 40s. We are both successful but have made very different choices.
I am trying to be a better person and ignore it, but it is exhausting. He never asks about my life and what I care about.
I wouldn’t trade my life and the strong bond I have with my kids and their son for all the money he has, but how can I change the dynamic?
I know he only brags to me and not to our other brother. At this point, I am considering cutting him off completely.
Annoyed: Imagine how it would feel to be told that you are never “enough.” This is the script that your mother wrote for your brother.
Basically, I'm suggesting that you try to take the air out of this through gently surrendering.
You could try telling him, “I know that Mom always set us up in a competition. I can only imagine what it was like for you. But I think she would be really proud of your success. I hope that you don't feel like you have anything left to prove.”
Guilty: I think you should do something — for you. You might start by taking an extended trip to your hometown — perhaps staying in a rental or with a friend.
Softy: It helps to remember that this is essentially a business relationship — on both sides. | 2022-07-27T04:44:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My brother constantly brags about his wealth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/27/ask-amy-brother-brag-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/27/ask-amy-brother-brag-money/ |
The parallels between Brazil’s demagogic leader Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump were obvious since the former took office. Both emerged from polarized political environments and appealed to angry nationalist bases. In power, the two leaders waged relentless culture wars and anti-liberal grievance campaigns. They pandered to corporate business interests and evangelical Christians. They railed against the international consensus on climate change and stood out as skeptics of the public health risks posed by the coronavirus.
Now, ahead of Brazil’s national elections in October, it appears that Bolsonaro may finish his term in ways similar to Trump. In opinion polls, Bolsonaro trails the leftist former president Lula Inacio da Silva by a wide margin. And so, for months, he has essentially dipped into the Trump playbook, casting doubt on the legitimacy of Brazil’s electoral process and, by extension, its democracy.
Last week, Brazilians were faced with the surreal spectacle of a nearly hour-long telecast of Bolsonaro lecturing dozens of foreign diplomats about the shoddiness of his own country’s voting systems from the capital, Brasilia. Not unlike Trump, he views electronic machines as suspect and vulnerable to rigging, although he has little to no evidence to prove his incendiary claims.
He has repeatedly harped on a 2018 data breach of the country’s election agency by hackers as evidence of lingering vulnerabilities, but electoral authorities have insisted throughout that the voting machines themselves were not compromised. They issued a 20-point fact check debunking some of the falsehoods put forward by Bolsonaro, who was also rebuffed by former legislative allies.
Rodrigo Pacheco, president of Brazil’s Senate, said that the country’s Congress, “whose members were elected with the current and modern electoral system, is obligated to tell the population that the electronic voting machines will give the nation a trustworthy result.”
Bolsonaro has summoned ambassadors from several countries to say that he does not trust the Brazilian electoral system. His desperation to discredit how the voting process works in Brazil is another attempt to stay in power but it's hardly a new move pic.twitter.com/jEhfwN3hbi
The abiding impression is that Bolsonaro and his supporters are preempting defeat with their own version of “Stop the Steal” — the slogan invoked by Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power in Washington. In Brazil, the prospect of violent clashes now looms over the upcoming vote, with the president and his allies having laid the kindling with a torrent of conspiratorial fearmongering and ax grinding at perceived foes, from the political left to the country’s top justices.
“Many diplomats at the event were shaken by the presentation, including Bolsonaro’s suggestion that the way to ensure safe elections was through deeper involvement of Brazil’s military, according to two diplomats at the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conservations,” noted the New York Times. “Those diplomats worried that Bolsonaro was laying the groundwork for an attempt to dispute the ballot results if he lost.”
Many in Brazil are urging the international community to pay attention to what’s at stake. This week, a delegation of Brazilian civil society leaders, coordinated by the Washington Brazil Office, a human rights organization, is touring the American capital city and pressing U.S. officials to back Brazil’s democratic institutions. On Tuesday, they had meetings at the State Department and called on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). They will also meet with Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot.
“Like Trump, Bolsonaro is attempting to undermine democracy in Brazil, the largest country in Latin America,” Sanders told me. “It is important that the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress stand for democracy and support the results of the upcoming election. The enemies of democracy are working together across borders, and supporters of democracy must do the same.”
O senador Bernie Sanders recebeu a comitiva brasileira em Washington. Após o encontro, manifestou preocupação com os ataques à democracia no Brasil. pic.twitter.com/pflpDVKNHi
— Brazil Office (@Brazil_Office) July 26, 2022
Bolsonaro and his allies have been full-throated in their continued support for Trump. Last month, Flavio Bolsonaro, one of the president’s sons and a Brazilian senator, defended the former president’s stance and echoed his false claims of electoral irregularities surrounding the 2020 U.S. vote. ″In my view, Trump didn’t send anyone there [to attack the Capitol],” he said. “People saw problems in the U.S. electoral system, were outraged and did what they did.”
He said that his father would never dispatch supporters to conduct a similar raid on the cradle of Brazilian democracy, but he also seemed to wave away responsibility should violence take place. “How can we control it?” he told O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.
The president is already calling on supporters to take to the streets on Sept. 7, Brazil’s national day. That day last year was occasioned by heated scenes as pro-Bolsonaro crowds in Brasilia attempted to push past police barriers and march on the Supreme Court but were ultimately thwarted and dispersed.
Bolsonaro’s critics want to ensure that he is restrained and held accountable. “All the elements are on the table showing that he will disrespect this fundamental pillar of our electoral system,” Camila Asano, director of programming at Conectas, a Brazilian human rights organization, told me.
“We can see again something similar to what you had in Jan. 6,” Asano added, imploring that “immediate recognition” by the international community of the result of Brazil’s Oct. 2 election after it’s announced by electoral authorities “is crucial to not curb any authoritarian attempt” to disrupt the country’s democratic process.
Bolsonaro is “replicating some of the attacks promoted by Trump,” which includes disseminating disinformation about the electoral system, said Asano, who is also a member of the delegation visiting Washington.
The revelations coming from the Jan. 6 hearings show that Trump remains unrepentant. On Tuesday, he delivered his first speech in Washington since leaving office and again claimed falsely that he won in 2020. “What a disgrace it was,” the former U.S. president said before winking at another bid in 2024. “But we may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”
The focus in Brazil remains on the dangers of the coming months. “We saw what you experienced in the U.S.,” Asano said. “But in Brazil, it can be even worse.” | 2022-07-27T04:57:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stop the ‘steal’? Brazil’s Bolsonaro looks poised to start it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/stop-steal-brazils-bolsonaro-looks-poised-start-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/stop-steal-brazils-bolsonaro-looks-poised-start-it/ |
With Draghi Gone, Putin May Make Moves on Italy
An uninvited guest from the cold north has turned up amid the heat of Italian politics. So, what to do with Vladimir Putin?
