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Ron DeSantis (R), governor of Florida, speaks during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa on July 22. (Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Miami-Dade County school board couldn’t make up its mind. It has voted three times in four months on whether students can use a particular textbook, “Comprehensive Health Skills,” for sex education classes. The board for the state’s largest district signed off in April, then banned it in July after some parents objected and told members that they’d be known as “groomers.” That meant the cancellation of sex ed classes for more than 100,000 students. Board members reversed themselves again a week later.
The first day of school in Florida is less than two weeks away, but officials are still plagued by confusion and uncertainty about what a raft of new laws championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will mean. The measures — aimed at eliminating what DeSantis calls “woke ideology” in public schools — have parents, teachers, and students scrambling to figure out how to follow them and to also keep from being targeted by Floridians newly empowered to sue school boards.
Florida’s culture war is being waged primarily in schools. The DeSantis administration has decried teachings on race, suggested civics instruction that downplays the historical separation of church and state, told school districts to ignore advice from the federal government that guarantees civil rights protections for LGBTQ students and, on Wednesday, asserted that children in elementary schools are being told they are the wrong gender.
“That is happening in our country. Anyone that tells you it’s not happening is lying to you,” DeSantis said at a news conference.
Religion belongs on public life, Florida tells teachers
His education department issued a memorandum the next day advising told school districts to ignore guidance from the Biden administration that says federal law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
The memo from Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said the Biden administration’s rules “should not be treated as governing law.” Diaz’s memo also says schools can ignore suggestions from the Florida Department of Agriculture Commission that they should post “And Justice For All” posters from the USDA in schools. The posters explain anti-discrimination laws. Florida Agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried, the only Democrat in DeSantis’s cabinet and a candidate for governor, said schools should display the posters. But Diaz said that “doing so may create a conflict with Florida law.”
The result of all this conflicting instruction is confusion and fear, teachers say.
In Palm Beach County, one teacher changed her plans for a lesson about Sally Ride — the first American woman to fly in space — to omit the fact that Ride was a lesbian because she didn’t know how to explain that without running afoul of the new laws, according to Michael Woods, a special-education teacher there who knows the instructor.
Some teachers in Orange County say they don’t know if it’s safe to bring in photos of their same-sex spouses. The school district told them the pictures are fine but said they shouldn’t talk about partners, because “it could be deemed classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity,” according to district spokesman Michael Ollendorff. Teachers in K-3 classrooms were also cautioned against wearing clothing that could bring up similar discussions.
“The vagueness of these laws is doing exactly what it was intended to do. It’s silencing teachers,” said Woods, who is also a member of the Classroom Teachers Association. “I have grown people coming up to me worried about what they can say.”
Florida is already facing a dire teacher shortage, with 9,000 open teaching and staff positions unfilled as the new school year begins, said Florida Education Association president Andy Spar. The shortage is severe enough that DeSantis recently signed a law that allows military veterans to teach without the required certificate or a four-year college degree.
Spar said Florida’s new laws have made the profession less attractive for experienced teachers and new college graduates alike. A recent national survey by the American Federation of Teachers found that nearly 80 percent of teachers are dissatisfied with their job.
“And here in Florida it’s worse,” Spar said. “The low pay, the lack of respect, the constant villainizing, that all takes a toll.”
This Florida teacher married a woman. Now she’s not a teacher anymore.
Most public school teachers in Florida work under one-year contracts that can be canceled without cause.
Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz declined a request for an interview, but his office said the department has provided guidance to schools districts on how to follow the new laws. The guidance, however, mostly uses the language in the laws, which teachers say is too vague.
DeSantis says the laws are popular with parents. They passed easily in the Republican-led legislature. “The government should never take the place of a parent,” said Speaker Chris Sprowls when DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill. “We’re taking a firm stand in Florida for parents when we say instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation does not belong in the classroom where 5- and 6-year-old children are learning.”
The Parental Rights in Education act, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, is the provision that bars classroom instruction on gender-related issues in grades K-3 and says lessons should be “age appropriate” after that. Even before the law was passed, those issues were not taught in early grades in Florida, Spar said.
In defending a lawsuit in federal court filed against the state in March by parents, students and several interest groups, Florida attorneys said teachers may still discuss such issues with students. A second lawsuit was filed July.
“Far from banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, the legislation expressly allows age and developmentally appropriate education on those subjects,” attorneys for the state have written. “Consistent with that modest limitation, the law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for the youngest children, neutrally allowing all parents, no matter their views, to introduce those sensitive topics to their children as they see fit.”
The state Department of Education has yet to define what “developmentally appropriate” means in the context of the new law.
Much of the consternation around the laws involves books. In Palm Beach County, teachers have been ordered to cull books from classroom libraries that are not “in compliance,” and to hide them “in a classroom closet” or somewhere else where students can’t see them. Woods, who has taught there for the past 30 years, said some of his fellow teachers have simply decided not to bring in any books at all.
Teachers in Brevard County have been told to “slow down” on adding books to the their classroom libraries.
“We’ve kind of asked teachers to press pause on that,” said Russell Bruhn, a spokesman for Brevard County Schools. He said the district’s media specialists are “going over titles as best they can to make sure that none of the titles are in violation of the new law.”
Culture wars lead to teacher firings, resignations
The state isn’t set to issue rules on books in schools until January. The current advice “preserves the rights of parents to make decisions about what materials their children are exposed to in school.” A process to rank, select, and eliminate titles is underway, and schools will be required to post online a list of all reading materials available to students.
“A lot of this is trying to get clarification and guidance from the state,” Bruhn said.
The school board in Miami-Dade County didn’t want to wait for the state rules. After initially approving “Comprehensive Health Skills” for middle and senior high health classes in April, members changed their mind.
A long-standing rule allows parents to opt out of having their children take sex ed classes, but opponents said that wasn’t enough. One said showing the book to students would be “illegal in the state of Florida.”
“If you adopt this, in the end, the country, the state, and your community will consider all of you groomers,” Lourdes Galban told the board, echoing a claim being used by some conservative groups that oppose sex education.
After school board staff said it would take up to eight months to find and vet another textbook on the subject, board chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman flipped her vote and approved the new book.
That fight over sex ed in the state’s largest school district alarmed health professionals, who say public opinion surveys show significant support for sexual education. Florida has the third-highest rate of new HIV infections in the country according to the CDC and is ranked 23rd for teen pregnancies.
“Florida isn’t a state that’s doing a top-notch job in terms of sex education as it is,” said Ellen Daley a professor and associate dean at the University of South Florida who specializes in women’s health and sexual education. “Parents are generally positive about it, but now we’re seeing the system kind of going back in time to when these things were controversial. That’s really scary.” | 2022-07-30T11:01:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida teachers race to remake lessons as DeSantis laws take effect - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/florida-schools-desantis-woke-indoctrination/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/florida-schools-desantis-woke-indoctrination/ |
In recent years, a number of major dinosaur finds have occurred by happenstance
A researcher examines evidence of dinosaur footprints on the patio of a restaurant in China's Sichuan province. (Lida Xing)
Using a 3D scanner, scientists determined that the tracks were made by sauropods — large herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and four legs. According to Lida Xing, a paleontologist at China University of Geosciences who led the team investigating the site, these footprints were probably made by the species Titanosauriformes.
“Sauropod tracks are not rare in Sichuan Basin … but they are very rare[ly] found in restaurants in downtown,” Xing said in an email. “Most of the time, the ground of the city is either vegetation or cement.”
Then there was the discovery of a well-preserved dinosaur “corpse,” unearthed by miners in Canada. While excavating at the Suncor Millennium Mine in Alberta in 2011, they stumbled upon the fossilized remains of a Nodosaurus, a heavily armored creature dating to about 110 million years ago, according to National Geographic.
“This land-style of giving birth is only possible if they inherited it from their land ancestors,” one of the researchers told Live Science. “They wouldn't do it if live birth evolved in water.” | 2022-07-30T11:01:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Diner accidentally discovers dinosaur footprints at restaurant in China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/30/dinosaur-footprint-accidental-discovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/30/dinosaur-footprint-accidental-discovery/ |
In this photo taken from video a view of a destroyed barrack at a prison in Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces, eastern Ukraine, Friday, July 29, 2022. Russia and Ukraine accused each other Friday of shelling a prison in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine, an attack that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian military prisoners who were captured after the fall of a southern port city of Mariupol in May. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP)
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched nighttime attacks on several cities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Saturday as they and officials in Moscow blamed each other for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in a separatist-controlled area of the country’s east. | 2022-07-30T11:01:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Red Cross requests access to Ukraine prison after POWS die - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-says-russian-attacks-hit-kharkiv-mykolaiv/2022/07/30/fa28a640-0ff2-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-says-russian-attacks-hit-kharkiv-mykolaiv/2022/07/30/fa28a640-0ff2-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Inside the private talks and public pressure that led to a deal between Joe Manchin and Charles Schumer
The U.S. Capitol reflected against a window on July 21. (Tom Brenner/For the Washington Post )
Five days after talks collapsed around Senate Democrats’ long-stalled package to combat climate change, temperatures were rising — literally and figuratively.
At the center of the impasse was Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). A moderate swing vote and longtime budget hawk, Manchin had said the week before that he could support investments to tackle global warming, just not in the way Democrats had proposed them, and not while prices nationally were soaring. Instead, he wanted his party to wait — but Democratic leaders felt they were running out of time.
At the White House, President Biden already had issued an ultimatum, telling members of Congress he would fire off new executive orders if they did not pass a law. In the Capitol, meanwhile, Democrats began to confront Manchin directly: Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), for one, approached him during a vote on the Senate floor, brandishing a list of recent deadly climate catastrophes that warranted Manchin’s attention.
Little did many Democrats know, however, Manchin was already back at the table — in another round of fierce discussions with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Soon, the steady mix of public pressure, private pleading and persistent negotiation would lead the two men to produce what once seemed unthinkable: a deal on the largest burst of climate-related spending in U.S. history that took nearly all of Washington by surprise.
The story of that breakthrough is one of intense talks and high emotions over a period of about two weeks, according to more than two dozen people familiar with the matter, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a process so secretive that few knew about it at the time. The journey spanned basement backrooms of the Capitol, countless hours of phone calls — and a virtual handshake that clinched the arrangement over Zoom, since the coronavirus had trapped Manchin at home.
For Schumer, the party’s chief negotiator, a key to assuaging Manchin’s concerns were policy sweeteners that boosted fossil fuels and coal-heavy West Virginia. But Manchin also spoke with a wide array of others — fellow Democrats, economists including Larry Summers, even executives like Bill Gates. They each delivered some version of the same message: If Democrats did not seize on a rare opportunity to combat climate change, the U.S. may never have another chance at it again.
Ultimately, though, Manchin came to agree with his own party, satisfied that Democrats’ plans would not harm the economy. Explaining his decision, Manchin maintained at a news conference Thursday he never actually wavered in his engagement, even once “the dogs came after me.” Schumer, for his part, seized on the magnitude of the moment, having finalized an agreement that had eluded Democrats for about a year.
“You’re going to change the country for the better,” he told Manchin in the hours before they released the bill late Wednesday afternoon. “This is going to be historic for the country.”
If it is adopted, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 would see nearly $370 billion in new climate and energy-related investments, aiming to foster new technology, cut back on emissions and satisfy Manchin’s demand that the U.S. maintain support for fossil fuels.
It includes new and extended tax credits for solar, wind and other renewable energy, and more than $80 billion in rebates for home improvements and electric vehicles. It also sets aside $1.5 billion to curtail harmful methane emissions. And at Manchin’s insistence, it mandates new oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.
The bill’s authors say it will reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030. That’s less than Democrats sought last year, when the House adopted roughly $555 billion in climate-related spending as part of the plan known as the Build Back Better Act. That proposal, named after Biden’s campaign slogan, proposed major overhauls to federal health care, immigration, education and tax laws. But Manchin in December essentially killed the bill, saying he could not cast his must-have vote for its roughly $2 trillion price tag.
More than seven months later, Schumer and Manchin had resumed talks, but found themselves barreling toward the same disappointment — even as Democrats attempted to rethink their agenda in a smaller form. Despite consistent, productive discussions, Manchin informed Schumer on July 14 that he still could not support his own party’s efforts to advance a sprawling proposal so quickly.
For Manchin, the primary concern was inflation. He withdrew his support after a government report showed the prices of gas, groceries and other goods had spiked by 9.1 percent in June, describing the development publicly as a “serious concern.” Privately, the senator sounded even more dire alarms — telling a group of energy executives and other supporters at a Washington fundraiser, for example, that he could not support anything that worsened the economy.
“Can’t we wait to make sure we do nothing to add to that? And I can’t make that decision on basically taxes of any type and also on energy and climate,” Manchin said during an interview on MetroNews TalkLine, a West Virginia radio show, a day later. “But I’m not going to do something, and overreach, that causes more problems.”
Manchin’s stance stunned Democrats. For weeks, many thought they were close to finishing a climate deal; aides on the Senate’s top environment-focused committee, led by Carper, had even started drafting press materials announcing a breakthrough with Manchin when the news arrived.
But the senator’s sudden skepticism posed a new, insurmountable challenge, since no bill could advance over GOP objections in the narrowly divided Senate without Manchin’s vote. Instead, he essentially offered his party a choice: They could wait for the release of new inflation numbers in August and try again, or they could further whittle down their bill to focus exclusively on health care costs and adopt it now.
Democrats did not want to squander their final opportunity to fulfill the pledges they had made to voters ahead of the 2022 election, so Schumer began work on a smaller measure — one focused on lowering prescription drug prices and insurance premiums. Biden endorsed the approach in a statement on July 15 that omitted any mention of Manchin, stressing: “The Senate should move forward, pass it before the August recess, and get it to my desk so I can sign it.”
But some in the party, long frustrated by inaction on climate change, embarked on a pressure campaign targeting Manchin anyway. A wide array of Democrats including Sens. Carper and Christopher A. Coons of Delaware, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and Ron Wyden of Oregon each worked with their aides to canvass environmental groups, energy companies and economists who might have be able to change Manchin’s mind.
Hickenlooper, meanwhile, turned to top executives from PG&E, DuPont and other firms. “They were kind of mopey,” the senator recalled in an interview, though he urged them to call Schumer and Manchin and encourage them to keep pursuing a deal. “You can sit on your hands, or be useful,” Hickenlooper said.
“There are folks in our party who are saying all sorts of terrible things about you, who believe you were stringing us along for a year and that you were never going to come to a deal because of your state or because of your conflicts of interest,” a source recalled Coons saying. The comment appeared to reference long-standing concerns about Manchin’s ties to the coal industry.
Coons then told Manchin: “I can’t think of a better way for you to prove them all wrong than to sign off on a bold climate deal. Prove every critic wrong.”
Manchin thought for a second, the source said, then responded, “It would be like hitting a homer in the bottom of the ninth, wouldn’t it?”
Quietly, Manchin that very day seemed to be angling for a deal. The senator’s staff in the morning had approached Schumer’s aides, offering a new counterproposal: Democrats could try to pass a bill in August, including money for climate change.
The entreaty set the stage for a hushed meeting between the two lawmakers that afternoon in the labyrinthine basement of the Capitol, in a conference room Schumer did not even realize at first was his. They left with a handshake agreement to at least try again before the August recess. Recalling it later, Manchin told reporters his message to the majority leader was that he hadn’t “walked away,” adding: “This is ridiculous. We can recalibrate, see if something can be done.”
“He said, ‘Can we work together and try to put together a bill?’ And I said, ‘As long as we finish in August,’” Schumer later told reporters.
Seemingly no one — not even top Democrats — knew about the extent of the encounter. Many party lawmakers arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday, July 19, steaming as global headlines raised urgent new alarms about heat waves. Carper brought his list of climate catastrophes to Manchin on the Senate floor, then into a Democrats-only lunch, where he urged members of his party not to give up.
“I went down and listed about a dozen situations around the world, of what’s going on in England, what’s going on with Antarctica … countries where lakes are drying up, they don’t have water to feed livestock,” Carper said. “I gave it to him on the floor.”
Similarly unnerved, the White House had started eyeing action it could take without Congress to address climate change, seeking to make good on Biden’s threat. Privately, aides began exploring whether to declare a national climate emergency, a directive that could have opened the door for the administration to pursue new regulations or redirect funding in response to rising emissions.
Biden ultimately did not issue the policy when he delivered a major climate address in Somerset, Mass., the following day, instead announcing action to combat extreme heat. Congressional aides later said they learned the administration had backed away from the emergency, partly out of fear it could upset the already delicate negotiations over a spending package — even one narrowly focused on health care.
That Sunday, July 24, Manchin dialed into a conference call joined by Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to Trump, and about a dozen conservative economists, media figures and business leaders. They profusely thanked Manchin “for saving the country” by resisting Democrats’ plans, Moore later recalled to The Washington Post. Manchin told the group he supported one of Democrats’ tax plans, a proposal to impose a rate on businesses that pay nothing to the government. But he also criticized Democrats’ spending ambitions — leaving conservatives convinced that Manchin remained opposed to acting.
In reality, Manchin was warming up to a compromise, and by late this Tuesday, he and Schumer had in hand an economic analysis of their still-forming deal. That analysis showed it could raise more than $739 billion over the next decade — enough to offset the costs and reduce the deficit by about $300 billion. For months, Manchin had demanded that any spending package contribute meaningfully toward improving the country’s fiscal health.
By Wednesday afternoon, now bonding over their shared, recent covid diagnoses, the two men clinched their deal and set about briefing Democratic leaders and the White House — during which Biden thanked Manchin over the phone for seeing it through. Schumer and Manchin then publicly revealed it to the shock of Washington, hailing their progress in a joint statement “after years of many in Washington promising, but failing to deliver.”
The breakthrough arrived about two weeks after Democrats thought their climate aspirations were doomed — and exactly a year to the day that Schumer tried to work out with Manchin a framework for a smaller spending package. That endeavor, enshrined in a document eventually made public, previously earned derision from Schumer’s own caucus; now, Democrats on Capitol Hill were ready to rejoice.
“I’m like, holy s---, this is fantastic,” said Smith, adding that she learned about the deal when Schumer called her while the Minnesota senator was presiding on the Senate floor. “There was a small group of people working hard to keep the door open, specifically to address the concerns Senator Manchin had around inflation.”
The news came as an even greater surprise to Republicans, who that day were huddling with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to plan how they could further stymie Democrats’ agenda. Aides, operatives and lawmakers discussed ways to force uncomfortable votes on a key element of Democrats’ plans, an attempt to lower prescription drug costs, that might win the support of another Democratic moderate, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).
Adding to the sting, Manchin and Schumer announced the agreement hours after the Senate voted to adopt a second, unrelated bill provisioning more than $50 billion for semiconductors. McConnell previously had threatened that measure, suggesting Republicans could obstruct it if Democrats moved forward with their spending ambitions. The GOP leader’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“It caught everybody by surprise. And the fact Manchin was gone with covid took it off everyone’s radar screen. Wherever he walks in the hallways, he’s answering questions constantly,” said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist. “There was a bit of out of sight, out of mind.”
Some at the White House were kept in the dark, too. “The White House staff were in the same position almost everyone in D.C. was: Complete surprise and a level of delight about an unexpected win. They’d resigned themselves to a loss,” said one outside adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with senior administration officials.
Instead, a jubilant Schumer on Thursday took to the podium in the Senate studio: “For years, decades even, many in Washington have promised to address the biggest challenges facing the nation only to fail to deliver,” he said.
At least one of the tax credits for electric vehicles hinges on domestic production requirements that some observers in Congress and elsewhere believe may benefit firms in Manchin’s home state. Another program that pays power providers for clean-energy production appears to be most generous when it comes to hydrogen and carbon-capture technology, according to experts, two advancements Manchin long has supported.
And Schumer worked out an agreement with Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Manchin that would see Congress vote in the coming months on rules that ease federal permitting rules for pipelines and other infrastructure in the coming months. Many of the details have not yet been made public, though climate hawks on Capitol Hill generally praised the final result.
“I think it’s an A-,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), another member who had been in contact with Manchin over the past two weeks. “There’s no doubt this is the biggest climate action the federal government has ever taken. … But let’s be clear: We made a deal with Joe Manchin, and what that means is that he got a few things we wouldn’t agree to under other circumstances.”
Schumer, for his part, acknowledged to reporters that he personally would have “never put these provisions in the bill,” adding that Democrats needed “50 votes.”
“Part of Manchin’s brand is meeting and talking with everyone throughout the ideological spectrum; he’s been doing that even when nothing was going on,” said Steve Clemons, a friend of Manchin’s for more than a decade. “I am unaware that anyone substantially moved him; he has been consistent with what he wanted to do the whole time, and he got what he’d been asking for.”
Initially, Manchin had said he wanted to see another round of inflation figures before he supported new climate spending and tax increases. But reams of data furnished to him — including nonpublic sources of information, provided by the Penn Wharton Budget Model — left him confident that “I’m not adding to inflation,” the senator said Thursday.
Schumer quickly set about selling the measure to Democrats, who must stay united if they hope to overcome a GOP filibuster. Some have yet to react publicly — including Sinema, who has also raised concerns about tax increases. But Schumer on Thursday did not express concern, telling reporters that “members are reviewing the text … and we expect to move forward next week.”
Manchin, though, stressed the agreement showed that he had never left the table. “No one in the right mind would go through all the protests, harassments, if you will, after the Build Back Better [Act] was defeated,” he said at a news conference over Zoom on Thursday.
“I didn’t walk away,” Manchin said. “I just told them, I can’t do what we’ve been doing at that level.”
Maxine Joselow and Tyler Pager contributed to this report. | 2022-07-30T11:02:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The two-week scramble that saved Democrats’ climate agenda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/30/climate-spending-agenda-senate-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/30/climate-spending-agenda-senate-democrats/ |
More than 18,000 monkeypox cases have been reported in over 70 countries as of July 2022. Here's what you need to know about how it spreads. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: CDC/The Washington Post)
Three people have died of monkeypox in Brazil and Spain, marking the first known fatalities outside Africa in the current outbreak.
In Brazil, a 41-year-old man with lymphoma and weakened immunity died in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, health officials said Friday. The country has confirmed at least 1,259 cases.
Hours later, Spain announced the first death in Europe, although no information about the individual has been released. The health ministry confirmed a second death Saturday. Spain has been one of the worst-affected countries, with 4,298 confirmed cases and at least 120 patients hospitalized.
At least five people have died in Africa.
[What to know about monkeypox symptoms, treatments and protection]
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, its highest-level warning. Globally 22,485 cases have been confirmed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the overwhelming majority outside of countries in central and western Africa where the virus is normally found.
The WHO says the risk from the virus is high in Europe and moderate elsewhere. Cases normally begin with flu-like symptoms and a rash that appears days later, according to the CDC. Infections usually last between two and four weeks.
[Struggle to protect gay, bisexual men from monkeypox exposes inequities]
Most cases have so far been reported among men who have sex with men, with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggesting earlier this week that they should consider temporarily reducing sexual partners as cases rise. Global health authorities have grappled with the risk of stigmatizing members of the community or downplaying the risk to the wider population. | 2022-07-30T11:02:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | First monkeypox deaths reported in Brazil and Spain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/monkeypox-deaths-brazil-spain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/monkeypox-deaths-brazil-spain/ |
Pope Francis says ‘door is open’ to eventual retirement as he slows pace
Pope Francis holds a news conference aboard the papal plane on his flight back after visiting Canada, July 29, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/Pool (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — The trip, Pope Francis said, was a “test” — first a 10-hour flight across the Atlantic and an eight-hour time change, followed by nine speeches in five different places in Canada. It was a lot for an 85-year-old pope with a knee so painful that he can scarcely walk on his own.
So on the return flight to Rome, Francis said he’s concluded that he needs to slow down. He said his style would have to change a bit. He even said the “door is open” to retirement, though nothing is imminent.
“I don’t think I can go with the same pace of the trips as before,” Francis said, conducting his news conference aboard the papal plane from a chair. “I think at my age and with this limitation, I have to save [my energies up] a bit to be able to serve the church or, on the contrary, think about the possibility of stepping aside. This I say with all honesty: It is not a catastrophe. It is possible to change pope.”
He said it was a “normal option” to think about retirement. That echoed other comments he’s made in which he’s said he would be open to stepping down if his health makes it impossible to run the church.
But so far, Francis said, he hasn’t reached that point.
“That doesn’t mean the day after tomorrow I don’t start thinking [about it], right?” Francis said. “But right now I honestly don’t.”
During his six days in Canada, Francis had moments both of sturdiness and frailty. For all the jet lag, he steadily delivered one speech after the next, and enjoyed moments of clear levity — like when he called for a detour from his wheelchair to get closer to a crowd outside a church.
But he also faced limitations far different from earlier years in his pontificate. While visiting an Indigenous community in the plains of Alberta, where he apologized for the brutality of Canada’s residential school system, he was wheeled to the edge of a wooden pathway leading to a cemetery. But he couldn’t move among the grave markers, which were all on grass.
While he has been quite healthy for much of his pontificate, Francis over the last year-and-a-half has dealt with painful flare-ups of sciatica, colon surgery, and most recently knee inflammation that has left him largely dependent on a wheelchair. The lost mobility has forced him to reconsider his hands-on style as pope. Many times, before his Canada trip, he has bemoaned the impossible of mixing with crowds of pilgrims as he used to.
And that is just one of the ways his pontificate has changed. He no longer has the rock star following or draws the immense crowds. His stories lack the novelty of earlier years — including in news conferences, where he keeps surprises to a minimum. But on some topics — like aging — his words carry more weight than ever. Many of his prepared remarks touch on the value of the elderly, and it’s left for interpretation how much of his sentiment reflects personal experience.
“It warms my heart to see so many grandparents and great-grandparents here,” Francis said at one point during his Canada trip. “I thank you and would like to say to all those families with elderly people at home: you possess a treasure! Guard this source of life within your homes: take care of it, as a precious legacy to be loved and cherished.”
In Canada, organizers shaped the itinerary to meet his limitations. He moved up and down from the papal plane on a platform-like lift. He spoke while seated. The trip had a slower pace than others during Francis’s pontificate — with two events most days rather than four or five.
“I don't think I can go with the same pace of the trips as before,” the pope said.
In Canada, Francis asked forgiveness — both personally and on behalf of “many” in the Catholic Church — for the church involvement country’s foremost traumas: residential schools that aimed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Christian society. The trip broke the norms of papal travel because it was overtly aimed at penitence, not evangelization.
Francis said he will continue to travel. Though he was forced to cancel an earlier July trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan because of his knee rehabilitation, he has a run of short trips within Italy in the coming weeks, and he is scheduled to travel to Kazakhstan in September. Francis also raised the possibility of attempting once more to visit to Congo.
“It will be next year,” he said. | 2022-07-30T11:02:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pope Francis, returning from Canada, says retirement a 'normal option' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/pope-francis-edmonton-retire-mobility/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/pope-francis-edmonton-retire-mobility/ |
Ashley Scott and Tanya Butler hold two loaded magazines to show to an instructor before a live fire test to get a conceal carry permit at Maryland Small Arms Range in Upper Marlboro, Md., on July 17, 2022. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
Chimere Barron, a financial adviser, is totally uncomfortable. You can see it in her eyes, even though her stance is strong.
“I’ve always been anti-gun,” she said, putting down her book bag and getting ready to lock, load and fire 18 rounds into a paper man’s center mass. “But things are different now.”
Barron, 34, is among what research has shown is a fast-growing group of gun owners in America — Black women.
After watching mass shooters rip through their spaces — grocery stores, church, parades — women who have spent a lifetime keeping guns out of their homes and away from their families are strapping up.
“Buffalo,” said Monique Chapman, 53. “We, as African Americans, sit here, as targets.”
What made that horrible decision more bearable? They found a Black woman to teach them.
These two women — among more than a dozen others, Black and White — spent two days a couple of weeks ago getting a concealed carry permit under the guidance of Mary Pitt, a Black woman like them, who was a firearms instructor both in the Air Force and with police in Atlanta.
Her clientele used to mostly be what you’d expect — gun guys. She was often contracted as an instructor for police and military folks.
“I see a high increase in females. Over 1,000% recently,” said Pitt, whose company, BOOM BOOM Firearms Training, is named for the sound her RPG made in Iraq. “I have women who came in fearful and came out confident. I had women who had never shot at the range before, who never held a gun. They were crying. They jumped.”
Now she’s snapping orders in a fire engine red, Kevlar vest, drilling women who know that she knows how complicated this all is.
“I wouldn’t even let my kids have play guns. Squirt guns. None of it,” said Tanya Butler, a tall, elegant 58-year-old who is clearly more comfortable in the halls of power than on the gun range.
A recent increase in crime — from car jackings to insurrections — has surrounded the congressional office where she works on Capitol Hill. “And now I have a gun safe, and I do take the gun out at night,” she said. “I’m not ready to carry yet. But I have the option.”
In the past two months, the combination of the Supreme Court’s ruling lowering the bar for concealed-carry permits and the unmooring feeling of vulnerability in the Black community following the race-fueled massacre in a Buffalo grocery store, Pitt has become a matriarch of the armed, Black, female community.
“They call and tell me they want a female instructor,” Pitt told me, when we met about a month ago. I had gone to the parking lot of Maryland Small Arms Range, the one near Joint Base Andrews, to talk to gun owners after the Supreme Court ruling. I was expecting to find a lot of White guys who love their guns cheering the change.
But the first few people I met coming out of the range, one after another, were Black women.
“I want to be able to keep my community safe,” one of those women told me.
Just about all the women I talked to at the range that day — as we pulled the protection off one ear to talk in between the booms — mentioned Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philado Castille. And Sandra Bland.
Black women are unsafe in America. Violence against Black women and girls shot up nearly 34 percent in 2020 amid an overall spike in homicides, to about 8 deaths per 100,000 — a rate more than twice that of White women, at about 3 per 100,000, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Five Black females — women and girls — were killed every day in 2020.
More than 40 percent of Black women are assaulted and more than 20 percent are raped in their lifetimes, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. These statistics are lower for all other women. And amid this trauma, Black women are expected to fill a stereotype — rooted in truth — that they are the strong ones in a community or family holding it all together.
No wonder more are thinking of having guns. Even though they aren’t a simple answer.
“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” said a 67-year-old grandmother of six, who hasn’t handled a gun since she left the Army, but decided to get her concealed carry permit because of all these events targeting Black folks.
They all said they feel America has let them down when it comes to feeling like they are protected. And it’s an important part of the gun control conversation. The same people who want to ban guns probably agree that Americans of color feel especially unsafe in the nation they helped build.
“You have to keep your head on a swivel now in the theater, the grocery store,” said Chapman, who retired from the Navy and was happy to leave weapons behind. She’s a suburban mom and grandma. “And I don’t want to say all officers are bad. I have law enforcement officers in my family. But you don’t always know if they’re on our side.”
Barron said it wasn’t part of her culture to grow up with weapons.
“Unlike a lot of White people, who grew up hunting or shooting with the family, we didn’t have that,” she said. “So we’re not familiar with guns. Handling guns. Safety. All that.”
Not all range instructors are cheering the new gun laws
That’s where Pitt comes in.
She’s not necessarily thrilled with how easy it is to get a concealed carry permit right now. She wants applicants to do more, even after they qualify.
Just 16 hours of training. Conference room slide-show presentations. Paper tests. At the most, 50 rounds are fired. That’s it.
But Pitt includes the high-tech, video simulators that include scenarios where students have to decide whether to shoot. They’re the same kind that police academies use.
The women told me she is more patient and thorough than the male instructors they see around them. Most found her online — her website is hard to miss. And she talks to them about kids and gun safety. Pitt does regular, free youth gun safety seminars for kids throughout the region. Often, kids are the ones who bring the mothers to her.
“I am honored they come to me,” Pitt said. She’s worried about them.
As their paper targets were examined, their scores tallied and they waited to see if they qualified for a license, she gave them some parting advice:
“It may be fashionable to carry a gun,” she warned. “But if you get your license, train more. Train before you carry a gun. It’s safer for everyone.”
As guns outnumber people in America, it’s no wonder Black women are seeking to level the playing field. Imagine a world where they didn’t have to. | 2022-07-30T11:23:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black women carrying guns to protect themselves shouldn't have to - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/black-women-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/black-women-guns/ |
The Biden administration is proposing a raft of reforms, but lacks the authority to deliver sweeping changes
The total student loan debt in the United States is over $1 trillion, a crisis that the Biden administration seeks to tackle in forthcoming proposals. (Seth Wenig/AP)
As the prospect of President Biden canceling student debt continues to dominate public discourse, new proposals are bringing into focus the administration’s broader plans for overhauling a federal lending system that is widely considered broken.
“The Biden administration has made tremendous progress,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “The Department of Education was not on the side of working families and struggling borrowers, and that has changed.”
“This isn’t about fixing the loan program, this is an attempt to carry out mass loan forgiveness and keeping taxpayers in the dark about it,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), the top Republican on the House Education Committee.
Bass and other higher education experts say Congress must play a role to achieve sweeping overhaul of the system, in part, because the Education Department has limited authority. While the department can make some administrative changes through rulemaking, many of the statutes governing federal student aid are largely the purview of legislators.
Take income-driven repayment plans, which cap monthly payments to a percentage of earnings and eventually forgive the balance. While the administration can propose a new version of the program — as it is slated to do in the coming weeks — it has no authority to fold the existing suite of income-driven options into one simplified plan. That requires Congress.
“Congress is having a lot of challenges on getting bipartisan consensus on a lot of reforms," Yu said. “The political system, as it is, is unlikely to bring about a lot of these reforms through Congress with the state that it is in right now. The department has a lot of room to make improvements.”
“We allow borrowers to take out as much debt as schools tell them to for degrees that simply have no return on investment, leaving students in 20 years of ballooning balances until the debt is written off," Foxx said. “Schools are well aware of these flaws, which is why the cost of college has skyrocketed because they know it will be taxpayers who will ultimately foot the bill.” | 2022-07-30T12:32:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden proposals would help overhaul student loan system. Some say it isn’t enough. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/biden-student-loans-changes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/biden-student-loans-changes/ |
During childbirth, I suddenly couldn’t hear any longer
Trying to figure out why my hearing loss occurred was mind-boggling. Often, it has left me feeling vulnerable.
Perspective by Edda Collins Coleman
Edda Collins Coleman with her husband, Bernard, and their daughters Peyton, Bailey and Quinn. (Bernard Coleman III)
When I was rolled into the operating room for my third Caesarean section, I could hear the relaxing sounds of classical music. Everyone was welcoming and feeling especially happy. A few minutes later, our third daughter was born and whisked away to be checked for a few routine complications.
A nurse took my vitals and pressed on my stomach. There was a deep pain, followed by a terrifying discovery: I couldn’t hear anything. Not the nurse, who was asking me questions, not my husband, not the beeping medical monitors. Nothing.
The anesthesiologist quickly reviewed my condition and said don’t worry, my hearing would return to normal once the head congestion, common in pregnancy, dissipated. But it never did.
Doctors aren’t sure why people can lose hearing during pregnancy or childbirth. Hormonal changes or high blood pressure can cause hearing issues, such as clogged ears or a background buzzing. But actual hearing loss in pregnancy is rare and losing hearing during childbirth, as I had, is so unusual that Frank Lin, otolaryngology professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of its Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, said he has never encountered it before.
My head congestion dissipated by the next day, but everything still sounded muted and definitely not back to normal. And as the months ticked by, things didn’t get better. There was a loud humming in my ears; I couldn’t hear my children clearly if we were all riding in the same car and they were seated in the back seat; I couldn’t hear a cashier in a grocery store telling me that their checkout line was open; I couldn’t hear a colleague call my name when approaching my desk at work; and I was constantly asking folks to repeat themselves during face-to-face conversations.
Finally, about nine months after giving birth, it was too much. “Babe, it’s time to take your hearing loss seriously and go to the doctor,” my husband, Bernard, said.
The audiologist immediately diagnosed me with severe hearing loss in both ears. I had lost more than a quarter of the hearing in my left ear and almost 40 percent in my right. And I have particular problems distinguishing lower tones. That may seem tolerable, but it is the difference between enjoying conversation and music and hearing muddled sounds.
With a sense of grief, shock and profound sadness, I officially joined the more than 38 million Americans over age 12 with hearing loss in both ears.
More than a third of pregnant women develop tinnitus, or a ringing in their ears, according to the British Tinnitus Association. The problem can be caused by stress, upper back pain, high blood pressure, headaches and other ailments common among pregnant women. But for most people, the tinnitus will vanish once their child is born.
What to do about tinnitus, the chronic ringing in your ears
While my muffled hearing was instantaneous, I first noticed my tinnitus six months after my new daughter, Quinn, was born, but I realize now it actually started before then. It became more pronounced at the end of the day, after my girls had gone to bed, and I was settling in for the night. I’d hear a low constant hum, like the sound of a broken air conditioner, that seemed to grow louder as our home grew quieter. If I was watching TV, I’d have to really turn up the volume.
As I searched for an answer to what had happened, my doctors thought I might be experiencing another disorder, otosclerosis, or abnormal bone growth in the middle ear, which can occur in pregnancy, probably because of hormonal changes. It causes mild to severe hearing loss but is curable with surgery or is helped by hearing aids.
“We don’t fully know if pregnancy causes otosclerosis, but there does appear to be a link with onset, or it getting worse during pregnancy,” said Franki Oliver, a researcher at London’s Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID). It appears more likely to afflict women in their 20s and 30s, she said, “and it does appear to run in families, but … we think there may be some environmental factors as well.”
Still, my hearing loss did not occur during pregnancy, and after a battery of tests, doctors scratched otosclerosis from the list of possible causes.
Instead, they began to focus on another culprit, sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), sometimes referred to as “sudden deafness,” which is nerve damage in the inner ear. While my doctors said they had not encountered a case of SNHL being caused by childbirth, it is not unheard-of that SNHL occurs during pregnancy. It is also permanent, they said.
After still more audiology exams, CT scans and genetic tests, doctors finally diagnosed a different problem that they now believe caused my hearing loss: I have an abnormally shaped cochlea — the part of the inner ear that changes sounds into nerve signals to the brain. That still does not solve the mystery of why childbirth triggered my hearing loss, but I will soon undergo additional genetic testing to help understand the origin of my misshaped cochlea, which may help our three daughters if they inherit the same problem.
A year after my daughter was born, I began wearing hearing aids. It was both sobering and delightful to hear everyone and everything again. My ear-ringing tinnitus stops when I wear my hearing aids, although it returns when I take them out for bed — but not so much to keep me awake. With the help of hearing aids, I was blessed that I was able to clearly hear my daughter’s first words — and her infectious laugh.
The pandemic has been particularly challenging for people like me who have hearing issues, because masks that other people wear muffle their voices and obstruct their facial expressions and lip movement — key hints that help me and others interpret what they are saying.
Trying to figure out my hearing problems has been eye-opening and often has left me feeling vulnerable — from wearing my hearing aids for the first time, to the anxiety that builds from attending in-person events and wondering whether I’ll be able to hear everyone clearly and participate in conversations, to concerns over how I will be perceived, to even sharing this story.
Fortunately the conventional belief of what hearing loss looks like is constantly changing, mostly for the better.
Because of rapidly advancing technology, hearing aids are becoming smaller, more powerful and more adaptable. I think most people I talk to do not even realize I’m wearing hearing aids in both ears, which can be adjusted to specifically amplify high and low pitches, depending on my environment. The devices have different settings for restaurants, concerts, meetings and phone calls. They can sync with mobile devices and other electronics, and they can be controlled with an app.
But there is a catch to this technological improvement: Prices for a pair of aids can run as high as $6,000, and typically are not covered by insurance.
I am lucky that my insurance covers a significant part of that cost. But for many older people on Medicare, which does not cover them, the cost can be especially onerous. Partly as a result, only about 28.5 percent of the people in the United States who need hearing aids have them. There is good news, however: Congress authorized over-the-counter hearing aids in 2017, and last fall the Food and Drug Administration started the process to create a new category of government-approved hearing aids that Americans will be able to buy without a prescription.
Hearing aids without a prescription or an exam? The FDA takes big step toward making that happen.
I’m now 43. Absent a medical breakthrough, hearing aids are a permanent part of my life. Without them — when I forget them at home, or I need to recharge the batteries quickly before an event — the ringing, the muddled sounds and anxiety return.
With them, I can go into meetings with greater assurance. I enjoy music and the theater. I can hear the birds singing in my backyard. And I can more clearly hear my three girls, although I sometimes have to ask them to repeat things and enunciate more clearly.
But I’ll take that.
Edda Collins Coleman lives in Orinda, Calif., and is a managing director at Cogent Strategies, a government relations and public affairs firm in D.C. | 2022-07-30T12:33:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | While giving childbirth, I lost my hearing and now need hearing aids - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/30/hearing-loss-childbirth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/30/hearing-loss-childbirth/ |
The battle for control of one of Florida’s largest public health systems has turned political.
A worker walks by Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla. (Thomas Simonetti/For The Washington Post)
SARASOTA, Fla — When his blood oxygen dropped to what he described as a critically low level in September, Victor Rohe knew he had “a bad case of covid.”
But like growing numbers of conservatives here in southwest Florida, Rohe didn’t trust the doctors at Sarasota Memorial Hospital to treat him, even though it’s part of one of the state’s largest and highest ranked medical systems.