It is no secret that ties between Italy and Russia have been a little too friendly in the recent past, confusing allies and hurting Rome’s credibility. For example, there’s Matteo Salvini of the League, who once showed up in Red Square dressed in a white t-shirt with Putin’s face on it. He has a history of downplaying the Kremlin’s hostilities and openly flirting with Russian nationalist parties.
There is also an entire catalogue of photographs of Putin and Silvio Berlusconi — the former Italian premier and founder of Forza Italia — dressed in linen shirts, all hugs and smiles, enjoying lunch together over the years, be it on the Italian coast or the Black Sea. The amici have exchanged compliments for decades and even shared a view of the world that put Italy at odds with the rest of the G7 countries.
The Italian political class has a bizarre fascination with Russia. But, no matter who leads the next Italian government, this is not the time to undo Mario Draghi’s hawkish turn on Russia.
To be fair, Berlusconi isn’t as happy with Putin these days. He’s told his supporters he was saddened by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That is also likely to be due to Draghi who, during his time as premier, silenced any ambiguity left over from previous governments.
He shifted Italy away from Russia-friendly statements to become one of the most outspoken critics of Putin in the European Council. He played a key role in designing sanctions targeting the Russian Central Bank and advocated for Ukraine’s candidate status to the European Union. His new approach was epitomized by his trip — alongside President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany — to Kyiv to reaffirm their joint support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. It is an image that will go down in Italian history.
Some in Italy argue that Draghi’s stance accelerated his fall from grace because it heightened tensions within his coalition. But Draghi has been unrepentant about changing course on Russia, reiterating it was the right and honorable thing to do. His successor should stay the course.
If polls are correct, the next government might well be a right-wing coalition led by Brothers of Italy alongside the League and Forza Italia. That’s a combination toxic enough on the foreign policy front to raise eyebrows in Washington and Brussels. Berlusconi and Salvini will play central roles in such a government.
Giorgia Meloni, the head of Brothers of Italy, is untested on the international stage and lacks experience outside of Italy. Nonetheless, Meloni is trying to soften her image to broaden her appeal at home and look less radical abroad. In one of her first interviews since the Sept. 25 elections were called, Meloni told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that her policy would not change from that of Draghi: maintaining sanctions on Russia and advocating for more weapons to Ukraine so it can fight back. She also reiterated Italy’s atlantismo, a term used in the country to define having strong ties with the US and NATO.
On the surface, Meloni is playing the moderate card. The question is whether she means business or these are just tactics to market herself and paint Brothers of Italy in a more palatable light. That’s easier said than done. A recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations portrayed her voters as more skeptical about the war in Ukraine than her statements would suggest: More than half of her voters are against sending weapons to Ukraine and more than 30% of her supporters blame the West and Ukraine for the war. So, given her split base, it’s not for sure that Meloni will continue the path laid out by Draghi. And doing so may only get harder as the economic impact of sanctions gets tougher to manage without resolute leadership. Hers is already questionable.
Still, Italy’s voice matters. It is a founding member of the EU, a member of the G7 and one of the original founders of NATO. While the theatrics often distract from the country’s international relevance, Rome is still a power player in European circles. Italy’s resolve will be key to setting new sanctions and rolling out the existing ones for longer in Brussels, where each package must be approved unanimously.
With Draghi out of office, Putin will no doubt test the resolve of his successor, perhaps hoping old friendships may lead to softer sanctions and pressure on Ukraine to accept a dictated peace. Italy cannot fall into the trap; it must not become Russia’s gateway into Europe. If that happened, the damage to the bloc — which is facing its most serious geopolitical test to date — would be enormous.
That should be clear to whoever leads Italy next. Keeping the determination and focus Draghi instilled on foreign policy is the first step to establish trust among its European allies. All roads lead to Rome, but when it comes to Russia, there can be no path for reconciliation as long as Putin wages war. | 2022-07-27T05:19:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With Draghi Gone, Putin May Make Moves on Italy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/with-draghi-gone-putin-may-make-moves-on-italy/2022/07/27/cad30dbc-0d69-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/with-draghi-gone-putin-may-make-moves-on-italy/2022/07/27/cad30dbc-0d69-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Updated July 27, 2022 at 1:15 a.m. EDT|Published July 27, 2022 at 12:10 a.m. EDT
Teva Pharmaceuticals announced that it has tentatively agreed to end a protracted, costly legal battle against communities that argued that the company misled doctors about its addictive fentanyl products for cancer patients. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)
The Israeli drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals has agreed to a proposed $4.25 billion deal to resolve thousands of lawsuits brought by states, other jurisdictions and, for the first time in a national settlement, Native American tribes over the opioid epidemic.
Among the lesser-known generic drugmakers that produced billions of opioids, Teva announced Tuesday that it has tentatively agreed with states’ attorneys general, tribal leaders and a group of attorneys that represents cities and counties nationwide to end a protracted, costly legal battle against communities that argued that the company misled doctors about its addictive fentanyl products for cancer patients. If the deal is finalized, the company would pay $3 billion in cash and $1.2 billion in donated Narcan, the overdose-reversing drug, over 13 years. Approximately $100 million would be distributed to the tribes.
The sum includes $650 million the company already agreed to pay when settling cases with Texas, Florida, West Virginia and others.
The national plaintiffs’ committee of attorneys representing thousands of cities and counties in the opioid litigation called the settlement “a vital step” that would offer help to those on the front lines of the epidemic, as more than 100,000 Americans are dying of overdoses a year, a record high.
Attorneys general involved in the negotiations with the drug companies heralded the news of the agreement. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong called it “a significant breakthrough in our fight to hold the entire addiction industry accountable,” and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said it “will provide much-needed relief for victims.”
Teva has denied accusations raised during the litigation, saying it legally produced generics and marketed its branded fentanyl-based lozenges Actiq and Fentora.
The company, which shared the news of the agreement in its second-quarter earnings report, would be giving more than $2.7 billion to $3.6 billion, the range CEO Kåre Schultz estimated for the settlement in February. Last year, Teva made roughly $16 billion in sales globally.