Rohe, a longtime Republican activist and self-described strict “constitutionalist,” instead rented his own oxygen unit and hooked it up at home. For the next several days, Rohe battled his coronavirus infection in his living room, relying on medical advice from friends and family members.
“If I went to the hospital, I believed I would die,” said Rohe, pointing to online videos and conspiracy theories he watched raising questions about the care some coronavirus patients received at the hospital.
Now a year later, Rohe is part of a slate of four conservative candidates trying to take over control of the board that oversees Sarasota’s flagship public hospital, highlighting how once-obscure offices are emerging as a new front in the political and societal battles that have intensified across the country since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
Although the contenders are considered underdogs to win on Aug. 23, health policy experts say the campaign is a troubling sign of how ideological divisions are spilling into the world of medical care as fights over abortion, the coronavirus and vaccines increasingly fall across party lines — alarming doctors, hospital administrators and medical experts.
“All you need to do is look at how [school boards] have now become very political … and how boards of education have ignored the science of education,” said Michele Issel, a public health professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “There this new disregard for the professional training that medical people have, and a disregard for the science of what is best for the a population.”
The Sarasota candidates, at least three of whom are skeptical of coronavirus vaccine mandates, are rallying behind the theme of “medical freedom.” The term is increasingly being utilized by the conservative movement nationwide and hits a belief that patients aren’t given enough control over their medical care. Proponents point to vaccine mandates and difficulty accessing unproven coronavirus treatments like Ivermectin that were touted by politicians but rejected by physicians.
“All 4 of us are devoted Christians, conservatives and patriots who deserve to make the [Sarasota Memorial Hospital] system stronger, more accountable with greater transparency,” one of the candidates, Joseph S. Chirillo, a retired physician, wrote in a social media post.
Several Florida-based conservative or far-right organization are supporting Rohe and his running mates in their bid to join the nine-member Sarasota hospital board.
Tamra Farah, senior director of MomForce, the education-focused branch of Moms for America, a group pushing to elect more conservatives to local offices, said campaigns for low-profile positions such as the Sarasota hospital board demonstrate conservatives have “woken up.” Issues involving medical care also increasingly galvanize conservatives to the polls, Farah said, amid their growing distrust of the health care establishment.
“No one should ever feel threatened by one group of doctors’ thoughts versus another group of doctors,” Farah said. “Everyone should have their debates. Everyone should have all the information available. And people should be able to decide for themselves.”
‘Controversial noise’
In Sarasota, the county hospital has long been a source of pride while also serving as a magnet drawing both retirees and doctors and nurses to the region. U.S. News and World Report recently named Sarasota Memorial Hospital as the sixth best hospital in Florida, and the top hospital in the broader Tampa Bay region.
Moderate and left-leaning residents now worry that the hospital’s prized reputation could be shattered if the current board is ousted in favor of more conservative candidates, who have largely still have not explained how they would yield their new powers.
“I am not sure what they are looking to prove, because we have a phenomenal hospital system,” said Teri A Hansen, president and CEO of the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, a Sarasota-based charity that oversees a $636 million endowment. “I would like to think that the people running just want to see it grow and be a winner, but I suspect that is not why they are running.”
As a taxpayer funded public hospital, Sarasota Memorial Hospital also operates as one of the region’s safety net hospitals. Nationwide, 951 of the nation’s 6,093 hospitals are affiliated with a state or local government, according to the American Hospital Association. In Florida, those public hospitals can either have elected or appointed boards of directors.
Sarasota’s elected board members — who represent districts but are elected by voters countywide — hold staggered four-year terms. Sarasota County Public Hospital Board members hire the CEO, provide strategic guidance, oversee the system’s $1.3 billion annual budget, and have the power to assess a property tax to raise money for hospital projects.
The current board members up for reelection this year, all of whom are also Republicans, appear stunned to now face a challenge from the more conservative wing of their party. Many have extensive backgrounds in medicine or business, and find themselves in the middle of a battle that could also help determine whether relatively moderate GOP candidates can continue to fend off more conservative factions.
Darryl W. Henry has served on the hospital board since 2008 and is facing a challenge from Patricia Maraia, a nurse running with the slate of conservative candidates.
Before retiring in Sarasota in 2006, Henry worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, serving as the director of the tech-focused Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration program. In the 1980s, Henry also served as chief engineer of the U.S. military’s “Milnet,” which he described as a forerunner of the internet.
In an interview, Henry said he is not sure why Maraia decided to challenge him, although he recalls how she would show up at board meetings as “controversial noise” during discussions about the hospital’s coronavirus and vaccination policies.
“The people running will probably regret if they won this position,” Henry said. “It is hard. It is time demanding and it requires deep intellectual thought and requires you gaining knowledge of the entire medical process, and entire medical financial process.”
Maraia did not return phone calls seeking comment. On her campaign website, Maraia describes herself as a “conservative who is committed to serving her community” by advocating for “patient’s rights” and the “rights of the medical profession to practice medicine with freedom.”
Another incumbent GOP board member, Joseph J. DeVirgilio, Jr., is president of a consulting company and a former utility executive who also previously served on a hospital board in Upstate New York. DeVirgilio is being challenged by Bridgette Fiorucci, a nurse at Sarasota Memorial Hospital who helped organize opposition to the hospital’s vaccine mandate policies, and one other GOP candidate.
Fiorucci did not respond to telephone and written requests for comment. In January, Fiorucci posted a photograph on Facebook of herself standing beside Robert Malone, a controversial activist who has spread discredited information about coronavirus vaccines.
“Over the last 3 years, we have seen our freedom slowly eroding,” Fiorucci wrote on her campaign website. “Decisions have been made in the medical profession that have ruled over a patients’ autonomy … I want to make sure you have ALL medical options available.”
DeVirgilio, however, said he believes Sarasota voters will continue to support him, noting his experience and the current board’s accomplishments, including overseeing the recent construction of a 100-bed hospital and opening a new cancer care center
“As an individual schooled in engineering,” DeVirgilio added, “I support the expansion of science-based health care initiatives for improved care for my Sarasota neighbors.”
‘Medical freedom’
Located about an hour south of Tampa, Sarasota County is home to about 450,000 residents who live among some of the nation’s top-ranked beaches and historic arts venues. Although the county has been a relative stronghold for Republicans for generations, voters here largely tended to align with the moderate, business-oriented wing of the party.
But over the past 2½ years, Sarasota has been an epicenter of some of Florida’s nastiest brawls over what policies should be implemented to keep residents safe during the pandemic.
Initially, the county school board voted to maintain a mask mandate for students, even though Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and GOP legislators barred school districts from implementing one.
Floridians give DeSantis points for his covid stance. Will it hold?
The policy enraged some parents, leading to months of tense school board meetings. Meanwhile, the public feud over the pandemic increasingly centered around covid patient care at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, even though the facility has consistently earned A ratings for patient safety. Rohe said one incident in particular last summer spurred the conservative challengers’ bids for the board.
In August, Sarasota County resident Stephen Guffanti, a former emergency room physician and outspoken conservative activist, was admitted to Sarasota Memorial Hospital for coronavirus treatment. Guffanti, who was skeptical he really was infected with the virus, was placed in a hospital room with another coronavirus patient. Within days, Guffanti said in an interview, both he and his roommate develop pneumonia — a complication of the virus.
As his roommate’s condition deteriorated, Guffanti said he became worried the man was not receiving quality care and became his “patient advocate.” He said he notified nurses and the on-call doctor that his roommate was getting worse — and accused them of not taking his concerns seriously. After raising his concerns, Guffanti said he was separated from the man and placed in a room by himself. Later, he signed a document to get out of the hospital, even though it was against medical advice. The patient he’d expressed concern about died a few days later, he said.
Kim Savage, a hospital spokeswoman, declined to comment on Guffanti’s allegations, citing privacy laws. But Savage said hospital employees “worked with dedication and diligence throughout this pandemic.” She added “unsubstantiated, untrue and often politically motivated accusations” do “a grave disservice to patients, caregivers and the community.”
But after he was released from the hospital, Guffanti produced viral videos that documented his alleged experience in the hospital and claiming that the hospital had become “a jail” — fueling conspiracy theories that health institutions were trying to inflate coronavirus numbers. The videos quickly circulated among conservative and anti-vaccine groups, leading to demonstrations outside the hospital.
About a month ago, Guffanti decided to press his grievance with the hospital even further by recruiting the slate of candidates to run for the health system’s board, personally reaching out to Rohe, Fiorucci, Maraia and Chirillo to launch their campaigns under the banner of “medical freedom.”
“The biggest problem, and it’s not just here, it’s all around the country, is the interruption of the doctor-patient relationship,” said Rohe, adding Guffanti’s experience at the hospital is one reason he decided to self-treat his own coronavirus symptoms. “If you went to a hospital. Would you want your medical decisions made a bureaucratic? Or by your doctor? … The culture of the hospital has changed.”
‘All we think about is the patients’
Shortly after Rohe and his running mates announced their candidacy, a coalition of conservative political groups began rallying in support, often linking the slate with a simultaneous effort by the right to win a majority on the Sarasota County School board.
In addition to Sarasota Moms for America, the slate has been endorsed by Sarasota Watchdogs, a far-right group whose leaders have been involved in several testy political fights in the county. Rohe said the slate is also being supported activists affiliated with Defend Florida, a group pushing to rewrite state elections laws to limit mail-in ballots.
“Conservatives just want to live our lives, do our own thing, and just be left alone,” said Victor G. Mellor, a local business executive who is supporting the slate. “That didn’t happen [during covid] … so everyone now understands you have to start sacrificing, wake up and get involved.”
Dr. Matthew N. Goldenberg, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, said he’s not surprised the politicization of medicine is now presenting itself in highly localized elections.
“Partisanship is creeping more and more, and in fact sprinting, into all facets of society,” said Goldenberg, who studies political trends in health care. “And one of the things that people can do to hopefully protect themselves is just be aware of that phenomena.”
Issel, the University of North Carolina professor, said a conservative takeover Sarasota’s hospital board could have a variety of implications.
With the board having the authority to raise Sarasota County property taxes, Issel said new board members could use that to drain hospital revenue. If new board members tried to enact policies that limited the administration of vaccinations, for example, Issel said that could result in conflict with major insurance companies.
“Would they pick a new CEO that is aligned with their perspective?” Issel asked. “And how would the new policies of the CEO trickle down?”
Thomas R. Oliver, professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said he worries politicization of health care could eventually filter into the boards of larger, statewide hospital systems.
Some public hospital networks, such as the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority, have boards of directors appointed by governors. And in recent months, some Republican officials have appointed vaccine skeptics to state health care boards or commissions.
“If you suddenly get new boards of government health care systems, you could really impact things significantly and cause a lot of reconsidering of what are our services? Who has a say?” Oliver said.
Dr. James Fiorica, the chief medical officer of the Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, said he doubts the makeup of the board would influence how medical care is offered. Instead, Fiorica said the bigger risk is that a new board could “slow down projects.”
“You certainly don’t want to rock the boat of a good system that is making good progress,” he said.
Social media posts made by one of the conservative candidates, Chirillo, provide some insight into his views. On Facebook, Chirillo, the retired doctor, has downplayed the ongoing spread of the monkeypox virus, mocked the effectiveness of vaccines, and questioned whether the term “assault weapon” should be used to describe such weapons.
Rohe, a former New York City police officer who also previously worked in the financial services industry, also expressed controversial views about the coronavirus vaccine.
“Calling it a vaccination is a joke,” Rohe said. “All it really is is a government-mandated shot to inoculate people to the fact that the government owns your body, and you do not.”
Still, Rohe stressed, if elected he and the rest of his slate will stay focused on bolstering oversight over hospital management, saying they are merely trying to create a hospital where residents feel comfortable talking to their doctors about a variety of treatment options when they need medical care.
“All we think about is the patients,” Rohe said. | 2022-07-30T12:33:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Conservatives promising ‘health freedom’ battle for control of a Florida hospital - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/florida-hospital-conservatives-sarasota-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/florida-hospital-conservatives-sarasota-election/ |
By Chris Graves
A faded flier with photos of eight members of the Rhoden family is tacked to a barn on the family’s property on Union Hill Road near Piketon, Ohio. It asks: “Do you know who murdered us on April 22, 2016?” (Ty Wright/The Washington Post)
PIKE COUNTY, Ohio — Weather has worn the name “Rhoden” from the mailbox on Union Hill Road here in the rural, rolling hills of southwest Ohio.
Six seasons of snow and rain and sun have grayed the outbuildings; faded the “no trespassing” and “private property” signs meant to keep out the curious and the true-crime gawkers. A sole ribbon of once-yellow tape is illegible.
All that remains of evidence that a family once lived — and died — here is a faded poster tacked to a barn and showing photos of smiling faces and a question:
“Do you know who murdered us on April 22, 2016?”
Prosecutors say they know exactly who executed the eight family members, and they are gearing up to present their case to a jury when the first trial in Ohio’s most costly and complex criminal investigation starts in late August. The trial will give onlookers a front-row view into a corner of America known more through stereotypes than complex realities: a place where, often, family protects family at all costs and where love and loyalty trump all else.
“A lot of this, and I don’t mean this in any kind of derogatory way, is the code of the hills,” said Mike Allen, a Cincinnati-based criminal defense lawyer who has monitored the case from the start. “Family sticks together.”
More than six years and thousands of pieces of evidence later, prosecutors are expected to unfurl a diabolical scheme by four members of one family to kill eight members of another.
The alleged motive: to obtain sole custody of a shared daughter, who was a toddler at the time.
George Wagner IV, 30, faces 22 charges alleging that he was part of his family’s criminal enterprise in the planning, plotting, execution and coverup in the shooting deaths of Christopher “Chris” Rhoden Sr., 40; Chris Rhoden’s former wife, Dana Manley Rhoden, 37; their children, Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20, Hanna May Rhoden, 19, and Christopher “Chris” Rhoden Jr., 16; Frankie’s fiancee, Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20; Christopher Sr.’s brother Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and their cousin Gary Rhoden, 38.
They were each shot in the head at close range, most multiple times, while some slept in three trailers and a camper in three locations on family land about an hour south of Columbus. A toddler and two infants — both found beside their dead mothers — were unharmed. The killers fired a total of 32 times.
The mass homicide mystified Ohioans and amateur sleuths around the world until authorities arrested Wagner and his family members in November 2018. The family of four had moved to Alaska in the spring of 2017 amid the investigation and returned in the spring of 2018.
Eight killed in ‘execution-style’ shootings in Ohio, some while sleeping, authorities say
Also indicted on the same charges — including eight counts of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and conspiracy to commit aggravated murder — were George Wagner IV’s father, George “Billy” Wagner III, 51; his mother, Angela Wagner, 51; and his brother, Edward “Jake” Wagner, 29 — who is the father of the child at the center of the custody dispute. In addition, Jake Wagner was indicted on a charge of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.
A gag order remains in the case, barring anyone involved, including all lawyers, from publicly discussing it. All but one of the police reports, and all of the dozens upon dozens of search warrants and court orders, remain sealed. However, details of the crime and the family dynamics that allegedly fueled it have come to light in motions and related hearings in Pike County Common Pleas Court that ramped up after Jake Wagner pleaded guilty on April 22, 2021. The hearings stretched through that spring and summer.
Special prosecutor Angela Canepa has portrayed the Wagners as an insular family that lived together their entire lives, worked together, were home-schooled together, commingled their money and voted as a group on everything, including the decision to kill Hanna Rhoden, the mother of Jake Wagner’s young daughter, and seven of her family members.
Canepa has painted the family as controlling to the point of violence toward anyone — notably the three women involved with the two Wagner sons — who threatened to disrupt the family’s intimate bond. Jake Wagner’s former wife, whom he met and married in Alaska, is expected to testify for the prosecution in the trial, as is George Wagner’s ex-wife, who relinquished full custody of their son years before Jake’s daughter was born. Both women, Canepa alleges, fled for their lives from the Wagner family.
Canepa also contends that as a family, the Wagners committed crimes including arson, drug dealing and theft.
“They were raised in the ways of committing crimes to survive; to lie, cheat and steal,” she said.
Angela Wagner also hacked into social media accounts, which is how the homicide plot first surfaced, according to the indictment. Canepa said Angela Wagner found a private Facebook message that Hanna Rhoden wrote to George Wagner’s former mother-in-law saying the Wagners would have to kill her before she would ever relinquish custody of her daughter.
Then, Canepa alleges, came that fateful family vote.
Once the Wagners voted to kill the Rhodens, Canepa alleges, they spent about four months methodically plotting and planning the executions to guarantee custody of the then-2½-year-old daughter of Jake Wagner and Hanna Rhoden. They all conspired to cover up the killings, she alleges, making a plan for the custody of the children in the event the adults were killed or arrested on the night of the killings.
“They each had a role to play,” Canepa said. She alleges the following:
Angela Wagner bought athletic shoes from Walmart for her sons to wear on the night of the killings. The shoes, which prosecutors allege left bloody footprints at one of the crime scenes, were bought the month of the homicides.
George Wagner bought the “murder truck,” which was to be used only that night in an attempt to avoid detection.
Jake and George Wagner hid in the truck together when their father went to the home of Chris Rhoden Sr. — the first victim — on the night of the killings on a ruse to involve Rhoden in a lucrative drug deal.
The sons had fired weapons under various scenarios to test whether shots could be heard.
Jake Wagner bought a silencer in March 2016 and bought parts to build silencers.
“It was all for one and one for all,” Canepa said.
Mass killings are rarely connected to custody issues, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University in Boston who maintains a database of 498 mass killings in the United States since 2006. He says that the Rhoden family massacre is just one of six mass killings in the past 16 years motivated by child custody.
In a case with more twists and turns than a mountain road, perhaps the most shocking came in 2021 when Jake Wagner and his mother broke their silence after sitting in jail for 2½ years.
Jake Wagner provided a proffered statement, meaning prosecutors cannot use his statements against him in any future criminal proceedings. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to all 23 charges and agreed to testify against each of his family members. As part of the plea deal, if he testifies truthfully, he and his parents and brother would be spared the death penalty if they are convicted.
Until Jake Wagner stood in court for his plea hearing on the fifth anniversary of the killings and said he was guilty, he and his family vehemently denied involvement in one of the largest mass homicides in Ohio’s history. For years, he and his mother expressed sorrow, repeatedly saying they wanted nothing more than for authorities to arrest the killers of the Rhodens, whom they considered friends and business associates. Angela Wagner said that her husband and Chris Rhoden Sr. were like brothers and that she considered Hanna Rhoden a daughter.
Then Jake Wagner told a judge that he had killed five of the eight victims. He will be sentenced to eight consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
According to Canepa, Jake Wagner corroborated the evidence investigators had gathered in the case. He also led investigators to the guns used in the killings and the truck the prosecutor alleged his brother bought solely to be used the night of the killings.
Five months later, in September 2021, murder charges against Angela Wagner were dropped. Prosecutors said she was at home with her two grandchildren — including the child in the custody dispute — when the crimes were committed. She pleaded guilty to 14 lesser charges and will be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Still, Jake and Angela Wagner are only half of the story.
George Wagner and his father, Billy Wagner, have maintained not-guilty pleas in the case. Although Billy Wagner’s trial is tentatively set for October, authorities have said they do not expect it to begin until 2023.
Before the trial of George Wagner IV begins on Aug. 29, lawyers must narrow a jury pool in Pike County, where nearly 20 percent of its 27,900 residents live in poverty, according to the 2020 Ohio Poverty Report. Many could face two months without pay if the trial stretches as long as 60 days, as some estimate it could. The county summoned 1,000 potential jurors who were expected to answer a detailed questionnaire. Lawyers narrowed their pool and will continue questioning individual jurors on Aug. 8.
“We were told … that approximately 20 to 25 percent turnout is typical of those summoned to appear for jury duty,” said John Patrick Parker, one of George Wagner’s attorneys. “That’s simply not acceptable if we’re going to have a fair cross section of the community. And when you factor in how notorious this case is … we anticipate there are going to be several factors that are going to make it difficult, if not impossible, to get a fair jury in this county.”
Even Gov. Mike DeWine (R) attended the hearing where Jake Wagner pleaded guilty, Parker added.
“When’s the last time that happened? Of course, he was the attorney general at the time of the investigation,” Parker said. “But, nonetheless, this case has garnered tremendous attention.”
Pike County Common Pleas Judge Randy Deering denied Parker’s motion to move the trial.
Some wonder whether a fair and impartial jury can be chosen at all, given the pretrial publicity — including one multi-season podcast about the case that has been downloaded millions of times.
Allen, the Cincinnati lawyer who also has been a prosecutor and a municipal judge, said he is not convinced that the case will end up being tried in Pike County’s Civil War-era courthouse in Waverly.
“I’m still of the opinion that there’s a good chance they’ll all end up pleading to something,” he said. “It seems like the prosecution really has its act together and has all the evidence to convict all of them.
“But again, in this thing, there have been so many twists and turns,” he added. “You never know.”
If George Wagner’s case does go to trial, it remains unclear exactly what his defense will be.
Parker has repeatedly argued in motions that his client should not have been charged with aggravated murder and should not face the death penalty because he did not kill the Rhodens. The attorney maintains that his client was not supposed to go on the killing spree.
“George did not shoot or kill anybody. He did not pull the trigger once,” Parker said during a motion hearing.
In his argument to drop the murder charges, Parker said: “When the state has made a bargain with the killer of at least five people in this case, when the state has decided that he doesn’t deserve the death penalty — we believe it’s unconstitutional, improper and an abuse of power to pursue the death penalty against George, when they admitted he didn’t shoot anybody.”
Parker said in a motion that Jake Wagner “clearly stated that George did not shoot anybody … was not supposed to go with Jake and Billy on this murder spree, and only went at the last second to protect Jake from Billy, who it was thought might kill Jake at the end of the series of aggravated murders.”
Ohio law holds, however, that someone involved in a conspiracy to commit murder is as guilty as the person who actually carries out the killing.
“Even if he didn’t pull the trigger, even if he were not there, he can still be convicted on a complicity theory or an accessory theory,” Allen said.
Ohio, like other death-penalty states, has had difficulty obtaining lethal-injection drugs. DeWine has put executions on hold until state legislators approve another method. Ohio’s last execution was in 2018.
George Wagner’s attorneys contend that their client should not be tried on the basis of his family’s past.
“A large part of the state’s argument we anticipate is: ‘He’s a Wagner, and this is how the Wagners operate,’ ” Parker said. “The jury needs to understand the basic premise of our criminal justice system is as follows: Our law punishes people for what they do, not [for] who they are, and so the jury will need to focus their attention on what the evidence proves that George did or didn’t do.”
Parker continued in court: “And he can’t be convicted on what his other family members may have done, or may have testified about.”
Jurors are expected to visit the property where the homicides occurred, although authorities towed away the trailers and camper in 2016. They have been stored in police custody since.
Deering approved a prosecution motion to allow jurors to view other properties that police repeatedly scoured for evidence, including a farmhouse in Peebles, Ohio, where the Wagners lived and where they allegedly voted to kill the Rhodens.
That was news to the new owner, Dwayne DeWeese, 53, who bought the 71½-acre property in 2017, just before the Wagners moved to Alaska.
It’s not the first time he has been surprised.
DeWeese said that he and his wife, Kim, were set to unload their first trailer of household goods on May 10, 2017, when hundreds of police officers swarmed the area with four-wheelers, metal detectors and a search warrant that included a long list of items that investigators were seeking: firearms, bullets, burglary tools, soil samples, vehicle tire impressions, electronic devices, and illegal drugs including marijuana, pharmaceuticals, heroin, cocaine, MDMA — also called ecstasy — and any evidence of drug trafficking.
That was the first of six searches at his property; the last was in the spring of 2021. DeWeese said investigators took at least three guns, bullet fragments and casings from a wooded area behind the house where, he said police told him, the Wagners practiced shooting. Investigators also cut down trees and hauled away sections with bullet fragments in them.
DeWeese said investigators searched a pond on the property, looked in two cisterns — emptying one — and told him they found parts of a homemade gun silencer during one search. He also said they dug holes and left metal fragments all over the property and never put anything back the way they found it.
“The first few times they were here, they were looking for the guns,” said DeWeese, who is fed up with the police, the onlookers and the attention. “They said they thought those guns were buried here.”
DeWeese is also upset that authorities never told him that the Wagners moved back to the area from Alaska. He found out from someone else that they were back in Ohio and working at a trucking company.
An investigator testified this spring that authorities put listening devices in the driving and sleeping cabs of the R & Carriers trucks the Wagners drove and monitored their conversations. He also testified that they tapped the Wagners’ phones. He declined to elaborate on what, if any, information of investigative value they gleaned from the surveillance.
The DeWeeses say they do not keep up with the case. They said they are private people and don’t want to be bothered. But, gawkers have filmed the house, and one man even trespassed, taking photos of the outbuildings and vehicles and posting videos on Facebook pages dedicated to the case.
DeWeese said he’s sure the attention will intensify again in August.
Court personnel are gearing up as well, including by trying to accommodate the families, the news media and the public in the courtroom.
Families will get priority seating in the courtroom. A Rhoden relative has always attended the hearings. Family matriarch Geneva Rhoden, 79, who has been ill, hasn’t been able to attend all the hearings. But when she does, she sits in the front row, often with an oxygen tank, flanked by some of her children.
She was in the courtroom when Jake Wagner pleaded guilty, and when he turned to the family and apologized.
She quietly wept.
Leonard Manley, the outspoken father of Dana Manley Rhoden and one of the first to point a finger at the Wagner family as possible suspects in the early days of the investigation, attended that hearing as well. He died one month after Angela Wagner admitted her involvement.
And as the criminal cases continue, an unlawful-death lawsuit is pending against the Wagner family, including its matriarch, Fredericka Wagner, 80, whose horse-breeding business and more than 2,000-acre property in the area is worth an estimated $4 million. Authorities initially charged her with helping her family plot a coverup, but prosecutors dismissed the charges. She has denied any involvement in the killings.
The Rhoden family intends to use any damages awarded in the civil case for the benefit of Hanna Rhoden’s two children and Frankie Rhoden’s two children, said Brian K. Duncan, the attorney representing the family in the lawsuit.
Nearly three years after ‘execution-style’ killing of family, four charged with murder
He said the arrests brought family members some peace of mind, but little else.
“They are exhausted,” Duncan said. “They have to relive these events almost on a daily basis.
“And every time there is another court hearing or court proceeding, or it is brought to their attention, they relive it again.”
Chris Graves is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. | 2022-07-30T12:33:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Ohio, prosecutors allege scheme by family to kill Rhoden family - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/rhoden-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/rhoden-family/ |
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday. (Max Brucker/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an autocrat astride a country whose GDP is more meager than that of Kansas and whose population is smaller than Michigan’s, has become a role model for America’s right-wing populists who admire his blueprint for dismantling democracy. Shunned in Western Europe, he naturally goes where he is appreciated — and next week will arrive to what is likely to be an adoring welcome at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, in Dallas, where he will deliver a keynote address.
U.S. conservatives who lionize Mr. Orban appear unfazed by his racist, retrograde rhetoric. After all, it’s part and parcel of his brand as what he calls an “illiberal” democrat — his adherence to democratic norms is tissue-thin, at best. Now they are shrugging at his latest jeremiad, in which he attacked the United States for its sanctions against Russia, joked about Nazi gas chambers and, borrowing a page from Nazi ideology, warned that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race.”
Mr. Orban’s words, in the course of an anti-immigration diatribe, triggered outrage across Europe. One of his longtime confidants, Zsuzsa Hegedus, who is Jewish, resigned, saying the speech would appeal to the “most vile racists.”
And yet, there was little upset among CPAC’s organizers, who treated the uproar over the Hungarian leader’s bigotry as if it were a tiff over regulatory policy. “Let’s listen to the man speak,” Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s chair, told an interviewer. “And if people have a disagreement with something he says, they should raise it.”
In fact, most of the CPAC crowd, whose ranks are heavily populated by former president Donald Trump’s partisans, is unlikely to raise objections. To the contrary, many of Mr. Trump’s adherents, like those of Mr. Orban, are enamored of “great replacement” theorists, who regard immigration, pluralism and diversity as existential threats to Western — and White — civilization and a menace to what they consider the ethnic essence of the United States itself. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News pundit, is among the exponents of that view, and a devotee of Mr. Orban.
More broadly, the Hungarian premier’s stock in trade, and his apparent appeal to many on the American far right, is his deft dismantling of democratic institutions, a crusade he has undertaken in the cause of championing Christian civilization and attacking “woke” culture — which includes LGBTQ communities. He has scrapped the quaint idea that elected officials should represent all their constituents, while locking in a suite of laws, and a new constitution, that marginalize his opponents in what amount to rigged elections. Those maneuvers have left them with little chance to gain traction in campaigns or even be heard in national media outlets effectively controlled by the state.
Mr. Orban’s racism, embodied by his attack on the “mixed-race” menace he sees in Europe, is the antithesis of American values. It should get him disinvited from CPAC. Instead, there is every indication he will arrive in Dallas to cheers. | 2022-07-30T12:33:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s visit to CPAC shows how far conservatives have strayed from American values - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-cpac-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-cpac-democracy/ |
Ukrainian refugees at a refugee center in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on April 21.(Heidi Levine for The Washington Post).
The United States has now met President Biden’s goal, announced in March, to legally admit “up to” 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s blood-soaked invasion. That admirable achievement shouldn’t mark the end of this country’s commitment to sharing the burden of the ongoing humanitarian nightmare in Europe. The administration has the means and programs in place to retain an open door for Ukrainians forced from their homes. It should prepare for another 100,000.
That target might seem ambitious. In fact, many of the United States’ closest allies have shouldered a greater refugee burden since the war started in February, either in absolute numbers or, in even more instances, on a per capita basis. Britain, Canada, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, France, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands have all welcomed large populations of Ukrainian migrants. Even the smallest NATO members — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, each with a population of fewer than 3 million — have accepted tens of thousands.
The flood of Ukrainians seeking refuge is a calamity inflicted on the world by Mr. Putin. He regards them not as suffering individuals but as leverage to force the West to cry uncle, and urge Ukraine to sue for peace. To the Kremlin’s strongman, the refugees are of a piece with the flow of Russian gas and oil, which he seems likely to impede as a way to break Europe’s unity and resolve. Democracies, he thinks, are fundamentally weak.
That’s why Mr. Biden’s leadership on Ukrainian migrants is critical. Continuing to admit Ukrainian refugees is important not only to reaffirm the historic U.S. role as a beacon to the world’s most desperate people. It also offers another means, along with military and economic assistance, of showing Mr. Putin that democracies can face down authoritarian brutality.
The challenge of sustaining that commitment should not be underestimated. As of early July, the United Nations estimated that more than 5.6 million Ukrainian refugees had been recorded across Europe. Millions more are displaced inside Ukraine, a devastating toll. Depending on the course of the war — unpredictable but still likely to last many more months, at a minimum — the migrant outflow may continue or accelerate. As Ukrainian cities are captured or rendered uninhabitable by Russian attacks, more migrants could seek refuge farther afield, in Britain, Canada and the United States
As in this country, Canada and Britain have established sponsorship programs, among other methods of entry, under which Ukrainians are resettled in homes. Under the U.S. version of that arrangement, called Uniting for Ukraine, roughly 30,000 migrants have been resettled, and another 30,000 or so have been approved for travel. Applications from would-be sponsors continue to roll in at a brisk pace; many are Ukrainian Americans around New York and Chicago. In Britain and Canada, too, tens of thousands more migrants are expected in the coming months.
U.S. resolve must continue unabated, and it should also grow to include refugees who lack sponsors. How the Biden administration meets this test will be an ongoing barometer of its commitment to American values and traditions. | 2022-07-30T12:33:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. has admitted 100,000 Ukrainian migrants. It must keep going. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/us-has-admitted-100000-ukrainian-migrants-it-must-keep-going/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/us-has-admitted-100000-ukrainian-migrants-it-must-keep-going/ |
Environmental disasters slam Latin America and Caribbean, report says
A man surveys damage from Hurricane Dorian in Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, on Sept. 9, 2019. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Latin America and the Caribbean are home to everything from rainforests to beaches and even glaciers. But a report from a United Nations agency called the World Meteorological Organization suggests one constant in the region’s diverse web of life and landscape: catastrophic climate change and extreme weather events.
The report takes a broad — and sobering — look at the state of the Latin America-Caribbean region’s ecological systems, such as precipitation, sea levels, forest cover and agriculture. Between 2020 and 2022, officials say, the region went through 175 disasters, 88 percent of which originated from the weather, climate or the water.
Andean glaciers have some of the highest rates of loss in the world — at least 30 percent of their area since 1990. Chile is in the midst of a 13-year-long megadrought, the longest, most severe drought in the region in more than 1,000 years. Countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia are also undergoing droughts that have affected everything from agriculture to the power grid.
Heat waves, wildfires and even sandstorms swept through the region in 2021, with 75,000 fire outbreaks occurring in the Brazilian Amazon alone. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon picked up, too, reaching its highest level since 2009 — a total of 4,633 square miles lost. Twenty-two percent more forest was lost in 2021 than 2020.
Some damage was felt more strongly in the region than elsewhere in the world: Sea levels are rising more quickly, and the agency says the region has one of the greatest needs for early-warning systems that could help residents adapt to extremes.
The report also documents the human cost of extreme weather and human-caused climate change, including ruined crops and tourism losses. It’s a tale of disaster and damage, all backed by climate data.
But a kernel of hope exists among the bad news: Researchers point to successful efforts to restore coral reefs affected by warming waters, an example of successful partnerships between academics and regional partners.
“Addressing such interconnected challenges and their associated impacts will require an interconnected effort,” said Mario Cimoli, acting executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. “No matter how it is taken, action must be informed by science.” | 2022-07-30T12:33:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Droughts, fires, sea-level rise hit Latin America, Caribbean hard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/30/environmental-disaster-latin-america-caribbean/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/30/environmental-disaster-latin-america-caribbean/ |
Congressman told longtime Trump adviser on eve of 2019 trial that he would not ‘do a day’ in prison
By Jon Swaine
(Video: "A Storm Foretold")
The lawmaker also told Stone during their conversation that Stone was mentioned “a lot” in redacted portions of Mueller’s report, appearing to refer to portions that the Justice Department had shown to select members of Congress confidentially in a secure room. “They’re going to do you, because you’re not gonna have a defense,” Gaetz told Stone.
The 25-minute recording was captured by a microphone that Stone was wearing on his lapel for a Danish film crew, which was making a feature-length documentary on the veteran Republican operative. The filmmakers allowed Washington Post reporters to review their footage in advance of the release of their film, “A Storm Foretold,” which is expected later this year.
The recording gives a rare unguarded view of Trump confidants candidly discussing legal peril away from public eyes. Mueller’s report said it was possible that Trump had both lied to investigators about his contacts with Stone and was aware Stone might provide damaging testimony against him if he chose to cooperate with prosecutors.
Gaetz is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. At the time of the conversation, the committee was investigating whether Trump might have obstructed justice by floating possible pardons to Stone and other allies who were swept up in Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
In a statement to The Post, Gaetz’s office said he was not speaking on Trump’s behalf during the pardon discussion with Stone. His remarks about secret portions of the Mueller report were not specific enough to violate the terms under which he had been permitted to view them, the statement said.
It also said the conversation was “illegally recorded.” Under Florida law, each participant in a discussion must consent for it to be recorded, provided they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Christoffer Guldbrandsen, the film’s director, said the congressman’s remark about recording devices suggested he had no such expectation. “There is nothing illegal about this recording,” Guldbrandsen told The Post.
In response to an email seeking comment, Stone complained about The Post’s past coverage of his case and Mueller’s report. He did not address questions about the conversation with Gaetz.
Stone, a friend and adviser to Trump since the 1980s, was charged by Mueller with lying to Congress about his communications with Trump’s campaign regarding WikiLeaks’ 2016 release of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign. U.S. authorities determined that the emails were hacked by Russian operatives seeking to boost Trump’s candidacy. Trump and Stone denied to Mueller that they had discussed WikiLeaks, but testimony from other Trump aides contradicted their accounts.
Stone was convicted on seven felony counts that November and sentenced to 40 months in prison. But Trump, who publicly praised Stone for not “flipping” on him, commuted his prison sentence before it began and eventually pardoned him.
‘We saw the skinny redaction’
Gaetz and Stone were speakers on Oct. 11, 2019, at AMPFest, a conference held by the pro-Trump group American Priority at the president’s National Doral golf resort in South Florida. The event made headlines for a video parody showing Trump violently slaying political opponents and media organizations.
Stone was scheduled to stand trial in Washington about four weeks later. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had placed him under a strict gag order early that year after an image of Jackson’s face beside a crosshairs-like logo was posted to Stone’s Instagram account. Stone apologized but was barred from discussing the case in public settings.
“I’m on trial in the District of Columbia. You can imagine the complexion of the jury pool — politically,” said Stone.
“I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interests,” said Stone, who has worked as a consultant to Trump’s businesses and acted as an informal adviser to his 2016 campaign.
“He’s not easy to deal with,” said Stone. “It’s complicated. And one of the problems is those who try to deal with him don’t understand the extent to which he resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed. You can’t just say, ‘Here are your talking points, read these.’ That will never work.”
After he came offstage following his speech in the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom, Stone was joined backstage by Gaetz, a Trump favorite who was speaking later in the afternoon. With event staff coming and going nearby, their conversation turned quickly to Stone’s trial and Mueller’s investigation.
The Justice Department had publicly released a version of Mueller’s final report in which some sections were redacted to protect classified information, grand jury secrecy and active investigations or prosecutions.
Stone had asked Jackson to order prosecutors to show him a full, unredacted version of Mueller’s report. On Aug. 1, 2019, Jackson granted Stone access to some redacted sections relating to him in Vol. 1 of the report, which focused on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Jackson said in her ruling that most of the redacted material in Vol. 2 — which covered Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice — related to Stone, but she declined to let him see it.
The material was covered by a protective order that barred Stone from sharing it with anyone other than his lawyers and from using it “for any purpose” other than his legal defense, Jackson wrote.
Backstage at AMPFest, Stone discussed the Mueller material with Gaetz in broad strokes, claiming that thanks to Jackson’s ruling, he’d viewed “the entire unredacted report,” which he said held no damaging details on him. It is not clear what Stone meant by that remark. Jackson’s order had specified that he could view only certain portions, and Stone complained in his email to The Post this week that some parts of the report were withheld from him.
Separately, the Justice Department had also shown varying amounts of the redacted material to congressional leaders, members of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the House and Senate and a limited number of aides. From mid-June, members of the Judiciary committees, such as Gaetz, were allowed to view some redacted sections in Vol. 2 of Mueller’s report.
Committee members and some aides could review the material in a “secure space” and were “permitted to discuss the report only among themselves,” the Stone prosecutors told Jackson in a court filing. As they negotiated access to the material, committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote then-Attorney General William P. Barr that the committee had agreed that “they cannot discuss what they have seen with anyone else.”
“We saw the skinny redaction, and there was, you know, there was a lot on you that was in the full redact that came out in the skinny redact,” Gaetz said, before stating that Stone was “not going to have a defense.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by the “skinny redaction.”
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about it publicly, said the committee’s agreement not to discuss the redacted material with outsiders was formalized in a written deal with the Justice Department. A Justice official reminded committee members and aides of the conditions when they visited the department’s offices to read the redacted material, the person said. The redacted material was not classified and the agreement was not legally binding, the person said.
The statement from Gaetz’s office said the lawmaker had not violated the confidentiality agreement because he did not disclose “specific content” from the report’s redacted portions. “He did share his perception, which is allowed,” it said.
“I may have to appeal to the big man, because I’ve got … it’s the District of Columbia. We surveyed 120 jurors. Ninety of them know who I am, and they hate my guts,” said Stone.
Prospective jurors in Stone’s trial had completed confidential questionnaires that asked for their views on Trump, Stone and others caught up in Mueller’s investigation. Stone’s lawyers agreed to keep the responses confidential, and no details had been disclosed publicly. Questionnaires completed by those selected as jurors were later leaked to right-wing operatives, prompting an FBI investigation. No findings were ever publicly disclosed.
Gaetz agreed that Stone was “f---ed” because of the D.C. jury, but he stressed that Trump viewed Stone favorably and that Stone was unlikely to spend time in prison after a conviction.
“I don’t think you’re going to go down at all at the end of the day,” Gaetz said.
The statement from Gaetz’s office said the conversation “largely reflects sentiments that Congressman Matt Gaetz shared publicly at the time, or sentiments he still holds today.”
For months, Trump had openly attacked former allies for testifying against him to investigators, complaining they had “flipped” and were lying to help themselves. In interviews and social media posts, Trump said Stone was “very brave,” had shown “guts” and was “somebody that I’ve always liked.”
Stone has always insisted that he had no incriminating information about Trump to offer Mueller and said publicly there was “no circumstance” under which he would testify against Trump. At AMPFest, Stone said he and Trump had not, in fact, discussed WikiLeaks. He reiterated to Gaetz that he would not “fold” under pressure from Mueller’s team.
“It would have been easy to make this go away, but I couldn’t live with myself,” Stone told Gaetz.
“Well, you’re a bulls--- artist, not a liar,” Gaetz said.
“Correct,” Stone said. “There’s a big difference.”
Stone and Gaetz spoke bluntly as the congressman awaited his turn onstage. They discussed their mutual dislike of Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Stone called him “such an a--hole,” and Gaetz said he was “one of my least favorite people I’ve ever had to work with.” Stone mocked the hairstyle and suits worn by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), prompting Gaetz to reply: “Anybody that can land a wife like that needs no advice from me.” Gaetz remarked that his district was so conservative that he effectively never had to campaign for reelection.
In the statement, Gaetz’s office said he stood by those comments.
The pair went on to discuss a photograph of them posing with Joel Greenberg, then the tax collector of Seminole County, Fla. Stone said the photograph had “come back to bite us in the a--.” He did not elaborate. The Orlando Sentinel had reported the previous week that Greenberg had given publicly funded contracts to friends and associates.
“Bite us in the a--?” Gaetz said. “I’m incredibly proud of that.”
The discussion shifted largely to small talk such as a shared dislike of Washington. Gaetz quipped that to escape the capital, he might ask DeSantis to make him head of Florida’s juvenile justice agency, before reflecting that Trump would not permit him to leave.
“He had heard a rumor that I was maybe not gonna run for reelection, and at the Christmas party, he berated me in front of my date. Like, straight berated me,” Gaetz said.
Johnson, the emcee, who had drifted into the conversation, argued it was a “net positive” to be berated by the president in front of a date. “That’s an alpha move,” he said.
Gaetz told The Post in an email, “While I did briefly consider joining the DeSantis administration, I ultimately decided against doing so out of fidelity to serving northwest Floridians in Congress.”
During the October 2019 conversation, talk returned to Stone’s case and to his early morning arrest by the FBI at his Florida home that January. Stone and his supporters had publicly claimed to be outraged that, as a man in his 60s charged with nonviolent crimes, he was roused by heavily armed officers in a dawn raid. Because footage of Stone’s arrest was recorded by a CNN crew waiting outside, Stone alleged that investigators improperly alerted the media before his indictment was unsealed.
“My suspect for who tipped the media off on that is you. You were my first suspect,” Gaetz told Stone backstage at AMPFest.
“Come on, Roger, it was you,” added Johnson. | 2022-07-30T13:51:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matt Gaetz assured Roger Stone of pardon on hot mic, discussed Mueller redactions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/30/roger-stone-matt-gaetz-pardon-mueller/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/30/roger-stone-matt-gaetz-pardon-mueller/ |
Jeremy Barr
Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch's wife, former model Jerry Hall, walk out of Trump International Golf Links in Scotland in June 2016. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
In the frenzied coverage of the Jan. 6 House committee hearings, Fox News has been the outlier. While every other major network carried the first public testimony live in prime time in June, Fox relegated the feed to its little-watched business channel. The network has aired midday hearings live, but Trump-boosting opinion hosts have tended to downplay revelations. When former White House aide Cassidy Hutchison gave bombshell testimony a month ago, Laura Ingraham called it “bad acting.”
But the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, has been watching the hearings with a less dismissive eye. And there are signs that the proceedings have helped convince him that the former president is losing his political expediency.
Speculation over the 91-year-old media executive’s thinking crescendoed after the first set of hearings concluded this month and two of his papers published nearly simultaneous editorials. “Trump’s silence on Jan. 6 is damning,” the New York Post declared. “Character is revealed in a crisis,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board concluded. “Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
Murdoch’s support for Donald Trump has been crucial to his political career and at times to his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss. But as Trump inches closer to a third presidential run under the glare of criminal, civil and governmental investigations, multiple associates of Murdoch told The Washington Post that it appears he has lost his enthusiasm for Trump.
But Murdoch, who controls a vast swath of the political media world, has spent decades learning to ride the waves of U.S. politics and hedge his bets on candidates. Fox has tried to pull away from the 45th president before, only to return in the face of Trump’s fury.
Throughout his career, one of Murdoch’s favorite activities has been getting on the phone with his editors and talking about the big stories of the day. That has continued even as he has retreated from the day-to-day management of his business. (Lachlan Murdoch, his elder son, became executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation in 2019.)
He remains an avid news consumer, and during the Jan. 6 hearings, Murdoch has been calling various executives to discuss revelations the committee has unearthed, according to five current and former Murdoch executives who have talked to him about the proceedings and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations.
One regular call is to Keith Poole, the editor in chief of the New York Post who Murdoch plucked in 2021 from the Sun tabloid in London. Murdoch calls Poole directly on his cellphone and has discussed the hearings with him several times. Another confidant is Paul Gigot, the longtime editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, these people say. (Poole and Murdoch declined to comment; Gigot did not respond to requests for comment.)
By all accounts, Murdoch remains deeply in the political mix and meets often with politicians and their operatives — mainly Republicans.
A conservative, Murdoch has always been a pragmatist when it comes to his political relationships, sometimes backing liberal candidates when it benefits him, as he did with former British prime minister Tony Blair.
To close readers of the Murdoch tea leaves, the editorials didn’t signal a major shift in his thinking regarding Trump but, rather, one more turn in the pair’s long, slowly disintegrating, on-again, off-again relationship.
Murdoch knew Trump for decades as a frequent source and subject for his New York Post tabloid, and he was not initially thrilled with the idea of a Trump presidency. “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” he tweeted in July 2015, after the candidate disparaged Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) service in the Vietnam War. Murdoch even flirted with endorsing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy and invited her to meet. She declined, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
Once Trump emerged as the Republican nominee for president, Murdoch got over his reservations and started to build a mutually beneficial relationship with him. “Appearing loyal to Trump made them money, and the minute it stops making them money, they will stop doing it,” said a former Fox News commentator who closely follows the company. “If it’s bad for their business, they will magically move on, the same way they magically discovered an affinity for him after their last attempt to stop him — during the 2016 primaries — failed.”
On occasions when Fox appeared to show any disloyalty to the president, Trump railed against the network. Perhaps Fox’s greatest offense to Trump was an early election-night call in 2020 that voters in the traditionally conservative state of Arizona had chosen Biden. The prediction, which proved accurate, disrupted Trump’s premature victory party at the White House and brought on a furious backlash from the president, his family and aides — and most painfully for Fox, from millions of Trump supporters and TV watchers. (Murdoch resisted calls from Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to dial back Fox’s projection.)
Trump encouraged his supporters to turn off Fox and switch to Newsmax or One America News — smaller channels that relentlessly champion the former president.
Trump’s edict served its purpose. For one hour on the evening of Dec. 7, 2020, Newsmax’s “Greg Kelly Reports” drew more viewers than Fox’s programming in the valuable 25-to-54 age demographic. It was a blip — Newsmax has not posed a serious challenge to Fox’s ratings in the year and a half since; and One America has since been removed from nearly every major cable provider. But Fox personalities and staffers told The Post that the moment sent shock waves through the staff, who feared it could be a turning point.
Fox seemed to shore up its Trumpian bona fides after that. In January 2021, the network announced that it was converting its 7 p.m. hour from a news program to an opinion show now anchored by the pro-Trump host Jesse Watters.
Ratings have soared since Trump left office, as the network’s opinion shows have feasted on a buffet of perceived Biden administration failures, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the coronavirus pandemic, inflation, gas prices, the border with Mexico and crime.
Some hosts on the network also partially embraced Trump’s ceaseless efforts to delegitimize the 2020 election and remain in office.
In the months after the election, some Fox hosts invited Trump attorneys such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani to come on air, where they made baseless claims about mass election fraud. Two election technology companies sued Fox and its parent company in 2021 over segments that falsely suggested they helped Democrats steal votes.
“We are confident we will prevail in both cases as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected,” Fox said in a statement, adding that the suits are “a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”
Fox News hosts have moved away from discussing the last election since those lawsuits were filed. Meanwhile, texts unearthed by the Jan. 6 committee showed that Fox personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were deeply concerned by Trump supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol that day.
Overall, Trump has received limited criticism on Fox’s prime-time shows for his role in the riot, which he helped inspire with a speech and then attempted to join, according to testimony at the hearings. When their text messages from that day were made public in December, Ingraham and Hannity turned their ire on the House committee for releasing them and the media for reporting it, not Trump.
But as the former president continues to obsess over the 2020 election results despite signs that it could hurt Republican electoral prospects, some at Fox have urged him to move on.
Brian Kilmeade, who co-hosts the Trump-friendly morning show “Fox & Friends,” said in February that the former president’s continued efforts are “wasting our time.” During an interview with Trump in May on the Fox Business Network, host Stuart Varney made a similar plea.
“What I hear from a lot of Republicans is that they don’t want you to look back to the 2020 election and rehash it,” Varney told Trump.
“The press, including Fox, doesn’t want to talk about” election fraud, Trump shot back.
Some longtime backers of Trump, including Varney, even declared his political career to be over after the Capitol attack. “I think President Trump, Donald J. Trump, is done, politically,” Varney said on-air. When asked whether Trump should run again in 2024, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren replied, “I don’t know if that’s the best idea, given all of this.”
Murdoch himself made a similar point during a meeting with shareholders in November. “The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity,” he said. “It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past.”
Murdoch associates say his frustrations with Trump have only grown; the two have barely spoken since Trump left office. But Murdoch’s reputation for pragmatism and Trump’s political durability make it hard to say for sure where their relationship will end up.
That uncertainty was apparent after the Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its first set of hearings on July 21 and the Journal and the New York Post published editorials scolding Trump. It wasn’t the first time either of those Murdoch-owned papers had broken with the former president, but it invited pundits to weigh in, anyway.
“Why Rupert Murdoch Is Finally Done with Donald Trump,” a column in Politico concluded.
“No, the Murdochs haven’t turned on Trump,” Media Matters wrote the same day.
Industry watchers have made much of Fox’s recent decision to cut back on live coverage of Trump rallies, which he still holds regularly. But the network doesn’t lack for Trump stalwarts. Hannity, for instance, has stocked his show with former Trump administration officials and family members.
A Fox News on-air personality, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, expressed doubt that Trump’s biggest boosters at the network “would ever turn on him” but suggested that hosts might prod viewers toward alternatives for the next Republican president — those they think stand a better chance at re-empowering the conservative movement.
On July 26, Trump returned to D.C. to deliver a speech — his first trip to the capital since he left office. Less than a mile away, his vice president turned potential rival, Mike Pence, addressed a smaller crowd.
Fox showed short segments of Trump’s speech throughout the day and aired Pence’s speech live for a full 17 minutes.
And the network has been giving airtime in the past week to another presidential hopeful: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whom Tucker Carlson interviewed Wednesday about the outrages of socially conscious investing.
On Monday morning, the hosts of “Fox & Friends” highlighted DeSantis’s edge over Trump in some polls.
As usual, Trump was watching. On his social media network, Truth Social, he blasted “Fox & Friends” for having “really botched my poll numbers, no doubt on purpose. That show has been terrible — gone to the ‘dark side.’ ” | 2022-07-30T13:51:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Murdochs and Trump aligned for mutual benefit. That's changing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/30/rupert-lachlan-murdoch-donald-trump-fox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/30/rupert-lachlan-murdoch-donald-trump-fox/ |
US President Joe Biden speaks while meeting virtually with his economic team on lowering gas prices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., US, on Friday, July 22, 2022. US gasoline demand remains below where it was this time two years ago as historically high prices keep more drivers off the road than Covid-19 did in the summer of 2020. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
President Joe Biden, or his designated representative, is having a good time tweeting about gasoline prices lately. Just about every time that the national average goes down by a penny, the White House is tweeting about it. We reached peak panic about gas prices about a month ago, Biden pledged to bring them down, and they fell. For sure, the White House wants to take credit. That’s just politics.
Now, the drop is due to a confluence of factors, including weakening demand, falling crude prices and the continued release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. At some point the SPR will run out and have to be refilled — potentially at higher prices. Biden also tried some moral suasion over gas station owners, but most in the business community laughed at that — the profit margins on gasoline are tiny, and gas stations practically sell it at cost already. This represents a policy victory of sorts, though it may be short-lived.
Other presidents have sought credit for favorable moves in economic variables. Throughout most of President Donald Trump’s first term, he tweeted obsessively about the stock market, almost daily for some stretches of time. He thought that his pro-growth policies lifted stocks, and they probably did, at least initially. But as Trump took credit for the stock market again and again, it was inevitable it was going to end badly, and in 2020, it did. Biden’s attempt to take credit for the decline in gas prices could well suffer the same fate. Trump could blame the stock market crash on Covid, and Biden will probably point to Vladimir Putin or oil companies when gas prices reverse course.
I’m not sure why presidents do this. By taking credit for the drop in gas prices, which won’t fall in perpetuity — Biden leads the public to believe that the president has control over an economic variable that he truly has no real control over. There’s no planning or forethought about the messaging when that policy measure ceases to be effective. Gas prices will inevitably go up, blame will be shifted, and Biden will appear weak and ineffective — the exact opposite of what he intended. President Trump didn’t need a lot of help looking foolish at times, but his adversaries were quick to pounce when the stock market crashed.
The question is: Do presidents have the power to move markets at all? The answer is yes — on a very long lag. A president can create the conditions that are necessary for higher stock or lower oil prices, but they cannot actually push prices in one direction or the other for any length of time. For example, I am a big believer that President Ronald Reagan’s supply-side reforms led to stock market gains over the next 20 years. He created the conditions that were necessary for individuals and businesses to flourish. But crucially, the government did not buy stocks, and the rise in stocks wasn’t the ultimate goal of the reforms — just a nice byproduct. If he chose, Biden could create the conditions that are necessary for oil prices to go down, by allowing drilling on federal land, for example. This might not make prices drop immediately, but they could over a period of years. Unfortunately, few people think past the next election cycle.
President Barack Obama was guilty of this, too, though not as much as Trump and Biden. Obama was a bit obsessed with the unemployment rate and thought that there was some immediate nexus between his policies and unemployment, though he was inaugurated at the bottom of the financial crisis, and unemployment would have improved over time anyway as the economy healed. One could make the argument that a decline in the unemployment rate was actually delayed by offering 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, slowing the recovery.
I am fond of saying that for someone who has spent his entire career in politics, Biden is sometimes tremendously bad at politics. In this case, his tweets about gas prices are shortsighted. When the prices go up, this will create disillusionment and possibly even lower his already-sinking approval ratings. The temptation is great for presidents to take credit for positive economic moves out of their control. They seem to forget that they open themselves up for the blame when things go awry. | 2022-07-30T14:04:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Presidents Don’t Move Prices. So Why All the Tweets? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/presidents-dont-move-prices-so-why-all-the-tweets/2022/07/30/5d9107c6-1008-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/presidents-dont-move-prices-so-why-all-the-tweets/2022/07/30/5d9107c6-1008-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
No sooner had one fire in Yosemite been contained than a new one erupted in a different part of the park. This summer’s Western wildfires have brought attention to the risks that climate change brings to America’s national parks and the treasures they contain — like the giant sequoia trees, the largest trees on Earth. In the last two years, fires have consumed nearly 20% of them, according to the Forest Service.
The people who know these forests told me the best place to go to understand the fate of these trees is Kings Canyon, a national park a three-hour drive south of Yosemite. What has happened there is unprecedented in natural history. In Kings Canyon, hundreds of giant sequoias have burned to death — even though these trees were built to burn and survive, and rely on fire to reproduce.
At the park’s visitor center, I met up with Tony Caprio, a fire ecologist who studies the longstanding relationship between fires and forests. The fire that caused the most trouble as it raged through the park was the KNP complex fire of 2021. A normal lightning strike became a freakish mega-fire, exacerbated human-generated climate change and our misguided attempts to control the natural cycles of fire.
Human-generated carbon emissions have contributed to the drying out of the Sierra and other mountain forests by warming the air and reducing snowfall. Since rain tends to run off slopes quickly, snow is crucial for preventing the ground and plant life from drying out. Then there’s fire suppression.
“We suppressed fire in those areas for hundred-plus years,” Caprio told me. That meant there was a tremendous amount of fuel on the ground. The drought conditions made that fuel more flammable. When it caught fire, it burned very hot.
“This is something that’s probably unprecedented in the history of sequoias.”
Standing on a ridge above the area that had burned, Redwood Canyon, he pointed to a healthy grove of the giant trees. These sequoias were saved by “prescribed” burns — planned, small fires done in 2011 and 2012. The clearing of brush and small trees from those fires acted like a wall, protecting the groves from the massive fires that devastated other parts of Redwood Canyon.
The giant sequoias thrived for centuries in a normal, natural cycle of fires. The trees have adapted so the cones open and release their seeds when heated by a fire — a fire that in turn clears the ground so that those seeds can reach soil and germinate.
Some of the trees in this grove are 3,000, even 3,400 years old. In the back of his pickup, Caprio had a core sample of a tree — a stick more than five feet long that recorded thousands of tree rings. He pointed to a section about eight inches from the outer edge, or present time. That was A.D. 1295, he said, when you could see the tree survived a fire, and then had a growth spurt. The fire happened right at the end of the Medieval warm period, and from the rings it looks to have been the worst fire for several thousand years — but it didn’t kill the tree, and the growth spurt probably resulted from the clearing away of competing plants.
We drove partway into Redwood Canyon, and Caprio removed some barriers from the road so we could enter a region that had been closed to tourists because downed trees hadn’t all been cleared. That led to a hiking path through the fire-ravaged area.
The first thing I noticed was how many trunks were black. Everything was covered in soot. But this, he assured me, was the healthier part of the area. You just had to crane your neck to see the crowns of the trees, 200 or more feet in the air, covered with live green needles. Cones were falling, sometimes piled up by squirrels. Each one contained hundreds of seeds the size of oatmeal flakes. A tiny fraction of those would sprout, and a tiny fraction of those sprouts would become new trees.
After two miles of hiking, we reached the bad part — a place called the Sugar Bowl Grove, where we were suddenly surrounded by a ring of blackened trunks. And now, if we looked up, there were no live, green branches. The fire here got so hot, and so high, that it jumped as if climbing a ladder from smaller trees to the crowns of the giants, and spread from one to another until all were dead.
This is something that’s probably unprecedented in the history of sequoias as far as we know, he told me. He was the first person to see the remains, and the one to deliver the bad news to others who worked in the park. “People cried when they saw this,” he said.
Something else is going wrong with some of these trees. Bark beetles started killing sequoias — something never seen until 2014. The beetles are native to this area, and until now, no match for the giant trees, with 15-foot diameter trunks, thick leathery bark and resin that blocks the beetles from boring in. But we’re in a prolonged drought amplified by human-generated global warming. Some of the trees are stressed, weakened.
Giant sequoias aren’t going to go extinct any time soon. Some of the oldest trees have lived in drier areas for decades and have harder wood that better withstands the beetles’ assault. But they live and reproduce so slowly that whenever they do die, they won’t be replaced for centuries, if ever.
Reducing emissions will help more trees survive in the long term. And in the shorter term, prescribed burns can mitigate the threat caused by all those decades of fire suppression and unnatural fuel build up. The downside to prescribed burns is that the smoke won’t stay in the park; it can affect nearby communities. Getting it right isn’t easy: Recent burns in New Mexico got out of control and destroyed hundreds of people’s homes.
But there’s always hope. Americans used to be so callous about these natural wonders they would chop them down for lumber. Anything to make money — even if the wood easily shattered and ended up being used for fence posts.
So we’re learning. And thanks to controlled burning in the past, the Yosemite fire is coming under control, and the sequoias there survived. On the hike back, Caprio bent down and pointed to a tiny little sprig of green sprouting from the ground. That’s an infant sequoia, he told me. And maybe, someday, it will live to be the next generation of giants. | 2022-07-30T14:04:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giant Sequoias Are Built to Withstand Fire, But Not These Fires - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/giant-sequoias-are-built-to-withstand-fire-but-not-these-fires/2022/07/30/5d391214-1008-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/giant-sequoias-are-built-to-withstand-fire-but-not-these-fires/2022/07/30/5d391214-1008-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
In this June 21, 2022 photo, Natalia Aleman, a rising junior at Harrisonburg High School, chops vegetables as part of an Emerging Chefs program hosted by On the Road Collaborative in Harrisonburg, Va. Aleman has participated in the program since the fifth grade. (Jillian Lynch/Daily News-Record via AP)
HARRISONBURG, Va. — For a culinary summer program at a local high school, there can never be too many cooks in the kitchen. | 2022-07-30T14:04:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Program teaches emerging chefs food justice, cooking skills - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/program-teaches-emerging-chefs-food-justice-cooking-skills/2022/07/30/c7fd14c0-1007-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/program-teaches-emerging-chefs-food-justice-cooking-skills/2022/07/30/c7fd14c0-1007-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Alex Jones talks to reporters during a midday break during the trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin on Tuesday. (Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool)
The bankruptcy filing represents the latest financial blow to Jones 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.
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 did not hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims. | 2022-07-30T15:10:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Jones' Infowars media company, Free Speech Systems, files for bankruptcy amid Sandy Hook trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/alex-jones-bankruptcy-infowars-sandy-hook/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/alex-jones-bankruptcy-infowars-sandy-hook/ |
The priceless win a teenager gave everyone who’s been body-shamed
What Olivia Julianna achieved after Rep. Matt Gaetz targeted her was a colossal victory for abortion rights activists. It was also more than that.
Abortion rights activist Olivia Julianna. (Callaghan O'Hare/For The Washington Post)
Of course, he went there.
Of course, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), when reaching for a way to insult abortion rights activists, disparaged their looks.
Of course, when faced with criticism for his words, he felt entitled to share the photo of a teenage activist, directing his many Twitter followers to look at her.
Of course. Of course. Of course.
I know I wasn’t the only woman who felt those two words roll around in her head after learning the congressman targeted 19-year-old Olivia Julianna, leading others to lob hateful words at her.
She publicly shared one message she received. It was filled with expletives and a racial slur aimed at her identity as a queer Latina. The part that can be printed in a family publication reads, “I don’t think you need to worry about anyone wanting to touch your body you fat … Here is a tip for your ‘life long’ struggle. Put the fork down and keep your face out of the dorito bag …”
Most people would agree those words are cruel. But if you are a woman or member of the LGBTQ community, and happen to be in a position that takes you onto social media platforms often, they also probably feel familiar. Too familiar.
You’ve probably received similar ones from strangers who felt they had the right to scrutinize your photo and let you know what they thought of your face or body.
You’ve probably deleted similar ones from your inboxes and, to your annoyance, found yourself thinking about them later.
I know we’re not supposed to admit this, but those body-shaming messages can sting. They can slip just below the skin like a splinter, proving bothersome and distracting, if only temporarily.
If you’re a man reading this and thinking about how you’ve also been body-shamed, that’s not a reason to dismiss the vitriol women and members of the LGBTQ community receive. It’s a reason to empathize. It’s a reason to wonder how often you get those types of messages compared to them.
I know plenty of women who get them regularly. I get them regularly.
The jeans in my closet right now range from size 4 to size 14. As an adult, I have felt confident at all those sizes. Just as the wideness of my nose tells of my Mexican roots, so does my 5-foot-1 height and the thickness of my curves. They are mine. They are me. My stomach may not be flat but it adjusted to accommodate two babies who turned into two little boys who now rest their heads comfortably on it when we cuddle.
They call themselves ‘fat cyclists’ — and they want to get more people, of all sizes, on bikes
When you’re a columnist, getting critical messages is part of the job. You expect people to disagree with your opinions. I try to respond to as many emails from readers as possible, including the cutting ones, because I believe we grow from having respectful dialogue with people who think differently from us. I’m also not easily offended. I once wrote to a reader, “It’s obvious from your email that you feel strongly about this issue, which is why I’m taking the time to write you back (and overlooking that you called me an idiot).”
But when I receive fat-shaming, sexist or racist emails, I immediately delete them. I do that not because they make me feel insecure. I don’t give them that power. I delete them because they are void of respect and usually come from misogynistic trolls who believe the best way to make a point is to claw at a stranger’s skin.
Those trolls, of course, have reason to believe that tactic will work. They’ve been empowered by high-profile figures who openly resort to it.
Gaetz didn’t whisper his body-shaming insults of abortion rights activists. He said them through a microphone before an audience at a conference last Saturday.
“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb,” he said. “These people are odious on the inside and out. They’re like 5′2, 350 pounds and they’re like ‘give me my abortions or I’ll get up and march and protest’ and I’m thinking: ‘March? You look like you got ankles weaker than the legal reasoning behind Roe vs. Wade.’ A few of them need to get up and march. They need to get up and march for like an hour a day, swing those arms, get the blood pumping, maybe mix in a salad.”
If you have been following what happened after that, then you know Olivia Julianna, who publicly goes by her first and middle names for privacy reasons, turned his comments into a colossal win for abortion rights.
After Gaetz posted her photo along with a link to a news story that told of his insults, she called on people to contribute to a fundraiser for the nonprofit Gen Z for Change. As of Friday evening, more than $1.7 million had been raised for abortion funds.
What happened between Gaetz and Olivia Julianna will rightfully be remembered as a million-dollar-plus win for abortion rights activists. But it was also more than that. It brought another victory — one that felt priceless. Within that swell of donations and supportive messages that followed Gaetz’s actions was a collective stance against body-shaming. It was a whole lot of people coming together to recognize a line had been crossed and to show they were not okay doing nothing about it.
“This movement, this mobilization, this collective action — has truly left me in awe,” Olivia Julianna said in a statement Thursday night after the fundraiser passed $1 million.
She also addressed her health in that statement.
“I have struggled with eating disorders and body image issues my entire life, being hospitalized last December in part because of this,” she said. “Representative Gaetz’ comments were reprehensible, disgusting, and outright despicable, but I am glad he directed his bigotry in my direction. We have now turned hatred into healthcare, and people across the country will be able to get access to abortion services because of it.”
Of course, this one event won’t stop body-shaming.
Of course, much more work is needed to change that part of our culture.
After Olivia Julianna took on Gaetz, a woman who is a professional in a field aimed at protecting people tweeted about how she is often fat-shamed. When I reached out to ask her if she would allow me to share that tweet with you, she agreed, but with hesitancy. But what she said next made me decide it wasn’t worth it. She knew it would likely bring her more attacks.
Of course, it would. | 2022-07-30T16:32:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The priceless win a teenager gave everyone who’s been body-shamed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/body-shame-win-teenager-gaetz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/body-shame-win-teenager-gaetz/ |
The fourth phase of the program has reopened to provide short-term rental assistance to residents who fell behind on paying rent because of the pandemic
The fourth phase of Montgomery County’s rent relief program has reopened to provide short-term rental assistance to residents who fell behind on paying rent because of the pandemic. The program, which is open to renters who either didn’t complete a previously submitted application or wish to submit a new application for review, does not have a deadline.
“I am pleased to announce the reopening of the rental relief program. We have additional funds to distribute, and we know that the need for this assistance has not gone away,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich in a statement. “The impact of this pandemic will be with us for quite some time, so I urge eligible residents who are in need to not delay and apply today.”
To be eligible for the fourth phase of the program, households must earn a gross income that is less than half of the median income of households in the county. They must also have experienced pandemic-related financial hardship, have resided in Montgomery County since at least August 2021, have an informal or formal obligation to pay rent and be behind on their rent by at least two months.
Depending on income level and available funds, households are eligible for up to $12,000 total or 18 months of assistance to pay back rent. Households well below the area’s median income level may also be eligible for up to $2,000 to assist in paying utilities.
Renters can fill out an online application here. County representatives are available to help complete the application for those without internet access or need other accommodations. Applications will be processed based on priority factors including income, eviction risk and geographic location.
As of July 24, the county has distributed $79.1 million in financial assistance through the rent relief program, which launched May 2020. The program is managed by Montgomery County’s Department of Health and Human Services with funding from the Department of Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
Renters facing immediate threat of eviction can call 311 Monday through Friday to be connected with the county’s Housing Stabilization Services. | 2022-07-30T16:32:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County opens fourth phase of pandemic rent relief program - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/rent-relief-montgomery-county-covid19/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/rent-relief-montgomery-county-covid19/ |
The death toll in Eastern Kentucky has risen to 25 people, including several children, as search-and-rescue teams continue scouring communities in the Appalachian foothills for survivors of devastating floods.
President Biden and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) have both issued disaster declarations for communities battered by heavy rainfall and rising waters in recent days.
“We’ve got some tough news to share out of Eastern Kentucky today, where we are still in the search and rescue phase,” Beshear wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning. “Our death toll has risen to 25 lost, and that number is likely to increase.”
“To everyone in Eastern Kentucky, we are going to be there for you today and in the weeks, months and years ahead,” he added. “We will get through this together.”
First responders conducted about 660 air rescues alone, Beshear said during an interview on NPR on Saturday.
“It is devastating. We have whole towns underwater,” Beshear said on NPR. | 2022-07-30T17:03:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At least 25 dead in Kentucky in devastating flood, governor says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/kentucky-flooding-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/30/kentucky-flooding-dead/ |
Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals spent the first week of training camp talking about his contract. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
For Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals, embarrassment cannot be removed as easily as an ill-conceived clause in a contract. The independent film study addendum is gone from Murray’s new $230 million pact. However, a broken trust is evident, shards everywhere, and in an organization full of front-runners, the damage may be irreparable.
After three years of working with their 24-year-old franchise quarterback, the Cardinals did not have enough confidence in Murray’s professionalism to resist taking the flabbergasting step of putting in writing their desire to micromanage his preparation. After feeling like he took too much blame for Arizona’s latest collapse last season, Murray had already showed signs of disenchantment with the Cardinals before this contract negotiation. The team and its most indispensable player may have a piece of paper that can keep them together for six more years, but this is no fairy-tale sports marriage.
It’s a business arrangement that both sides would have been foolish to abandon too early. The Cardinals have the most coveted asset in football: a young, multifaceted quarterback who can carry an offense. Murray, the first pick of the 2019 NFL draft, plays for a coach who has known him since high school and in an offense that suits his dual-threat abilities. With his five-year extension, he will be among the league’s highest-paid players starting next season. Stars are always in a hurry to sign that lucrative second contract. Yet for all the security this deal gives Murray and Arizona, the relationship seems so fragile.
Candace Buckner: Kyler can’t play today, guys. He’s got to finish his homework.
They can try to use the fan and media reaction to the leaking of that short-lived homework clause as the source of their frustration, but it won’t mask the real problems. The Cardinals do not trust their quarterback. Murray cannot trust a franchise that would insult him like that. And on the field, no one can trust this team because, under Coach Kliff Kingsbury, it has played its worst during the most important times.
“To think that I can accomplish everything that I have accomplished in my career and not be a student of the game and not have that passion and not take this serious is disrespectful, and it’s almost a joke,” said Murray, who became the No. 1 pick despite concerns that, at 5-foot-10, he was too short to be a top-tier player. “To me, I’m flattered. I want to say flattered that you all think that at my size, I can go out there and not prepare for the game and not take it serious. It’s disrespectful, I feel like, to my peers, to all the great athletes and great players that are in this league. This game is too hard. To play the position that I play in this league, it’s too hard.”
During a week in which the Athletic wrote a story in which anonymous league sources disparaged former MVPs Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, it felt like open season on the accomplishments of Black quarterbacks who have graced the game with their exciting brands of football. Such negative perceptions are ludicrous — and informative, because they show how hard it will be to achieve lasting change in a sport that still otherizes Black quarterbacks instead of respecting them as standard bearers in an evolving game.
“Obviously, the Black quarterback has had to battle to be in this position that we are in, to have this many guys in the league playing,” Mahomes told reporters after being referred to as playing “streetball” in an anonymous quote. “Every day, we’re proving that we should have been playing the whole time. We’ve got guys that can think just as well as they can use their athleticism. It’s always weird when you see guys like me, Lamar, Kyler kind of get that on them when other guys don’t. But at the same time we’re going out there to prove ourselves every day to show we can be some of the best quarterbacks in the league.”
But it’s also important to look beyond surface-level generalization here. The anonymous criticisms of Mahomes and Jackson were remarks to a reporter from outside sources. In the case of Murray, the Cardinals did the smack-talking, then wrote it down, with rules that specified not playing video games while studying, among other things. And for some reason, Murray, with the guidance of his agent, still went with it and signed.
It leaves a sense that Murray knows he has some maturing to do. Which is not an indictment at his age. When reporters asked if he was mad the Cardinals included the addendum, he didn’t comment. So he was very mad. But with an offer that guaranteed him more than $100 million, he opted for pragmatism over emotion.
From trash talk to Kanye, sounds tell the story of training camp
As soon as there was scrutiny, the Cardinals struck the homework requirement.
Good try with that boilerplate defense. The commitment reflected in that contract is one that any other team in Arizona’s situation would have offered Murray. At 24, he’s a top-10 NFL quarterback. If he were available in an open market, three-fourths of the league would stampede to pay him nine figures. The contract is smart business, for asset protection if nothing else. | 2022-07-30T17:03:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyler Murray's contract shows the Arizona Cardinals still don't trust him - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/kyler-murray-contract-cardinals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/kyler-murray-contract-cardinals/ |
Ukraine Live Briefing: Russia accused of ‘deliberate mass murder’; Blinken ...
A war crime prosecutor kneels near a university facility in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, that was shelled on July 15. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
ODESSA — Amnesty International and the European Union have backed Kyiv in calling for an investigation into footage circulating online that appears to show pro-Russian forces castrating and executing a captive Ukrainian fighter.
“This horrific assault is yet another apparent example of complete disregard for human life and dignity in Ukraine committed by Russian forces,” Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said Friday.
In a roughly 1½-minute-long video, a man dressed in military fatigues, wearing a “Z” patch and an orange-and-black ribbon associated with Russian forces, castrates the bound prisoner using a green utility knife.
A separate video shared on pro-Russian Telegram channels shows a single shot being fired into the prisoner’s head.
Database of 235 videos exposes the horrors of war in Ukraine
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the men in the footage as Russian “propagandists” delighting in torture. “But the fog of war will not help to avoid punishment for the executioners,” he tweeted. “We will identify and get to each of you.”
Social media users, investigative journalists and members of conflict intelligence groups have been poring over other footage of Russian forces available online, in an attempt to identify the men shown in the videos. The Post was unable to identify the captive in the footage.
Aric Toler, director of research and training at the investigative collective Bellingcat, said the presence of the “Z” symbol, which has become an emblem of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on a car in the background in one video “goes against some claims ... that the video may be old and just now emerging after a year or two.”
The E.U.’s top diplomat described the footage as an example of the “inhumane, barbaric acts” that amount to war crimes.
“Evidence in form of appalling video footage has been widely shared on pro-Kremlin social networks today, in which Russian soldiers commit a heinous atrocity against a Ukrainian prisoner of war,” Josep Borrell said Friday in reference to the gruesome videos. “The European Union condemns in the strongest possible terms the atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces and their proxies.”
Amnesty’s statement said the London-based rights group has documented crimes under international law during Russia’s war on Ukraine, including summary killings of captives of Russian-backed separatists and extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces.
After the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kyiv’s suburbs earlier in the conflict, images of bodies lying in the streets and evidence of torture in Bucha, near the capital, prompted global outrage — and more Western sanctions against Russia. Moscow has dismissed the accusations.
As Russian bombs pummel Ukrainian cities, Kyiv says it is collecting evidence around the country to investigate and prosecute hundreds of alleged war crimes by Russian forces during the war, now in its sixth month.
In April, a Ukrainian official said an investigation would be launched after a graphic video shared online showed the apparent killing by Ukrainian forces of a Russian fighter lying on the ground. | 2022-07-30T17:37:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video appearing to show pro-Russian forces castrating Ukrainian fighter condemned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/ukraine-russia-video-castration-soldier/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/30/ukraine-russia-video-castration-soldier/ |
By Shabana Basij-Rasikh
Afghan women wait to receive cash aid for displaced people in Kabul on July 28. (Ali Khara/Reuters)
In Afghanistan, women now talk about their futures in the past tense. I was on a Zoom call recently with two young university graduates in Kabul, when I asked them about their plans. “I hoped to go …,” they answered. “I planned to do …”
But they won’t. They can’t. They have been judged and the verdict rendered: They are female, and for that, from the Taliban, there can be no mercy.
It’s been 11 months since the fall of Kabul, and the vanishing of women is nearly complete. The men who rule my country wield their control with a casual cruelty that can be breathtaking. Just this month, the Taliban told female employees of Afghanistan’s finance ministry — well-educated, well-qualified women barred from their workplace for these past 11 months — to send in male relatives to do their jobs because the ministry’s workload was becoming quite heavy.
Vanished. Just like the freedom to work in your chosen profession. The freedom to travel without a chaperone. The freedom to decide what you will wear in public. The freedom to go to school beyond sixth grade.
None of that will be necessary, the Taliban says. Not for Afghan women. The blue burqa awaits you. At puberty, your education ends, your autonomy ends. Your future is a memory you never had a chance to make.
Eleven months is all it took. The great vanishing of Afghan women is happening again before the eyes of the world, just the way it did in the 1990s when I was a child growing up under the Taliban’s first regime — a girl with no choice but to attend secret schools, walking frightened through Kabul’s streets among the blue shrouds of invisible women.
I am a woman now, in exile abroad, and I haven’t forgotten what those days felt like — just like I haven’t forgotten what I saw in the years after the Taliban’s retreat in 2001.
I haven’t forgotten the Afghan women who returned home, those educated exiles who had studied overseas and came back to take jobs in our public and private sectors and showed all of us that our futures were exactly that — our futures. Ours to shape.
In August, you’ll be seeing Afghanistan in the headlines again. It will be a year since the Taliban’s return and the U.S.-led evacuation of Kabul, an evacuation my students and I were part of. You’ll hear the stories of refugees scattered around the world, and of the immigration purgatory so many find themselves in, waiting for the chance to build new lives.
These refugees must have access to quality education — women and girls in particular. My school and I are committed to the effort, and the international community must make investment in these women and girls an aid priority, especially in those who will not soon leave the transit camps in which they live.
Many girls in these camps have not had schooling of any kind for a year or even longer. To ignore these girls is to do the Taliban’s job for them. The men who rule my nation fear what an educated girl can become and what an educated woman can create. I say, let them fear us.
They remember who led the way in reviving Afghanistan after the demise of their first regime. By investing in the education of Afghan refugees, we work to make that past prologue.
We are the women of Afghanistan. And our futures are ours. | 2022-07-30T18:38:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ignoring Afghan women and girls is to do the Taliban’s work for them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/ignoring-afghan-women-is-to-do-the-talibans-work-for-them/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/ignoring-afghan-women-is-to-do-the-talibans-work-for-them/ |
The climate bill offers a boost to Biden. Can it change the equation?
Democrats believe this summer’s events, including the Supreme Court decision on abortion, are energizing their voters. But core issues like inflation and Biden’s approval ratings continue to push against Democratic candidates.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks about his deal with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at a news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The surprise announcement of a deal on a climate, prescription drugs and tax bill, which could give President Biden a much-needed legislative victory, is the latest in a series of summer developments that have put a question mark next to assumptions about the outcome of November midterm elections. Are Democrats onto something or are they fooling themselves?
At the start of the year, the basic outline for the November elections was clear. Republicans were on a path to win and maybe win big, most notably taking back control of the House. Everything tilted against the Democrats: Inflation, Biden’s anemic approval ratings, and history (the president’s party, with rare exceptions, loses seats in the first midterm of a new presidency).
But events — expected and unexpected — have since intervened, particularly the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and several more mass shootings, especially the killing of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex., which led to passage of the first gun safety bill in a decade. Add to that the possibility of enactment of a package that everyone had said was on life support a few weeks ago after Sen. Joe Manchin III seemed to walk away from the negotiating table, citing concerns about inflation.
Suddenly this week the West Virginia Democrat, who has been at the center of what rises or falls legislatively, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) came together to agree on a package that, while smaller than Biden’s original Build Back Better bill, was far bigger than anyone thought possible earlier this month.
Schumer and Manchin produced the biggest climate bill in history, which also includes provisions designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs, extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, establish a corporate minimum tax and close a loophole that some wealthy taxpayers use to lower their tax rates. The bill calls for $433 billion in new spending, including $385 billion to combat climate change. It would raise an estimated $739 billion in new revenue over the next decade.
Their Democratic colleagues may have been stunned, but Republicans were outraged after having helped pass a bipartisan semiconductor bill.
Here is what is in the Schumer-Manchin package
Passage of the climate bill would give Biden and Democratic candidates something tangible to talk about this fall, and the bill’s title — the Inflation Reduction Act — shows just how much Democrats need an antidote to the high cost of gasoline, food and many other products. Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary whose warnings in 2021 that the Biden spending initiatives risked triggering inflation were largely dismissed by the White House, has weighed in on the Schumer-Manchin package. He says it likely will help lower the rate of inflation (though he still worries about a possible recession).
The path to passage of the Schumer-Manchin bill is potentially tortuous, given the fact that there are not expected to be any Republican votes. The sometimes enigmatic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has yet to be heard from, and until she’s satisfied, the Democrats can’t get the bill out of the Senate. More twists could come in the House. Another emerging wave of the coronavirus adds another wrinkle to the timeline.