“While the agreement will include no admission of wrongdoing, it remains in our best interest to put these cases behind us and continue to focus on the patients we serve every day,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The agreement is still contingent on several factors: The final terms are likely to be ironed out in writing in “the coming weeks”; Allergan, a generics maker acquired by Teva in 2016, must also sign off; and a vast majority of the governments suing the company have to agree to the deal once it is finalized.
There are no remaining trials currently scheduled against Teva in 2022.
The deal also follows several others with similar terms. The three biggest wholesalers — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — agreed to a $21 billion nationwide settlement alongside a $5 billion deal with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson. OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is pushing forward with $10 billion bankruptcy plan to resolve litigation and become a public company. Mallinckrodt, the leading opioid maker, made a $1.6 billion nationwide deal in bankruptcy court.
The Teva deal is a first in a significant respect: Other agreements the drug companies reached with states and communities have typically not included Native American tribes. The tribes usually reached their deals after the states. At the same time, the increase in drug overdose deaths has disproportionately affected Indigenous people in the United States. (The toll rose 39 percent among Native Americans compared to an increase of 22 percent among Whites in 2020, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Friday.)
“It reflects a fundamental shift in the development of the law toward greater parity between tribal governments and States,” Miller wrote in an email. | 2022-07-27T05:19:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opioid maker Teva agrees to tentative $4.25 billion deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/27/teva-reaches-opioid-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/27/teva-reaches-opioid-settlement/ |
1,850-year-old Roman coin featuring zodiac sign found off Israeli coast
The rare bronze coin depicts the Roman moon goddess Luna and the zodiac sign of Cancer, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP)
A rare Roman coin minted nearly two millennia ago in Egypt has been found off the Israeli coast, in what authorities say is the first discovery of its kind in the area.
The approximately 1,850-year-old bronze coin was discovered on the seabed off the Carmel coast in northern Israel during an underwater archaeological survey. It was minted in the name of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, who ruled between 138 and 161 A.D., the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.
The coin bears the date “Year Eight,” marking the eighth year of his reign, and depicts the Roman moon goddess Luna and the zodiac sign of Cancer on the reverse. Experts say it belonged to a series of 13 coins that depicted the 12 zodiac signs and the complete zodiac wheel.
Such finds are “extremely rare,” said Jacob Sharvit, director of the Maritime Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, adding that they contribute to “the historical puzzle of the country’s history.”
Unlike his predecessors, Pius was not a military man, and he presided over one of the most peaceful periods during the Roman Empire, according to experts, with no major revolts or military incursions. He was known instead for his public works, completing many of the building projects started by his predecessor and adoptive father, Hadrian.
Israel’s coastline has yielded other ancient finds in recent times. In October, an amateur diver discovered a sword that is likely to have belonged to a Crusader knight who sailed to the Holy Land almost a millennium ago.
Israeli diver finds 900-year-old sword, said to be Crusader knight’s weapon, on Mediterranean seabed
Shlomi Katzin came across the 900-year-old weapon on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea while scuba diving off the Carmel coast. He turned it over to authorities and was awarded a certificate of appreciation. (Israeli law requires any artifacts found to be returned to the nation.)
Experts said at the time that the ancient sword was probably uncovered after waves caused sand to shift. Other artifacts found in the weapon’s vicinity included metal anchors, stone anchors and pottery fragments.
“Along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea … there are many archaeological sites and findings, which tell of connections that existed here in ancient times between the ports of the Mediterranean Sea and the countries along it,” Sharvit, from the Israel Antiquities Authority, said of the latest find. | 2022-07-27T06:29:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rare Roman coin bearing Cancer zodiac sign found off Israeli coast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/zodiac-coin-israel-cancer-sign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/zodiac-coin-israel-cancer-sign/ |
Olivia Julianna said Tuesday that she has helped raise about $115,000 for the nonprofit Gen Z for Change after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) insulted her and other abortion rights activists online. (Callaghan O’Hare for The Washington Post)
In response, Olivia Julianna announced a fundraising campaign on behalf of Gen Z for Change, a 500-person youth-led group that says it seeks to create tangible change on “issues that disproportionately affect young people” and supports abortion rights.
“This is absolutely the most insane amount of donations we have had thus far from individuals, especially in such a short frame of time,” she said in an email. “On a broader scale, this highlights the extreme power of social media mobilization, and it shows Republican politicians that their cheap attacks and political theater will no longer be tolerated.”
Olivia Julianna grew up as a queer Latina in a small conservative rural Texas community. “I’ve been mocked, ridiculed and harassed for most of my life. I will not tolerate that kind of behavior anymore,” she said. | 2022-07-27T08:09:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Olivia Julianna turns Matt Gaetz insult into abortion rights fundraiser - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/matt-gaetz-insult-olivia-julianna-abortion-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/matt-gaetz-insult-olivia-julianna-abortion-rights/ |
The global eradication of smallpox more than 40 years ago was one of the greatest achievements in public-health history, vanquishing a cause of death, blindness and disfigurement that had plagued humanity for at least 3,000 years. On the downside, it also led to the end of a global vaccination program that provided protection against other pox viruses. That includes monkeypox, which has been spilling over from its animal hosts to infect humans in West and Central Africa with increasing frequency since the 1970s. Now monkeypox has sparked unprecedented outbreaks in Europe, the US and elsewhere, demonstrating again how readily an infectious agent in one region can mushroom into a global emergency.
Monkeypox is a misnomer that results from the fact that it was discovered at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen in 1958, when outbreaks of a pox-like disease occurred in monkeys kept for research. While monkeys are susceptible to it, just like humans are, they aren’t the source. The virus belongs to the Orthopoxvirus genus, which includes the variola virus, the cause of smallpox; the vaccinia virus, which is used in the smallpox vaccine; and cowpox virus. Monkeypox is less contagious than smallpox and the symptoms are generally milder. About 30% of smallpox patients died, while the fatality rate for monkeypox in recent years is around 3% to 6%, according to the World Health Organization.
After an incubation period of usually one to two weeks, the disease typically starts with fever, muscle aches, fatigue and other flu-like symptoms. Unlike smallpox, monkeypox also causes swelling of the lymph nodes. Within a few days of fever onset, patients develop a rash, often beginning on the face then spreading to other parts of the body. The lesions grow into fluid-containing pustules that form a scab. If a lesion forms on the eye, it can cause blindness. The illness typically lasts two to four weeks, according to the WHO. The person is infectious from the time symptoms start until the scabs fall off and the sores heal. Mortality is higher among children and young adults, while people whose immune systems are compromised are especially at risk of severe disease. Pregnancy also carries a high risk of severe congenital infection, pregnancy loss, and maternal morbidity and mortality.