If the bill does reach Biden’s desk, then the issue is whether the new measure will break through with the public enough to help Democratic candidates in November. Neither the $2 trillion stimulus package nor the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which were passed last year, have had enough staying power to boost perceptions of Biden among the electorate. The president’s approval rating is still net negative despite those achievements. What’s to say this bill, other than that it is happening closer to November, will be different?
Still, when added to the high court’s abortion decision and public revulsion over mass shootings, the events of the summer are seen as having the potential to energize the Democratic base and improve Biden’s standing among those in his own party. If so, that could limit Democratic losses in the House (though Republicans are still favored to win control) and brighten the party’s hopes of maintaining its tenuous hold on the Senate. But there are still a lot of ifs in those presumptions.
The strategists working campaigns this year are looking closely at how people say they would vote in congressional races, a question known in the polling world as the generic ballot test. In recent weeks, Democrats have been narrowly ahead and in a stronger position than they were earlier in the year. But Republicans and Democrats interpret those numbers differently.
Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake have teamed up for three decades on a series called the Battleground Poll, now housed at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. The latest in this series was released Thursday and it showed Democrats leading on this congressional ballot test by 48 percent to 46 percent. Some other recent polls have shown Democrats with a bigger advantage, while a few show Republicans ahead. The RealClearPolitics average on Friday gave the GOP an advantage of about one percentage point.
In a call with reporters on Thursday, the two pollsters offered differing interpretations of their current numbers. Goeas began by noting that the generic ballot question has been historically skewed toward the Democrats, which is to say Republicans have done well even when the generic ballot question showed a Democratic advantage.
“If the generic ballot is within five points, usually that means we (Republicans) pick up some seats,” he said. “But I think the big question for Republicans is not whether we win control of Congress — I think we’re moving in that direction from everything I’m seeing — but whether we win it by five seats or do we win it by 25 seats?” That’s where motivation and enthusiasm come into play.
Lake countered by saying that political conditions today are different than they were, say, in 2010, and that can affect how people will vote. Traditional assumptions about politics may hold less weight at a time when the Republican Party embraces former president Donald Trump’s denials of the 2020 election results, and the midterms could bring more believers in Trump’s lies to power. The combination of the overturning of Roe, the issue of assault weapons and the hearings by the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have helped balance the levels of intensity and motivation among voters in the two parties. “I think we have a good chance to avoid the kind of sweeping losses that both parties have faced in the first off-year election,” Lake said.
Goeas agreed that Republican and Democratic voters are currently closer to equal in their intensity. The question he asked was whether that’s transitory or something that will carry through to November. Do the issues of summer remain potent when the votes are cast, or do people fall back to the issues that have been uppermost in the voters’ minds all year — inflation and crime and now the threat of a recession along with that?
That is the biggest question as the primary season winds to a close and more voters begin paying attention to their choices for November. Right now, Democrats see reasons to think that their losses in the House can be held to a point where Republicans would have a narrow majority next January and that, because of the flaws of some of the GOP’s candidates for the Senate, maintaining control there is possible.
But fundamentals are what fundamentals are. Biden is unpopular, the cost of living looms large, a possible recession is on the horizon unless the Federal Reserve calibrates things skillfully, and most people think the country is off track. Democrats may be modestly optimistic today, but come September and October they will be measuring the drag that Biden’s standing puts on all their candidates and whether what looks helpful now has had the staying power to affect those fundamentals. | 2022-07-30T18:38:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate bill offers boost to Biden, Democrats. Can it change their midterm fortunes? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/climate-bill-midterms-sundaytake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/climate-bill-midterms-sundaytake/ |
Baltimore City could soon regain control of troubled water treatment plant
“I don’t know if we can legally do that,” Currey said. “What we can do is work with the city to say, ‘Okay, can we keep MES on-site?’ ”
MDE ordered the Maryland Environmental Service to take over the city plant’s operation following an inspection that showed serious maintenance problems causing months of excess discharges of nutrients and bacteria into the Back River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The Environmental Service, a government entity that operates smaller wastewater treatment facilities around the state, sent a team to assess the facility and jump-start repairs.
The city initially balked at the state’s intervention at Back River, challenging it in court. But after negotiations, the city agreed to reimburse the state for its help at the plant. The state agreed that it would leave once the plant had achieved 90 straight days of compliance.
“I can’t do anything on the river. My boat is hanging on the lift,” Essex resident Jason Glanville said. “I can’t even wade out to it to put the plug into it in fear of getting a[n] . . . infection.”
Some said they’ve continued to see clumpy matter floating in Back River that they worry comes from the plant. MDE scientists previously concluded that some of the material found floating in the river was mats of algae. The release of excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, both found in sewage, can cause excess algae growth in bodies of water, which starves it of oxygen and can kill marine life. | 2022-07-30T20:10:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore City could soon regain control of troubled water treatment plant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-city-could-soon-regain-control-of-troubled-water-treatment-plant/2022/07/30/ac52c1ce-0ed7-11ed-bf3a-cdf532019c52_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-city-could-soon-regain-control-of-troubled-water-treatment-plant/2022/07/30/ac52c1ce-0ed7-11ed-bf3a-cdf532019c52_story.html |
By Courtney Lucas
A home sits almost completely submerged along Route 15 near Jackson, Ky. (Arden S. Barnes/For The Washington Post)
Courtney Lucas is a writer living in Pikeville, Ky.
On Thursday night in Hindman, Ky., I stumbled through pelting rain, guided by only lightning flashes, waded through creeks that once were streets and moved my car to higher ground. Then I went inside a building that already had several inches of water on the floor and watched as the only road to or from the building turned into a rushing river four feet deep with a current strong enough to carry away cars and houses.
The disaster here in eastern Kentucky was like nothing I’d ever seen before — but some of the online response to it was depressingly familiar. “These people got what they voted for,” said one post. “Elect a turtle, learn to swim,” read another. “Maybe it’s God’s punishment for being a bastion of ignorance and regression.” Or, my personal favorite, “What are those houses doing there along the river in the first place?”
I scrolled through social-media post after social-media post of self-proclaimed Democrats, liberals and leftists declaring the flood some kind of punishment for the Republican-controlled state that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnellcalls home. Whenever a natural disaster occurs in Kentucky, as with the 2021 tornados that ripped through western part of the state, killing more than 70 people, I see online derision about climate-change-denying Republicans or just about general Republican corruption.
Meanwhile, on Facebook, my friends and acquaintances shared images of the devastation — families stranded on rooftops, a bedridden person awaiting rescue in a bedroom filling with brown water, lost pets, found pets — and desperate pleas for help escaping the rising waters or contacting missing loved ones. At least 25 people have died, and more rain is coming.
I have always proudly voted for Democratic candidates in local, state and federal elections. The first vote I cast in a presidential election was for Hillary Clinton, and I gladly voted for Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who has gracefully led this state through the pandemic.
I support the Black Lives Matter movement, abortion rights, same-sex marriage — all the things good Democrats are supposed to support. I have also always been an Appalachian, a part of my identity that I cherish. I was born and raised in Pikeville, as were my parents, my grandparents and many generations before them.
This week, when I saw two very different stories about the flooding unfold on social media, I wondered if I was an “us” or a “them,” if I should stand with my party or my people. Democrats often justifiably accuse Republicans of choosing party over people. You don’t have to look hard for examples — in mid-July, it was Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania voting against federal protections for same-sex marriage and then three days later attending his son’s same-sex wedding.
Democrats tend to view themselves as being above such behavior. But what I saw on social media suggests that more than a few can’t put people before party even when lives are in danger.
I know, you can’t deduce too much from the awful things people say online. But when those comments draw dozens of like-minded replies, and you know plenty of these people’s friends and allies are likely thinking the same thing but just aren’t putting it online, that’s disheartening — and infuriating.
People need a scapegoat for their political frustrations, and Appalachia’s complicated history of exploitation and extraction makes it the perfect candidate. It’s a region that outsiders have a hard time understanding, a region that was blamed for helping elect Donald Trump. Too many of my fellow Democrats have become calloused to places like eastern Kentucky because they are deemed a lost cause. That makes things only more difficult for the people and organizers who are actively working to try to change this part of the country and make it a better place.
The flood waters didn’t check voter registration before taking cars, homes and lives. Yard signs proclaiming “In this house we believe …” were not going to make the water change course and spare the homes of Democrats. But even if this were possible, even if the only people affected by the floods were those who voted for McConnell and Trump, even if the only homes destroyed belonged to gun-toting, Capitol-insurrection-attending, bigoted, worst-of-the-worst Republicans, they are still human beings, and no one deserves the devastation that I’ve seen. No one.
If the choice is between party or people, I’ll choose to stand by my people every time. Although flooding on this scale is unprecedented, the people of eastern Kentucky and Appalachia are resilient, and we will continue living here and celebrating our shared culture, even when we don’t share each other’s politics. | 2022-07-30T20:10:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Kentucky flooding is horrific. So is some Democrats’ lack of sympathy. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/eastern-kentucky-flooding-democrats-response/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/30/eastern-kentucky-flooding-democrats-response/ |
Following the end of Roe v. Wade, many in the GOP have embraced uncompromising positions and loaded rhetoric out of step with mainstream public opinion.
Antiabortion demonstrators protest during a special session of the Indiana State Senate at the Capitol building in Indianapolis on Tuesday, July 26, 2022. (Cheney Orr/Bloomberg)
The Texas attorney general said he would be willing to defend the state’s defunct anti-sodomy law, while the a GOP Senate candidate in Arizona has called for a nationwide abortion ban — two positions also out of step with public opinion.
And some of the party’s most vocal members traffic in extreme and inflammatory rhetoric — from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) claiming that heterosexual people will disappear while denouncing “trans terrorist” educators, to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) calling abortion rights protesters ugly: “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
In Wisconsin, Democrats have hammered Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for his statements on abortion, including his comment that the end of Roe "might be a little messy for some people.” He recently put out a lengthy statement saying he supports exceptions for rape and incest and free contraception for those cannot afford it; this month he also said he has “no reason to oppose” a federal bill protecting same-sex marriage rights now under consideration in the Senate.
“The vast majority of America … are not where the extreme sides are,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who has the endorsement of major antiabortion groups and criticizes the stance of both Republicans and Democrats. “They want guardrails, and they want to be reasonable about it and particularly compassionate to women who’ve been wronged.”
Mace was among a handful of Republicans to vote for a federal bill guaranteeing access to birth control and walked around the U.S. Capitol last week with a message taped to the back of her blazer: “My state is banning exceptions — PROTECT CONTRACEPTION.” She has been advocating for exceptions in cases of rape and incest and says she dropped out of high school after being sexually assaulted.
A federal bill to prevent states from banning travel for abortion also met Republican opposition in the Senate this month, underscoring a contrast with public opinion. About 8 in 10 Americans — including 64 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of independents — say states that ban abortion should not be allowed to outlaw travel for the procedure, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted a month after the Supreme Court struck down Roe.
Americans dismayed at end of Roe less likely to vote in November, new poll finds
“Talking to, you know, these college educated suburban women — I would say that the issue with abortion is that the economy still looms very large,” said Sarah Longwell, a moderate D.C.-based Republican strategist who has been running focus groups of voters across parties.
“This isn’t just anti-women rhetoric,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn). “This is an anti-women agenda that is actually becoming law in a very scary and quick way.”
Jennifer Lim, the executive director of Republican Women for Progress — which has criticized the GOP’s transformation under Trump — agreed. She said LGBTQ rights are another social issue where Republicans are “moving in the wrong direction” without a cohesive response from the party.
The offices of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that “Democrats are out-of-touch on every single issue from the economy to abortion and voters will be sure to remind them in November.”
Charles Moran — the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a national group for gay conservatives — pointed to significant GOP support for the federal same-sex marriage bill as evidence of progress. Forty-seven House Republicans joined Democrats to pass the measure, and supporters in the Senate have been working to get 10 GOP votes.
Moran also said he found nothing problematic in a recent social media post from Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, which ranked politicians by their likelihood of getting monkeypox, a disease that in the U.S. is spreading mostly between men who have sex with men. On one end was Donald Trump; on the other was Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic transportation secretary, who is gay. In the middle was Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), whose criticism of Trump has drawn the right’s ire. | 2022-07-30T20:10:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Some Republicans fear party's extremes on abortion, gay rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/republicans-roe-abortion-lgbt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/republicans-roe-abortion-lgbt/ |
Mystics’ comeback falls short as Storm gets leg up in standings
Mystics center Shakira Austin and Storm center Ezi Magbegor dive for a loose ball Saturday during the teams' game at Entertainment and Sports Arena in Washington. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)
Game on the line, playoff seeding at stake and a head-to-head tiebreaker about to be determined, the Washington Mystics put the ball in the hands of their two leaders. They came up empty both times.
With the chance to move up to No. 4 in the overall standings, which would put them in position to host a playoff series, the Mystics fell, 82-77, to the Seattle Storm. Both teams have six games remaining, and now the Storm (19-11) not only lead by a game but hold the tiebreak between the teams.
The teams will play each other again Sunday at Entertainment and Sports Arena, with the Mystics (18-12) getting the opportunity to pull even. With Saturday’s win, the Storm clinched a playoff spot.
“These are like the best games,” Mystics forward Elena Delle Donne said. “Obviously, when you lose, they're not as fun. But they're just fun, playoff-atmosphere type of games. Our crowd was so in it. These are the games we play for and live for.
“Unfortunately the outcome isn’t what we like to see, but these are great preparation games.”
Washington rallied from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to trail by one with 21 seconds left. The two-time MVP Delle Donne drove left against Ezi Magbegor and missed a runner from seven feet out. The Mystics were looking for a foul call that never came. Seattle’s Breanna Stewart hit a pair of free throws to go up 80-77 with 11.8 seconds remaining, and the Mystics had a chance to tie the game with a three. Natasha Cloud ended up with a wide-open 28-footer that rimmed out.
Delle Donne was the most dominant player on the floor and finished with 22 points on 50 percent shooting, five rebounds and three blocks. Ariel Atkins added 13 points on her 26th birthday and Shakira Austin finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds, the rookie’s third double-double. Cloud also had a double-double with 10 points and 11 assists.
Stewart (18 points), Jewell Loyd (17) and Tina Charles (16, nine rebounds) did the heavy lifting for the Storm.
“We can’t let one mistake domino-effect the rest of the next play and different plays after that,” Mystics guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough said. “I think that was one of our biggest things we let one play affect the next.”
Here’s what else to know about Saturday’s game:
The deciding run
The Storm used a 20-5 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters to build their 15-point cushion and held on the rest of the way. The Mystics made just one field goal during that run. Seven of Washington’s 16 turnovers came during that 7:35 stretch.
“We need to make some of the layups we missed, we need to not turn it over,” Coach Mike Thibault said. “That had a playoff kind of atmosphere to it. A lot of physicality there, and we’re going to have to play through it. … I hope that we take that you’ve got to value every possession. In a game like this, you can’t have 16 turnovers in a playoff game. ... It comes down to little things.
“Get back on the horse and let’s go. Can’t sit here and cry about it. Doesn’t do us any good.”
Schedule challenge
Saturday was the first of a four-game stretch in which the Mystics face three of the top four teams in the standings. They will host the Las Vegas Aces (21-8) on Tuesday and travel to face the Chicago Sky (22-7) on Friday. That gives the Mystics the opportunity to move up in the standings. They then host the Los Angeles Sparks (12-16), who sit in the No. 7 playoff slot, a week from Sunday.
Charles back again
Charles made her third appearance at the Mystics’ home arena since leaving the team in free agency during the offseason. The first two came with the Phoenix Mercury before the two parties agreed to a contract divorce. The former MVP then signed with the Storm, as she continues to compete for her first championship.
Seattle Coach Noelle Quinn said the team has tried to integrate Charles by utilizing her skills while also fitting her into the established system.
“It’s trying to mesh her strengths in with where our deficiencies were lying,” Quinn said. “And that is on the offensive end, scoring. Obviously we know that she’s a bucket and she’s a prolific scorer within this league. Just trying our best to bridge that gap of how we play with making sure we put her in places for her to be successful.”
Bye-bye Bird
Washington held a pregame ceremony to say goodbye to the retiring Storm players Sue Bird and Briann January. A video montage featured Mystics players and Thibault speaking about their memories of Bird — a 13-time all-star, four-time champion and five-time Olympic gold medalist. Both received a package of D.C.-related items.
Myisha Hines-Allen surpassed 1,000 career points. … Both Thibault and assistant Eric Thibault received technical fouls at the same time Saturday. | 2022-07-30T20:53:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics lose to Seattle Storm and fall behind in WNBA standings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/mystics-storm-saturday-wnba-standings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/mystics-storm-saturday-wnba-standings/ |
Four indicted in robbery of mailbox keys, stolen-check scheme
Prosecutors said the U.S. Park Police recovered approximately 65 checks in June that appeared stolen and “washed”
Authorities indicted several men who are accused of stealing master keys from postal carriers. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Four men accused of stealing master keys from postal carriers, and sifting through stolen mail for checks they could doctor and cash, are behind a string of scams and violent assaults this year in the Washington region, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
“At least thirteen such robberies have taken place in the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area between May 23 and July 7, 2022,” federal prosecutors said in a court filing Friday, seeking to keep the arrested men detained pending trial. “The evidence not only ties defendants to this string of armed and, in some cases, violent robberies, but during the charged offense the defendants also employed violence to attempt an escape after law enforcement observed them ... steal mail from USPS collection boxes and tried to stop their vehicle.”
Ali Dickerson, 20, of Hyattsville; Eyalan Owona, 21, of Upper Marlboro; and Benjamin Washington, 22, of Owings Mills, were arrested and made their initial appearance in Greenbelt federal court Friday. Attorneys had not been listed for any of them as of Saturday.
A fourth man who was indicted, Ibrahim Kourouma, 22, of Glenarden, was a fugitive as of Friday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland. Authorities said they have identified three other co-conspirators in the alleged robbery-and-check-fraud scheme, but they have not been charged or named in court records.
Prosecutors said the U.S. Park Police recovered approximately 65 checks in June that appeared stolen and “washed,” with several bearing amounts in the tens of thousands of dollars, from a residence that the four men and their co-conspirators appeared to be using or living in. They also found handgun ammunition, computers, printers and blank check stock, authorities said.
The four indicted men were in a dark gray Hyundai on May 25 when Montgomery County police observed Washington exit the vehicle and return, apparently carrying contents from a mailbox, prosecutors said. When police started a traffic stop, the car began to speed away, they said.
Owona, who was alleged to be driving, rammed police vehicles that tried to box him in from the front and rear, “striking one law enforcement officer with his car in the process and knocking him to the ground,” according to the detention memo prosecutors filed Friday. Police had to shatter the front windows, unlock the car from the inside, and drag Owona from the vehicle, prosecutors said. Owona and Washington were on pretrial release or probation from prior offenses, they said.
“The robberies all included firearms, which were displayed and sometimes aimed directly at USPS employees,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland said in requesting that the three suspects who were arrested remain in custody pending trial. “Physical force has been used to take Arrow keys from mail carriers, resulting in physical injuries as well as constant threat to their lives as long as they carry the Arrow keys sought by defendants and their co-conspirators. Further, defendants have recklessly and dangerously resisted arrest already, and should not be given the chance to do so again.”
Prosecutors said that Dickerson, Kourouma and Owona were released after being arrested May 25, while Washington remained in custody because he was on probation. Later the same day, “two mail carriers were robbed at gunpoint in the Chevy Chase and Crofton, MD, areas by individuals with physical descriptions matching” the same men, prosecutors said.
The Postal Service carriers were robbed of their arrow keys — a master key for the mailboxes in a given geographic area that postal workers carry — at least one of which was identical to the key seized from the foursome that morning, officials said.
All four men, if convicted, face a maximum of 10 years in prison for possession of Postal Service keys and a maximum of five years for stealing mail.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service reported earlier this year that it has seen a “significant increase” in armed robberies nationwide of letter carriers to steal arrow keys in a trend linked to stolen checks.
Frustrated residents in Maryland suburbs including Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Silver Spring had reported strange, inflated charges to their accounts that they traced back to checks they had left in the mail, according to reporting earlier this year by The Washington Post.
Stolen checks and keys are often found for sale online, according to experts. On Telegram channels dedicated to check fraud, payment amounts ranged from $8 to a business check written out in the amount of more than $36,000, according to a Post review. The checks themselves were on offer at $100 or more. One Telegram seller offered USPS arrow keys for $5,000 and $7,000 to access mailboxes in Maryland and North Carolina. Another offered a Florida key for $3,000. Several channel administrators said they accepted payment only in bitcoin or Cash App. | 2022-07-30T21:28:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arrest in theft of checks and keys to USPS mailboxes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/mailbox-stolen-checks-keys-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/30/mailbox-stolen-checks-keys-arrest/ |
Samantha Murch, with her two boys, votes in the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11, 2020, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The Democratic National Committee delayed a decision Saturday on a new order for early state voting in the 2024 presidential elections until after this fall’s midterm elections.
The order of early states had been scheduled for final debate and a decision next weekend, but disagreements inside the committee and continued uncertainties, including a question of Republican cooperation in some states, led the committee to push the date.
“Following the midterm elections, we will reconvene to update our evaluation of the applicant pool and work towards a final decision to present to the full DNC for a vote, which DNC leadership has assured us they will make happen as soon after the midterm elections as is possible,” the chairs of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, Minyon Moore and Jim Roosevelt Jr., wrote to members Saturday in a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
Some Democrats were concerned that a decision before the midterms could have an adverse affect on Democratic campaigns this year. Both Nevada and New Hampshire, which are making plays to be the first 2024 primary contest, have contested Senate contests at stake in November. Michigan and Minnesota, which have contested gubernatorial contests, were hoping to move up their primaries.
“Several states were saying it could cost them Senate seats,” said a Democrat involved in the process who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. “The elections are making it too complicated.”
Complicating matters further is the continued resistance of Republicans in Minnesota and Michigan to publicly commit to moving those states’ primaries earlier, which Democrats would likely need to allow those states to join the first weeks of voting. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee also must decide whether to allow Iowa to remain in the early voting order, and what the consequences should be for candidates and states that disobey the party-dictated calendar.
A party official familiar with the process said that Democratic leadership wanted to make sure that the party was not distracted from the midterm elections. There are 17 state and territory applicants still in the running for four or five spots in the early nominating calendar. Officials close to the process expect at least three of the traditional early voting states — Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina — to retain spots, though the order is unclear.
The party official said DNC leadership has assured party members that a vote on the new calendar will occur as soon as possible after the midterm elections.
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is still expected to meet late next week to pass the delegate selection rules for the 2024 campaign and the call to the convention, which the full party is expected to ratify in the coming weeks. | 2022-07-30T21:41:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats delay early state order decision for 2024 campaign - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/dnc-primary-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/dnc-primary-states/ |
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ won’t reopen on Broadway
Writer Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed stage adaptation shutters amid controversy with producer Scott Rudin, who was accused of abuse last year.
Jeff Daniels takes a bow during curtain call after the opening night performance of “To Kill A Mocking Bird” at the Shubert Theatre on Dec. 13, 2018 in New York City. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” writer Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, will not return to Broadway after all. Amid a wave of covid infections on Broadway this past winter, and after the Jan. 2 departure of Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch, the show was put on hiatus Jan. 16, with the intention to bring it back later this year. The most recent plan was to reopen at New York’s Music Box Theater on Nov. 2.
But late Thursday, Sorkin and Bartlett Sher, the play’s director, sent a letter to the cast and crew, saying they were “heartbroken” to announce that the show would not return, despite months of planning. They blamed producer Scott Rudin, who still owns rights to the play, and who, according to Sorkin and Sher, stopped the play from reopening.
“Bart and I, as well as our agents and lawyers, tried everything we could think of to overcome the obstacle and get the play back on its feet. We couldn’t do it,” Sorkin wrote in the message, which was obtained by The Post. “[We] mourn the loss of all the jobs — onstage, backstage, and front of house — that just disappeared, … we mourn the loss of a great show, and of our chance to reconvene and reconnect over this extraordinary production we all know has changed our lives and the lives of everyone who has come to see it.”
The Broadway show, which opened at Shubert Theatre in 2018, was a pre-pandemic hit. Retelling Lee’s beloved novel centering on the trial of Tom Robinson — a Black man in 1930s Alabama who is wrongly accused of rape — with an emphasis on Robinson’s lawyer Atticus Finch, the play had been lauded for dealing with racism in a more nuanced way than its source material did. It became the top-grossing American play in Broadway history, bringing in more than $40 million in 27 weeks and was nominated for nine Tony Awards . (Celia Keenan-Bolger won for her portrayal of Finch’s daughter Scout.) In the years since, the show has gone on a national tour and a production has opened in London’s West End.
But recently, the Broadway production had been hampered by controversy related to Rudin, who faced allegations of abusive behavior, detailed in a Hollywood Reporter story last year. In response to the allegations, Rudin stepped away from his productions, including “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and “The Book of Mormon.” Last year, “West Side Story,” another Rudin-produced show, also did not reopen as planned.
In their letter, Sorkin and Sher said that Rudin had “reinserted” himself as a producer at the last moment. “For reasons which are, frankly, incomprehensible to us both, he stopped the play from reopening,” they wrote. Rudin attributed the decision to financial concerns, saying in an email to Sorkin and Sher that he had a “lack of confidence in the climate for plays next winter,” and “didn’t believe that a remount of ‘Mockingbird’ would have been competitive in the marketplace,” according to the New York Times.
Sorkin and Sher had been working on the show with producer Orin Wolf, who was installed after Rudin’s departure, and whom they credited in their letter for getting the production ready to reopen. Their relationship with Rudin had soured months earlier. In September, Sorkin told Vanity Fair that he had experienced his own instances of a “higher class of bullying” by Rudin, but refrained from commenting further, saying the producer “got what he deserves.”
In the Hollywood Reporter story, Rudin is described as “unhinged.” The producer is said to have once slammed a computer monitor on an assistant’s hand hard enough to draw blood — one among several so-called “tantrums” described in the piece.
The truths ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ tells about white people
The decision to shutter Broadway’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” will not affect the national tour, which came to D.C. earlier this summer, nor will it affect shows at London’s Gielgud Theatre, where it debuted in March of this year.
The news comes as Lee’s original “To Kill a Mockingbird” storyline has come under scrutiny, with some schools removing the book from their curriculums, citing the characterization of Atticus Finch as a “White savior.” In the play, Sorkin divides the narration between three adult characters — Scout, her brother Jem and their best friend Dill, looking back on the past — and creates a more complex portrayal of Finch. The Post’s theater critic, Peter Marks, praised the show when it opened on Broadway, writing that Atticus “is wrenched from his faith in the goodness of humankind toward a more sober assessment of the limits of human decency.”
In a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sorkin spoke about his changes to the story: “In the book you’ve got a guy who’s got all the answers,” he said, “And in the play you’ve got a guy who’s wrestling with the questions.” | 2022-07-30T22:11:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To Kill a Mockingbird Won't Return on Broadway - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/30/mockingbird-broadway-will-not-return/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/30/mockingbird-broadway-will-not-return/ |
Ryan Kerrigan is done playing, but he loves football too much to leave
Former Washington defensive end Ryan Kerrigan retired from the NFL after signing a one-day contract with the Commanders on Friday. He hopes to parlay his career into another one as a coach. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Wearing a burgundy Commanders T-shirt, Ryan Kerrigan stood silently behind the end zone as the defensive line rammed into sleds and dodged padded cones. Explicit instructions from coaches became his background music as he adjusted to a new view.
Rarely in the last 12 years had Kerrigan ever been there — on the sidelines and in street clothes watching a game he loves but can no longer play.
“Even though I know it’s the right decision, ultimately it’s still not easy to know that I’m not going to play football anymore,” he said. “I kind of had that realization the other night … I’m not going to play football anymore. That’s kind of crazy. Been doing it for so long. But I just know where I’m at, health-wise and whatnot, that this is the best thing for me moving forward.”
The former defensive end and the franchise’s all-time sack leader decided in June and announced Friday he was retiring, capping an 11-season run in the NFL, including 10 with the Commanders. This was his plan for more than a year, even though at times the Indiana native wondered if he could keep going.
Following the Commanders’ playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in early 2021, he trotted back out to an empty FedEx Field, sat on the team bench and took a final glimpse at the stadium he has called “home.” When he returned to FedEx a year later as a Philadelphia Eagle, he relished playing in front of Washington’s fans. And when his body felt “nice” after a couple months off from training, his mind couldn’t help but wonder about playing some more.
“[I] was like: ‘Oh, my body feels nice! I can do this again,’ ” he said. “It’s like, well, your body feels nice because you haven’t trained for football in two months, so you got to kind of acknowledge the truth there.”
And the truth was that his knee was shot.
Doctors gave him poor reports on his knee in May 2021, and he was encouraged to call it a career. But while his knee needed him to retire, his mind wasn’t close to being ready.
Over the last two years, and especially in recent days, he has had to time to reflect on his years in Washington. He has gone back to 2012, when Washington defeated Dallas in Week 17 to win the division at home. He has thought about that 2018 matchup with the Cowboys at FedEx Field, where he forced a fumble and defensive end Preston Smith recovered it for a touchdown. Kerrigan has thought back to his pick-six in his first game and the many locker room interactions of the past decade.
“But it’s when I come back here to [the] Park that I really am like, ‘That’s why I’ve loved this place,’ ” he said. “Because it’s all the relationships you built over the years with teammates, coaches, the people in the kitchen, the strength staff, [media]. … It’s hard to walk away, even though I know it’s the right thing.”
Kerrigan’s retirement closes a chapter, as he is one of the last players to star for the franchise under its former name. His last season in Washington was the franchise’s first year as the Washington Football Team, and his last day was as a Commander.
On Friday, he returned to Ashburn, where he was welcomed with applause by former teammates and coaches in the lobby of the facility. He received a hug from third-year defensive end Chase Young and later signed his one-day contract to end his career with Washington.
“He’s a guy that you could always count on,” Coach Ron Rivera said. “He’s a guy that always could help set the example. I mean, you only get so many of those guys, and when you get them, they most certainly need to be celebrated.”
Kerrigan, a model player and staple of the Washington franchise, attended Saturday’s training camp practice with an unrelenting smile and peace with his decision. But he admitted he still would be playing if those medical reports were cleaner, if his knee could hold up longer, if his body could still go at the same intensity of his mind.
“That’s what kind of makes it tough,” he said. “It’s complicated because I still feel like I can, but knowing that it’s not a guarantee that I would get a roster spot at the end of camp. Because that was kind of my plan this offseason, was to kind of wait throughout training camp and, once rosters started to shake out, hopefully find a good situation. But without that guarantee, to continue to put more stress on my knee and whatnot, it wasn’t worth it.”
Players in Washington still revere Kerrigan as the savvy veteran who showed him this technique or this move on the field or this recovery method after games. His work ethic, which bordered on maniacal, is cited by players as almost legendary. Wide receiver Terry McLaurin remembers tips Kerrigan gave him to stay healthy and ready for game days. Young remembers the practices with Kerrigan and how the vet took him under his wing, even as Young supplanted him as a starter.
“He’s a guy I looked up to since middle school,” said Young, who has been rehabbing from a knee injury himself. “So it was definitely an honor just to play with him. Good to see him. Good to see all the little RKs with him. … RK never really talked too much, but every time he joked, it was funny. I used to want him to talk more. Just how we used to laugh in practice, and he would give me certain things, certain tips on the field.”
Ryan Kerrigan watching the D-line pic.twitter.com/MR9e1as9Sd
Kerrigan’s 172 career regular season games — including 139 consecutive to begin his career — 147 quarterback hits, 95.5 sacks, 26 forced fumbles and three interceptions returned for touchdowns put him among the game’s finest pass rushers and among Washington’s finest players.
His durability and regimented work ethic were part of an all-consuming football lifestyle. He stressed out when he couldn’t get a chicken and rice dinner on the road, and he treated breakfast as another job. Every meal and every decision was geared toward the game: How would it help him be better at football?
Eliminating the rigidity in his diet and lifestyle has been “freeing,” he said — “If I want a beer, I’ll have a beer” — but his approach to the game is one he hopes fans will remember when they think of his performance.
Ryan Kerrigan on his final year in Washington and why he picked the Eagles
“I just want [fans] to know that I gave them everything I had, like, literally everything I had,” Kerrigan said. “Emotionally, physically, they got all of me. Football was my life. … I just want fans to know that it meant that much to me, that my performance and what I was showing on Sundays was that important to me, that it was my driving force in life.”
Though Kerrigan appears resigned to his decision to retire, he is hardly done with the game. His hope is to parlay his career into one as a coach, where he can continue to be a mentor.
Maybe his next career will also start in Washington, perhaps as a consultant or assistant, where he feels at home in foreign territory, on the sideline.
“I love football too much,” he said. “I just love football too much to not be involved in it in any capacity.” | 2022-07-30T22:51:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ryan Kerrigan retires from Washington and considers football career - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/ryan-kerrigan-is-done-playing-he-loves-football-too-much-leave/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/ryan-kerrigan-is-done-playing-he-loves-football-too-much-leave/ |
Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) speaks during a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
Reps. Peter Meijer, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse have not grabbed the same type of headlines that other Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump in January 2021.
The Republican trio have remained steadfast in support of their votes against Trump but have otherwise mostly kept their heads down and tried to work hard on issues they have long focused on.
Meijer, an Army intelligence officer in the Iraq War from Michigan, has been a major critic of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Herrera Beutler, from a massive rural district in southwestern Washington, just got a bill passed to transfer land from the U.S. Forest Service to a local county government.
And Friday, Newhouse took to the House floor to speak out against Democratic legislation as “bureaucratic red tape” that would fail to combat wildfires, a perennial issue in his vast district in eastern Washington.
On Tuesday, all three will learn their political fate with Republican voters back home, helping determine if there was ever a path to victory for a Republican who so directly rebuked Trump. And it will go a long way to determining whether there will be one, two or more pro-impeachment Republicans left when the new Congress is sworn in next January.
“I think we’ve got some very good members of Congress we’re talking about here. It would be a shame to see them not return, because they contribute a lot, are very productive and, I think, represent their districts very well,” Newhouse said in a brief interview after his Friday floor speech. “It’s important to have all opinions represented in any discussion,” he added.
Four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach have opted to retire rather than face almost certain defeat in their primary races. Another, Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), lost by a more than a 2-to-1 margin last month, while Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has drawn the most vociferous opposition from Trump, faces an uphill battle in her August primary.
That has left the anti-Trump faction of the party hoping that at least some victories come among the trio of Herrera Beutler, Meijer and Newhouse to provide voices inside a House Republican conference that are not in lockstep with the former president.
“I think if they win, there’s still a battle, there’s still a fight,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who voted to impeach Trump and decided to retire last fall, said in an interview.
Early on, after that impeachment vote, the 10 Republicans stayed close and talked often, helping raise money for one another. “We had a common thread of kinship,” Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), who chose to retire, said recently.
But for those that sought reelection, it became important to not be viewed solely as part of that group, to be identified more for what they have done for their constituents rather than focusing on impeachment. The group still talks, particularly on experiences related to their Trump vote, but they are running for reelection almost like lone wolves.
“We share a lot of things in common to talk about on that particular subject,” Newhouse said, “but I don’t know that I have a better relationship with the 10 than I do with other people.”
Just one Republican who voted to impeach Trump, Rep. David G. Valadao (Calif.), has secured his party nomination for the November general election, in large part because Trump never endorsed a challenger.
Most Republican insiders suspect that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) used a ton of political capital to keep Trump out of the Valadao primary, as he is a close friend of the party leader and considered the only Republican who can win in a district that gave President Biden a margin of victory of nearly 11 points. With Valadao facing a tough reelection, there remains a chance that all 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump will be swept out of Congress by the end of the year.
Cheney and Kinzinger took the highest profiles in attacking Trump and his role in the insurrection, both serving on the select committee investigating his actions in the Capitol riot in January 2021. Rice spent the final days of his primary last month castigating Trump in national television interviews and calling impeachment the true “conservative vote” in defense of the constitution.
Valadao went on more with his head down and rarely talked about Trump, and now this next trio is attempting something of a hybrid approach. They will defend their votes, if asked, but will also talk about the ongoing work they do that matches up with what their constituents have come to expect.
“The way we look at it, it’s another tough election,” Herrera Beutler told local reporters earlier this month. “I’m not changing course. I’m still the same Republican I’ve always been.”
Meijer, who won the 2020 general election by a comfortable margin of 6 points, faces a unique political situation in which his district lines were redrawn through the decennial redistricting and now sits in a district that Biden won two years ago.
For that reason, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a nearly $500,000 campaign attempting to boost his Trump-endorsed opponent, John Gibbs, whose campaign is basically broke and unable to air its own ads, believing Gibbs would be an easier candidate to defeat in November.
Meijer hopes that shows undecided Republicans in the Grand Rapids-anchored district that he remains their best hope to win in November. “I think the momentum is certainly on our side,” he said in a brief interview Friday, “and I think if anything, the last week, the last 72 hours has shown, that even in a town that is used to some pretty despicable hypocrisy, the D-trip’s meddling has awakened a new sense of, are you kidding me?”
Some Democrats have also expressed alarm that the DCCC, with much of its revenue coming from funds raised by lawmakers, would target someone they consider honorable for his impeachment vote. “I’m disgusted that hard-earned money intended to support Democrats is being used to boost Trump-endorsed candidates,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter.
“I think Peter is exactly the kind of Republican we want to have around, but at the end of the day we have to win the majority and that is the bigger concern,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who flew with Meijer into Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal, said Friday.
Democrats have stayed out of the two Washington state primaries, districts that will likely stay in the Republican column regardless of who the nominee is. The district Newhouse represents is so conservative that twice in his four elections the top two vote-getters were Republican candidates in the all-in state primary system, so the November general election was an all-Republican contest.
There is a possibility that could happen again, thus extending his race until November. Newhouse’s vote to impeach Trump was one of the more surprising, as he comes from such a conservative district and he had initially signed a legal brief in December 2020 in support of Trump’s effort to contest the election.
Newhouse is somewhat soft-spoken and avoids the spotlight — “I’m not going to be very talkative, not to be rude,” he said at the start of the brief interview Friday — but Trump’s inaction amid all the violence of that day flipped a switch in his principled psyche. “Our country needed a leader, and President Trump failed to fulfill his oath of office,” he said in a statement released before he voted to impeach.
While they may not talk or text as often as they once did, these anti-Trump lawmakers are all closely watching one another’s races, hopeful that enough of them can win their primary as well as in November so that there is a future for Republicans like them. “If they all lose, I think it means we’re doomed in the near term,” Kinzinger said. | 2022-07-30T23:12:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three more Republican impeachers face their primary juries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/republican-candidates-election-primary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/republican-candidates-election-primary/ |
In Wisconsin, Barnes reckons with liberal past as he looks to November
The Democrat, now closing in on his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate, has deployed a careful strategy of downplaying some associations with the liberal wing of his party
Mandela Barnes, lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, is a Democratic candidate for Senate in a contest that holds the potential to decide control of the upper chamber of Congress in November. (Sara Stathas for The Washington Post)
MADISON, Wis. — In 2019, Mandela Barnes traveled to neighboring Minnesota, where he visited a recycling facility with Rep. Ilhan Omar.
The Democratic lieutenant governor of Wisconsin danced with the member of the “Squad” of House liberals, both of them grinning in front of a truck that read “Zero Waste.” The footage was packaged into a GIF and broadcast from Barnes’s official Twitter account.
“She’s brilliant. She cares about the environment,” read the tweet. It also said: “She’s exactly who we need in Congress right now fighting for what’s right.”
Nearly three years later, Barnes, 35, is distancing himself from Omar and some polarizing ideas he has associated himself with as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in a marquee battleground. The contest holds the potential to decide control of the upper chamber of Congress in November.
“A staff person tweeted that out,” Barnes said in an interview with The Washington Post last week, speaking of the August 2019 tweet about Omar. “That wasn’t even my Twitter, that was the official side Twitter.”
The comment is part of Barnes’s careful strategy as he looks to a potential showdown against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. This past week, three of Barnes’s Democratic competitors left the race and endorsed him, giving him a clear path to the nomination in the Aug. 9 primary.
As he runs in one of the country’s most closely contested states, Barnes has faced Republican attacks for the appearance with Omar, for once holding up a T-shirt with the phrase “Abolish ICE,” for saying he supports moving funds from police departments to community programs, and, in a speech referring to slavery and colonization, describing the founding of the country as “awful.”
Even as Barnes has sought to clarify himself in all of those instances, some Democrats have privately voiced worries that they could cause problems for him this fall. Quelling those apprehensions has been an important task in the primary, close observers said.
“Barnes understands the concern that he couldn’t win a general election. So in some ways, he has to run his primary in a way that dispels those concerns,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Barack Obama. “It’s a parable about the challenges of running as a progressive in a swing state and what that requires.”
Barnes has also showed strength in his party, consolidating support in a crowded race with a message underscoring a commitment to working-class voters. In rapid succession, Barnes’s three main competitors — businessman Alex Lasry, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski — each withdrew over the past week and endorsed him.
After making history by becoming the first Black lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, Barnes would be the state’s first Black senator if elected this fall. He has won the support of leading figures on the left, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). He is also backed by more moderate Democrats, such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.).