Monkeypox doesn’t usually spread easily between people. Close contact with the virus from an infected animal, human or contaminated object is the main pathway. Most reported cases in the 2022 outbreaks have been linked to skin-to-skin contact with someone infected with this virus, such as during sex. The pathogen enters the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract or the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, mouth, rectum and anus. Clubs, raves, saunas, sex parties and other activities where there is close contact with many people may increase the risk of exposure, especially if people are wearing less clothing. Tests on patient saliva, rectal swabs, semen, urine and fecal samples found traces of the virus that could indicate an infectious source for these bodily fluids and their potential role in disease transmission by close physical contact during sexual activity, a study from Spain found. Replication-competent virus was found in air samples collected during a bed linen change in rooms used to isolate patients, UK researchers reported in a study released in July ahead of peer-review. The finding supports the theory that monkeypox may be present in aerosols -- suspended skin particles or dust -- and not only in large respiratory droplets that fall to the ground within 1 meter (3 feet) to 1.5m of an infected individual. High concentrations of virus particles were also detected on toilets, sinks and other inanimate objects used by hospitalized patients, though it’s not yet known whether they could be a source of infection, a study from Germany found. Transmission from mother-to-unborn baby has also been documented. It can also happen indirectly through contact with contaminated clothing or linens. Common household disinfectants can kill it.
• Cases don’t involve recent travel to places in Africa, where the disease is endemic.
5. Is monkeypox a sexually transmitted disease?
No. Although it’s one of many pathogens capable of being transmitted during sex, it’s not considered an STD because it also uses other transmission pathways.
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. Monkeypox is concentrated among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, especially those who have had multiple, recent sexual partners, Tedros said. That fact means the contagion can be stopped with “the right strategies in the right groups.” On the flip side in some countries, the communities affected face life-threatening discrimination, he said. “There is a very real concern that men who have sex with men could be stigmatized or blamed for the outbreak, making the outbreak much harder to track, and to stop,” Tedros said on July 21.
10. Can it be stopped?
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. A case in a pregnant woman was reported in the US, where pediatric infections have also occurred. 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 to add studies on potential transmission pathways in section 3, and section 5 on whether monkeypox is an STD.) | 2022-07-27T08:22:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding Monkeypox and How Outbreaks Spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/27/9673e7f2-0d83-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/27/9673e7f2-0d83-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Australian rugby league players boycott game over Pride-themed jerseys
Des Hasler, coach of the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles in Australia’s National Rugby League, speaks in Sydney on July 26. (Flavio Brancaleone/AP)
An Australian rugby league team will don rainbow-accented jerseys on Thursday in a show of support for the LGBTQ community, but seven of its players who have refused to wear them won’t be playing in the crucial game.
The Sydney-based Manly Warringah Sea Eagles announced Monday that the team would wear the “Everyone in League” jersey in a game against the Sydney Roosters, with rainbow stripes instead of the usual white ones, to “celebrate inclusiveness.”
While the jerseys were soon celebrated by LGBTQ advocates, they were just as quickly rebuked by conservatives who derided the involvement of “politics” in sports. The seven players cited cultural and religious grounds for their decision to boycott the Thursday game in which the Pride jersey will be worn, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The Sea Eagles are ranked ninth in the National Rugby League, one spot below the Roosters.
Sea Eagles coach Des Hasler apologized Tuesday for “a significant mistake” in how the plan for the jerseys was executed, saying there was “little consultation” with those involved, including the players.
The intent of the jerseys, he said, was to “represent diversity and inclusion for all, utilizing the symbolic colors of Pride to embrace all groups who feel marginalized or face discrimination.”
Instead, the plan has “caused significant confusion, discomfort and pain for many people,” he said. Hasler apologized to the LGBTQ community, as well as to the players, saying, “We accept your cultural beliefs and hope you can accept our apology.”
Jioji Ravulo, a professor of social work and policy studies at the University of Sydney and a person of Fijian Indigenous heritage, wrote in an op-ed for the Age that six of the seven players refusing to wear the Pride jersey are from a Pasifika heritage — an Indigenous term encompassing many Pacific Islander communities.
In a phone interview, he said nearly half of the players in the National Rugby League were of Pasifika heritage, and a “large proportion” of Pasifika people are Evangelical Christians.
“Staunch views on sexuality are based on conservative family values that are paralleled with the Christian faith,” Ravulo said. “These views didn’t exist in Pasifika cultures before colonization.”
Homophobia, he said, “was taught to us by White, Western views brought to us by colonization and the Christian church.”
He said the “demonization of the queer community” was not historically a Pasifika ideal, but rather, “it’s homophobia in the context of the broader Evangelical church.” In many Pasifika communities, church is not just about religion, but a place to “connect recreationally and socially,” he added.
Ian Roberts, a former player for the Sea Eagles who is openly gay, wrote in a Sydney Morning Herald column that he was “trying not to be angry.” He said the “intentions were good” behind the effort to wear the rainbow jerseys, and he thanked Hasler, who Roberts said was supportive of him when he came out.
Addressing the players who refused to wear the jersey, he wrote: “I am trying to understand your position. I ask you to understand mine, and that of the gay community.”
“We were born gay,” Roberts said. “We had no choice in the matter. It is your right to pursue whatever faith you like. But if your belief is that we have made the wrong choices in life, because we chose to be gay, then you are simply wrong.”
He also pointed out that homophobia has led to suicides among LGBTQ teens and children. LGBTQ Australians between 16 and 27 years old are five more times likely than the general population to have attempted suicide, according to LGBTIQ+ Health Australia.
Keegan Hirst, who came out as gay while he was a professional rugby player in Britain, wrote on Twitter that he would be honored to wear the Sea Eagles’ Pride jersey. “As should all your players,” he wrote, tagging the club. “Shame on the ones who aren’t.”
“I feel like it’s just homophobia hiding behind religion,” Hirst said in an interview on Britain’s Sky Sports, “because there are plenty of people who are religious who are not homophobic.”
Warren Smith, a commentator on Fox Sports Australia, tweeted: “Imagine, in 2022, having to apologize for wanting to promote inclusiveness and diversity.” | 2022-07-27T09:31:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Australia rugby league players boycott LGBT-themed rainbow jerseys - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/australia-rugby-league-boycott-rainbow-jersey-lgbt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/australia-rugby-league-boycott-rainbow-jersey-lgbt/ |
Filipino lawmaker wants to punish people for ghosting, calls it ‘emotional offense’
Ghosting — when someone cuts off all online communication with another without an explanation — can be cruel or baffling for some (iStock)
MANILA — A Filipino lawmaker wants “ghosting” — the act of abruptly severing communication without explanation — to be declared an emotional offense.