Like some other Democratic candidates who rose to prominence during the Trump administration, a period of impassioned and confrontational political activism on the left, Barnes’s past associations have come under the spotlight at a moment when many party strategists see a more moderate path as a better blueprint for electoral success in the current political climate.
When it comes to policy, the Senate contender has championed several ideas long advocated by liberals. He has voiced support for Medicare-for-all, saying it is the quickest way to get to universal health care. He has said he believes in a “Green New Deal” that’s tailored for his state. He would end the cash bail system. He also supports structural changes to the federal government, favoring term limits for Supreme Court justices and expressing openness to expanding the size of the court. He says he would end the Senate filibuster.
But he has also chided President Biden from the right, saying in the interview with The Post that the administration should not have tried to move ahead with lifting a public health restriction on immigration without a plan to replace it. Still, Barnes said he would welcome a chance to campaign with Biden.
Barnes identifies as part of a new crop of Senate candidates who defy traditional labels, a trait he shares with Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman — a fellow lieutenant governor he has gotten to know in the past few years.
“We’re two people who didn’t necessarily fit political molds,” said Barnes, who added that they bonded over being “swing state Democrats.”
In the interview at a trendy coffee shop here in Madison, Barnes said voters have gotten to know him as an advocate for the working-class, and he played down potential vulnerabilities identified by some fellow Democrats.
“I have done the hard work and built credibility,” he said. “It’s not coming down to labels or specific ideology.”
He also discussed Omar, who is frequently criticized by Republicans for her political views. Omar has clashed with some Democrats over her rebukes of the Israeli government and what Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders once called her “use of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Barnes said he admired the personal journey of the congresswoman, who fled civil war in Somalia with her family as a child. “She came from circumstances that most of us would never have been able to make it out of and became a member of Congress,” Barnes said.
But, asked about the 2019 tweet about Omar, he added, “I don’t just throw around the word ‘brilliant.’ ”
Barnes has also faced scrutiny over other parts of his recent past. He was photographed posing with a red T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Abolish ICE,” a slogan some on the left embraced that references U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s not clear when the photo was taken, but it was posted on Reddit in 2018. Also in 2018, Barnes wrote “I need that” on social media in response to a person who offered him an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt in his size.
Barnes subsequently distanced himself from the slogan, saying he does not support eliminating the agency and was expressing solidarity with those upset by President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
“He does support comprehensive immigration reform that ensures we can protect our borders while creating a path to citizenship for DREAMers and their families, and making sure no children are cruelly separated from their parents,” Barnes spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said in a statement.
When it comes to policing, another divisive issue, Barnes has said departments should continue to exist but suggested that some of their funding could be directed elsewhere. “We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” Barnes said in a 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”
McDaniel said Barnes does not support defunding the police — a left-wing slogan rejected by Biden and many Democrats and criticized sharply by Republicans. “What he does support is investing just as heavily in preventing crime from occurring in the first place in addition to ensuring law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to keep us safe,” McDaniel said.
GOP activists and strategists have also criticized some of Barnes’s comments from last year. During an August 2021 event in Wisconsin, amid a national debate over school curriculums, Barnes talked about the country’s early days. “Things were bad. Things were terrible. The founding of this nation? Awful,” Barnes said. “The impacts are felt today. They’re going to continue to be felt unless we address it in a meaningful way.”
He continued: “We are here now, and we should commit ourselves to doing everything we can do to repair the harm, because it still exists today — the harm, the damage. Whether it was colonization, or whether it was slavery.”
The words prompted swift attacks from Republicans, who left out his references to slavery. “Barnes’ comments prove why Democrats are advocating for policies that would fundamentally dismantle our country,” said the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s rapid response director, Mike Marinella, in a statement to local media.
Barnes’s spokeswoman said portraying his comment “as anything other than a condemnation of slavery is a sad GOP attempt to distract from Ron Johnson trying to literally overthrow the government of this country and strip reproductive rights from millions of Americans.”
Republicans have seized on Barnes’s past comments, photographs and videos as they gear up to make a case that he is too far to the left for the state in the general election.
“Who needs oppo when [Barnes] supplies this stuff himself?” asked Anna Kelly, the communications director for the state’s GOP, in a tweet accompanied by four photos, including Barnes with Omar, Barnes holding up the Abolish ICE T-shirt and separate shots of Barnes with Warren and Sanders.
Yet the GOP is navigating its own challenges. Johnson, one of his party’s most vulnerable senators this year, has been polarizing, saying that those who dislike their state’s laws restricting abortion “can move,” carving out a role in Washington as one of the Senate’s most prominent 2020 election deniers and blaming the school massacre in Uvalde, Tex., on failures to teach adequate values in schools and “wokeness.”
With an evenly divided Senate, both parties see the Wisconsin race as a critical battlefront in the fight for control of the chamber. In pursuit of the seat, Barnes and his allies have been seeking to make a personal pitch to voters.
“If we want to change Washington, we have to change the kind of people we send to Washington,” said Barnes, speaking on July 23 at a waterfront rally in Milwaukee that was headlined by Warren.
Barnes, addressing the crowd, said that voters should be frustrated by inflation, which he blamed on large corporations putting the “squeeze” on families. “That frustration is what pushes us to action,” he said, channeling an anti-incumbent message.
“The U.S. Senate is broken,” Barnes said. “It refuses to deliver for people like us.”
The Democratic challenger has focused on a message of improving conditions for blue-collar voters and has played up his working-class roots. “Hard work needs to be respected again,” Barnes says in one of his TV ads.
Across the state, some voters said they felt that Barnes was a familiar presence whose biography would overpower any concerns about liberal comments.
“His background makes him a really good contrast with Ron Johnson, because he comes from the working class,” said Dan Larsen, a Democratic candidate for the State Assembly, who joined those crowded into a tiny Ozaukee County Democrats office in Grafton recently to hear Gov. Tony Evers, who will also be on the ballot this year. “He’s definitely capable of connecting with folks.”
Barnes was named after former South African president Nelson Mandela. He said he was inspired to get involved in politics when he heard Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.
He hoped to work on Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, signing up for a program that he thought would lead to a position, but instead, he found himself working on a congressional race in Louisiana. The candidate lost by about 300 votes, he said, a hard lesson but an experience that gave him longtime friends and hands-on experience in a campaign.
He has worked as a community organizer in the state. At age 25 in 2012, after making connections in Democratic circles, he defeated a sitting member of the State Assembly in a primary to represent northern Milwaukee. But in 2016 he hit a roadblock, trying to unseat a Democratic state senator by arguing, according to news reports at the time, that “fresh, transformational leadership” was needed. He lost.
By 2018, he focused on economic issues when he launched his bid for lieutenant governor, winning the Democratic primary. That gave him a berth on the gubernatorial ticket headed by Tony Evers. The pair won, defeating GOP Gov. Scott Walker.
Though the office carries few official responsibilities, Barnes used the platform to build support outside his base in Milwaukee by traveling frequently beyond the capital, according to Democratic activists.
Barnes frequently invokes his parents on the campaign trail. His mother, a longtime schoolteacher, was featured in a recent TV spot that described her decision to have an abortion. “The pregnancy had complications and there was very little chance of survival,” Mandela Barnes says in the spot. “It was my decision. Not some politician’s,” says his mother, LaJuan Barnes.
During a recent campaign stop on a sweltering afternoon at a neighborhood brewery in Milwaukee, Barnes invoked his father, a retired assembly-line worker and member of the United Auto Workers. Recalling how a local leader of the Service Employees International Union once asked how the union could trust him once he was in office, Barnes noted his dad’s ties to organized labor.
“I said, ‘Let me tell you, if I do the wrong thing, I’ve got my dad to worry about. Not SEIU,” Barnes said, earning a big laugh from his father, who was in the audience. | 2022-07-30T23:12:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Wisconsin, Democrat Mandela Barnes reckons with liberal past as he looks to November - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/wisconsin-barnes-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/30/wisconsin-barnes-senate/ |
Okla. downgrades school district over complaint it ‘shamed White people’
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has touted House Bill 1775, which he signed last year, as prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
The Oklahoma State Board of Education voted this week to downgrade the accreditation of Tulsa Public Schools after a teacher reportedly complained that the school district’s training materials “shame White people.”
The board voted 4-2 to lower the status of Tulsa Public Schools to “accredited with warning” on Thursday after the state’s Department of Education determined an implicit bias training for teachers in August 2021 violated House Bill 1775. The law, which restricts discussions of race and sex in public schools, is widely seen as targeting critical race theory. The state investigation began after a complaint from a teacher who has not been publicly identified, according to the Oklahoman.
The board also demoted another district, Mustang Public Schools near Oklahoma City, to “accredited with warning” after it self-reported that a teacher had violated House Bill 1775 by using an exercise that made students uncomfortable on account of their race or sex.
The demotions mark the first enforcement action under the law, which Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed in May 2021, the Oklahoman reported. All four members who voted to downgrade the districts were appointed by Stitt.
The law does not explicitly mention critical race theory — an academic framework for examining the way laws and policies perpetuate systemic racism — but prohibits teaching what it calls “discriminatory principles,” including that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
The measure came amid Republican efforts to bar teaching about systemic racism and oppression in schools following the nation’s racial reckoning in 2020, which opponents say is leading to self-censorship and fear among teachers. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Oklahoma over the law in October, alleging that it violates students’ and teachers’ First and 14th Amendment rights.
Representatives for the Tulsa and Mustang school districts did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday. In a statement to the Oklahoman, Tulsa Public Schools denied that the training stated that people of a certain race were inherently racist, saying it would “never support such a training,” but the system defended the need for implicit bias training.
“In Tulsa, we are teaching our children an accurate — and at times painful, difficult, and uncomfortable — history about our shared human experience,” the district told the newspaper. “We also teach in a beautifully diverse community and need our team to work together to be prepared to do that well.”
Charles Bradley, the superintendent of Mustang Public Schools, said in a statement published by News 9 that he was “shocked” by the board’s demotion, which he called a “harsh action.”
House Bill 1775 prohibits teaching that any individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” It also bans any course material that would make a student “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”
ACLU sues Oklahoma, saying law restricting teaching of gender and race theories is unconstitutional
The complaint against Tulsa Public Schools stemmed from a 20-minute implicit bias training for teachers conducted by a third-party vendor last August. The administrative rules for House Bill 1775 extend the prohibitions in the law to teacher trainings.
Tulsa’s training informed teachers that they must be “aware of our own inherent biases, as well as historical biases against minorities,” the Oklahoman reported. In response, a teacher filed a complaint with the state alleging that the training materials “specifically shame white people for past offenses in history, and state that all are implicitly racially biased by nature,” according to Public Radio Tulsa.
The outlet identified the teacher who filed the complaint as Amy Cook, who was investigated earlier this year for allegedly proselytizing in class and briefly ran for state senate. On her campaign website, she wrote that as a Tulsa Public Schools teacher, she has witnessed “spiritually damaging programs, liberal brainwashing, and political indoctrination being slipped into our schools.”
Brad Clark, the general counsel for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, announced at the board’s June meeting that his agency’s investigation into the complaint found the district in violation of the law.
“It was a close call, but we believe the spirit of that training, or the design of it, was contradictory to House Bill 1775,” Clark said in June.
Though Clark recommended the district be demoted one level to “accredited with deficiency,” board member Brian Bobek introduced a motion at Thursday’s meeting to downgrade it one step further, to “accredited with warning.” That level indicates the district has an issue that “seriously detracts from the quality of the school’s education program,” per the state’s accreditation standards.
Bobek argued that anyone who took the training “is going to be biased, potentially” and called it an “egregious” violation that merited warning status.
Board member Estela Hernandez agreed, accusing the Tulsa district of deliberately flouting the law and arguing the extra level of demotion was necessary to “send a message.”
The state’s finding that the training violated the law was met with pushback from board member Carlisha Williams Bradley, who said implicit bias “does not equate to inherent racism.”
“Maybe this is why some of this content should be taught in schools because I just don’t know that we all have a shared understanding of definitions and language here,” she said at the meeting.
New critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring
Williams Bradley and state superintendent Joy Hofmeister, who won a primary last month to be the Democratic nominee for governor, voted against downgrading both districts. Hofmeister said she voted no because she supported the state agency’s recommendation of only demoting the districts one level.
The board’s vote came less than a month after Stitt called for a “special audit” of the Tulsa district over its use of coronavirus relief funds and for allegedly teaching critical race theory, which the district denies.
Williams Bradley told The Washington Post on Saturday that the decision was an “obvious attack” on Tulsa Public Schools, which she noted is a majority-minority district.
“It is appalling and terrifying that we have schools and educators who can be penalized for having conversations about true facts, history and implicit bias that we all have based on the differences of our lived experiences,” she wrote in an email.
While the Tulsa complaint involved teacher training, the complaint against the Mustang district centered on a lesson for students, which was investigated internally and self-reported to the state, Clark said.
The exercise, which was taught by a single teacher, asked students to answer questions about whether they had experienced or perpetrated discrimination or bullying, according to News 9. The district determined that the lesson violated the law because it made students feel discomfort based on their race or sex.
The state also recommended Mustang be demoted one level to “accredited with deficiency,” but board member Jennifer Monies argued the panel must be “consistent with how we apply” House Bill 1775 and avoid the appearance of “unfairly targeting” the Tulsa district.
The same four members then voted to downgrade Mustang Public Schools two levels to “accredited with warning.” | 2022-07-31T00:35:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma school board downgrades Tulsa Public Schools for 'shaming White people' in training - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/crt-oklahoma-tulsa-schools-shame-white/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/crt-oklahoma-tulsa-schools-shame-white/ |
Phil Mickelson lines up a shot on the 18th hole during the first round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J. (Seth Wenig/AP)
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — The players who have absconded to the LIV Golf Invitational Series have consistently said their decision to join the deep-pocketed, Saudi-backed venture was not about the money.
“There’s many facets to making this decision,” Jason Kokrak said.
“There’s a lot more to my decision of sitting here than just a financial opportunity and less golf,” Paul Casey said.
“No, money was not a factor,” Charles Howell III said this week to a room of skeptical reporters.
So, then, what is this all about? What makes this nascent series, steeped in controversy and determined to buck tradition, “the future of golf,” as Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and others who have signed on keep calling it.
This weekend’s LIV Golf event at Trump National Golf Club involved serious money — a total purse of $25 million — and took great efforts to present itself as golf with attitude. Or at least a personality. There were paratroopers before the first tee shot and T-shirt guns during breaks in the action. Music — stadium rock, Top 40, dance — blared from speakers across the course, even as players lined up tricky putts.
With a different competition format, LIV is trying to be more than a fresh coat of paint on a sport that has resisted big changes. But thus far, with relatively thin crowds, modest online viewership numbers and much of the attention focused on peripheral controversies, it’s not yet clear whether there’s an audience for LIV’s version of the sport — or whether that even matters to the circuit’s wealthy benefactors.
“We firmly believe that we can attract a younger audience,” Atul Khosla, the LIV president and chief operating officer, said in an interview. “ … If you look at golf over the years, it’s aged. I think the average viewership is 65 and older. And I think from our perspective, when we looked at launching a new product, we’ve always viewed it from the lens of, ‘What are we trying to solve for?’ And what we’re trying to solve for is get younger people playing golf, watching golf, becoming fans of golf. And we think we can do that by changing how the product is packaged.”
For the uninitiated, LIV presents golf as both an individual and a team sport. There are 12 teams, with names such as Crushers, Majesticks and Aces. The winning four-man team this week will split $3 million; the event’s individual winner will take home $4 million. But the tournament is unlike other organizations in that it features a shotgun start — every player begins his round at the same time from a different hole on the course — there is no cut, and the entire event lasts three days, not four.
Traditionalists might deride the format as gimmicky, but LIV defenders will counter that the format is not trying to cater to traditionalists.
Mickelson is perhaps the biggest believer — and he has millions of reasons to be, courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. He has noted that LIV Golf intends to target a global audience with events staged around the world. The players can’t skip faraway stops; they’re contractually obligated to show up.
“We receive a ton of money, and we give up our schedule, and we commit to wherever they hold the events,” Mickelson said.
The play inside the ropes would feel familiar for any golf fan, but the format and the delivery are the biggest departures.
“One, it’s not a 12-hour day, having to watch golf all day. You’ve got a 4½-hour window,” Mickelson said. “Second, when I think a streaming partner comes about, I think it’s going to revolutionize the way golf is viewed because you’ll have no commercials and you’ll have shot after shot after shot and it will capture that younger generation’s attention span.”
The Bedminster event aimed for a festival-like atmosphere, with a stage set up for a Chainsmokers concert at the conclusion of Sunday’s final round.
“We view this course as our stadium, and the things that you could experience at a stadium or an arena, how do we best bring those things to a golf course?” said Khosla, a former executive with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and before that with the Chicago Fire of MLS.
With taps flowing and drinks easy to find across the course, the mood was light from tee to green. Fans are close to the action — “Nice shot, Phil,” a fan near the 14th green said, “you just cost me 20 bucks” — but the crowds at Bedminster were rarely two deep, even around the most popular players.
At times, the LIV product can feel merely like golf with a soundtrack. Despite the big names LIV officials have lured from the PGA and European tours — the 48-man field this weekend included 11 major champions — the field was still an uneven mix of the who’s-who and who’s-that of the golf world.
Measuring its popularity is tricky, in part because the start-up doesn’t seem concerned about traditional metrics in these early stages. Unlike at other pro golf events, there aren’t corporate logos and signage littering the course. Though the LIV Golf social media accounts are active, there is no television rights deal and no commercials on the streaming broadcasts.
Fewer than 1,000 people were concurrently watching the Facebook Live feed for much of the first two rounds this weekend, while LIV Golf’s YouTube channel was at or above 60,000 viewers for much of Saturday’s second round. On the course, there were far fewer people. Event officials didn’t announce attendance, though most estimates suggested only a few thousand spectators. Tickets sold for $75 per day but could be had on the secondary market for $1 apiece (plus $5.05 in fees via StubHub).
Meanwhile, with its controversial Saudi backing, the alliance with former president Donald Trump — whose courses will host two LIV events — and the peril it poses to the pro golf establishment, the actual competition has drawn scant attention through three events. (Henrik Stenson, who lost his Ryder Cup captaincy after he joined LIV, leads this weekend’s event through two rounds; the first two events were won by South Africans Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace.)
The days leading up to the Bedminster event were overshadowed by Trump and the families of 9/11 victims, who are protesting LIV Golf events because of the Saudi benefactors. On Friday afternoon, a couple hundred spectators surrounded the 10th tee box to watch Mickelson begin his round. As the golfer approached his ball, someone shouted, “Do it for the Saudi royal family!” and Mickelson quietly backed away. He regrouped and smacked his shot into a bunker as a staffer approached the fan and issued a warning.
But most fans strolling around Trump’s Bedminster club were supportive of the assembled golfers, hoisting cameras in the air to record tee shots, shouting encouragement for big drives, studying the giant leader boards throughout the course and trying to make sense of the format.
The team element could take time for golf fans to digest, but players have repeatedly cited it as part of the appeal. “I love being able to look up at that leader board and not just see my name but also look for my guys,” golfer Patrick Reed said.
LIV officials think the format is the draw, but it’s also what could jeopardize LIV players from being able to perform on the sport’s biggest stages. Players have voiced few misgivings about leaving their former tours, but many have said they hope they still will be eligible for majors and Ryder Cup events.
While a handful of players have exemptions into some majors, other could miss out because the Official World Golf Ranking board hasn’t yet decided whether it will recognize LIV Golf events.
“I feel like it would be kind of crazy not to get any points if we’re playing in these big-time events,” Abraham Ancer said.
LIV Golf officials have publicized plans for the future but have made no indication they will be tweaking their competition format. The breakaway outfit announced plans for a full 2023 season that will include 12 teams competing in 14 events. A news release last week made no mention of the 54-hole format or shotgun starts, but Khosla said LIV Golf is committed to its format for now and that officials are hopeful the OWGR will recognize its events.
While many of the game’s stakeholders fret over the upheaval fracturing the sport, the players who have made the LIV leap have said they’re hopeful the game can support both the preexisting tours and this start-up, complete with its bouncing soundtrack.
“The landscape in golf is looking good,” golfer Ian Poulter said. | 2022-07-31T01:01:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf's Bedminster tournament has loud music, scant crowds, big talk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/liv-golf-bedminster-format/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/liv-golf-bedminster-format/ |
How Hillsdale College-affiliated charter schools spread
(iStock) (NosUA/iStock)
I recently wrote a piece about a controversy over disparaging comments that Larry Arnn, president of the small but influential Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan, made about teachers. Arnn said recently that teachers “are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country,” and that “anyone” can teach. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), who had invited Arnn to help open dozens of charter schools in the state, heard the remarks and was criticized for not pushing back by Democrats and Republicans.
Since then, three school boards have rejected applications for three Hillsdale-affiliated charter school applications. And the Associated Press reported that when Lee was asked recently if he still held a “wholehearted embrace” of Hillsdale, the governor said he had talked to Arnn “maybe five times” in the past two years.
What happens in Tennessee, of course, won’t stop the spread of Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools. This piece looks at one way this network is growing, in this case with the help of Academica, the country’s largest for-profit education management company. It was written by Darcie Cimarusti, communications director for the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit group that advocates for public education.
By Darcie Cimarusti
Hillsdale College is a small, nondenominational Christian school in Michigan with a satellite campus on Capitol Hill. Hillsdale President Larry Arnn headed former president Trump’s 1776 Commission, and last year Hillsdale College released a “1776 Curriculum” as a counter to the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its corresponding K-12 curriculum.
Hillsdale spreads the gospel of the right-wing through their K-12 curriculum and the Barney Charter School Initiative, which currently claims member schools in nine states across the country and “curriculum schools” in 19 states. The college’s mission to maintain “by precept and example the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith” morphs into a call for “moral virtue” in their K-12 charter schools.
The school’s expanding K-12 footprint aligns with former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s admission that “greater Kingdom gain” is the ultimate outcome of the religious right’s school choice agenda. Hillsdale has made gains in this aim via charter schools, which are publicly funded but operated by entities outside traditional school districts.
In a steely anti-government polemic, Betsy DeVos says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family
Hillsdale does not “own, govern, manage, or profit from” the charter schools they work with, and they do not charge for their curriculum. But Florida-based Academica, the largest for-profit education management organization (EMO) in the nation, stands to make money on Hillsdale’s crusade.
Hillsdale’s classical charter school initiative was designed to turn the tide on what the college sees as “a hundred years of progressivism” in public education. Charter schools that contract with Hillsdale agree to center Western tradition in their K-12 curriculum, and to focus on the “four core disciplines of math, science, literature, and history.” Students must learn Latin and receive explicit instruction in phonics and grammar. The core disciplines are taught through the reading of primary source material [fcalv.net] and the “great books” which are also chosen to guide students’ moral development. Hillsdale’s curriculum not only narrows the course of study available to students, it rewrites American history, particularly when it comes to civil rights.
The American Legacy Academy (ALA) was recently approved to open in the Weld RE-4 School District in Colorado. According to ALA’s website, the charter school will offer a back-to-basics, classical education as a Hillsdale College curriculum school. The approval of the charter school is a victory for local culture warriors who have stormed board meetings with grievances over masks and critical race theory.
New, large housing developments are leading to significant population growth and a severe public school capacity problem in the Weld RE-4 district. Nevertheless, in November 2021 voters rejected a bond initiative to build new public schools, leaving district officials to lament that they “have a problem without a clear solution.”
Since the bond’s defeat, district employees and community members have been working together to educate the community and put together another bond proposal. A district survey showed that 70 percent of residents favored a “district-built, traditional or non-charter school” in RainDance, one of the new neighborhoods.
But the supporters of ALA and the for-profit charter chain Academica have different plans. Academica is working closely with ALA’s founding board to open the charter through its related organization, Academica Colorado. According to ALA’s application, Academica Colorado will provide comprehensive services to the charter school.
Working hand-in-hand with Academica, ALA tried to purchase the RainDance property from the district for $2.1 million to build a charter school. Craig Horton, executive director of Academica Colorado, was the first member of the public to speak in favor of the purchase at a recent board meeting, just before board members voted down the proposal. Horton stated: “We’re providing a tax-free solution for two elementary schools. You’re walking away from the ability to relieve overcrowding and save taxpayers up to $80 million by building two charter schools in place of two elementary schools.”
At the meeting, ALA supporters said they would only support the district’s bond effort if the charter is approved, essentially holding the education of the district’s students hostage.
However, there are parents in the district who want to see a neighborhood public school on the property, not a Hillsdale charter school affiliated with Academica. They, too, spoke out. Autumn Leopold and Kimberly Kee, who administer a private Facebook group called RE4 Families Want Schools For All, told a local reporter: “We really just want a compromise that works for everyone and serves the entire community.”
Conservative culture wars
What is playing out in the Weld RE-4 district is part of a greater conflict in the state. A recent poll of Colorado voters showed a growing split in support for charter schools. Only 36 percent of Democrats polled expressed support, compared to 79 percent of Republicans. Perhaps most telling are the reasons. Among the reasons Republicans say in the poll that they favor charter schools is because they don’t teach a left-wing agenda while some Democrats and Independents oppose charter schools because they see them as religious.
The entrance of ALA follows raucous school board meetings over mask mandates, critical race theory, and other hot-button cultural issues that have been playing out in Weld RE-4 for some time. Tensions ultimately boiled over, leading to an unsuccessful campaign led by local resident Luke Alles to oust two board members. Alles is the executive chair of Guardians of RE-4, a local group “founded by three patriot families” that is pushing for the ALA charter school to open.
The first link on the Guardians website resources page is to the Colorado Department of Education’s “Charter School FAQ.” Another leads to a recently released film titled “Whose Children Are They?” The documentary-style film was produced by Deborah Flora, a syndicated conservative Christian talk radio host and failed Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. When the film was released in March, Flora simultaneously announced that she was founding a new nonprofit, Parents United America, which she created to defend “parental rights” against “ideological state guardianship.”
The film is a veritable who’s who of the culture wars. Parents and teachers active in CRT battles are given voice, as are dozens more who claim public schools are grooming children through LGBTQ-infused curriculum and disadvantaging female athletes by allowing trans girls to compete in sports.
Representatives from organizations identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as hate or extremist groups make appearances, as do spokespeople for conservative Koch-funded groups, including the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit American Enterprise Institute.
The overarching narrative is that the ultimate villains are the teachers’ unions and the U.S. Department of Education. Conservative political activist and writer David Horowitz, [whose group is] considered an extremist group by SPLC, claims teacher unions have been infiltrated and are controlled by Communists. Public School Exit founder Alex Newman suggests that the Education Department was formed not only to teach Communist propaganda but to “de-Christianize” and “make the schools less patriotic.” The film claims this campaign began 100 years ago when progressives like John Dewey “intentionally undermined our education system.”
In early 2022, Fox News host Pete Hegseth launched a five-part series, “The MisEducation of America” on Fox Nation. The series shares the same themes, a similar format, and many of the same interview subjects as “Whose Children Are They?” “MisEducation,” which Hegseth claims is the most watched content on Fox Nation, supposedly “uncovers the secrets of the left’s educational agenda.”
In the fifth and final episode, titled “Our COVID- (16) 19 Moment,” the “experts” agree on this: the only path forward is for parents to remove children from the public school system and place them in Classical Christian Schools. If that’s not an option for families, they suggest a classical charter school.
ALA will not be the first classical charter in Colorado. According to the 2019 Colorado Department of Education State of Charter Schools Triennial Report, 24 of the state’s 255 charter schools followed a classical curriculum in the 2018-19 school year.
Academica’s Craig Horton, a retired police officer, was a founding board member of a prominent classical charter, Liberty Common Charter School. Liberty’s headmaster Bob Shaffer is prominently featured in “Whose Children Are They?” — as is Kim Gilmartin, director of New School Development for Ascent Classical Academies.
Ascent, which is a Hillsdale College-affiliated CMO in Colorado, has two classical charter schools in the state, with ambitious plans to open several more.
Horton was also heavily involved in the formation of CIVICA Colorado, part of a national CMO CIVICA, which contracts with Academica. While CIVICA does not formally claim to be a classical charter, CIVICA principal Sheena McOuat stated: “I make sure a lot of politics that are in other schools, sex ed or critical race, they don’t come into my building and it aligns with a lot of people.” McOuat’s husband, Corey McOuat, is one of the founding board members of the American Legacy Academy.
The Colorado Department of Education, which recently revealed that it is struggling to spend down a $55 million dollar federal Charter School Program (CSP) award the state received in 2018, still went ahead and awarded CIVICA a $990,000 start-up grant. ALA hasn’t applied for CSP funds yet, but when representatives appeared before the Weld RE-4 board, they spoke confidently about access to a million-dollar grant.
What the Biden administration’s new rules for charter schools really say
The new Academica classical brand CIVICA is moving into Wyoming as well. Its Republican governor and legislature recently cleared the way for charter schools by passing legislation to take the decision out of the hands of local school districts and give it to a political body. The State Loan and Investment Board now has the ability to approve charters and is currently composed of Gov. Mark Gordon, Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, Auditor Kristi Racines, Treasurer Curt Meier, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Brian Schroeder. All of them are Republicans.
Horton, with the assistance of high-ranking state Republicans and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, is now attempting to open two new classical charters in Wyoming. The two schools — Wyoming Classical Academy and Cheyenne Classical Academy — which propose to open in the fall of 2023, will be Hillsdale College Member School Candidates.
Schroeder, the head of a private Christian school recently appointed state superintendent, attended a parent information meeting hosted by the Cheyenne Classical Academy at the Cheyenne Evangelical Free Church. He told the gathering of prospective charter school parents that “the evangelists of secularism saw two institutions, government and education, as the perfect twin vehicles through which they would remake society in their image.”
Conservative Christian Republicans are now positioning themselves, with the help of Academica and the charter lobby, to use taxpayer funds to challenge “the evangelists of secularism” with a national push for classical charter schools.
Meanwhile, the Weld RE-4 school board’s approval of American Legacy Academy’s application paves the way for two Hillsdale classical charter schools in the district. The schools will ultimately serve approximately 1,300 students, feeding them directly into the Hillsdale pipeline of conservative thinkers trying to “save the country.”
At scale, the approval could also add, at minimum, $580,000 a year to Academica’s bottom line. In the charter application, enrollment figures show that the two charters will serve 1,296 kids in total. In the draft contract between ALA and Academica, the base compensation is $450 per student. If 1,296 students are indeed enrolled, Academica would earn $583,200, not including earnings for facilities and other services. | 2022-07-31T02:11:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/hillsdale-affiliated-charter-schools-spread/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/hillsdale-affiliated-charter-schools-spread/ |
Gary Antuanne Russell, left, punches Rances Barthelemy during their super lightweight boxing match at Barclays Center on Saturday in Brooklyn. (Adam Hunger/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Even amid violent exchanges in the center of the ring, with boxing fans at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center hollering at a fever pitch, Gary Antuanne Russell blocked out the din and allowed the familiar, comforting voice of his late father, Gary Russell Sr., to guide him.
That inspiration, combined with power and precision, contributed to a victory over Rances Barthelemy on Saturday night via sixth-round stoppage, keeping the 140-pound title contender unbeaten in a co-feature before the Premier Boxing Champions main event matching Danny Garcia and Jose Benavidez Jr.
The decisive punch was a right uppercut early in the sixth that sent Barthelemy to the mat for just the third time in his career, compelling referee Shada Murdaugh to halt the proceedings at 50 seconds.
Patrons roundly booed the stoppage in a bout in which all three judges had Russell ahead on their scorecards.
“I felt his presence when I first entered the ring,” Russell said of his father after running his record to 16-0, all by knockout. “It came natural. I said, ‘Dad, I know you’re here.’ ”
Russell Sr. had been in his son’s corner for every bout in his promising career until this encounter, the first for the Russells since the patriarch of the established boxing family died in late May. The eldest Russell brother, Gary Jr., since has assumed the role of lead trainer for Antuanne.
Complications from type-2 diabetes in addition to strokes robbed the Russells of the only trainer in their lives, but Russell Sr. left indelible words of pugilistic wisdom for all his fighting progeny.
“I felt him in the locker room. I felt him in the corner,” said Russell Jr., adding he was somewhat surprised at the stoppage coming that early. “Energy is transferrable. It doesn’t matter where you are, so we’re still utilizing it, and we’re still using it as fuel.”
Russell Sr.’s health had been declining drastically over the past year, with the most severe manifestation the amputation of his left foot in December. Still, Russell Sr. managed to attend Russell Jr.’s most recent fight in January in Atlantic City, where he lost to Filipino Mark Magsayo in a debatable majority decision.
The following month Russell Sr. accompanied the family to Las Vegas to be ringside to watch Antuanne beat Viktor Postol via technical knockout in the 10th and final round. Confined mostly to a wheelchair, Russell Sr. still provided Antuanne direction during the fight from outside the ropes.
The triumph, the most impressive of Antuanne’s career, also was the last fight in person for Russell Sr. in a life that included four sons winning national Golden Gloves titles as well as Russell Jr. and Antuanne making the U.S. Olympic team.
Another son, Gary Antonio Russell, 29, is an undefeated bantamweight with championship aspirations. Gary Allan Russell III, a former amateur boxer, also is heavily involved in the family business, assisting with training at Russell’s Enigma Gym in Prince George’s County.
In the moments before the opening bell Saturday, Antuanne gazed skyward, acknowledging his father’s presence in spirit during introductions. The boxer from Capitol Heights, Md., pointed toward the area where his father always sat by ringside, nodding his head in approval.
Then Antuanne, as has been his calling card since turning professional, came out swinging from the outset, applying pressure with stinging jabs and drawing immediate applause.
Having faced little resistance through his first 15 bouts, Antuanne absorbed some of the more damaging blows to date from an opponent 11 years his senior but with a two-inch reach advantage. Barthelemy (29-2-1, 12 KOs), at his most effective counterpunching, did not shy from trading with the heavier-handed Russell either.
A punch in the second round briefly staggered Antuanne, who used a clinch to blunt Barthelemy, a former two-division champion, from continuing to come forward. Barthelemy also switched from orthodox stance to southpaw, causing Antuanne to modify his strategy on the fly.
In between rounds, Russell Jr., the former WBC 126-point champion for close to seven years, advised Antuanne to remain aggressive on the inside, leading to the punch that pushed him to a victory in an arena where he had fought several times, in each instance with Russell Sr. right by his side.
Barthelemy “tried to pressure me with an onslaught,” Antuanne said. “I kept my composure. I went to the body. I came upstairs when I had to come upstairs. I just executed our game plan. It’s now about what my opponent is doing. It’s about what I do.” | 2022-07-31T03:29:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gary Antuanne Russell beats Rances Barthelemy in boxing co-main event - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/gary-antuanne-russell-rances-barthelemy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/gary-antuanne-russell-rances-barthelemy/ |
Juan Soto reached base in all four plate appearances in the Nationals' 7-6 victory over the Cardinals. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
As Juan Soto stepped to home plate for his first at-bat Saturday night and his walk-up song “Esa Muchacha” blared from the stadium’s speakers, scattered fans throughout Nationals Park did something that might become a recurring theme over the next couple of days.
They stood and gave Soto a standing ovation that extended through Soto playing with the dirt under his feet in the batter’s box. With the Aug. 2 trade deadline looming, it’s unclear how many more of his at-bats they’ll see.
Or how many times they’ll watch his ritual of pointing to the fans in right field, then down the first base line before throwing ahead of the first inning like he did again in the Nationals’ 7-6 win against the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday.
If Soto is dealt in the coming days, he will have provided a productive departure, as he reached base in all four of his plate appearances Saturday.
Soto walked in his first two at-bats, but the Nationals (35-67) weren’t able to bring him home either time. Victor Robles’s solo shot in the third inning was the team’s only run in the early going, and it leveled the score 1-1.
Soto then singled in the fifth inning off Cardinals left-hander Packy Naughton, who was brought in to give Soto a difficult matchup. Two batters later, Nelson Cruz drove in Soto and César Hernández with a two-out double; Yadiel Hernandez singled to score Cruz and tie the game 4-4.
Andrés Machado allowed the first two Cardinals to reach base the ensuing inning, and Hunter Harvey surrendered a sacrifice fly that scored one of those base runners to put the Cardinals up 5-4.
Soto walked again in his final at-bat in the seventh, putting a pair of runners on for Josh Bell. This time, Bell made the most of the extra runners on base; he launched a three-run homer that just cleared the out-of-town scoreboard and ended up as the game-winner even after the Cardinals (53-48) added a run in the eighth.
Why didn’t Erick Fedde make his scheduled start? Fedde was placed on the 15-day injured list before the game, retroactive to July 27, with right shoulder inflammation. Cory Abbott was recalled from Class AAA Rochester to fill his spot.
Fedde said he didn’t feel like himself in his start Sunday against the Arizona Diamondbacks and had more discomfort than usual the following day. Fedde said his concern level about the injury is “not very high” and hopes his IL stint will be brief. He has made 19 starts this season, the second-most on the team behind Patrick Corbin, and has a 4.95 ERA.
“It’s not ideal, but just trying to look at the season big picture,” Fedde said. “It’s tough when you’re in it, but I just want to be at my best to finish the year.”
Paolo Espino moved up a day in the rotation and took the mound in Fedde’s place Saturday; Josiah Gray will now start Sunday. Espino allowed seven hits over 4⅔ innings, but two high-80s fastballs by Espino right down the middle of the plate led to home runs by Nolan Arenado and Paul DeJong.
Arenado’s solo homer opened the scoring in the second inning. DeJong’s two-run blast in the fifth pushed the Cardinals in front 3-1.
Where is Dee Strange-Gordon? With Class AAA Rochester. Strange-Gordon started at shortstop Saturday and finished 1 for 3 with a walk in his first game with the Red Wings since being signed to a minor league deal in mid-July. He was designated for assignment by the Nationals in mid-June and opted to become a free agent but, after re-signing with the team, reported to the Florida Complex League to get back into playing shape.
In 22 games off the bench as a utility man this season, Strange-Gordon had a .308 batting average but only two extra base hits and no walks. | 2022-07-31T03:29:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juan Soto on base four times in Saturday's game against the Cardinals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/nationals-cardinals-soto-josh-bell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/30/nationals-cardinals-soto-josh-bell/ |
I don’t like to be crowded when I’m stressed, and he has a large and tightknit family. I know they want to welcome our daughter into the world and to help out, but I’m not looking forward to it.
I want to breastfeed in private and bond with my new family without people breathing down my neck. I thought I could compromise by stipulating that adults are welcome, but the young children are not.
— Expecting in Arizona
Expecting: As long as visitors (young and older) are healthy they don’t pose a risk to your newborn, but your physical, mental, and emotional health is paramount.
My husband’s family went camping every year with a group of about five other families. His parents’ generation has continued to see each other regularly (except during the pandemic), and my husband’s generation generally does this only for big events — like a big wedding.
I met this friend “Barry” only once, briefly, and probably about 10 years ago. His wife has died. Neither my husband or I had ever met her.
Torn: Your husband and children will be flying the family flag at this memorial event.
He will pass along your condolences. You could follow up with a note to the grieving husband, expressing your regrets.
Grateful: Exactly. | 2022-07-31T05:05:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I don’t want my husband’s big family around when I give birth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/31/ask-amy-birth-big-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/31/ask-amy-birth-big-family/ |
Dear Carolyn: When I met “Susan” I was a 25-year-old virgin, and she was 30 and just out of a five-year marriage to a pathologically jealous guy who had battered her. To give you an idea, he once beat the crap out of one of her platonic friends, thinking the other man posed a threat. He had also accused her of having sex with the dog.
We began dating, and soon she was doing a great imitation of a woman who was in love with me — all over me constantly, telling me how wonderful I was. One night I took her home, she asked me to spend the night, and we made love. The fact that I was a virgin was pretty evident, and I saw no point in denying it.
A few days later I told her I was in love with her and wanted a relationship. I got the, “It’s not you, it’s me,” spiel: “I need time and space. I made a mistake marrying my husband, and I don’t want to make another mistake.” At one point I said, “Tell it to me straight.” I asked her if I was at least in the running, and she said yes. She was willing to keep seeing me, which was less than I wanted, but I figured I’d take what I could get. She didn’t ask me to spend the night again.
Five weeks later she said she’d entered an exclusive relationship with another man. I was shattered. So much for needing time and space.
Apparently, it wasn’t her after all, it was me. If it had taken several months for this to happen, I would have said, “Okay, she wasn’t ready for a relationship then, but she is now, and I wasn’t the one, so be it.” But five weeks?
I suppose that given her recent history, she wasn’t a great prospect for a relationship, but I think she was extremely dishonest. When I told her I loved her, she should have said, “I don’t love you back, and I can’t see you anymore.” What do you think?
— Apparently, It Was Me
Apparently, It Was Me: I think her, “It’s not you, it’s me,” was the one moment of clarity Susan had in the entire span you describe.
Not that everything that happened was about her. But I’ll get to that in a second.
The woman you described is reeling. Emotionally all over the place. I’d be reeling, too, if I were newly rid of a spouse who beat me — someone who felt so entitled to possess me that he beat the snot out of my friend just for being my friend.
You acknowledge that yourself: Susan was “not a great prospect.” But then you accuse her of lying to you, and you write a preferred breakup script that only someone with a healthy EQ could have pulled off.
Again, putting myself in her place, I hope I’d be able to recognize I was off-balance and needed a cease-romance till I steadied myself a bit; tell you the love/physical connection wasn’t there as I broke up with you; and block off whatever “me” time it took to work through my trauma — but that’s the thing about reeling from a trauma or anything else. It compromises judgment. Which requires good judgment to fix.
It is a complex problem that a simple “should have” can’t reach.
Plus, to be thorough: “Shoulds” mean expectations, templates, control. The letdowns and finger-pointing.
You get your needs met or you don’t. You stay or you don’t. No “should.”
All together, this suggests you’re taking the wrong message from the breakup. You see it as, “She didn’t love me but then loved someone else so the problem was obviously with me and she lied and just pretended to love me.” No. Well, maybe, but more likely: She is a traumatized person, possibly seeking pain relief in new attractions, and you had preconceived expectations of love that she couldn’t meet.
Compassion both for Susan and for yourself would be more apt here, and rewarding, than picking through the wreckage for blame. Compassion and understanding: “Given her recent history, she wasn’t a great prospect for a relationship” is not an “I suppose” kind of thing. It’s huge.
My answer is kind of reeling here, too — so much to cover — but I’ll wrap it up this way:
Breakups happen all the time, every day, constantly, always. People get together for reasons and break up for reasons and there’s nothing “wrong” with any of the reasons. It’s a necessary sorting process and it’s arguably not even personal. If a shirt doesn’t fit, is it your fault? The shirt’s?
Susan didn’t fit. When the pain of that eases, you can be a bitter person seeking phantom justice, or wiser person seeking a better fit. Entirely your choice to make. | 2022-07-31T05:05:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: 'It's not you,' she said — then committed to someone else - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/31/carolyn-hax-relationship-commitment-break-up/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/31/carolyn-hax-relationship-commitment-break-up/ |
Journalist José Rubén Zamora leaves a hearing against him on charges of money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling in Guatemala City. (Edwin Bercian/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
An award-winning journalist in Guatemala has gone on a hunger strike to protest his arrest by authorities amid growing signs of a crackdown on political dissent in the country.
José Rubén Zamora was arrested at his home in Guatemala City on Friday night as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling, according to prosecutors. Zamora denounced the charges against him as a conspiracy, describing his arrest as “political persecution.”
Zamora is president and founder of the newspaper elPeriódico, which has reported on suspected corruption within the administration of President Alejandro Giammattei, including in the prosecutor’s office.
In a video posted on Twitter on Saturday, Zamora said he would begin a hunger strike protesting his detention. Authorities also raided his newspaper’s headquarters.
In a separate post, elPeriódico said it would not be silenced despite what it said were “constant” attacks, persecutions and threats against the paper and its president. “We have always believed in freedom of expression and worked to control power through journalism, against all odds,” the paper wrote.
Zamora’s arrest was condemned by human rights groups and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which gave Zamora its International Press Freedom Award in 1995 for his work advocating for press freedoms and fighting censorship in Guatemala.
“Guatemalan authorities should immediately release and drop any criminal charges against journalist José Rubén Zamora, president of elPeriódico,” said CPJ Advocacy Director Gypsy Guillén Kaiser in a statement late Saturday. “Judicial persecution against journalists is a mechanism of intimidation, and authorities in Guatemala need to put an end to their campaign to intimidate and threaten the press.”
In a video statement, Rafael Curruchiche, who leads the anti-impunity office in Guatemala, said Zamora’s arrest “has no relation in his capacity as a journalist.” He said that he was being investigated in relation to “a possible act of money laundering in his capacity as a businessman.”
Curruchiche was placed on a State Department list of “corrupt and undemocratic actors” from Central America earlier this month. The U.S. report accuses Curruchiche of obstructing investigations into acts of corruption “by disrupting high-profile corruption cases against government officials.”
Anti-corruption judge flees Guatemala despite U.S. efforts to protect her
Several other senior Guatemalan officials, including Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, were placed on the list last year. In May, the State Department announced additional sanctions against her over allegations of “involvement in significant corruption.”
In March, one of Guatemala’s most important judges and a key U.S. ally in the fight against corruption resigned and fled the country in a worrying sign of the deterioration of its judicial system.
The Biden administration has said bolstering anti-corruption programs and improving governance in Central America are essential to deterring illegal migration, and has accused senior officials and politicians in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras of corruption.
Guatemala isn’t the only Central American government cracking down on journalists. In Honduras, journalist Sonia Pérez is facing criminal charges over her coverage of police evictions of Indigenous people, according to CPJ. In El Salvador, authorities have effectively criminalized reporting on gangs, leading to concerns about human rights amid a wave of arrests often made with very little evidence.
Kevin Sieff contributed to this report. | 2022-07-31T05:18:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora arrested in political crackdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/guatemala-zamora-arrest-corruption-crackdown/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/guatemala-zamora-arrest-corruption-crackdown/ |
Women’s Wealth Is Growing. When Will Finance Catch Up?
SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND - JULY 26: Fran Kirby of England celebrates with team mates after scoring their team’s fourth goal during the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Semi Final match between England and Sweden at Bramall Lane on July 26, 2022 in Sheffield, England. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images) (Photographer: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images Europe)
The Women’s Euro 2022 football championship has drawn record crowds, selling out huge stadiums that, until very recently, had been the preserve of men’s games. If there was any lingering doubt about the commercial viability of women’s football, Euro 2022 has shown that, with sufficient engagement, change can happen very quickly.
Other social changes are occurring more quietly, but they are no less revolutionary.
More than 60% of UK assets will be in female hands by 2025, according to a forecast by the Centre for Business and Economic Research. This means that older women especially will have to engage in more financial planning.
Several factors are contributing to this shift. There are twice as many women as men aged 90 years or older, for example, and divorce rates among those in retirement, so-called silver splitters, are rising even as the total number of divorces falls. This often leads to older women assuming greater financial responsibility at a stage in life when many look to make things less complicated.
Among the myriad of issues older women might face, two stand out.
The most pressing is usually how to generate retirement income. In the past, there might have been a spousal pension income to inherit, together with a share of their partner’s state pension. These days, a pension is more likely to take the form of a lump sum from which cash is withdrawn. This puts far more onus on individuals to ensure that they don’t live beyond their means.
For all its faults, it’s worth remembering the 4% rule — which involves withdrawing 4% of your nest egg in your first year of retirement and increasing the drawdown in line with inflation thereafter. Many advisers today, however, consider this to be on the high side. It also presupposes that 50% of your fund is exposed to the stock market.
The second issue is that the default advice regarding UK inheritance tax (IHT) is that all assets should be passed to the surviving spouse after one’s death. This is because a widow, or widower, can inherit their partner’s estate entirely free of inheritance tax and also assume their IHT allowances. Yet although this is tax efficient, it imposes a significant management burden upon an often elderly partner.
For younger women, the financial challenges can be very different. Imbalances in earnings are beginning to be addressed by women’s stronger academic performance. In the UK, women today are 35% more likely to apply to university than men and, according to the country’s Joint Council for Qualifications, 46.4% of girls achieved A* or A grades at A-level in 2021 compared with just 41.7% for boys.
Women also tend to make better investors, but they are drawn to more conservative savings vehicles, such as deposit accounts and cash Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs). While useful for short-term savings and emergency funds, such products are unsuitable for building wealth over the longer term.
Historically, women have opened six times more cash ISAs than ISAs that allow investment in stocks and shares; meanwhile, men are 25% more likely to invest in stocks and shares ISAs than women. Helena Morrissey, the chair of financial platform AJ Bell, once described this preference for conservative savings accounts as being “recklessly cautious.”
As a rule, the longer your investment horizon, the greater your exposure should be to stocks and funds. So, for younger women investing for their retirement, it’s appropriate to have a significant exposure to the stock market. There is plenty of time for suitably diversified investments to recover from any intervening market volatility.
A big issue for men and women alike, however, is which investment funds to choose. The investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown alone offers more than 3,000 funds. The variety can be overwhelming to the point of paralysis. Faced with so much choice, many novice investors choose to avoid the problem altogether.
While a financial adviser can help with this issue, there are cheaper options. Many online brokerages offer what’s called robo advice. A short survey determines your investment objectives and risk appetite and suggests a selection of suitable, low-cost funds. For most people, simply getting started with investing is of far greater importance than what precisely they invest in, especially if the alternative is lengthy procrastination.
Full-blooded financial advice is essential for more complex issues, though, especially for people, typically women, suddenly finding themselves inheriting sole control of assets previously managed by their partner.
Many financial advisers acknowledge that their traditionally male industry has a problem with how it communicates with women. Advisory firm Schroders commissioned a report that came up with several specific recommendations. The most basic is to involve spouses in the conversation from the outset and to take time to understand a woman’s story and her support infrastructure.
At a broader level, the industry would benefit from bringing more women on board as advisers. Although the situation is slowly improving, the Personal Finance Society estimates that only 22% of the UK’s chartered financial planners are women.
The Euros is but one demonstration of how, with sufficient support and application, change can occur quicker than people might expect. The world of finance has some serious catching up to do to reflect women’s growing wealth. | 2022-07-31T06:49:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women’s Wealth Is Growing. When Will Finance Catch Up? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/womens-wealth-is-growing-when-will-finance-catch-up/2022/07/31/d3aad034-1096-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/womens-wealth-is-growing-when-will-finance-catch-up/2022/07/31/d3aad034-1096-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html |
Three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray will play in the upcoming Citi Open in Washington. (Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post)
Having earned more than $62 million in winnings and been knighted by Prince Charles, Andy Murray need not achieve another sporting feat for kin or country in his lifetime.
Yet here is Sir Andy in Washington yet again, sweating through shirt after shirt amid stultifying humidity, berating himself during a two-hour practice Friday in the run-up to the Citi Open each time he blasted a service return over the baseline or into the net.
“I love this sport,” Murray said when asked what compels him to continue competing at 35 despite a surgically repaired hip with a metal implant. “That’s essentially why I am back and why I wanted to keep going: because I love the sport.”
Tennis has given Murray everything, as he put it in a wide-ranging interview, a towel draped around his neck as he sat on the metal bleachers of a court at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center after practice.
A Glasgow native, he traveled to America for the first time at age 11, he recalled. He got to visit South America, too. And at 15, he moved to Spain to train at an academy.
Andy Murray, survivor of childhood gun violence, angry after Uvalde shooting
“I absolutely loved that — learning about different cultures and meeting new people and having some independence,” Murray said.
Tennis introduced him to his future wife, Kim Sears, with whom he has four children — three girls and a boy aged 1 to 6.
It also brought trophies and triumphs he does not enumerate — among them, three Grand Slam titles, two Olympic singles golds and the distinction of being the only man to break the chokehold that Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal held on the world No. 1 ranking for 18 years, from February 2004 to February 2022. Murray also restored a nation’s sporting pride in becoming the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years in 2013 and again in 2016.
But recent years have been difficult, marked by injury and often debilitating pain.
After dropping outside the top 800 in 2018 and undergoing a second hip surgery in 2019, Murray confronted the prospect of life without the sport he had played since age 3.
At 31, he wasn’t ready for that.
“Tennis has given me an amazing life,” Murray said. “It has also given me a purpose each day. There is a routine because you’re always trying to improve yourself and get better at something. I enjoy that process.”
So he committed to the long slog back, convinced that if he could overcome the injuries, he was capable of playing great tennis again.
At 6-foot-3 and a lean 181 pounds, Murray is wiser now about managing his body. His training — both on court and in the gym — is less about logging hours of ball-striking and power sets and more about targeted, purposeful work.
“Probably could have done with a bit more of that when I was younger,” he mused.
As for his strengths, Murray boasts deft touch and a wide repertoire of shots, including a rock-steady two-handed backhand, trusty slice and volleys, effective serve and, in his prime, an even better return.
He has always been a savvy tactician, son of Scottish tennis coach Judy Murray.
“In terms of tennis management, he is outstanding,” said former player Brad Gilbert, who coached Murray in 2006-07. “He has great knowledge of what he does as a player and what his opponent does.”
To that base, Murray has added data and analytics, crediting his off-again, on-again coach, Ivan Lendl, the Czech-born former No. 1, with introducing that element to his game.
“He doesn’t talk lots,” Murray said of Lendl, an eight-time Grand Slam champion with whom Murray won his three majors. “He gives quite simple messaging and doesn’t overcomplicate things. But he is into data and analysis, which I am interested in, too. And he’s a hard worker by nature and obviously knows the amount of hours and effort it takes to get to the top of the game.”
Murray had long considered the serve and return-of-serve the most important shots in the game.
The latter was once a strength but has let him down of late. During Friday’s practice against Arlington native Denis Kudla, it was to blame for considerable frustration and more than one expletive.
The issue, Murray explained afterward, is that as players have gotten bigger and stronger over the past six years, the first serve has become more of a weapon. Not surprisingly, the tour-wide percentage of return-games won has dropped 2 or 3 percent from what it was in 2016.
In Murray’s case, he confessed, the drop has been precipitous — down 14 percent.
“If I can change that and I can improve that, then that, over time, should make a big difference to my results on the court,” Murray said.
He has brought a similar analytical bent to broadening his perspective on issues off the court.
He wasn’t particularly outspoken as a rising star in his 20s, nor was he particularly informed. “Being perfectly honest,” he said, “I was in my own tennis bubble and was not really focused on anything else.”
Today, Murray is regarded as a statesman of the game, willing to use his platform to advocate for causes he believes in, such as the need for a domestic-violence policy on the men’s tour, equal opportunity and pay for female athletes, racial and social justice, and the importance of vaccines amid the pandemic.
In March, Murray announced he would donate his prize money for the year to UNICEF’s program to help the children of Ukraine. Citi Open chairman Mark Ein announced Saturday that the tournament would match whatever amount Murray won in Washington and create an online portal for tennis fans to contribute.
“What is happening in Ukraine is horrifying,” Murray said. “You can never put yourself exactly in their shoes; I’m aware of that. But it must be absolutely terrifying, heartbreaking and scary. I wanted to do something, and the only thing I can probably offer is to give money to try and help the children that are being displaced from their families.”
Murray traces his awakening to working with Amelie Mauresmo, the former No. 1 whom he hired as his coach in 2014, and the skepticism and double standard he encountered as a result of hiring a female coach.
“Amelie was number one in the world and a great player, and a lot of the men I’ve worked with [as coaches] were nowhere near that,” Murray said. “But if I lost a match, nobody ever asked whether it was because of a [male] coach, whereas when I started working with Amelie and I lost, the questions were ‘Do you feel like she’s the right person?’ A lot of people on TV were saying, ‘Oh, he needs to change coaches.’ Even people within my own team, I stopped working with them because it was a problem for them as well.
“It made me realize that there is a problem there on that topic. And it was something that opened my eyes to other things. So I just felt like, when I saw what I perceived as injustices, I tried to speak about it.”
As he prepares to launch his hard-court preparation for the U.S. Open, Murray continues pushing to get the best out of himself and the team around him.
Seeking more power and spin, he experimented with a new racket this year before concluding the acclimation wasn’t worth it, so he reverted to his familiar frame. He changed coaches in March, bringing back Lendl, who will be in his box for the U.S. Open, and adding former player Mark Hilton to push him further as a traveling coach.
“A coach is there to challenge you,” Murray said. “I enjoy debating. Even though I have played 900-odd matches on the tour and have been out there for a very long time, I still feel like I can learn.”
And he is making strides. In March, he earned his 700th career victory, which has been among his goals. And he has climbed from No. 135 in the world at the season’s outset to 50th. His next goal is improving his ranking enough to be seeded at big tournaments.
“There’s a lot of people that feel like maybe I shouldn’t be playing,” Murray conceded. “But I love tennis, and I love competing, and I feel like I can get better than where I am today. If I reach that point where I don’t feel like I can improve or that things are maybe going backward, then that would maybe change where I’m at.” | 2022-07-31T09:35:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At 35, Andy Murray battles on, driven by his love of tennis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/andy-murray-citi-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/andy-murray-citi-open/ |
Should 18-year-olds be able to buy semiautomatic rifles? In Georgia, two young men who want to be the ‘good guys with guns’ try to decide.
By Stephanie McCrummen
Skylar Honeycutt, 23, holds the first gun he ever owned, a Henry rifle with lever action, in Ringgold, Ga. He's with his cousin Evan Honeycutt, 18, who wants an AR-10 rifle. Skylar and Evan are cousins who want to be the "Good guys with guns," but they have differing views on what that may mean. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
RINGGOLD, Ga. — It was a summer weekend in Northwest Georgia, and two young men were getting together to talk about how to be good guys with guns.
Evan Honeycutt was 18, saving up for a semiautomatic rifle, and the one his teenage brain was dreaming of was an AR-10. His cousin Skylar Honeycutt was 23 and had some questions about that.
Only a few weeks had passed since a young man with a semiautomatic rifle killed 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo and another young man with a semiautomatic rifle killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., and among the concerns raised by mass shootings in America was whether anyone should have easy access to a semiautomatic rifle such as an AR-10, much less an 18-year-old.
Skylar watched as Evan pulled up to the house and headed to the door. It had been a while since they’d spent time together. In Skylar’s mind, his cousin still existed somewhere between being the skinny kid who had gotten blown flat on his back the first time he fired a shotgun, and the teenager learning to control his adolescent temper. Now he scanned him for signs of burgeoning adulthood: aviators, khaki T-shirt, leather wristband, cowboy boots with engraved silver spurs. Skylar lingered on the spurs.
“What’s up, cowpoke?” he said. “You look like a hick.”
“I hate you,” joked Evan.
“This town’s not big enough for the both of us,” Skylar continued, and so began a conversation about guns in a part of America where within a 10-minute drive of Skylar’s house there were six gun stores, two firing ranges and a warehouse-size shop specializing in ammunition. Others stocked tactical gear and accessories such as Hell-Fire triggers that could push a semiautomatic rifle toward what was advertised as “full-auto fun.” There was a shop that specialized in custom-painting ARs with designs such as camouflage and red splatters. And up and down rural highways were signs for politicians who blamed mass shootings on everything except the roughly 20 million AR-style rifles circulating in America, especially in places such as Northwest Georgia, where Evan set his pistol on a side table.
His father had bought it, since federal law sets the legal age for purchasing a handgun at 21, as opposed to the legal age for purchasing a rifle, which is 18. But in Georgia, an 18-year-old could legally possess a handgun, and Evan thought of the pistol as his own.
“Did you clear that thing?” Skylar asked now.
“Yeah, I cleared it,” Evan said.
They sat in the living room, where a painting of Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat hung over the fireplace, and Evan began telling Skylar about what he’d been up to.
“I went to see a buddy in the sticks,” he said. “He’s got an arsenal. Has submachine guns, handguns, shotguns, any other kind of long guns you can think of, almost. Got his own range. Big field he owns. Nobody for miles. He brought out all these guns for me to shoot — I shot everything but a sniper.”
Skylar listened. He’d always taken on the role of big brother with Evan, and now he considered it his duty to make sure Evan was ready for an AR-10, a heavier version of the more ubiquitous AR-15 that also fired bigger rounds. It wasn’t that he was worried about Evan becoming some sort of bad guy with a gun; it was that Evan was 18. The part of his brain associated with rational decision-making was still forming. He was impressionable.
“I’m thinking, if I was in this scenario, what would I do?” Evan continued. “How fast could I pull my weapon and fire at this target. Mom’s always worried about my hero complex, but I’m not going to be a peon if there’s an active shooter.”
“That’s what’s so dangerous about a gun though,” said Skylar, finding a chance to make his first point. “You never know how you’re going to react. You might freeze up in that kind of situation. You can’t say for sure.”
“Yeah,” said Evan. “All I know is, me and my friends joke that if there’s a mass shooting, I’m going to be the one that gets him.”
“I’ll be honest,” said Skylar. “If I’m in Walmart, and I’m concealed carrying, and someone starts shooting? Unless they’re near me, I’m not going after him. As much as I’d like to be the hero and save people, I’m trying to get the person I’m with to safety. Plus, I got to think about I may have to kill somebody. And am I prepared to do that? Am I going to miss because of nerves? You got to think about all that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah,” said Evan.
“It’s why it’s better to get trained,” Skylar said.
He mentioned a gun safety class he wanted Evan to take.
“I already took classes,” said Evan, who had been commander of his high school Junior ROTC rifle team.
“There’s nothing wrong with learning more,” Skylar said. “You can never know enough. You can never be fully prepared.”
That was Skylar, the cautious one in the conversation, the one whose memories of guns began with seeing rifles mounted on a wall in his grandfather’s house, and the voice of his father, so stern it could scare him, saying don’t touch a gun, don’t go near a gun, guns are not for children.
He remembered being a young boy, and seeing a gun on the carpet behind the couch at his uncle’s house, and a baby crawling toward it. “I just thought: ‘Danger,’ ” he said, recalling the moment a few days before Evan’s visit.
He remembered scenes from westerns he watched in darkened rooms with his dad and starting to believe that men with guns could do good: Clint Eastwood drawing a gun to save a little girl, or pretending to hand over his pistols to a villain only to spin them around and kill him, or his favorite, Lee Van Cleef shooting Eastwood’s hat cleanly off his head and into the night sky, the hat blowing higher and higher as he shoots it again and again.
He remembered being 10 years old and hearing his mother scream so loud that he thought an intruder was in the house, grabbing a steak knife and running to her room, only to learn that she was screaming because a beloved relative had killed herself with a gun.
He remembered a certain level of violence becoming ordinary. The active shooter drills in middle school, when he sat in the corner of a classroom as an administrator wiggled the door handle. The kid who accidentally shot another kid in the head, killing him. Another kid who shot and killed someone during an argument. “I probably know 10 kids who got killed because they were idiots,” Skylar said.
He remembered wanting a gun, and his dad saying no until the Christmas after he turned 18, when Skylar opened a long, white box containing a lever-action rifle called a Golden Boy.
“Brand spankin’ new,” he said, recalling the walnut stock and brass highlights. “My eyes lit up. I remember sitting down with my dad and him talking to me. He said I love you. He said I want you to have it. He took me shooting and made sure I was safe with it. I fell in love with it. I remember the feeling when I first shot it. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, to be honest. I was like, holy crap, I’m a cowboy now.”
He remembered how else he felt being 18, uncertain and full of wild emotions, listening to extreme metal one day and Dean Martin the next. He sweated when he got mad. He had a strange desire to be punched in the face. He got frustrated and smashed his gaming console once. He remembered his mom and dad paying close attention to his moods, and his dad saying, “Buddy, if you ever get depressed, I want you to tell me,” and his mom saying, “Skylar, are you happy?” He remembered turning 19, and 20, and feeling such things less and less.
He remembered the day he and his dad were stopped at a red light in a rough part of town, and his dad grabbing his pistol from the console, cracking open his door and pointing the gun at a man he thought was about to carjack them but who, it turned out, was just trying to close the door to the gas tank his dad had left unlatched. As they drove off, Skylar remembered thinking how quickly things can escalate, and how in control his dad had seemed, how capable of making him feel safe.
He remembered wanting to be that kind of man, too, so when he turned 21, he used his pandemic stimulus check to buy a Smith & Wesson 9mm at a pawnshop down the road. He started watching YouTube videos of men shooting guns at blocks of soap and dummy torsos that exploded in slow motion. He wore the pistol around the house to get used to how it felt, and now it was two years later, and he still wasn’t used to it. He still wouldn’t take it out of the house.
He confined himself to shooting groundhogs with his dad’s hunting rifle from a second-story bathroom window. The backyard sloped down into a bowl, and was surrounded by other houses, and Skylar allowed himself to fire only if the groundhogs crossed into an imaginary square of grass.
“I don’t want neighbors to think I’m some young guy willy-nilly popping off,” Skylar said. “I don’t want people to fear me.”
He was sitting on his front porch, thinking about how it felt to be 23. He had a job working at a RaceTrac gas station. He was preoccupied with learning a trade, buying a house, having a family. He thought about how different he felt from when he was 18, and he thought about how young Evan could still seem at times, and about Evan in the world with an AR-10.
“I don’t feel that I know enough yet to go out in public with a gun,” Skylar was saying to his cousin now, trying to lead by example. “I don’t think I’m trained well enough to know how to shoot. I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of situation.”
Evan was swiveling in the recliner. “I’m in a house with my mom? And someone’s threatening her? For the love of God, they’re going or I’m going,” he said.
“But you have to think, are you mentally prepared to do that?” Skylar said.
They started talking about mental preparedness, and mental maturity, and soon, they were talking about the minds of young men who carried out mass shootings.
“If you ask me, the problem is mental illness,” Skylar said. “I think of all the kids who do these killings, that’s involved. They’re depressed. They’ve been bullied. Who knows? They lose their mind because no one pays them any attention.”
“I think we have societal blinders on,” said Evan.
“Think about us,” Skylar said. “One of us gets depressed? We voice it. We have support. But most people don’t get to know people. There’s red flags.”
Skylar mentioned that he’d just heard about a former classmate who’d killed himself. Evan mentioned a friend who had attempted suicide, who still called him up sometimes.
“He’ll just say, ‘Dude, I’m spiraling,’ ” Evan said. “Mostly I just listen.”
“It would not bother me to have a mental evaluation before you could own a gun,” Skylar said. “If you ask me, it makes perfect sense.”
They thought of questions they’d ask a hypothetical 18-year-old in such an evaluation.
“I think there should be questions about real-world scenarios,” Skylar said. “Like, should you pull out a gun here? Do you think it’d be okay to pull a gun here? Do you think it’s legal? If you were armed, would you shoot this guy? How’s your temper? Like, if someone pushed your girlfriend, are you going to shoot them? Are you just going to walk into Wendy’s with it?”
“It raises a certain alertness,” Evan said. “I mean, I’m not going to walk into Bass Pro with an AR-10 strapped to my chest but —”
“No, that’s not helping,” Skylar said. “You’d look like a pretentious asshole.”
“Or a shooter,” Evan said.
“I’d ask about their home life,” Skylar continued. “Do you enjoy going to school? Do you enjoy life? Are you an angry person? If you had a gun, how would you feel? What do you know about this weapon? What is your purpose with it?”
He sensed an opening to talk about why Evan wanted an AR-10 and his purpose with it.
“What I like is you can basically do what you want with it,” Evan began, referring to its adaptability. He pulled up a photo of an AR-10 on his cellphone.
“See, if I wanted, I could get a longer mag or a fatter one,” he said, referring to the magazine, one of the many modifications that AR-style rifles are designed to enable. “Or I could get an angle grip, or a side grip, or a smaller grip. I can get a longer barrel. I could turn that into a hair trigger and make it easier to fire.”
“There are laws —” Skylar said. “Just like you can’t saw off a shotgun.”
“I could get a flash suppressor,” Evan continued, talking about what else he wanted. “My dream rifle is a Diamondback chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor,” he said, referring to another AR-10-style rifle. “I just like big guns. Monkey brain in male body. Ooga-booga. Like, if I got a truck? I’d take out the muffler. For me, it’s the presence. Like, ‘Look at me! I’m big and bad, and I got a car that goes grrrrr. I’m a special boy, listen to me!’ It’s the dopamine surge.”
He returned to the AR-10 and his plans for it.
“I’ll take it to the range when I have time or money to go,” Evan said. “Have some fun with it. And, I mean, even so, there’s the point that in case it ever needs to be used in a militia, I need to know how to use it.”
Skylar listened; it was an interest of Evan’s they had not discussed very much.
“You can’t ever not take all the scenarios into account,” Evan continued. “What if the government takes over? What if we’re invaded by some other military? In situations like that, you’re not going to take a pistol out against what could be an army.”
That was Evan, full of bravado, whose first memory of guns was seeing them in the westerns he watched with Skylar, hours upon hours of Clint Eastwood coolly dispatching the bad guys against a spare desert landscape. That was roughly third grade, which was 10 years ago.
He remembered firing the shotgun that blasted him backward and a boyhood obsession with weapons of all kinds. He shaved down sticks to make little spears and carried rocks in his pockets, and when his mother went into a gas station, he’d follow with some homemade armament, scanning the place for danger.
He remembered becoming infatuated with ancient Western civilizations. He learned the runic alphabet, and old Norse phrases such as “I’m going to tear you to pieces,” and around middle school, started dreaming of “a warrior’s death.”
He remembered having access to his first gun around that time, which was after his parents split, when he and his mother moved to an isolated area and she handed him a pistol and said, “You know more about this than I do,” and he put it in his bedside table.
He remembered how it felt becoming a teenager, and having surges of anger and frustration he had trouble controlling, and partly because of that, moving in with his father as he started high school.
He remembered wanting an AR-10, a gun he said “spoke to me.” He joined ROTC because he wanted to learn responsibility and feel a larger sense of purpose. He started playing a game called airsoft, in which he shot plastic beads from a mock AR-type rifle in various fake combat scenarios. Some of the players introduced themselves as Boogaloo Bois, whom experts describe as a loose network of anarchists interested in sparking civil war, and whom Evan saw as “the minutemen of their times” and “overweight guys with lots of tactical gear.”
He remembered being more impressed with one of his closest friends, who told Evan he was part of a group called the Georgia III Percent Martyrs, which experts describe as an anti-government militia, and which Evan understood to be “kind of like justice warriors.”
He started watching Tucker Carlson, trying to make sense of a confusing world. He discovered an app called iFunny, which is Russian-owned and has been used as a recruiting tool for extremist groups, and which Evan described as full of disturbing videos, soft porn and people who are “Biden haters, Trump haters, authoritarians, left wing, right wing, sideways wing, nothing-wing.” He found videos that convinced him the 2020 election was stolen. He found what he described as “a lot of enthusiastic people in the community of the right wing, talking about ‘Man, I can’t wait for this revolution to happen,’ ” and found himself wondering what that was about.
He also learned about a subculture of hypermasculinity in which men tried to be “Alphas” and “Sigmas” and “Giga Chads,” which Evan said was partly a joke — “Like, a Giga Chad wakes up and shaves with a hunting knife, waterboards himself, does 5,000 push-ups and is ready for the day at 2 a.m.,” he said — and partly serious.
“The serious aspect would be just having as much testosterone as you can,” he said.
It was within that context that Evan turned 18, a day he celebrated by going with his dad to buy the Taurus 9mm pistol that would become his when he turned 21.
“I felt like a kid who got a new PlayStation,” he said. “I had it with me the whole day in the house. When I went upstairs to play games, I had it on the bedside table with me. When I was in the kitchen making a bowl of cereal, I had it in my pocket with me. The barrel was kind of digging into my hipbone. I felt tougher. I know that’s the adolescent answer, but I felt tougher.”
He remembered spending the rest of the day planning the cheapest way he could get the AR-10 he could now legally own. He decided he would buy it piecemeal from an online dealer. He could get what’s called the upper receiver, which included the barrel, for as little as $550. He could get the lower receiver, which included the serial number, the magazine well, the trigger mechanism and the safety, for as little as $220, and he could accessorize from there.
As the months went on, he started saving up, first from a job at Publix and then from his summer job building fences. He tried getting used to the idea that he was supposed to be an adult now, even as he sometimes wished for a boyhood that was only a few years ago. He got the spurs. He got steel-toed boots and brass knuckles. He got his first tattoo, a cross stamped with a Proverb that read, “The wicked flee when no man pursues but the righteous are bold as a lion.” He worked on his temper — tried walking it off, taking a deep breaths, although managing it was still sometimes a challenge.
“You get to the point where you get frustrated, then you get angry, then you reach a certain level,” he said. “It’s not a fun feeling.”
And that was who Evan Honeycutt had become by the summer weekend he pulled into Skylar’s driveway. He had saved up $1,100, more than enough.
“Sometimes it can seem like civilization is crumbling,” he was saying to Skylar now. “I feel like there’ll be a civil war of some sort. There’s not going to be a peaceful way to deal with the two sides that are fighting, because —”
“I think it just depends on if there are enough people who are levelheaded and smart enough to find a way,” Skylar interrupted.
They talked about the sides arguing over gun restrictions.
“I saw a video of a protest, and this woman had no idea what an AR-15 was,” Evan said.
“I saw a video of parents from Uvalde — it was a dad crying about his daughter,” Skylar said. “If they’re against guns? I could understand that. I can’t fault that man. The thing is, there’s no one solution. There’s no one law that’s going to fix everything.”
“I still believe the more Americans who are armed on a daily basis, the less these shootings would happen,” Evan said. “If a couple of civilians like me are there? These situations would be dealt with.”
“But you’ve got to think,” Skylar said, as he’d been saying all day. “Are you mentally prepared to do that? Are you really ready?”
He was asking himself the question as much as he was asking Evan, and now they were trying to imagine what it would feel like if they actually had to pull the trigger.
“If he’s right in front of me,” Skylar said, imagining an active shooter, “I would like to think that I would pull out my gun and shoot. If he’s shooting at me, I would hope I’d be fast enough to defend myself and end the threat. But I don’t know. I can’t say for sure.”
“I can kill somebody, but am I going to be okay after?” Evan said. “Probably not. But if I have to, I will.”
“It’d be a hard thing to live with,” Skylar said. “I’d never forget that face. I’d never forget that moment. I’d probably need counseling afterwards. They’d probably take my gun away for a while.”
They carried on, and soon the conversation drifted toward the regular preoccupations of two young men on a summer Saturday in Northwest Georgia. They talked about dream cars and death matches between powerful animals, and circled back to guns, types of ammo, and specifically the pistol that Evan had set on the side table.
“When you get a gun, you’ve got to really know the gun,” Evan said now, picking it up. “Not all guns are going to fire the same.”
Skylar watched him start fiddling with it. He watched him take the magazine out and put it back in, explaining how he knew what to do when the slide jammed.
“I know how to fix the gun, because I shot the gun, and I know all I have to do if that happens is smack it into place,” he said.
Skylar watched him smack the slide and put the gun in his waistband.
“You have to build a relationship with it almost—” Evan was saying.
“I’m sorry,” Skylar said sharply. “I don’t mean to cut you off, but you know what you haven’t done with that thing?”
Evan shrugged.
“Take it out, take it out,” Skylar said, becoming irritated
“This?” Evan said, pulling the pistol out of his waistband.
“Yeah — what have you not done yet?” Skylar said.
“What are you talking about?” Evan said.
“Have you cleared it?” Skylar said. “I ain’t seen you clear it once.”
“I cleared it this morning,” Evan said.
“I’m talking about every time you take it out,” Skylar said.
“Oh,” Evan said.
“Do it. Every. Time,” Skylar said, motioning for the gun.
Evan handed it over to his older cousin.
“Here’s what I was talking about — one, you handed it to me like this,” Skylar said, demonstrating that Evan had the gun pointed at a wall instead of down at the floor.
“Do it like this,” Skylar said, pointing it down.
He pulled back the slide to expose the chamber where a live round could be.
“Look in there,” he said.
Evan looked.
“No, look all the way down,” Skylar said.
Evan looked all the way. It was clear.
“It don’t have one,” Skylar said. “But all it takes is one mistake, buddy, then someone’s hurt.”
He handed the gun back to Evan.
“Anyway, as you were saying,” Skylar said.
“Um, I was saying you almost have to have a connection with a gun,” Evan said, and as they talked into the late afternoon, Skylar kept making his points. Don’t post on Facebook about your guns. Watch instructional videos. Check your temper.
“You’re young,” he said to Evan at one point. “You didn’t grow up too rough. So it’s not a bad thing to not know things. It’s not a bad thing to be ignorant.”
“Yeah,” Evan kept saying, and Skylar felt sure that he was listening, even though on some level, he knew that it didn’t matter anymore.
Evan Honeycutt was 18 years old in a nation where he could buy a whole arsenal of rifles if he wanted, and soon, he was heading back to his car.
“Got everything, bud?” Skylar said.
“Yeah,” Evan said.
“Drive safe,” his older cousin said. “Be careful.” | 2022-07-31T10:31:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Should 18-year-olds be able to buy semiautomatic rifles? In Georgia, two young men try to decide. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/ar15-legal-age-semiautomatic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/ar15-legal-age-semiautomatic/ |
The U.S. Naval Academy is proposing to build a second golf course on Greenbury Point, Md., an idea opposed by birdwatchers, hikers, environmentalists and Chesapeake Bay advocates. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
When the U.S. Naval Academy’s athletic director wrote to the secretary of the Navy earlier this year proposing to build a new golf course on Greenbury Point across from the military school in Annapolis, he said he only wanted to float the idea for further study.
Instead, Chet Gladchuk’s pitch became a call to arms.
Soon after the proposal became known this spring, hikers, birders and environmentalists launched an impassioned campaign to preserve the Greenbury Point conservation area overlooking the Severn River and Chesapeake Bay. The green patch of land is visible from the city, and its three radio towers — remnants of an array that once communicated with Navy submarines below the Atlantic Ocean — have become landmarks for sailors clearing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
Opponents fear that an additional 18-hole golf course on the peninsula will destroy important wetlands and forest habitat, pollute the bay and cut off the public’s access to the shore. They also worry that the proposal is further along than the Navy will admit and that well-connected Navy veterans and wealthy graduates will have outsize influence in determining whether it gets built.
“There’s lots of people here that are loving and using this place: elderly folks, kids being pulled in little wagons . . . people walking dogs, people training for marathons . . . people fishing,” said Joel Dunn, president and chief executive of the Chesapeake Conservancy. “This is a very special resource for the community, and we’re very grateful for the Navy for letting us use it, visit it, enjoy it. So the threat of taking it away with a private golf course is really disconcerting to all of us here.”
Eastern Shore development sparks fight
Twenty-five environmental organizations — including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Severn Riverkeeper and the Maryland League of Conservation Voters — wrote a letter in May to Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro urging him to kill the plan. A poll commissioned by the Severn River Association and the Chesapeake Conservancy found more than two-thirds opposed the idea.
A Facebook page called Save Greenbury Point has attracted about 2,000 members, and about 4,700 people have signed a Change.org petition. Letters have gone out to members of Maryland’s congressional delegation asking them to intervene.
Though several opponents said they have long respected the Navy’s efforts to balance its mission with protecting the bay, they criticized the proposal and what they said has been a lack of transparency.
“This is a developer’s typical M.O.,” said Jesse Iliff, executive director of the Severn River Association. “Hide the ball until you’re in the end zone and then spike it.”
Gladchuk, though unsurprised by the outcry, characterized the response as alarmist and wildly premature to what he describes as the equivalent of a trial balloon.
“There’s no bulldozers, there’s no plan, there’s no architectural design — there’s no architect,” Gladchuk said in an interview. “We looked at Greenbury Point and said, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be interesting to study the feasibility of creating a magnificent recreational facility on the point?’ ”
In his Feb. 15 letter, Gladchuk — who is president of the Naval Academy Golf Association (NAGA) and the academy’s athletic director — urged Del Toro to back the project. He said a second golf course — which NAGA would develop on property to be leased from the Navy — would fit in well with the newly renovated and redesigned golf course. The overhaul, which began in 2020 and cost $10 million, also includes plans for a new clubhouse with a dining area.
“I am asking for your support,” Gladchuk says in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “I look forward to visiting with you to show you our conceptual plans for the course.”
But there has been no meeting and, as yet, not even a map of a new golf course, Gladchuk said. In his imagining, though, about 280 acres of Greenbury Point’s conservation area and adjacent land would be developed into an 18-hole golf course set among nature trails, a boat launch, birdwatching blinds, physical fitness sites and other features. Areas with tainted soil from previous Navy activity would be cleaned up, and sea walls raised in anticipation of higher sea levels because of climate change.
“It’s overgrown,” Gladchuk said of the area now. “It’s infested with ticks. The walking trails are full of invasive species. It’s just undeveloped land.”
Hundreds, if not thousands, of golfers use the existing, privately funded course, including midshipmen in varsity, intramural and physical education programs; active military personnel from all branches, including civilian employees; and veterans and academy graduates, Gladchuk said. Members of the public are welcome to play for a fee or become members.
Even if the Navy were to give the all-clear to proceed with a new course, he said, the process would require multiple levels of bureaucratic review, environmental and historical studies in line with federal law, as well as ample public comment. It also would have to take into account a binding, decades-long agreement by the Environmental Protection Agency and state governments located in the watershed to restore the bay.
“It would take years to develop,” Gladchuk said.
He also estimates NAGA would need to raise at least $35 million to make it happen.
Critics say Maryland's environmental agency is failing to protect the Chesapeake Bay
In the meantime, his proposal is moving up the chain of command, beginning with Naval Support Activity Annapolis, an installation that’s part of Naval District Washington and serves the naval academy, Greenbury Point and nearby Navy properties. Ed Zeigler, a spokesman for Naval District Washington, said nothing has changed since Gladchuk’s letter and referred further questions to the Navy’s FAQ page.
Jennifer Crews-Carey, a retired Annapolis police officer who has helped organize opposition to a new golf course, said opponents keep pushing the Navy to learn more about the proposal’s status.
“I doubt it’s on a napkin,” said Crews-Carey, 56, of Cape St. Claire.
Under the tax code, the Naval Academy Golf Association is a nonprofit social club created to promote and support golfing and operate the academy’s existing golf course.
NAGA had revenue of more than $2.5 million in 2018 from greens fees, initiation fees, golf cart rentals and membership dues of more than $1.6 million, according to the most recent public financial statements. The financial statement estimates the value of the property at nearly $5.8 million.