Arnold Teves Jr, a member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition which is allied with the ruling administration, says “ghosting is a form of spite that develops feelings of rejection and neglect,” that should be considered an abusive act.
The proposed bill, which was put forward last month but shared publicly this week, does not suggest any penalties, though it does say the act “should be punished.”
The proposal has sparked amusement on social media — but also criticism that it is a distraction as the country faces a cost of living crisis.
In the document entitled “An act declaring ghosting as an emotional offense,” Teves claims that ghosting is a form of cruelty prevalent in today’s world. He says thanks to technology, “the realm of dating has changed exponentially compared to previous years” which means people are easily able to cut ties with one another — without considering the other person’s feelings.
“The ambiguity with ghosting, is that there is no real closure between the parties concerned and as such, it can be likened to a form of emotional cruelty,” the bill’s explanatory note declares.
Ghosting, Teves says, is an act that is “mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting” for victims. The bill also notes that ghosting can lead to “ridicule” and “humiliation” and that victims are likely to suffer emotional turmoil as a result of being ghosted by another person.
Those who have been ghosted in their lifetime say the phenomenon is cruel and baffling. Experts say those who are guilty of ghosting do so for a number of reasons, from being scared of having difficult conversations, to sensing the other person could react dangerously, to believing it is kinder than an outright rejection.
We asked for your ghosting stories. Here they are.
The bill, in its current form at least, is unlikely to pass. Without any outlined penalties, it is unclear whether the proposal will have any legal effects. For a bill to pass, it needs to pass three readings and garner support in both Congress and the Senate. Many proposals languish or are forgotten, especially if they are not deemed a priority.
On social media, reaction to the proposed bill was mixed. While some found the proposal entertaining others pointed out that government officials should be focusing on more pressing issues such as inflation — which surged to its highest level in almost four years in the Philippines last month.
“House bill creating department of ghostbusters is next,” read one Facebook comment. Another pointed out there were “bigger problems in our country today.”
Political scientist Arj Aguirre, who works at Manila University’s political science department, was also among those noting that the bill may be an attempt to distract from wider issues facing the country, including the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
In a statement to The Washington Post Tuesday, Aguirre accused Teves of using the bill “to get public attention and media mileage.”
“It is a calculative move to make him popular and be part of the public conversation,” Aguirre said, adding that Teves has a history of stirring public debate with controversial proposals.
Earlier this month Teves proposed renaming the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila after the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, whose two-decade regime saw tens of thousands of human rights violations and plundered the country of up to $10 billion. Benigno Aquino Jr, the current namesake, was an opposition senator critical of Marcos who was assassinated in the airport when he returned from the United States.
The bill was widely criticized by survivors of martial law and interpreted as an attempt to curry favor with the newly instated president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who won in a landslide election last May. | 2022-07-27T09:31:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philippines lawmaker Arnolfo Teves Jr proposes bill to punish ghosting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/philippines-ghosting-emotional-offense-act/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/philippines-ghosting-emotional-offense-act/ |
Brittney Griner to take the stand at her trial in Russia
Brittney Griner in court in Moscow, Russia on July 26, 2022. (Photo for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post)
RIGA, Latvia — WNBA star Brittney Griner is facing the most crucial day in her Moscow trial on drug charges, due to give testimony and face questioning from the judge and prosecutor on why she brought cannabis oil to Russia.
Griner earlier pleaded guilty, telling the court she had no intention of breaking Russian law and was unaware that two vape canisters containing cannabis oil were in her baggage because she packed in a hurry.
In Russia, carrying even small amounts of the substance is illegal. The prosecution argues that the 0.702 grams of cannabis found in the vape cartridges was a “significant” amount. She faces up to 10 years’ jail if convicted.
Her lawyers have presented evidence that Griner used cannabis oil to relieve chronic pain due to a sports injury, on the recommendation of an Arizona doctor, and called a witness who said this was common practice in the United States and some other countries.
They say the case for leniency is that she had no intent to bring the substance in, not that she had a right to do so.
Griner’s supporters in the United States say she is a Russian “hostage” but senior Russian Foreign Ministry officials have warned that political and public pressure for her release in the United States would not help her cause. They have hinted Russia may consider a prisoner swap, but only after her trial is complete.
However, Trevor Reed, a former marine who was convicted and jailed in Russia in 2019 for assaulting two Russian police officers and endangering their lives, said Monday during an NBC interview that the Biden administration was not doing enough to free Griner and others. He denies the charges against him, and was brought home in an April prisoner swap.
The White House says that Griner is being held in “intolerable circumstances” and that it is doing everything possible to free her and other wrongfully detained prisoners, including Paul Whelan, a security consultant and ex-marine arrested in 2018, convicted of spying in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years’ jail. He denies the charges, saying he was set up.
The United States’ efforts to free Griner and Whelan are being handled by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. Biden last week signed an executive order declaring a national emergency to deal with the threat of foreign states and other actors wrongfully detaining American citizens or taking them hostage.
United States officials have declined to comment on any possible prisoner exchange. But Whelan’s case underscores the unpredictability of such issues. His conviction sparked intense speculation in Russian media in 2020 of a possible prisoner swap, but nothing came of it.
His family was dismayed when Reed was freed before Whelan, given that Whelan had been jail in Russia for longer. Reed was exchanged for convicted Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko who was serving a 20-year-sentence after his 2011 conviction.
Media speculation has grown about a possible prisoner exchange involving Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, 55, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” who is serving a 25-year-sentence in Illinois for conspiring to kill U.S. nationals and selling weapons to terrorists. The Kremlin has been pushing for his release since his arrest in Thailand in 2008, claiming he was wrongfully convicted in a New York court in 2011.
Much of the speculation is focused on comments by Bout’s lawyer in the United States, Steve Zissou, who says what Moscow wants is “obvious.” He argues that Moscow has made it clear that no Americans will be exchanged, unless Washington hands over Bout.
But details of any possible swap negotiation remain murky, including whether Russia would agree to swap Bout for two Americans. | 2022-07-27T09:40:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WNBA star Brittney Griner set to give testimony in Russia trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/russia-brittney-griner-testimony-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/russia-brittney-griner-testimony-trial/ |
Two experts offer advice on how to assess your risk and coverage on your first and second homes
Damage to two homes is seen from the air in the aftermath of a tornado in Pembroke, Ga., in 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)
The prevalence and intensity of storms, wildfires, floods and tornadoes not only threaten people’s safety, but can also cause heavy damage to homes.