There are 510 dues-paying members, split evenly between military and civilian, with another 118 on a waiting list, Gladchuk said. The initiation fee — $22,500 for a family membership — is steeply reduced for retired military, who pay $5,500. Greens fees are similarly discounted.
Besides the golf course, the Navy’s property across the Severn River from the academy supports several other uses, including rugby fields and a rifle and pistol range. Much of the 827 acres was purchased in 1909 by the Navy as farmland to support the academy’s dining hall.
Beginning in 1918, Greenbury Point became a radio research and transmission site until satellite communications rendered it obsolete. The radio towers were decommissioned, and all but three were razed.
From the archives: Anne Arundel County clears way for $250 development at David Taylor Research Center
Since 1999, Greenbury Point has been managed as a conservation area. During a recent tour, Dunn and a group of preservationists pointed out the rich diversity of wildlife there — although part of the conservation area was off limits while the shooting range was in use.
Butterflies floated over stalks of milkweed, and an indigo bunting piped from a treetop at the edge of a ragged field. Hundreds of creatures, including ospreys, deer, tree frogs, turtles and, yes, ticks, make their home on the site, whose nearby waters support oysters and other marine life.
The land has been inhabited by humans as early as 10,000 years ago, and settled by Europeans as far back as 1649, said Sue Steinbrook, an organizer of the opposition who is also researching a history of the area.
“It’s a rare, rare resource for people to use,” said Dunn, who heads the Chesapeake Conservancy. “We all care about the Severn River and the Chesapeake Bay, we want people to invest in its future, and we’re devoting billions of dollars to restoring it. But if you don’t get to see it, and you don’t get to enjoy it, you’re not going to vote for it.” | 2022-07-31T11:15:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Naval Academy proposal to build new golf course riles environmentalists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/01/naval-academy-golf-chesapeake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/01/naval-academy-golf-chesapeake/ |
White House Digital Service found that the technology that matches donated organs to patients has failed repeatedly
Doctors prepare for kidney transplant surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in 2019. (Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“There are little to no incentives for ... UNOS … to ever modernize the operations of the [system] and improve the current processes or technology, and the government has very little leverage,” the investigators wrote.
“When nearly 100 percent of hospitals use electronic records, the notion that we rely on human beings to enter data into databases is crazy. It should be 85 to 95 percent automatic," said University of California at San Francisco surgery vice chair Ryutaro Hirose, a former chair of the UNOS liver transplant policy committee. “We could concentrate more on improving patient care.”
Carrie Frenette, who until December was medical director of liver transplants at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., echoed that complaint. "You have to have your coordinator at your center arrange transportation, and there is no help from UNOS,” Frenette said.
“We request you take immediate steps to secure the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network system from cyber-attacks,” the committee chair, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote to Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana in February.
Located in Richmond, UNOS sits at the center of the system. It is the only organization to ever hold the 36-year-old contract to run the operation, currently a multi-year pact worth more than $200 million, funded mainly by fees patients pay to be listed for transplants.
More than 20 percent of all kidneys procured for transplant in the United States are not used, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. That rate reached a new high in 2020, when 21.3 percent of procured kidneys were not transplanted, a registry report found. The reasons are in dispute, with members of the network often blaming each other.
European countries report much lower “discard rates” for kidneys, according to various studies. France had a kidney discard rate of 9.1 percent from 2004-2014, a 2019 study found. The United Kingdom has a rate ranging from 10 to 12 percent. Eurotransplant, a consortium of eight countries including Germany, reported a rate of about 8 percent.
Some of the 57 OPOs also fail to meet government standards for their main job — collecting organs. After decades of allowing them to calculate and report their own compliance data, the government in 2019 took steps to hold the worst of them accountable.
The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act established the transplant network as a “quasi-governmental agency” — with UNOS in mind — run by a non-profit under a single contract, the Digital Service report said.
UNOS’s shortcomings are compounded by HRSA’s own failings. The agency lacks technical expertise, can’t force the network to turn over data, and is so concerned about upsetting the nonprofit by asking for more intensive lung that it has been reluctant to push for a demonstrations of the system, according to the report and interviews. That allows UNOS "to wiggle through and around most new contract requirements for the [transplant network’s] technology by hand-waving at change with technical jargon, while making no substantive progress,” the Digital Service report said.
“There are no requirements, or mechanisms to create requirements, in the current contract” that would force UNOS to upgrade its technology, the report said. "UNOS knows this, and it is why when asked directly about their timeline for modernization, they point at HRSA and just say, ‘We’ll do it when they tell us to.’ "
UNOS also "has at times even threatened to walk away and continue operating the [transplant network] without a contract, despite the fact that it would be illegal for them to operate such a network independent of a government contract,” the Digital Service wrote. That has kept HRSA “hesitant about pursuing avenues for real change in this program,” it added.
But potential competitors for the contract are waiting to see how HRSA writes the requirements in a new bidding document. The last time the contract was up, in 2018, potential applicants ultimately were dissuaded by requirements that HRSA included that called for bidders to have at least three years of experience managing transplant projects of similar complexity — a description that fits only UNOS or a group running a transplant system in another country.
And for the same expenditure as now, according to the former HHS official not authorized to discuss the contract publicly, “You would be hard pressed to think you couldn’t at least get 5 percent better, which would be thousands of transplants.”
Todd C. Frankel contributed to this report. | 2022-07-31T11:24:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UNOS transplant network depends on out-of-date technology - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/31/unos-transplants-kindeys-hearts-technology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/31/unos-transplants-kindeys-hearts-technology/ |
States may revive abortion laws from a time when women couldn’t vote
A group of women mill workers in 1908. (Lewis Hine/Library of Congress)
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, it invalidated antiabortion laws in many states. Now that the Supreme Court has struck it down, these states face questions about whether and how the old laws will take effect again.
Some states avoided this confusion by taking preemptive action. In the half-century that the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abortion, a number of states passed trigger laws automatically restricting abortion if Roe were ever overturned; now those laws are going into effect. Other states passed laws codifying abortion rights in the event Roe was reversed.
But a few states did nothing at all, and now confusion reigns about whether the old laws are kicking in again.
In Arizona, a 15-week abortion ban will go into effect this fall, but the Republican state attorney general is trying to enforce a stricter 1901 law immediately.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is fighting a 1931 law that would ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Abortion remains legal there by court injunction.
In West Virginia, a law from 1849 — before West Virginia was even a state — which makes providing an abortion a felony, is enforceable, according to the Republican state attorney general.
And in Wisconsin, the Democratic attorney general is fighting enforcement of a law, also from 1849, making it a felony to provide an abortion unless it is needed to save the life of the mother. The Democratic governor has said he’ll grant clemency to anyone charged under it.
She survived a forced sterilization. Activists fear more could occur post-Roe.
For many women, it’s jarring to contemplate resurrecting laws from a bygone era when women’s rights were drastically curtailed.
In 1849, West Virginia was still part of Virginia. (The Trans-Allegheny region didn’t break off until the Civil War.) Women of any race or class had difficult lives and few rights.
In 1850, there were about 10,000 enslaved Black women in the counties that became West Virginia. These women had no control over their financial, professional, political or sexual lives. They could not legally marry, and there was no legal protection against sexual assault. Many enslaved women, particularly in Virginia, were subjected to rape and forced breeding. They had no right to travel, so they could not have crossed state lines for an abortion. Some enslaved people brought recipes for abortion-inducing drinks with them from Africa, but access to these would have been inconsistent at best.
Even the most privileged women in what would become West Virginia had few rights. Rebecca Harding Davis was a White woman born into an upper-middle-class family and educated by tutors and private schools. She embarked on a career as a journalist and novelist. Her breakout work, “Life in the Iron Mills,” detailed the plight of immigrants in the mills and mines around her. But she forfeited some of her rights when she married, since Virginia denied married women any property rights, with one legislator arguing that a woman having such a right would destroy the entire institution of marriage.
Wisconsin was a progressive state since its beginning, at least relative to the others. In the 1840s, when it passed its abortion law, its lawmakers took the radical step of considering giving women the right to vote in the state Constitution, before deciding against it, according to the Office of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin. As one local newspaper editorial put it soon afterward, “Women are confessedly angels, and angels don’t vote.”
Married women in Wisconsin were given some property rights in 1850, though they were still barred from writing their own wills or controlling their wages. The University of Wisconsin, which was founded in 1848, the same year as the state, let women enroll as early as 1863, though it was largely a business move to boost enrollment during the Civil War. Even then, female students could only study teaching.
Few Black women lived in Wisconsin, though it was a free state and many White residents were involved in abolition and the Underground Railroad. For Indigenous women, though, there was almost no freedom of movement. For years, settlers and traders had been sexually exploiting them and pushing them off their lands, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 1850, the federal government lured thousands of Indigenous people from Wisconsin to Minnesota, including Julia Spears, an 18-year-old Ojibwe woman. She later described watching hundreds of adults and children die of starvation and disease in what is now called the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
Arizona was still a territory when it passed its abortion law in 1901, but the fight for women’s suffrage was in full swing. Bills to give women the vote in 1883 and 1891 had failed. Two other bills passed but were vetoed by governors. A narrower law, which gave taxpaying mothers of school-age children the right to vote in school board elections, was struck down in court. At Arizona’s 1911 constitutional convention to become a state, women’s suffrage failed again.
Frances W. Munds of Prescott was there for all of it. She was already a member of suffrage organizations when she married a cattle rancher in 1890. She was a mother to young children as she climbed the ranks in these organizations, where she pushed to include Mormon women in the movement. Finally, after she campaigned for a ballot initiative, women in Arizona got the right to vote in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment. When she was elected to the state Senate two years later, local newspapers called her “Mrs. J.L. Munds” — her husband’s name, a common practice for newspapers nationwide.
It would be decades until Indigenous and Hispanic women in Arizona could vote.
Though Black women got the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, many were still unable to exercise that right. In 1931 — the year Michigan passed its abortion law — Detroit preacher’s wife Fannie B. Peck was focused on a different type of voting: voting with your dollars.
Peck started the Housewives’ League of Detroit in 1930 to encourage Black women to shop only at Black-owned businesses and businesses that hired Black employees. Their motto was “Don’t buy where you can’t work” — but that was somewhat symbolic, given that only 22 percent of women were in the labor force nationwide at the time, according to census data.
Michigan women also couldn’t open their own bank accounts. In 1932, as a Great Depression-era federal measure, employed women were forced to quit their jobs if their husbands were also employed.
Nationally, many rights for women were still years or even decades away, according to the National Women’s History Alliance, including receiving a minimum wage equal to men’s (1938), serving on juries without restriction (1975), using birth control (1965), keeping a job after becoming pregnant (1975), enlisting as full members of the military (1948), serving in combat (2013), attending an Ivy League school (1983), owning a credit card (1974) and pressing charges for sexual assault against a spouse (1993). | 2022-07-31T11:24:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ancient antiabortion laws could come back in Ariz, Wis., W. Va., Mich. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/31/abortion-laws-womens-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/31/abortion-laws-womens-rights/ |
Perceptions of sharks are changing as Americans learn they pose far less of a threat than people thought.
Perspective by Christopher Pepin-Neff
Christopher Pepin-Neff is a senior lecturer in public policy at the University of Sydney and author of the book "Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking."
A Great White Shark swims about 50 meters off the coast of the Cape Cod National Sea Shore in Cape Cod, Mass., on July 15. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
As eager viewers wrap up this year’s Shark Week, it’s time to reevaluate the power of sharks in American politics. Several reports of shark bites near New York’s Fire Island, have prompted city officials to close Rockaway Beach over concerns about future harm that sharks may cause. And yet, statistics show that the likelihood of being bitten by a shark and dying is very, very low: one in more than 3.7 million.
Despite the rarity of a shark attack, sharks have long been villains in American society, folklore, and yes, presidential politics. In fact, the commanders in chief have contended with sharks in varying ways over the years, often using the fish as a stand-in to assuage the public’s other fears and anxieties.
Sharks have long fascinated presidents. In 1751, for example, George Washington wrote about sharks in his diary while sailing to Barbados, the only time he left the North American mainland. He wrote: “Shark; this fish from its peculiarly formed jaw and teeth is also called the dog fish. Some of the species are harmless to man but others are particularly ferocious and dangerous.”
Other presidents used the fish to build a cult of masculinity around them and strengthen the executive office. The hypermasculine image associated with Theodore Roosevelt and the “Roughriders” during the Spanish-American War, for instance, was in no small part attributed to their ability to ride horses through swamps and overcome whatever environment they were thrust into. To this end, Roosevelt wrote, “if attacked by a man-eating shark, [I] would be much more interested in evading or repelling the attack than in determining the precise specific relations of the shark.”
But it was Woodrow Wilson who began crafting public policy on sharks to become the first “tough on sharks” president. This followed four fatal shark attacks up the New Jersey inner shoreline on the first 12 days of July of 1916. The attacks were believed to have been the work of a single “man-eating” shark. The incidents made it onto Wilson’s War Cabinet agenda, and Coast Guard ships were deployed to help round up and kill the scoundrel sharks. One shark was in fact found and killed with remains still in its stomach. The threat was addressed by an all-of-government approach to killing a perceived killer shark.
Wilson learned that sharks made for good political targets and a way to show presidents taking action to help the American people. This crisis management was designed to show executive protection of people — namely rich donors who were living in the resorts off the coast — during a time of need.
It also made for a good story, one the public eagerly consumed. Horace Mazet published several successful books about bloodthirsty sharks in the 1930s, including 1933’s “Shark! Shark!: The Thirty-Year Odyssey of a Pioneer Shark Hunter.” Mazet helped popularize the idea that sharks caught “shark rabies,” the precursor to the rogue shark theory on which the 1975 popular film “Jaws” is based.
Based on this lore, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who often tried to control public perceptions of his physical health as he was living with the effects of polio, told the U.S. press about how he fought a 235-pound shark for 90 minutes before landing the fish in 1938. The picture of the president sitting alongside a large strung-up shark was circulated to the public by the White House.
John F. Kennedy similarly used sharks to beef up his masculine persona, as when he brought up the heroic story of how he helped save other crew members onboard a patrol torpedo boat that had been rammed by the Japanese during World War II. His tale of that moment in 1943 included how he had to swim through shark-infested waters.
Such stories may have boosted presidents’ political image by showing them as strong and fearless leaders, but they also boosted the idea that sharks posed a real threat. In 1969, a few years shy of Richard M. Nixon’s downfall from Watergate, taxpayers paid to keep the president safe from sharks at his private beach house in Florida. Nixon asked the Secret Service to install shark nets around his home during his presidency following shark sightings in the waters off Key Biscayne. According to a government report, “The Navy has installed and maintained at the request of the secret service a shark net in Biscayne Bay to protect the President while swimming there.”
The horror tale “Jaws” helped sway the general public and government about the “dangers” posed by sharks. Following the film’s release, the federal government began to see sharks more as “waste fish,” lowering their status in regulatory fishery protections, while many local jurisdictions hosted regular weekend shark derbies where sharks were butchered.
A shift, however, was on the horizon, as sharks received new and perhaps more sympathetic treatments in the coming decades. For instance, Discovery Channel’s Shark Week premiered in 1988 and began to gain traction among the general public in the 1990s. By 1994, California even added protections against fishing or catching great white sharks in its waters.
Several American presidents began using sharks to craft a story of hope for the public. Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama each created shark sanctuaries that helped preserve endangered species. In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noted that “President [H.W.] Bush enjoyed the distinction of having the most national marine sanctuaries designated during any presidential administration,” totaling six.
A shifting political climate has helped to protect sharks, and the public anxieties surrounding shark “attacks” seem to be decreasing. The work of activists and scientists hs helped demonstrate that shark bites are often the result of the shark mistaking a human for one of its natural prey. Thus, a new era in human-shark relations is upon us, with the arrival of the “Save the Shark” movement.
Statistics indicate that public perceptions are indeed changing when it comes to sharks. In 2015 and 2016 surveys, 66 percent of people agreed that the phrase “shark attack” was too sensational. This makes sense given additional data that only 38 percent of reported shark attacks resulted in injury.
And yet, the idea of the shark as villain has also persisted in American political imagination. then-president Donald Trump declared an informal war on sharks in 2018. “I’m not a big fan of sharks, either. I don’t know, how many votes am I going to lose?” he said. In noting some people had asked him to contribute to funds dedicated to saving sharks, he claimed to have responded with: “No, thank you. I have other things I can contribute to.”
The history of sharks and the American presidency makes clear that the fish have served as a powerful tool to shape public perceptions. Indeed, sharks have long been used as a political foil, creating a feeding frenzy, wherein presidents circle and attack sharks to create a moment of opportunity for themselves and their agendas. | 2022-07-31T11:24:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Presidents have long fanned fears about sharks to display toughness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/31/presidents-have-long-fanned-fears-about-sharks-display-toughness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/31/presidents-have-long-fanned-fears-about-sharks-display-toughness/ |
Air travel is in chaos — and there are no easy solutions
Airport workers arrange rows of suitcases that belong to air travelers at Toronto Pearson International Airport on July 22. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)
If you’ve traveled much by air over the past few months, chances are you have encountered difficulties: flight delays and cancellations, misplaced luggage, massive lines for check-in and security. Commercial air travel is in disarray —and, unfortunately, there is no quick solution in sight.
According to the flight-tracking company Flight Aware, in the past two months, 2.2 percent of flights by U.S. carriers have been canceled and 22 percent — or 260,000 flights — have been delayed. The pattern is by no means limited to the United States: 52.9 percent of flights departing from Toronto Pearson International Airport were delayed between June 1 and July 12; London’s Heathrow Airport, where 40 percent of flights were delayed, announced it would restrict the number of departing passengers to 100,000 daily.
Much of the problem stems from an industrywide labor shortage. After the aviation industry was decimated in 2020 by covid-19, U.S. airlines received $54 billion in pandemic aid. Overestimating how long it would take for travel to scale back up, they offered older employees retirement packages and gave many workers temporary leaves of absence. Now they are struggling to train and certify new pilots quickly enough. Federal data suggests that the airlines were the biggest reason for flight delays in the United States from January to May, and are responsible for a significant number of cancellations.
Airlines, however, do not bear sole responsibility. Most organizations working in air travel had to cut back on staffing or pause hiring in 2020. That has led to shortages in airport staff, baggage handlers, security and more. Employers are trying to rapidly hire and train workers, but many airport positions require security clearances. The air traffic control system has also seen staffing challenges in certain high-volume areas, caused in part by covid-19 outbreaks and a halt in training before vaccines were available. Because air travel is deeply interconnected, issues in one airport can lead to delays and cancellations downstream, overwhelming the system.
Some lawmakers have called for the Transportation Department to use its powers on consumer protection to crack down on air carriers. In fact, the department has opened 20 investigations into airlines for failing to pay back refunds efficiently. Authorities should enforce rules if any have been violated, but investigations take time and may not always produce the desired results.
In a June meeting, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pushed airline executives to ensure summer flight schedules were operable. Airlines, to their credit, have cut their schedules by 16 percent since the spring, and flight cancellations have decreased since mid-June. Yet that does not address the longer-term questions of capacity.
Airlines, airports and authorities must work together to fix the structural issues exposed by this summer’s disorder. The pilot shortage was a concern even before the pandemic. Carriers and the federal government should find ways to lower the barriers to entry to training programs and certification, which are time-consuming and costly. It’s also time to look closely at recruitment and retention in airport and ground services, jobs that are often low-paying and labor-intensive with unattractive schedules.
The air travel industry, like much of our economy, was unprepared for the disruption from covid-19. By acting now, it could be more resilient in the face of future crises. | 2022-07-31T11:24:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Air travel is in chaos — and there are no easy solutions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/air-travel-chaos-solutions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/air-travel-chaos-solutions/ |
Dark days again in Russia. For prisoners, an endless carousel of absurdity.
Russian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza on Capitol Hill on March 29, 2017, in D.C. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
To understand Russia today, it is necessary to reach back to Stalin’s Great Terror, when the secret police were called NKVD. In 1937, the writer Evgenia Ginzburg was shocked to find a professor and colleague under suspicion. She knew he had done nothing wrong but at a Communist Party meeting was confronted about why she didn’t denounce him. “Don’t you know he’s been arrested?” she was told. “Can you imagine anyone’s being arrested unless there’s something definite against him?”
Everyone was scared; even Communist Party theorists were “frightened out of their wits like rabbits.” The “power and importance of the NKVD grew with every day,” she wrote in a memoir, “Journey Into the Whirlwind.”
Sadly, much the same is happening today. More than at any time in recent memory, the Russian security services are grabbing people arbitrarily and imprisoning them for criticism of Vladimir Putin or his barbaric war against Ukraine. A prominent and alarming example involves our opinion contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested in Moscow in April on a sham charge of disobeying the police, then indicted on a charge of “public dissemination of knowingly false information” about the Russian military, a law approved after the invasion and intended to squelch any criticism of the Kremlin’s misadventure. Now, Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyer says the authorities are preparing yet another bogus charge, this time for participating in a nongovernmental organization deemed “undesirable” in Russia, a law first approved in 2015 and expanded last year with the aim of closing down organizations that receive funding from abroad. Mr. Kara-Murza, in detention still, hasn’t been indicted on this charge, and his lawyers said they know little more.
But they know the method — an endless carousel of arbitrary prosecutions. The same approach has been employed to unjustly imprison Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, and most recently, Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader accused of spreading “false information” about the military, reportedly for discussing on his YouTube channel the killings of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, by Russian troops. On July 8, a Moscow court sentenced local politician Alexei Gorinov to seven years in prison under the same provision. Defiant, Mr. Gorinov said in court, “I am convinced that this war is the fastest route to dehumanization, when the line between good and evil is blurred. War is always violence and blood, torn bodies and severed limbs. It is always death. I do not accept this and reject it.”
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Russian journalists who have written often about the Russian secret police, say in Foreign Affairs that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, has been turned into “a far more expansive arm of an increasingly ruthless state. In its sweeping reach into domestic society, foreign affairs, and the military, the FSB has begun to look less like its late-Soviet predecessor, the KGB. It now resembles something much scarier: the NKVD, Stalin’s notorious secret police, which conducted the great purges of the 1930s.”
There have been 16,403 detentions of people taking a stance against the war since it began. These are once again dark days for Russia. | 2022-07-31T11:24:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Vladimir Kara-Murza’s case is one in an endless carousel of arbitrary prosecutions in Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/vladimir-kara-murza-stalin-great-terror/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/vladimir-kara-murza-stalin-great-terror/ |
FILE - Singer Sting performs during a concert with singer Shaggy, as part of their ‘The 44/876’ tour in Panama City, Oct. 19, 2018. British musician Sting has interrupted a concert in Warsaw to warn his audience that democracy is under attack worldwide. He also denounced the war in Ukraine as “an absurdity based upon a lie.” Sting asked a popular Polish actor to join him onstage to translate his appeal that democracy is worth fighting for despite it being messy and frustrating at times “because the alternative to democracy is a nightmare.” (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco, File) | 2022-07-31T11:24:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sting warns during Warsaw concert of threats to democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sting-warns-during-warsaw-concert-of-threats-to-democracy/2022/07/31/3a29d502-10bb-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sting-warns-during-warsaw-concert-of-threats-to-democracy/2022/07/31/3a29d502-10bb-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
In this photo taken on July 24, 2022, onlookers watch the launch of a rocket transporting Chinas second module for its Tiangong space station from the Wenchang spaceport in southern China. (-/AFP/Getty Images)
The Long March-5B rocket, which weighs more than 1.8 million pounds, blasted off from the Wenchang spaceport on July 24 — carrying another module to China’s first permanent space station, Tiangong, which is in the process of being constructed.
The “vast majority” of the rocket’s debris burned up during reentry into the atmosphere at around at 12:55 a.m, the China Manned Space Agency said Sunday in a statement on its official Weibo social media account.
The rest “landed in the sea” at 119.0° East and 9.1° North, it said. These coordinates are in the waters off the island of Palawan, southeast of Philippines city Puerto Princesa. China’s statement did not say whether any debris fell on land.
Experts were concerned that the huge size of the 176-foot rocket and the risky design of its launch process would mean its debris may not burn up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The rocket shed its empty 23-ton first stage in orbit, looping the planet over days as it approaches landing in a difficult-to-predict flight path.
“The People’s Republic of China did not share specific trajectory information as their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth,” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Saturday.
“All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices, and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, especially for heavy-lift vehicles, like the Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property,” he continued. "Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth.
Ahead of the rocket’s reentry, China sought to quash fears that debris posed a risk to the public, predicting that pieces from the core stage would likely end up in the sea.
U.S. criticism of China when it comes to space debris has been long running. “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris," read a statement released by NASA earlier this year.
China’s position that the odds of debris causing severe damage are small was backed by some experts. The chances that someone would die or be injured from parts of a rocket would be at 1 in 10 over the next decade, according to an article published in the journal Nature Astronomy this month. But many believe launch designs like the Long March 5B’s are an unnecessary risk.
Last week, China’s state-run newspaper the Global Times accused the West of showing “sour grapes” and trying to discredit its space efforts in space. The article accused the United States of leading a “smear campaign” against the “robust development of China’s aerospace sector." | 2022-07-31T11:54:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China: Long March-5B rocket debris falls back to Earth, lands in sea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/china-rocket-reentry-debris-earth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/china-rocket-reentry-debris-earth/ |
Philppines President Fidel Ramos inspects guards of honour upon his arrival at Moscow's Vnukovo-II airport in Moscow, Russia, 11 September 1997 (reissued 31 July 2022). (Yuri Kadobnov/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
MANILA — Fidel V. Ramos — former president of the Philippines, career military official and figure of the 1986 revolution that deposed a dictatorship — died on Sunday. He was 94.
Ramos led the military under the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos, his second cousin.
“Our family shares the Filipino people’s grief on this sad day,” Marcos’s son and current Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said in a statement. “We did not only lose a good leader but also a member of the family.”
His defection was among the highlights of the People Power Revolution movement that overthrew the regime, which was known for widespread human rights violations and plundering up to $10 billion from government coffers.
He went on to serve as army chief and defense secretary of the post-revolution administration under democracy icon Corazon Aquino. He later succeeded her as the 12th president of the republic, from 1992 to 1998.
Ramos leaves behind a mixed legacy. To his supporters, he is a hero of the revolution who went on to urge the Marcos family to publicly apologize for their misdeeds. As president, he was credited with helping modernize the economy and forging a peace agreement with rebel forces in the southern Philippines.
To his detractors, he has yet to be held liable for police and military abuses under his watch—and his actions were not enough to prevent an eventual Marcos comeback.
Born on March 18, 1928, Ramos was a career military official before he got into politics. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, Ramos led the Philippine Constabulary. In a 2017 interview with Maria Ressa, founder of the news site Rappler and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ramos explained why he turned against Marcos — despite a long history that involved the would-be dictator hiding in his family sanctuary during World War II.
“You must understand that even with that close relationship and association during the war… why did I go against this guy?” he said. “It’s because of what is in the Constitution… You obey the orders of your superior, your commanding officer, if they are legal orders. But when he started to stray during the martial law years… that went against my values.”
During his term, Ramos brokered a peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front, then a separatist group operating in the Muslim majority south.
In 2016, Ramos threw his support behind populist candidate Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking strongman who would later be known for a brutal anti-drug campaign that left thousands dead.
But within the same year, the former president said Duterte’s government was “a huge disappointment and let-down,” criticizing Duterte’s constant cursing and hostility toward the U.S. in foreign policy in a column for the broadsheet Manila Bulletin. He resigned as Duterte’s appointed special envoy to China that same year.
Duterte also allowed the controversial state burial of Marcos in the Cemetery of Heroes. Ramos opposed the decision, which sparked thousands to take to the streets in protest. Under his presidency, Ramos allowed the family to bury the late dictator in their home region of Ilocos when they returned from exile in the United States. Some Marcos critics believe Ramos should not have allowed them to return.
In this year’s national elections, the party that Ramos founded endorsed dictator’s son Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who won in a landslide. However, officials from Ramos’ Cabinet publicly endorsed opposition candidate Maria Leonor Robredo. Ramos himself, who had been out of the public eye over the pandemic, did not make a public endorsement.
Despite the criticism, Ramos has generally aged as a respected figure in Philippine politics. His contemporary Juan Ponce Enrile, a former Marcos defense minister who defected alongside him, faced corruption scandals and has since walked back on claims critical of the dictator. He has since returned to the fold of power, and serves as legal counsel to Marcos Jr. at 98. Ramos’ successor to the presidency, Joseph Estrada, was later ousted in a second People Power revolution amid corruption issues.
In a forum covering Ramos’s legacy last year, political columnist and veteran journalist John Nery said the former president “passed the test of time.”
“It should be clear now that, in the end, and to the end, he retained an abiding loyalty to the primacy of the Constitution… whatever the Constitution was,” Nery wrote. He added Ramos’ loyalty to the law explained his defection.
“There is no gainsaying his constitutional sense, and his fidelity to it. When I think of the possibilities open to him, during the era of the coup attempts, to choose the other side—which would have completely changed the country’s history—I appreciate all the more that he knew his limits.” | 2022-07-31T12:42:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fidel Ramos, former Philippines president, dies at 94 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/fidel-ramos-philippines-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/fidel-ramos-philippines-death/ |
Move over, ‘National Landing’ — Amazon HQ2’s neighborhood tries ‘NaLa’
The National Landing Business Improvement District has launched NaLa Beach Club, a series of beach-themed events through August and September in Arlington. (National Landing BID)
At first, it showed up on freebie water bottles. Then it made its way onto rainbow T-shirts for Pride month.
In June, it popped up on Instagram as a hashtag, and this month it was suddenly plastered on the surfboard and silver Airstream set up in a grassy patch of Arlington, declaring to the commuters, dog-walkers and joggers strutting by that their neighborhood had earned a brand-new nickname: NaLa.
Yes, “National Landing” — the term invented by local economic development officials to lure Amazon to Northern Virginia four years ago — is being shortened and SoHo-ized, whittled down to a two-syllable abbreviation that says everything, and nothing, all at once.
“NaLa?” asked Mohsin Abuholo, sitting on a bench near a faux lifeguard shack advertising the NaLa Beach Club on a humid evening this week. “I guess it’s a name for a female. Like Anala?”
“That must be a new thing they’re doing?” wondered Allison Gaul, 38, a lawyer walking her 10-year-old Dalmatian, Dotty, nearby. “I don’t know what the hell ‘NaLa’ means.”
“I had to try to figure that one out. I mean, sure, I guess,” said Johnathan Edwards, 40, who moved back to the area a year ago for his job at Amazon. “I’m not a big fan of it, to be honest.”
National Landing, the combined umbrella name for this set of Northern Virginia neighborhoods — Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard — was subject to plenty of confusion when it first debuted in 2018, with many longtime residents refusing to adopt a label they said felt like a corporate creation for Amazon. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Now, much like AdMo (Adams Morgan) and CoHi (Columbia Heights) before it, or NoMa before that, the area appears to be trying on the kind of shorthand that, depending on whom you ask, is synonymous with either peak yuppiness or a new kind of urban cool.
The rebranding of Amazon’s HQ2 neighborhood: Alpacas, mocktails and flower crowns for dogs
Tracy Sayegh Gabriel, the executive director of the National Landing Business Improvement District (BID), made it clear that “NaLa” was nothing more than an event series her organization was putting on this summer.
Besides the beach club — which invites neighbors to “close your eyes and enjoy this summer escape with your toes in the sand” — there’s NaLa Fit, featuring outdoor barre, HIIT and yoga classes, and NaLa Fridays at the Park, a weekly concert series featuring local musicians.
“It’s more of a shorthand that’s intended to be fun and punchy,” Sayegh Gabriel said. “There’s no intention to introduce a new name for the neighborhood at all.”
But some others have also adopted the abbreviation, unprompted: A dentist’s office in Old Town Alexandria — officially outside the bounds of National Landing — recently changed its name to NaLa Smiles, in part to attract some of Amazon’s new customers as patients. (“It was a better abbreviation on boards and signage, and it sounds better,” said Hisham Barakat, the office’s owner.)
And across social media, a few residents and small businesses have also begun using the shorthand for a rapidly changing area that is already seeing an influx of new apartment buildings, restaurants and corporate relocations.
“We have a lot of community pride and equity and social capital in the names that we have. So we’re really committed to keeping ‘Crystal City,’ ‘Pentagon City’ and ‘Potomac Yard’ in regular use, along with the umbrella name of ‘National Landing,’ ” Sayegh Gabriel added. “It is the destination we are building.”
That doesn’t mean everyone else sees it the same way.
‘A cultural shorthand’
The logic behind “NaLa” is nothing new in the D.C. area or beyond. As long as there have been neighborhoods, there have been portmanteaus meant to sell those neighborhoods and their potential trendiness.
“It’s sort of a cultural shorthand,” said Jeffrey Parker, an urban sociologist at the University of New Orleans. “Places with this kind of name, this kind of nomenclature are associated with certain types of amenities and certain types of commerce. … It is very silly, but it’s branding. It’s boosterism.”
One of the earliest examples in the United States, he said, is New York’s SoHo. Once a deteriorating, light-industrial area, it was rebranded by city planners as they looked to rezone the neighborhood for the artists taking over its spacious lofts.
It didn’t hurt that the new name evoked a hip part of London, and copycat versions followed across Lower Manhattan: Tribeca. NoMad. FiDi.
But more than half a century later, as New York real estate agents tried to peddle monikers like “SoHa” (South Harlem) and “SoBro” (the South Bronx) well outside the city’s downtown core, some said it had gone too far: One lawmaker even proposed a bill that would punish brokers who used made-up names to sell property.
The trend — and the ensuing pile-on — made it inside the Beltway not long after. “North of Massachusetts Avenue” was successfully re-christened “NoMa,” with a stop on the Metro’s Red Line to seal the deal. Other attempts withered amid the blowback: Neither SoNYA (South of New York Avenue), the GaP (between Georgia Avenue and Petworth), nor SoMo (southern Adams Morgan) seemed to stick.
“This is something really easy to make fun of,” said Parker, the urban sociologist, but “people see something work once, and they latch onto it.”
Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the two-syllable craze has reached South Arlington, where this rapidly changing neighborhood has for the past four years been trying to sort out its identity — and what it should be called.
After decades of being known as a kind of soulless concrete maze, the neighborhoods of Crystal City (named for a chandelier in the lobby of a local building) and Pentagon City (after the nearby home of the U.S. military) were immediately thrust into urban superstardom when Amazon announced in November 2018 that it would be bringing its second headquarters here.
But when officials celebrated the company’s new neighborhood as “National Landing,” an umbrella term that also looped in part of Alexandria’s Potomac Yard, the resounding reaction was: What?
“Never heard of National Landing?” asked one local blog. “You’re not alone.”
Stephanie Landrum tells its origin story: When economic development officials in Northern Virginia came together in 2017 to submit a joint bid for Amazon’s second headquarters sweepstakes, the proposal was known as “Alexandria-Arlington.”
She and her colleagues put together a 285-page booklet extolling the virtues of this booming region to send to Amazon, and just before printing, realized they were lacking something — anything — more compelling to label it.
“We literally spent so much time word-smithing everything about a vibrant, connected community,” said Landrum, the president and chief executive of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, “that we kind of got to the last day and needed to make a decision.”
Crystal City? That was just one neighborhood. Potomac Landing? That didn’t stick. Landrum said she was texting her counterpart in Arlington, each with a celebratory glass of wine in hand, when they settled on “National Landing.”
The name, meant to evoke Reagan National Airport nearby as well as the area’s long list of transportation options, quickly became ubiquitous in the respective offices as they engaged in secret talks with Amazon over the following year.
When they finally made the announcement, “we sort of forgot that the rest of the world didn’t know we had created this moniker,” Landrum said.
Still, the BID and developer JBG Smith both embraced it, using the name more and more as the neighborhood began a physical and cultural transformation: Besides Amazon’s offices, the area is now home to Boeing’s new headquarters and, soon, Virginia Tech’s new graduate campus. There will be a new Yellow Line station in Potomac Yard (PoYa?), the first added to the Metro system in decades, and a pedestrian bridge connecting the airport with the rest of the neighborhood.
Sitting on a picnic table near the NaLa Beach Club, Robert Vainshtein, a 36-year-old federal employee, broke into a chuckle when asked about the neighborhood’s two new monikers.
“What’s wrong with ‘Crystal City’ ?” asked Vainshtein, 36, an Alexandria resident who commutes here for work. “It’s been ‘Crystal City’ forever. I don’t think people are going to get that off the bat.”
Across the table from him, Lauren Callahan, 27, said “NaLa,” let alone “National Landing,” has not clicked for her yet, either. But the changes that have come with these names are hardly a bother.
She’s a fan of the free bananas that Amazon has been handing out near Crystal City’s infamous underground mall, she noted, and the iced coffee the BID gives out weekly at the installation a few yards away.
“They’re doing nice things for the area. It’s a very trendy thing to do,” Callahan pointed out. “Who knows? Maybe ‘NaLa’ will catch on more than ‘National Landing.’ ”
“Yeah,” Vainshtein objected, “but it’s made-up.”
“Well,” she asked, “what isn’t made up?”
More coverage on Virginia
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Sen. Tim Kaine’s nightmarish 27-hour commute on I-95 | 2022-07-31T12:46:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Once called National Landing, Amazon's Arlington area tries on 'NaLa' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/nala-national-landing-amazon-hq2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/nala-national-landing-amazon-hq2/ |
(Illustrations by Daryn Ray for The Washington Post)
The end of Roe is changing friendships — for better or for worse
Some friends are learning that they don’t see eye to eye on the issue. Can they make it work?
Miranda Dockett felt certain she was about to lose another friend.
After all, she had been watching them fall away over the past few months, as she became more vocal about her views against abortion. Then, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month, Dockett, 31, readied herself for a worrisome confrontation with her childhood best friend.
The exchange lasted hours, she said, as the pair traded messages and news articles on Facebook days after the ruling. Dockett, a stay-at-home mom in Lansing, Mich., wanted her friend to understand that she believes life begins at conception and should be protected. Meanwhile her friend, who declined to be interviewed for this story, argued that abortion bans infringe on women’s right to health care and bodily autonomy.
“I suspect this will be the end of our friendship,” Dockett wrote in a Twitter thread recapping the conversation. “Heartbroken BUT it took me forever to find my voice & I will not be silenced even if that means losing every friend I have/had.”
They don’t agree on abortion. Can their relationship survive post-Roe?
Dockett’s story echoes a similar cry across social media as the post-Roe era continues to takes shape. With “trigger bans” now in effect in 13 states and organizers mobilizing on both sides of the abortion debate, friends are inevitably wading into the conversation — and some are learning that they don’t see eye to eye on the issue.
“The fact that abortion is so much in the news right now kind of forces people to think about it,” said Julie Chor, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago. “So I do think that more of these discussions are happening in the public setting.”
Like Dockett, many people are reporting how those conversations went. For some, it has deepened their bond as they confide in each other about their own experiences. For others, it’s creating new rifts as they contemplate whether their friendship has what it takes to withstand their opposing views.
For instance, one user on Twitter recently considered how to part ways with a friend of more than 20 years. “He’s pro-life, I’m pro-choice and since the Roe v. Wade decision I’ve been unable to even talk to them,” they wrote. “I just want to vomit.”
It didn’t come to that for Dockett and her friend, she said. A day or two after their exchange, they returned to their usual banter. “She kind of like moved on, and it was much lighter conversation,” Dockett said. “We’re not going to continue talking about it because we both said what we needed to say.”
“I suspect this will be the end of our friendship.”
— Miranda Dockett
Last year, the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the think tank American Enterprise Institute, found that 45 percent of Americans discuss politics with their friends at least a few times a month. And although political disagreements are common, the study found that 15 percent of people said they ended a friendship over politics.
“While friendships can buckle under these differences, friendships can also truly spur changes,” said Marisa G. Franco, a psychologist, author and friendship expert. “And that’s because we care about people. We see how it’s affecting them. We humanize the issue.”
Others on Twitter shared similar sentiments. “Personally I’m not a fan of abortion,” one person tweeted, “but if my best friend needs me to hold her hand when she gets one. I will be there to hold it.”
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In states that have enacted abortion bans, the American Psychological Association notes that some people might feel more compelled to disclose an unplanned pregnancy to loved ones to solicit help in securing access to an abortion. But such legislation could also inhibit these discussions.
“The people who are now in this crossroad and don’t know where to turn to in terms of care are feeling a lot of fear around who can they talk to,” said reproductive psychologist Julie Bindeman, citing Texas’s ban, which empowers private citizens to bring suit against providers or anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. “So it doesn’t create spaces where talking to people about abortion care or health care choices feel safe.”
For a long time, Rachel Stevens had hoped her best friend would reconsider her stance against abortion. Eight years ago, when Stevens sought to terminate a pregnancy, her friend said she would never speak to her again.
“He’s pro-life, I’m pro-choice and since the Roe v. Wade decision I’ve been unable to even talk to them.”
— Twitter user
That threat didn’t hold up, said Stevens, now 35. But something shifted in their friendship for good after the Supreme Court ruling.
“With Roe being overturned, I tried to speak with her about it as she has three young daughters herself, and this will most definitely impact their future,” said Stevens, a server in Nashville. “And I think it’s something that she should be concerned about and aware of.”