A recent analysis by Redfin real estate brokerage of housing records and ClimateCheck data found that vacation homes are particularly susceptible to natural disasters. Purchases of second homes with a high flood risk rose 45 percent between 2020 and 2021, while purchases of second homes with high storm risk rose 40 percent during that same period.
Owners of primary residences and second homes may not clearly understand their homeowner’s insurance policy as it relates to damage from a natural disaster.
What are some common natural disasters and average costs to homes of those disasters?
Are most of these issues covered by homeowner’s insurance?
Hertel: Damage caused by wind, hail and fire are generally covered by a standard homeowner’s insurance policy, including losses from wildfires and tornadoes. Losses caused by flooding or earth movement, such as earthquakes or landslides, are not covered by a standard homeowner’s policy. Special endorsements can be added to a standard homeowner’s policy to protect against earthquakes or landslides. Your insurance agent may be able to offer you flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program.
Wood: Yes, but there are gaps in coverage. For example, certain disasters like earthquakes and storm surges are not usually included in standard homeowner’s policies, so you could be on the hook for covering those damages on your own. Other common gaps include things like depreciation of your roof’s value, high deductibles for disasters like hurricanes and variances in your home’s replacement value versus its market value that create out-of-pocket costs consumers must cover from their wallets. Plus, with typical insurance, people could be stuck waiting up to 30 days before getting paid after submitting a claim. That can feel like an eternity if your home is severely damaged or uninhabitable.
What’s the difference between market value, extended replacement and guaranteed replacement homeowner’s insurance coverage?
Wood: Most extended replacement policies are capped up to 125 percent based on a home’s insured value. The average homeowner may be on the hook for as much as 2 to 20 percent of their home’s value because these policies are based on market value, not replacement cost, which we know is quite high these days.
Is it typical for insurance to cover relocating temporarily if the house needs extensive repair?
Hertel: Yes. A standard homeowner’s policy includes coverage for living expenses if your primary home is not fit to live in because of a covered natural disaster. Depending on the damage, this could include a short-term hotel stay or longer-term housing while your home is restored or even rebuilt.
Is an umbrella insurance policy helpful in the case of a natural disaster?
In the case of a natural disaster, property insurance — not liability insurance — is needed to cover the damage.
Any other tips for homeowners around natural disasters and insurance?
Hertel: It’s important to make sure you understand what natural disasters are covered by your homeowner’s policy. If you live in an area prone to flooding or earthquakes, you may need additional insurance protection. It also is important to check your policy limits, which determines the maximum amount your insurance will pay. Your insurance agent can help make sure you have the right coverage and limits.
Wood: Recoop Disaster Insurance is a multi-peril disaster insurance coverage that pays a lump-sum cash benefit (up to $25,000) following a covered natural disaster, including hurricane (with storm surge), wildfire, tornado, earthquake, gas explosion, winter storm or dust storm. Your premium is based on the amount of coverage purchased and the level of risk for your area. Recoop Disaster Insurance isn’t designed to replace your homeowner’s or renters’ policy; it is designed to work with it and exists to cover the gaps left by most homeowner’s insurance policies in the wake of a natural disaster. After a disaster, you reach out to Recoop directly to answer a few questions, submit photos of your home for proof of loss and then the claim is reviewed. If everything is in order, the payment comes within 24 to 48 hours of claim approval. | 2022-07-27T09:49:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Natural disasters are intensifying. Is your insurance policy sufficient? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/27/natural-disasters-are-intensifying-is-your-insurance-policy-sufficient/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/27/natural-disasters-are-intensifying-is-your-insurance-policy-sufficient/ |
Brazil’s Democracy Needs More Friends in High Places
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, left, greets supporters at a rally during Bahia’s Independence Day in Salvador, Bahia state, Brazil, on Saturday, July 2, 2022. Former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva still leads the Brazilian presidential race in a potential runoff against incumbent Bolsonaro, a survey carried out between June 20-24 by Futura for Modalmais shows. Photographer: Maira Erlich/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
In close to four years in office, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has done little to instill faith in his commitment to democracy. He’s claimed only God could remove him from office, chipped away at checks and balances, and repeatedly questioned Brazil’s well-established electronic voting system. He recently took his unfounded claims beyond the country’s borders by calling foreign ambassadors in for a presentation that rehashed debunked conspiracies about the electoral process and berated Supreme Court justices.
Whether such bluster translates into a concerted effort to reject an unfavorable outcome in October’s presidential election remains to be seen. But the mere possibility of an electoral crisis in Latin America’s biggest country is one that Brazil’s other leaders — with the help of the democratic world — should act now to prevent.
Bolsonaro has denied any desire for a coup. Attempting to hold on to power will certainly be harder if the incumbent, trailing leftist candidate and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the polls, suffers a resounding defeat. But there are a range of less extreme outcomes that would still be devastating. Outbreaks of violence could prompt military intervention, and a split in the wider security forces is not inconceivable, given the military police’s more enthusiastic support. Any move to reject or discredit results would exacerbate Brazilians’ mistrust in government institutions, at a time when discontent with the fruits of democracy is already running high. The country risks paralysis.
The work of ensuring a free and fair election should be led by Brazilians — not just political leaders but also technocrats, the judiciary, civil society and the media. Efforts by electoral authorities, academics and fact-checkers to combat the spread of disinformation over social media, particularly WhatsApp, have been encouraging. But these forces need help. In the coming months, the U.S. should reiterate its confidence in Brazil’s democratic institutions and electoral authorities, through public visits by senior Biden administration officials and bipartisan congressional delegations. Washington should work with Brazil’s neighbors and other democratic governments to support international election observers. They should fund exchanges for technical and cybersecurity experts to bolster Brazil’s voting system, vital to countering any eventual claims of vote-rigging and fraud.
Corporate leaders can also use their clout. Though many executives are rightly reluctant to wade into Brazil’s domestic politics, some financiers have already signed an open letter in defense of democracy. More business coalitions and lobby groups can make clear the lasting economic harm that would be caused by violations of basic democratic rules. Speaking out would be in the interests not just of Brazilians but also companies themselves, which have nothing to gain from the unraveling of the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
In recent years, the credibility of the world’s democratic powers — and the US in particular — has undoubtedly suffered among the citizens of Latin America, in part because of lackluster diplomatic engagement in the region. Providing clear and unmistakable support for democratic forces in Brazil today would help limit the damage, and ensure the will of its people prevails. | 2022-07-27T09:49:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil’s Democracy Needs More Friends in High Places - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brazils-democracy-needs-more-friends-in-high-places/2022/07/27/7deb638e-0d8f-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brazils-democracy-needs-more-friends-in-high-places/2022/07/27/7deb638e-0d8f-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
That puts civilians at risk, research shows
Analysis by Andrew Bell
Katherine Kramer
Volunteer soldiers from the Dnipro area relax at their outpost in Ukraine's Kramatorsk region on July 1. The men in the unit come from various backgrounds, one a police officer, one a farmer, one a retired television cameraman and one a college professor. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters a fifth month, media reports continue to detail the heavy toll on Ukraine’s civilian population. Less media attention, however, has been paid to the humanitarian impact arising from the influx of foreign fighters, mercenaries, civilian volunteers and other nontraditional armed combatants — fighters not formally integrated as members of the professional armed forces of Russia or Ukraine. This month, for instance, reports emerged that Russian forces are now recruiting prisoners to fill depleted front-line units.
But nontraditional combatants typically have less training and less capacity to abide by the norms of international humanitarian law — the legal rules known also as the “law of war.” Indeed, nontraditional combatants in Ukraine have been associated with some of the worst atrocities of the war.
What do we know about the role and operations of nontraditional combatants? Our work suggests three key points on how these fighters can impact the protection of civilians in Ukraine.
Why do Russia and Ukraine exchange their prisoners?
Nontraditional combatants come in many forms
Recent headlines have highlighted the dizzying variety of nontraditional combatants and groups in the conflict. Estimates vary — several thousand of these fighters, coming from both inside and outside of Ukrainian and Russian territory, may have taken up arms on both sides.
The initial invasion inspired thousands of Ukrainian civilian volunteers — ordinary civilians mostly without military experience — to join Ukraine’s military-organized “Territorial Defense Forces” and defend the Ukrainian homeland from invasion.
Foreign volunteers have also augmented fighting forces, many with combat experience from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria as part of Ukraine’s International Legion of Territorial Defense. And there are signs that Ukrainian civilians, working in the capacity of resistance fighters, have stepped up attacks on Russian targets in eastern Ukraine.
Across the front lines, Russian forces have been similarly supplemented by volunteers, as well as by armed groups not wholly under the control of government forces. Paid mercenaries, along with foreign fighters and other forces from Chechnya, Syria and elsewhere, have also joined the Russian war effort. Notably, the Russian military has relied extensively on the Wagner Group, a Russia-based mercenary organization implicated in a number of alleged war crimes throughout the Middle East and Africa. These examples reveal the breadth and diversity of nontraditional fighters operating on Ukraine’s battlefields.
Looser command structures can mean more war crimes
Research shows that aspects of these nontraditional armed groups create additional risks for civilians. The weaker command structures implemented by nontraditional armed groups can decrease their capacity to comply with international laws of war, for instance. Commanders can’t always directly monitor the activities and conduct of fighters on the front lines. Military commanders in war thus face a stark command “dilemma” — they need to motivate their fighters to employ violence, but they also need to control and constrain this violence.
Additionally, the chaotic nature of warfare can increase the likelihood of civilian harm, especially where the lines between civilians and combatants become blurred — or when fighters believe targeting civilians will help them to achieve battlefield gains.
Extensive research shows that to regulate the use of force, military organizations often institute enforcement structures, including codes of conduct, regulations for military justice and rules of engagement, that limit what actions are authorized in combat.
Nontraditional combatants, however, often fight under far less strict command and enforcement structures. These weaker command structures can inhibit commanders’ ability to constrain fighters’ conduct, leading to increased war crimes and other violations.
Less training in the laws of war can also lead to more violations
In addition to enforcing the rules of conduct, military commanders also rely on training in organizational values to influence the behavior of fighters under their command. Recent research shows how factors such as norms, ideology, political education and military culture can socialize combatants to the military’s organizational values, shaping soldiers’ views about appropriate behavior in combat. Recent survey research by one of us finds that intensive training can increase the adoption of civilian protection norms, known also as “norms of restraint.”
Professionalized military forces like the U.S. and British armies — and increasingly the Ukrainian army — devote significant training to instilling within the ranks the principles of international humanitarian law and ethics. While this training often requires a greater investment in time and resources, shaping combatants’ views of appropriate battlefield conduct can be a more effective method of constraining violence than simple rule enforcement. This training is particularly important for battlefield environments, where combatants often operate outside commanders’ direct control.
Conversely, nontraditional combatants, including those operating in Ukraine, often have lower levels of training and generally much less exposure to the rules of international humanitarian law. Individual fighters, in particular, may join the conflict with little military experience or with previous military experience that paid less attention to protecting civilian lives. This lack of training and socialization in the law of war can thus lead to more atrocities in conflict.
What does this mean for Ukrainian civilians?
These issues reveal that the presence of nontraditional combatants can make already dangerous modern battlefields more perilous for civilians. Armed groups, mercenaries, foreign fighters and other combatants who lack strong enforcement structures or intensive training in norms of civilian protection can create far greater risks for civilians. If countries wish to reduce these risks, our research suggests the importance of strengthening command enforcement structures and civilian protection training across the broad spectrum of armed groups engaged in conflict — both in Ukraine and around the world.
Professors: Don’t miss TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides.
Andrew M. Bell (@AndrewBellUS) is assistant professor of international studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington and a visiting fellow at the U.S. Army War College.
Katherine Kramer is senior manager for protection of civilians at InterAction, a coalition of humanitarian and development NGOs working globally.
The views expressed in this work are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily represent the view of the U.S. Army or the U.S. government. | 2022-07-27T09:50:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, what leads to war crimes? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/ukraine-russia-combatants-civilians-atrocities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/ukraine-russia-combatants-civilians-atrocities/ |
Now on the tee for LIV Golf: Trump National and a polarizing former president
Trump National Golf Club will host the LIV Golf Invitational Series for its second American event. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Former president Donald Trump joins hands this week with the biggest controversy in sports when his New Jersey golf club hosts the latest event in the Saudi-funded LIV Golf series, further cementing his relationship with Saudi Arabia while angering families of 9/11 victims who have decried the start-up venture as “sportswashing.” While the renegade golf circuit has staged two other events, including another in the United States, this week’s event at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., promises to be an even more glaring flash point, given its proximity to Manhattan and the involvement of the ex-president.
In recent days, Trump has publicly and privately dismissed human rights concerns about the Saudi kingdom and railed against the professional golf establishment. He is expected to attend every day of this weekend’s event and has been in contact for months with organizers on event details, according to an adviser, who said Trump remains livid with PGA of America officials who moved the 2022 PGA Championship from his Bedminster club following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Doral, his club outside Miami, will host another LIV Golf event in October. Trump and his spokesperson didn’t respond to requests to comment.
Financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the LIV Golf venture has landed high-profile players with exorbitant guaranteed paychecks and lavish perks. But while the players have pocketed big money — some signing bonuses reportedly have amounted to eight- and nine-figure paydays — they also have faced stiff questioning about allegations against their benefactors, which include the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist.
Some 9/11 families protested at the LIV event this month at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club outside Portland, Ore., and last week members of the 9/11 Justice group sent Trump a letter urging him to cancel this week’s event and requesting a meeting with the former president. Brett Eagleson, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks, said a Trump aide reached out to him Saturday to discuss the letter.
“It was a frustrating and frivolous call and made me more angry,” Eagleson said. “I wish they’d never even called.”
According to Eagleson, the aide said the LIV contract was binding “and there’s no way out,” and that Trump was “grateful and thankful for the letter” from the 9/11 families.
“My response was: You have to appreciate that what you’re saying, the words are ringing hollow,” Eagleson said. “If it’s so important, why is he having you call me? Why isn’t he calling me himself?”
Trump repeatedly defended Saudi Arabia while he was president. He made his first foreign trip to the country, over the concerns of some advisers. Since leaving office, son-in-law Jared Kushner has attracted large investments from the country’s sovereign fund, according to multiple reports.
In an interview this week with the Wall Street Journal, Trump said: “I don’t know much about the 9/11 families. I don’t know what is the relationship to this, and their very strong feelings, and I can understand their feelings. I can’t really comment on that because I don’t know exactly what they’re saying, and what they’re saying who did what.”
“We all left overjoyed. We were crying; families were hugging each other,” Eagleson said. “He told us all: ‘We’re going to help you. Don’t worry about it. It’s already been done.’ ”
But soon, William P. Barr, Trump’s attorney general, classified the documents as top secret, and the White House made no effort to follow-up with the families, according to two people present at the meeting.
“Trump was a disappointment as a sitting president, and he’s a bigger disappointment now as a former president,” said Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, whose husband, Tom, worked in the North Tower during the attacks. “He knows more than anybody the level of depravity of the kingdom and he knows — he’s a New Yorker, he knows how families were affected by the attacks. Seven hundred and fifty people were lost in New Jersey. It’s right in our backyard and just, what, six weeks before the anniversary? It’s just beyond insulting.”
From June: Golf legend Greg Norman is throwing his sport into chaos. This time, he’s doing it with Saudi money.
LIV Golf has been throwing unheard-of amounts of money at golfers, course operators and even broadcasters. It has created a sharp divide in the sport; the PGA Tour has suspended defectors, and others opted to resign their membership from golf’s top tour.
Trump has long been passionate about the sport and has counted many of the world’s best golfers as friends. But he has struggled in recent years to gain formal entrance to the world of professional golf; many stakeholders, especially in recent years, have steered clear of his properties and at times butted heads with Trump himself.
The PGA Tour hasn’t held a tournament at a Trump course since 2016. Doral hosted a PGA event for more than a half-century in South Florida. After purchasing the resort out of bankruptcy in 2012, Trump renamed it Trump National Doral. But after losing Cadillac as a title sponsor, the PGA moved the event to Mexico City in 2016. In response, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee at the time, told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “I hope they have kidnapping insurance.”
Following the Jan. 6 insurrection, the PGA of America terminated its agreement to stage its 2022 PGA Championship at the Bedminster course. The R&A said Trump’s Turnberry club in Scotland wouldn’t be considered as a site for the British Open for the “foreseeable future.”
That left Trump with few options to host a tournament with any level of prestige. The Trump Golf portfolio includes 19 properties around the world — but no major tournaments in sight. LIV was the only imminent option, creating a marriage of two controversial entities that have tried to elbow their way to mainstream acceptance.
Because LIV’s finances are not public, it is not known how much Trump stands to make hosting the LIV events, but several industry experts estimated multimillions.
The Bedminster event is likely to see protesters this week — family members of 9/11 victims held a news conference Tuesday and have another scheduled for Friday — and has been swathed in controversy from Day One. The sport has been thrust into a state of chaos, if not full-blown crisis. The tour has lost several stars — Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau among them — and can’t match the deep pockets of the Saudi-backed group. This weekend’s winner at Bedminster will pocket $4 million, the last-place golfer will take home $120,000, and no golfer will be cut for high scores. By comparison, the winner of last weekend’s PGA Tour event, the 3M Open, took home $1.35 million, and just 11 golfers in the 153-man field earned more than $105,000.
In a statement about LIV last week, Trump made no mention of the Saudi support or controversy surrounding the event. For him, it’s a matter of money.
Greg Norman, the LIV commissioner and a Hall of Fame golfer, has been friendly with Trump for years, and the two spoke several times about the start-up circuit. “He loves it,” Norman said in a recent interview.
“He loves the concept, he loves the whole — and he thinks I’m the perfect guy for it,” Norman said. “We’ve had many conversations.”
Bedminster has long served as a key hub in Trump’s world; the former president spends much of the summer months based out of the New Jersey club. A Washington Post report estimated Trump spent 106 days at the club while president, squeezing in nearly three dozen rounds of golf there.
Trump has played 18 to 36 holes of golf four to five days per week since leaving office, one adviser said. In recent months, he has talked or played with a number of professional golfers, including Johnson, Norman, Jack Nicklaus and Ernie Els, among others, the adviser said.
Hosting a top-tier golf event at Bedminster has always been a Trump dream. He purchased the property, more than 500 acres of farmland that formerly served as automaker John DeLorean’s estate, in 2002. At the groundbreaking, Trump brandished a shovel and boasted to reporters: “This is a special place. We have so much to work with, we’re going to make this beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and expectations.”
Ashley Cooper, who managed the property in the early days and later ascended to managing partner of Trump Golf, said in an email, “We knew from day one it was destined to host majors.”
Kent Babb contributed to this report. | 2022-07-27T09:50:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf event at Trump National promises attention, controversy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/27/live-golf-trump-national-bedminster/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/27/live-golf-trump-national-bedminster/ |
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