But her attempts to talk about the issue fell on deaf ears, she said: Her friend showed little interest in engaging in the conversation. “It really sealed the deal in walking away from that friendship once and for all,” Stevens said.
When it comes to fraught topics like abortion, it’s not just opposing views that can drive a wedge between friendships.
Lately, Mela Horr, a Houston-based college student, has been feeling particularly isolated from their friend group. One late night in June, they unpacked those feelings in a short Twitter thread. “It’s that time of year again where I realize my friends will never actually be able to understand my gender identity,” the tweet began.
As a nonbinary person, Horr, 23, said it’s been challenging to talk to their friends, a group of mostly cisgender heterosexual men, about abortion and how new restrictions could disproportionately affect the transgender community.
“At the end of the day, because it doesn’t directly affect them, it’s not something that they’re ever going to fully understand the full ramifications of,” they said.
Transgender advocates say the end of Roe would have dire consequences
For Horr, like many others, the coronavirus pandemic uprooted their social life. Classes went online and the communities they had previously found solace in — a group of local Filipino artists and a queer organization on campus — fell away.
“I felt very strongly rooted in where I was,” Horr said of their life before covid. “And I was still trying to discover who I was, but at least I kind of felt like the people I was around kind of reflected parts of me.”
Renée Mannino, 23, found that support years ago at New York City’s Pride Parade, where she sparked a friendship with Emma Beckerman back when the pair were still in high school. They traveled to the city with a group of mutual friends, Mannino said, “and we clicked so well that that same night we had a sleepover.”
“It’s that time of year again where I realize my friends will never actually be able to understand my gender identity.”
— Mela Horr
Years later, after Mannino had an abortion, Beckerman was one of the first people she told. “It was so nice because she had, like, no reaction,” said Mannino, who works as a nanny in Flemington, N.J. “She was just very comforting when I told her … it was just a regular conversation.”
Among the abortion stories that have flooded social media in recent months, Mannino said she’s noticing a dominant narrative: decisions to terminate a pregnancy due to health risks, traumatic experiences or to escape a toxic or abusive relationship.
But Mannino has seen fewer stories that reflect her reason for getting an abortion three years ago: “I do not want to bear kids,” she said. “I don’t want to carry a child.”
Then, after Roe was overturned, Beckerman reached out with the reassurance Mannino needed. Not wanting to be a mom is enough of a reason to get an abortion, Beckerman texted her: “You don’t need to go thru [something] traumatic to deserve the right to choose.”
“You’re such a great friend,” Mannino texted back.
Beckerman, 22, said she had been thinking about how Mannino might be feeling in the aftermath of Roe.
“I bet that I know more women [who have had an abortion], but Renée is the only person who has opened up to me about that experience,” she said. “It just felt like something that was appropriate to say and that I would want someone to say to me.”
Few studies examine the private conversations people have about abortion decisions with their loved ones. But a small study published in 2019 offers some insight.
“What we found was that most people did talk to a friend or family member or a partner,” said Chor, the University of Chicago professor and one of the authors of the study. “And most people described having some positive experiences in those discussions.”
Experts echo the importance of such conversations — and have some tips on how to navigate them.
“It is not a space to insert your own opinion,” Bindeman, the reproductive psychologist, said. “It is not a space for your values to come out, even if your values are supporting what your friend did.”
Center the conversation on the storyteller — not the listener, she added.
For Dockett, talking through her views with her friend made one thing clear: “[We] both value our friendship and love for one another more than our political or moral values.”
That’s a realization she thinks others can discover through these conversations.
“It is absolutely possible to have differences in various areas of your life and maintain a friendship,” she said. “It truly depends on your love for the person, their love for you, and the ability to accept that you don’t have to think alike to genuinely love and care about each other.” | 2022-07-31T12:46:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can people who disagree on abortion stay friends post-Roe? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/31/friendships-abortion-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/31/friendships-abortion-roe/ |
At last, an easier way to prepare for a colonoscopy
The prep remains perhaps the biggest impediment to screening. That’s why the approval last year of a pill-based option is welcome news.
A doctor holds an endoscope, which is used in colonoscopies. (iStock)
Decades ago, to prepare for a colonoscopy, patients first had to clean out their colons using laxatives such as castor oil or magnesium citrate, sometimes over several days. It wasn’t pleasant.
Things improved in 1984 with the introduction of a powder-based solution that patients could drink the day before a colonoscopy. The colon-cleansing drink, called GoLYTELY, tastes nasty but “turned 3½ days of torture into 3½ hours of torture,” says gastroenterologist Jack Di Palma, a professor of internal medicine at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine.
The prep for a colonoscopy, a procedure in which a physician snakes a flexible tube through the colon to get a camera’s-eye look at the organ’s interior, remains perhaps the biggest impediment to screening. So the approval last year of a far less sickening prep option for patients was welcome news.
Cleansing the colon beforehand is critical to identifying and removing polyps, often a precursor to cancer, during the procedure. Over the years, several newer-generation prep solutions have become available, each with advantages and disadvantages, and others — including those in the form of flavored shakes and food bars — have been tested but not yet approved.
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The solutions that most patients drink clean out the colon, but patients have to ingest copious amounts — four liters, or a little more than a gallon — and the taste is still pretty terrible.
Physicians now recommend that patients split the dose in two, half taken the day before and the rest several hours before the procedure.
“We tell people to chill it, sip it through a straw, hold their nose, chew gum in between or suck hard candies,” says Louis Korman, a semiretired D.C.-area gastroenterologist. “Everyone hears the stories about how horrible the preparation is. The prep is what everyone remembers, and it represents a disincentive to getting a colonoscopy.”
But last year — in what experts believe could end the dread that keeps many people from this important screening — the Food and Drug Administration approved a regimen of pills, Sutab, that studies show works just as well as the liquid solutions — without the vile flavor. It’s a 24-tablet regimen: 12 pills the day before and 12 the next day, several hours before the procedure.
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Patients still must drink lots of water, a total of 48 ounces the first day and another 48 ounces the next day. But at least plain water is tasteless.
“The thing that is great about Sutab is that it takes the issue of the taste away,” says Douglas K. Rex, distinguished professor emeritus of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. “You’re still going to have to sit on the toilet, but not having to drink something that tastes awful is a big advantage.”
Oncologist Arif Kamal, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University, agrees. “This is a good option for those for whom taste is an issue,” says Kamal, who is also chief patient officer at the American Cancer Society. He also points out simpler alternatives to full-blown colonoscopies for patients who are at average colon cancer risk, including at-home screening tests for blood and altered DNA that suggest the presence of cancer.
“The pros: It’s more convenient to do it at home,” Kamal says. “The cons: You still have to sample your own stool. Also, the frequency is more often — every two to three years,” compared with a seven-to-10-year interval for colonoscopies. Most insurance plans, including Medicare, cover these.
“Virtual” colonoscopies also are available, although patients still must do the prep, and certain “flat” polyps are more easily seen in conventional colonoscopies, experts say. Virtual colonoscopies are not at-home procedures, as they involve imaging the colon, and insurance coverage is spotty. They are covered only under special circumstances, such as when a conventional colonoscopy cannot be completed for some reason.
The American Cancer Society now recommends that people 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer undergo screening. This is a change from previous guidelines that recommended screening for only those 50 and older at normal risk.
Excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third-most commonly occurring cancer in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society, which projects an estimated 106,180 new cases of colon cancer this year and 44,850 cases of rectal cancer. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults ages 50 to 75 are up-to-date on colonoscopy screening, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts believe prep avoidance probably is one of the major reasons the remainder are not.
Colonoscopy prep is not fun, but the test’s benefits are quantifiable
The new pills could change that, but they have a downside.
Many insurance drug plans won’t cover them, and their out-of-pocket price can be $120 or more. (It cost a friend of mine in Florida $150 after her insurance plan denial and — after mine also refused — I paid $60 using a discount coupon my doctor obtained from Sebela Pharmaceuticals.)
“For people who won’t get a colonoscopy because of the nasty tasting prep, it could be a game changer — if they can afford it,” says gastroenterologist Clement Boland, retired professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. “That’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be that expensive. It’s just salt [sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride], not something fancy like monoclonal antibodies.”
Experts say the most likely reason for the insurance denials is that the pills are new and aren’t yet proved to be an advance over less expensive alternatives. “An insurance company will say: ‘Well, if it’s equivalent, we’ll just cover the cheaper one,’ ” Kamal says.
Many gastroenterologists coping with patient prep reluctance regard this as backward thinking. “The insurance companies try very hard to force people into using the generic products, which are not tolerated very well,” Rex says. “When it comes to prep, efficacy is not the issue. From the patient’s perspective, it’s tolerability. That is really important to patients.”
Several major insurance plans cover the pills, including some in Medicare Part D, says John McGowan, head of research and development for gastroenterology at Sebela Pharmaceuticals.
Because others do not, however, it probably is a good idea to check with your own individual plan to determine whether the pills are covered.
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For those who lack insurance or whose plans won’t cover the pills, McGowan suggests checking sutab.com/savings on his company’s website for ways to save. Also, the company provides free samples and discount coupons to physicians for patients who cannot afford the pills, he says.
He acknowledges that the cost can be a barrier for some patients. Nevertheless, “in the event that a patient cannot properly complete the liquid preparation, a colonoscopy must be repeated, in which case, the additional upfront, out-of-pocket costs for Sutab would be worth it,” he says.
The newest pills should not be confused with earlier tablets, made mostly of sodium phosphate, which the FDA found in 2006 caused serious kidney damage in some patients. While still on the market, the old pills are rarely used today, experts say.
“The newer ones have sodium sulfate, and are safe,” Rex says, stressing that patients still must drink the recommended amounts of water to avoid dehydration. “You don’t want to drink the bad tasting stuff, but you have to drink something,” he says.
Di Palma, who conducted the Sutab study, says he has tried all the preps and used them for his own colonoscopies.
“I’ve had five colonoscopies, and Sutab was the easiest one yet,” he says. | 2022-07-31T12:55:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At last, an easier way to prepare for a colonoscopy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/31/easier-colonoscopy-prep-pills/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/31/easier-colonoscopy-prep-pills/ |
Distinguished pols of the week: Democrats are getting their act together
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on July 26. (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
If you did not have “Sen. Joe Manchin III and his fellow Democrats strike historic energy, tax and prescription drug bill” on your bingo card last week, you’re in good company. Even the White House, which was bracing for the second straight quarter of negative growth, was taken by surprise.
After a year of struggling and false starts, Senate Democrats might now fulfill a bunch of President Biden’s priorities. The deal would make genuine progress in helping the United States transition to clean energy. In remarks on Thursday, Biden crowed: “This bill would be the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis and improve our energy security right away. And it’ll give us a tool to meet the climate goals that are set — that we’ve agreed to — by cutting emissions and accelerating clean energy. A huge step forward.”
The deal would also address one of Biden’s biggest bugaboos. “Now, I know you’ve never heard me say this before — it will come as a shock to you,” Biden said sarcastically, “but 55 of the Fortune 500 companies paid no federal income tax in 2020.” He explained that the Senate’s deal would force these companies, which have a collective income of more than $40 billion, to pay “a minimum of 15 percent tax on that $40 billion or whatever the number turns out to be.” The provision would not only raise revenue without hiking taxes (and hence counteract inflation), but it would also enhance Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s leverage in securing other countries’ pledges to enact an international minimum tax.
There’s another feature of the bill that has received less attention but is just as critical: It would add funding for Internal Revenue Service enforcement, which would help narrow the tax gap.
Whatever maneuver, psychological ploy or horse-trading Democrats used to bring Manchin to this place after a year of haggling and backtracking, the party might just be able to deliver a huge win they can tout in the midterms. Despite a 50-50 Senate and the usual clashes between progressives and moderates, this would also include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies and prescription drug cost controls.
Combined with the first gun-safety bill in 30 years and the bill to improve U.S. competitiveness with China in the semiconductor chips industry, Democrats are managing to pull together a compelling record of accomplishment to stand behind in November. Meanwhile, they can lambaste Republicans for opposing many of those items as well as codifying protections for gay marriage, access to contraception and freedom of women to travel for abortions. (Plus, Republicans’ inexplicable decision to delay passage of legislation that would provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq suggests the GOP has lost its bearings.)
The legislative process can be maddening, slow and illogical. But when it all comes together to produce measures that would improve the lives of Americans, it can also be immensely satisfying. To the Democrats who patiently persevered and showed flexibility to deliver an impressive legislative record, we can say, well done. | 2022-07-31T12:55:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Joe Manchin deal shows that Democrats are finally getting their act together - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/distinguished-pols-congress-legislation-democrats-get-act-together/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/distinguished-pols-congress-legislation-democrats-get-act-together/ |
A policy win, an economic hit: Turbulent week reflects Biden’s challenge
On Wednesday, the president’s agenda sprang back to life. On Thursday, the numbers showed a shrinking economy. Which will drive voters?
President Biden speaks July 28 during a meeting with CEOs on the economy. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden notched a series of unexpected policy wins just hours after emerging from his covid-19 isolation last Wednesday: Democratic senators announced a startling breakthrough on his long-stalled climate agenda. A multibillion-dollar bill to subsidize computer chip manufacturers was on the cusp of becoming law. And a measure to make some prescription drugs cheaper gained momentum.
But all of that crashed into the news the very next day that the economy contracted for a second straight quarter. Biden and his top aides have spent much of the past few days arguing that the country is not entering a recession, pointing to strong economic indicators such as job growth and low unemployment, but that didn’t stop Republicans from decrying the “Biden recession.”
Now the question becomes whether Biden’s run of legislative wins — particularly if Democrats manage to pass their health-care, climate and clean energy bill, which contains a hugely popular measure to let Medicare negotiate the prices of some drugs — will be enough for Biden to help overcome the stubbornly high inflation that has helped sink his approval ratings.
That question will help define the final two years of Biden’s term. Democrats are at risk of losing their narrow Senate and House majorities in November’s midterm elections, and operatives on both sides say the president’s popularity will be a major factor. If Democrats lose the House, as many analysts expect, Biden is likely to face numerous investigations; if they lose the Senate, Biden will struggle to confirm judges and other appointees. Democrats feel they have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass an ambitious climate agenda given that they hold unified control of Washington and do not know when that will happen again.
Still, the action in Congress has the potential to change the narrative of Biden’s presidency. Until recently, Biden was widely seen to have fallen short of his promise that he could bring the parties together to pass bills that would help Americans. But in his first two years, he has pushed through a coronavirus relief measure, an infrastructure law, a modest gun-control law, a semiconductor law — and now, possibly, a climate and prescription drugs package.
Yet several economists said that package, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, will have a modest impact on inflation in the near term. And they expressed skepticism that voters would feel more confident about Biden’s leadership because he has passed a slew of bills when they are struggling with the everyday costs of food and other items.
The Democrats’ package “will help with inflation and make the [Federal Reserve’s] job a little bit easier, but far and away the largest and most important forces in the economy are well outside the control of anything the president or Congress could do,” Jason Furman, who was a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said Friday.
It’s not that it won’t make a difference, Furman said — it’s that it won’t happen by the midterms. “Over time, the legislation that was passed this week, and they made progress on this week, will matter much, much more than any of this week’s economic data,” said Furman, now an economics professor at Harvard. “The problem is, that may not be true on a time scale of two months.”
Politically speaking, Democrats say their bill at least allows them to show they are trying to help voters. White House officials say their goal is to draw a stark contrast with Republicans, a mission they say has now become considerably easier.
One White House official stressed that the administration was “being careful not to count chickens before they hatch,” given that the economic bill still must be pushed through Congress, which Democrats are aiming to do using a parliamentary process called reconciliation. The Democratic caucus’s slim majority in the Senate — the chamber is divided 50-50, with Vice President Harris casting tiebreaking votes — means every Democratic vote is needed, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has not yet said whether she supports the bill.
Republicans say the economic package will do little to assuage voters regardless.
“Americans know Democrats can’t be trusted,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday on the Senate floor. “They know it every time they fill their gas tank, every time they check out at the supermarket, every time parents stay up late at their kitchen table trying to figure out which bills they can afford to pay this month.”
Republicans plan to frame the economic package as a tax increase, since it includes a provision to make sure large corporations pay a minimum tax. “The Democrats who’ve robbed American families once with inflation now want to rob the country a second time, through gigantic job-killing tax hikes,” McConnell said.
Democrats, for their part, plan to highlight many Republicans’ votes against both the semiconductor bill and another popular measure that would help military veterans who have been exposed to toxic burn pits. Measures providing help to veterans usually have broad bipartisan support, and White House officials felt Republicans handed them a political gift by opposing such a popular bill.
“This week showed the president and congressional Democrats have a plan to lower costs for middle class families,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Saturday. “What is congressional Republicans’ plan? Only extreme ideas that would prolong inflation, end Medicare in five years and raise taxes on nearly 100 million working people.” That was a reference to an agenda outlined by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who heads GOP senators’ campaign arm, though he denies his plan would have those consequences.
Even many Democrats concede privately that while the White House may have little choice but to stress that the country is not in a recession, that is hardly politically desirable turf. Rather than litigate either the economy or the president’s record, some in the party contend, Democrats should be focusing on a message that Republicans are extremists.
Republicans are increasingly out of step with most Americans on hot-button issues including abortion and gun control, these Democrats say, and the GOP has not presented its own plan to deal with inflation and high gas prices, which have fallen considerably in recent weeks.
“Arguing whether we’re in a recession or not is not the economic argument to make. The economic argument you make has to be relevant to people’s lives,” said Joel Benenson, a Democratic strategist and former Obama pollster. “You have to make the case that you are the party that is fighting for working- and middle-class Americans, and Republicans continue to be the party that gives tax breaks to corporations and the super wealthy.”
Presidents have little control over the economy, most economists say, even though the issue historically plays the largest role in whether voters approve of the job a president is doing. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have historically blamed bad economic news on their predecessors or the alternate political party, while taking credit for any positive indicators.
Republicans have hammered Biden on rising fuel prices all year, and gas surpassed $5 a gallon in June for the first time ever. As prices have fallen in recent weeks, Biden and his deputies have repeatedly touted the decline and pointed to the extra money it will put in Americans’ pocketbooks, but so far that message does not appear to be moving voters.
Economists say the measures needed to cool the economy and tamp down inflation — including the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates — are painful to many voters.
“If you’re arguing over the definition of a recession or you’re explaining, you’re losing. They’re just in a really bad place,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who now runs American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. “The inflation picture is getting worse, not better. I think that’s simply going to be more important to people than the definition of a recession or this piece of paper that’s supposed to do something on inflation.”
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — as the package including climate action, prescription drug negotiations and the minimum corporate tax is officially called — is significantly smaller than the transformative $3 trillion bill Biden initially sought that some Democrats likened to the New Deal. But it would still represent one of the most consequential pieces of economic policy in recent U.S. history.
It would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of some drugs, cap seniors’ out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year and penalize drugmakers for price hikes above the rate of inflation, making it the most significant drug pricing legislation since 2003.
The Medicare provisions have broad bipartisan support, with more than 90 percent of Americans saying in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in March that letting the government negotiate with drug companies to get a lower price on Medicare prescription drugs should be an “important priority” or a “top priority” for Congress.
The measure would also extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years, avoiding premium hikes right before the November midterm elections.
The bill also includes the largest investment in fighting climate change in U.S. history, aiming to boost clean-energy technology even as it delivers some of the support that Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) sought for fossil fuels. To cover its costs, the bill looks to bolster the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to pursue tax cheats, in addition to the minimum tax that targets profitable companies that pay nothing to the U.S. government. And it raises more than $300 billion that can be used to reduce the federal deficit.
Biden and other White House officials have repeatedly cited economists who have said the bill would help reduce inflation. They have leaned heavily on comments from Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary who had been warning about inflation for a year and helped assuage Manchin’s concerns. Summers said the bill was “an important step forward on inflation.”
Even so, some economists have said the bill’s effects on inflation will take years. The drug pricing and climate provisions will appeal to Democrats’ base but may not make a significant dent with upset voters worried about how they will afford their bills in the coming weeks and months, said Stephen Miran, who served as a senior official in the Treasury Department in the Trump administration and is the co-founder of Amberwave Partners, an investment fund.
“I think that everyone knows that President Biden and the Democrats are concerned about inflation,” Miran said. “They talk about it enough. [But] I don’t think many people are convinced they’re doing anything meaningful to stop inflation.”
The Inflation Reduction Act “will do good work in consolidating President Biden’s own coalition behind him, but they were very likely to support him anyway,” Miran added. “In respect to the real political problem, which is middle-class households dealing with record inflation, I don’t think this is going to move the needle.” | 2022-07-31T12:55:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A policy win, an economic hit: turbulent week reflects Biden’s path - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/biden-agenda-economy-challenge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/biden-agenda-economy-challenge/ |
A Texas blueprint for converting the ‘abortion-minded’: Lattes and a view
With abortion banned, a crisis pregnancy center plots a $10-million waterfront expansion for the post-Roe era
Beth Reinhard
Jana Pinson, Executive Director of the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend poses for a portrait with the center's staff at the future site of the center's new building, in Corpus Christi, TX. (Marvi Lacar)
CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. — Jana Pinson leaned over the table at the architect’s office, craning for a better look at the textures and patterns that would bring her post-Roe dreams to life.
At a meeting in mid-July, three weeks after the Supreme Court retracted the constitutional right to abortion, Pinson was plotting a new-age makeover for her crisis pregnancy center, an organization designed to persuade people to carry their pregnancies to term. She ran her fingers across samples of porcelain tile and beechwood-stained cabinets. The walls of her new building would be varying shades of green and gray, splashed with abstract pictures of trees, each detail designed to evoke, as she’d requested, the feeling of a “coastal spa.”
The executive director of the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend had recently overseen the purchase of what she sees as the most “strategic” plot of land in Corpus Christi, a city of 300,000 people on the South Texas coast. Right next to the local Texas A&M campus, looking out over the Oso Bay, Pinson’s $10 million crisis pregnancy center will be built to attract female undergraduates, with a coffee shop and a thrift store visible from the road, and a patio where students can sip their caffè lattes.
Chuck Anastos, the architect, gestured to the blueprint for the 20,000-square-foot facility. When it opens in February 2024, he said, the pregnancy center would be the “hip place for people to come.”
Over the past 50 years of legal abortion in America, crisis pregnancy centers have been one of the top tools of the antiabortion movement, and a target for intense criticism from abortion rights advocates. With more than 2,500 locations across the United States, these centers deploy what critics decry as overly aggressive — even deceptive — tactics to talk women out of abortions. Often religiously affiliated, they typically offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, sometimes initially presenting themselves as abortion clinics or objective sources of “abortion information.”
Now that abortion is banned across much of the South and Midwest, including Texas, many crisis pregnancy centers in these regions are preparing to assume a larger role, stepping into a void left by shuttered abortion clinics as the go-to place for ultrasound exams and pregnancy resources, despite the fact that they are not licensed medical facilities. The goal is to intercept women before they can access abortion some other way — through an online pharmacy or across state lines — and convince them that they’ll have support.
With its new building in Corpus Christi, the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend would become home to one of the largest such facilities in the country. The center’s plans, detailed in blueprints, artist renderings and other documents reviewed by The Washington Post, offer a rare glimpse inside the post-Roe strategy of a crisis pregnancy center in transition.
Pinson, 60, has emerged as a prominent champion of transforming these centers — often mom-and-pop shops that operate as small storefronts — into large-scale professional operations. In addition to directing the rise of her own organization, she has taken on the role of evangelist, training other center directors in the tools and tactics required for a new era.
In Texas, that means tapping into what has become a reliable stream of public money. The legislature approved $100 million for crisis pregnancy centers in 2021, to be doled out over two years, while simultaneously banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Pinson says the new building will be financed largely by state money — funding that is distributed with little government oversight. Records show the center received $776,000 last year.
Pinson’s plans are not widely known in Corpus Christi, and are likely to draw controversy as construction begins, especially on campus.
“They want to camouflage what their mission really is with iced coffee and a thrift shop,” said Molly Davis, a sophomore at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi, who leads Islander Feminists, an abortion rights group that plans to protest Pinson’s new building.
Since Roe was overturned, several of the five existing locations of the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend have been busier than ever, said Pinson, who plans to stay open an extra three hours each night to meet demand.
At the meeting with the architect, Pinson closely surveyed her floor plan for the future, pointing out the components she says will help her reach tens of thousands of women in South Texas over the next 50 years. The facility will have nine counseling rooms, six sonogram rooms and a “man cave” with a pool table, where men will be approached by a certified marriage counselor as they wait for the women they impregnated.
A few years from now, Pinson thought they might add a kayak launch and a few chairs beneath the palm trees, so women could spend an afternoon of reflection looking out at the bay.
“Perfect time, perfect space,” Pinson said with a smile. “I call it the post-Roe building.”
When Pinson took over the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend in 2014, the organization had seven employees and a budget of about $125,000, tax returns show. The center looked like “grandma’s house,” Pinson said, with a hodgepodge of discarded furniture donated by local churches.
“It was the way all the old pregnancy centers were,” she said.
A pastor’s wife and former marketing executive, Pinson carries her iPad with her everywhere she goes, tucked inside a leather Kate Spade tote. She has become a known entity within the Texas antiabortion movement, taking her place beside Gov. Greg Abbott (R) when he signed the Texas Heartbeat Act in the spring of 2021. Her phone is always dinging, and no matter what she’s doing, she always checks the message. It might be a new donor, eager to write her a check.
Pinson’s first mission as executive director was to do more to target “AMs,” what she calls “abortion-minded” women. The organization had purchased an ultrasound machine — widely regarded within the pregnancy center movement as the best way to reach people considering abortion — but they were still mainly seeing “LTCs,” or “likely to carrys.”
And so Pinson took to Google, she said, paying thousands of dollars to bid on key search terms. Now, whenever someone in Corpus Christi searches for phrases like “need an abortion” or “abortion cost Texas,” the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend is regularly the first item on the list.
Pinson simultaneously revamped the website, adding stock photos of girls gazing out at the ocean — and using the word “abortion” as many times as possible. Patients who visit the center’s homepage today can click on “I Want An Abortion,” which directs to a page that says: “CONFIDENTIAL ABORTION CONSULTATION — NO COST TO YOU.” There are detailed descriptions of both surgical and medication abortions, estimated costs and several buttons that allow you to schedule an appointment.
Looking at the center’s website, even antiabortion donors are confused. Occasionally, Pinson said, she’ll get angry phone calls from conservative members of the community, demanding to know why the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend is talking about abortion.
“I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to talk about?’ ” she said. “How else do you get an abortion-minded girl to know that you’re there?”
Eighteen-year-old Brooke Alexander — whose story was depicted in a Washington Post article in June — was one of the hundreds of abortion-minded women who found herself at Pinson’s pregnancy center in 2021. Like every client who arrives seeking an abortion, Alexander was advised on what a counselor told her were the potential risks of the procedure, including infertility, breast cancer and death. Those claims are widely disputed by leading medical organizations.
Even after leaving the pregnancy center — and deciding to continue her pregnancy — Alexander had no idea the organization had an antiabortion mission.
Pinson has no qualms about her strategies, which she says have been highly effective: The first year she started Google advertising, she said the number of “abortion-minded” clients at the center increased by almost 90 percent.
Now they have 50 employees and an annual budget of approximately $2 million, Pinson said. Last year, she said, they convinced 583 women to carry their pregnancies to term.
On a recent Wednesday morning in July, Pinson drove 30 minutes to a branch of her pregnancy center in Calallen, Tex., where she has been piloting what she refers to as their “prenatal care program.” Housed in a medical plaza, next to several doctor’s offices, the center offers blood tests, ultrasounds and ultimately a referral to an OB/GYN during the client’s second trimester.
“Post-Roe needs to have prenatal,” Pinson said. “We’re taking care of the whole woman.”
When she became executive director, Pinson quickly amped up what she calls the center’s medical offerings. They purchased several state-of-the-art ultrasounds, including a $65,000 machine Pinson calls her “Ferrari,” following a broader national trend among crisis pregnancy centers to appear as professionalized medical facilities. In almost all cases, these centers have no doctors on staff, said Andrea Swartzendruber, a professor at the University of Georgia College of Public Health who studies crisis pregnancy centers.
On the website for the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, a disclaimer appears at the bottom that reads, “Information is provided as an educational service and should not be relied on as a substitute for professional and/or medical advice.”
The bulk of the medical offerings are administered by seven registered nurses, a nurse practitioner and two diagnostic medical sonographers, one of whom, according to Pinson, orchestrates and oversees a 40-hour training to teach the nurses how to read ultrasound scans. While Pinson says she can’t afford to hire doctors, two local OB/GYNs volunteer as “medical directors,” reviewing ultrasound scans and calling in to consult on any potentially high-risk situations via FaceTime. As a “kindness,” Pinson said, a doctor might come into the center to see a patient every six months or so.
Whenever Pinson’s staff sees what they think might be an ectopic or a molar pregnancy — potentially life-threatening conditions that crop up at her centers a few times a year — they text a photo to one of the medical directors, who advises on whether the client should be sent to the emergency room. Even without a doctor on-site, Pinson said she feels “phenomenally confident” that they will catch any serious complications.
Leading medical organizations see it differently.
“These places are incredibly dangerous for our patients,” said Nisha Verma, an OB/GYN and a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
ACOG has voiced concern about the medicalization of crisis pregnancy centers, arguing that the trappings of health care lead patients to believe that center staffers are fully trained to identify potential complications. Because pregnancy centers aren’t licensed medical facilities, Verma said, they are exempt from the laws and statutes that govern medical clinics — putting them in the extraordinary position of providing unregulated medical services.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which licenses health-care facilities, does not monitor crisis pregnancy centers because they do not fall within its “regulatory scope,” said Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the HSCC.
In her new building, Pinson says she will offer more medical services than ever before, including an expanded prenatal program. Along with the sonogram rooms, the building’s floor plans include a nurses’ station, two “medical services offices,” two rooms for “blood drawing” and a doctor’s office.
She also plans to expand their “abortion reversal” offerings over the next few years, as more women in South Texas take abortion pills obtained illegally or in Mexico. The practice — denounced by ACOG as potentially dangerous but widely embraced by the antiabortion movement — involves administering the hormone progesterone to a patient soon after they take the first of two abortion pills, in an attempt to “reverse” the abortion.
A clinical trial for abortion reversal ended abruptly in 2019, after several patients started hemorrhaging so severely that they had to be rushed to the hospital.
Andrew Folley, Pinson’s only medical director who will participate in abortion reversal, said he has “no concerns” about the procedure, which he says he has facilitated a handful of times since Pinson’s center started offering the service a year ago. The doctor is open about his reasons for prescribing progesterone and volunteering at the center.
“I feel that conception is the beginning of life,” he said. “I don’t see where there’s a woman’s right or a human right to murder an unborn baby.”
Every week, Pinson sits down at her desk with a stack of thank you letters, signing a few dozen notes to donors. Since Roe was overturned, the center has seen a spike in support, Pinson said — and she is determined to keep it going.
Pinson, who according to the center’s treasurer was paid $75,000 in 2021, said she raised more money in the first half of 2022 than any six-month period in the center’s history, with donors energized by the prospect of a post-Roe future. For the center’s annual banquet in March, over 2,800 people packed into the entertainment megacenter downtown — a space that has hosted Flo Rida and the WWE SmackDown — to hear about the pregnancy center and see Tim Tebow, an NFL player turned antiabortion activist. After the audience enjoyed a barbecue dinner, Pinson directed their attention to 15-foot-wide mock-ups of the center’s new building.
That night, the center raised over $850,000 — a sum Pinson will mostly put toward her daily operations.
To finance her grandest ambitions, she relies on the state.
Texas started funding crisis pregnancy centers in 2006, when lawmakers allotted $5 million for what they called the “Alternatives to Abortion” program. Since then, the Texas program has grown exponentially alongside similar initiatives in about a dozen other states, where legislation has often accompanied abortion bans.
The Texas program has garnered sharp criticism for its failure to provide detailed information on how this ballooning pot of money is used.
“It is very frustrating that the legislature has continued to pour funds into a program where there is practically no transparency, no accountability and basically no metrics to the tune of $100 million without any medical or health services being provided,” said state Rep. Donna Howard (D), a member of the appropriations committee. “Half of what they do is give out pamphlets.”
The Texas Pregnancy Care Network, the contractor that administers the state funds and is responsible for monitoring the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, does not oversee any service considered “medical,” Pinson said, including ultrasounds. John McNamara, the network’s executive director, has not responded to calls and emails from The Post.
The Texas money comes with one condition that has led many pregnancy centers to turn down state support, Pinson said: To qualify, centers have to ask a client’s permission before they broach anything spiritual. While Pinson agreed to those terms when she began accepting the funding in 2018, the center’s clients are incentivized to sign up for Bible study classes, where attendance is rewarded with “points” redeemable for diapers and baby clothes.
“We have staff that are committed to share Christ with every girl that walks through that door,” Pinson said in a 2019 promotional video, calling the center a “ministry.” Pinson will refer women who need additional support to local churches, which she says do “a beautiful job of coming around mamas and walking them through.”
Since Roe was overturned, Pinson said she’s heard from a lot of angry abortion rights advocates, demanding to know how she intends to help the women she helps convince to carry to term. Sometimes she offers to give them a tour of her stock room, where diapers are stacked to the rafters.
“We gave out 200,000 diapers last year.” If there’s a woman in need, she says, “there is absolutely nothing we couldn’t help them with.”
According to government estimates, the average cost of raising a child in the United States is $233,610.
Pinson’s final stop of the day was the church where her husband preaches. Eight women had already arrived, waiting for her with thick white binders, ready to be trained as volunteers.
“Abortions are closed in Texas,” she told the group: The closest abortion clinics to Corpus Christi, in San Antonio and McAllen, had just announced plans to shutter and move to New Mexico.
That was a great sign, Pinson said — but they could not allow themselves to become complacent.
Other threats still loomed.
By the end of 2023, Meg Autry, an OB/GYN based out of the University of California at San Francisco, plans to sail a vessel into the Gulf of Mexico and provide abortions for women on federal waters, nine miles out to sea. Deep in South Texas, with no direct flights out of state, Corpus Christi will be a priority, she said.
“It’s the most critical point,” said Autry, who got the idea from gambling boats that sail up and down the Mississippi River, skirting local laws. “If your idea is to try to provide abortion access to the most number of people on the water in the U.S., this is the place to do it.”
If her efforts are successful, she will provide the people of Corpus Christi with the most convenient abortion access they’ve had since the local clinic closed in 2014.
“I’m going to need a pregnancy center boat,” Pinson told her husband as soon as she heard about Autry’s plans on the news.
‘We’re done’: Chaos and tears as an abortion clinic abruptly shuts down
If they can get an “abortion-minded” woman to have a conversation, Pinson feels confident that the center’s staff can change her mind. In their counseling sessions, Pinson says, they “pour into girls,” persuading them that, no matter the obstacles in their lives, they can become successful mothers.
Pinson welcomes even the most devastating cases.
“I’ve seen a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a negative thing.”
She closely followed the case of the 10-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in Ohio last month. If that girl came into her center, Pinson would suggest she consider adoption, she said, adding that abortion would not fix the girl’s problems.
“That life is still a life and, even at 10, she knows a life is inside her.”
Whenever a new crisis pregnancy center opens in South Texas, Pinson says, she usually hears from its leaders. They call her up, asking for advice — and she invites them to shadow for the day.
In the wake of the Roe decision, Pinson met up with Nelda Flores, who plans to open a small center in Mission, Tex., in August.
“You’ve absolutely got to go medical,” Pinson said, hands on the steering wheel, shuttling Flores from one of her centers to another. “I will beg, borrow and steal to get you an ultrasound machine.”
Flores took furious notes all morning as Pinson advised her on how to attract volunteers, which grants she should apply for and how to find a medical director.
“God will grow your center as fast as you will step out in faith,” Pinson said.
Just look at what they’d done in Corpus Christi, she added.
In 10 years, Flores could build an operation just like hers. | 2022-07-31T12:55:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After abortion ban, Texas crisis pregnancy center eyes major expansion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/pregnancy-center-of-the-coastal-bend-expansion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/pregnancy-center-of-the-coastal-bend-expansion/ |
New space race holds promise, but possible environmental risks, too
As more communities welcome spaceports, questions are popping up about the facilities’ effects on the land and wildlife nearby
The SpaceX Starship spacecraft on a rocket booster at the company’s launch facility in Boca Chica, Tex. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
With the commercial space industry rapidly expanding, more states are vying to host launch sites for satellites and other cargo, hoping to tap a new and growing revenue source.
But even as “spaceport” proposals proliferate from Georgia to Maine to Michigan — far away from long-established federal launch sites in California and Florida — they’re drawing pushback over fears they could harm sensitive habitats, public safety and even drinking water.
Critics warn that the noise and light generated by launch sites could harm wildlife and that failed launches could spread toxic materials and debris or even cause wildfires.
“Spaceports have become an en vogue economic development tool,” said Brian Gist, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is opposing efforts to establish a launch site in Georgia’s Camden County. “But not every location is a good candidate for a spaceport site, and you need to balance the economic development with the risk to the public and the risk to natural resources.”
SpaceX and plovers
Space experts say innovation has driven down the cost of rocket launches even as the miniaturization of electronic components has allowed for much smaller satellites. That means more companies can access space for a wider variety of uses, including mapping, internet access, weather forecasting, agricultural monitoring, environmental detection and tracking of vehicle fleets.
SpaceX launches first all-private mission to International Space Station
“In the past, [building a local spaceport] was unreasonable because a launch site meant big, expensive, unreliable rockets,” said George Nield, who served as the associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration and now runs a consulting business. “We’re seeing smaller satellites, smaller rockets, a move toward reusable space launch systems which could potentially be more reliable.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has led the way in the commercialization of space, and many local officials see the company’s Starbase production and launch site in Boca Chica, Tex. — with its more than 1,600 employees — as the sort of economic engine they would like to attract. But Starbase also represents the fears of some environmental groups.
In May, documents released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed that SpaceX’s activity had caused a decline of endangered piping plovers in habitat surrounding its facility, while also potentially harming sea turtles and other shorebirds. Environmental groups have called attention to those findings and criticized the agency’s mitigation requirements as insufficient. The FAA issued a notice in June that the company would need to make more than 75 environmental adjustments to proceed with its heavy-lift Starship rocket program.
Jared Margolis, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group focused on endangered species, said rocket explosions have damaged habitat in the area, and the company has conducted more test flights and caused more environmental harm than it proposed in its initial request for authorization.
“The lesson from Boca Chica is the impacts can be papered over from the beginning, and then what happens in reality is way worse than expected, and you have significant harm to habitat and species that’s not being addressed,” he said. “I would be concerned if I was these local governments with a company coming in saying it’s all going to be okay.”
Wildlife refuges
But many local leaders still see potential in spaceport development. Camden County, Ga., received FAA approval for its proposed spaceport late last year, after years of pushing the project and spending more than $10 million in taxpayer money to support the plan. County commissioners think the site, which might launch small commercial rockets, would diversify the local economy.
Several groups are suing to challenge that decision, saying the launches threaten the nearby Cumberland Island National Seashore, a refuge for sea turtles and migratory birds. Environmentalists think the small rockets have a higher risk of failure, which could blast the island with debris and fuel or even cause a wildfire.
“If we need a certain amount of capacity for certain rockets, we should launch those from the safest places and not simply license them to anyone who believes they can meet the minimum criteria,” said Gist, the environmental lawyer.
This year, Camden County residents voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to block county officials from buying land for the spaceport. As a result, the company that owns the land says it is unable to sell to the county, the Associated Press reported.
County Administrator Steve Howard responded with a statement from the county’s external litigation legal counsel, the Robbins Firm, which asserts that the referendum is not “legally proper”; county commissioners subsequently sent another statement saying they are suing the property owner to complete the deal.
Howard also touted “active negotiations” with multiple launch companies that would yield a return on investment within 12 to 25 months. Another Camden County spokesperson emailed a study funded by the county that determined launches are not a risk for causing a fire on the island.
Sarah Gaines Barmeyer, senior managing director for the National Parks Conservation Association’s conservation programs, said that Florida’s Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge also has been floated as a potential spaceport site.
Launches from a site within the refuge would send rockets over the Canaveral National Seashore, unlike launches at the nearby Kennedy Space Center. She said launch-site proposals, which need to avoid inhabited areas to meet federal safety guidelines, probably will continue to threaten protected coastal parks.
“The very same attributes that draw visitors to these national parks are the same things that the commercial spaceports are looking at because there’s less human development nearby,” she said.
Local support, concerns
In Michigan, state officials in 2019 awarded a $2 million grant to the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association to study the feasibility of a spaceport in the Upper Peninsula. The proposal includes a vertical launch facility for traditional rockets, a site for horizontal launches — in which airplanes take off with a rocket, which releases in the air and propels itself into space — as well as a command-and-control center. Backers say the project could benefit from the manufacturing expertise in the state’s automotive industry and help the state attract and retain talent.
Cars were killing salamanders. A student got the road closed to save them.
Gavin Brown, the aerospace group’s executive director, said the spaceport would capitalize on environmentally friendly launch technologies that are still emerging. He said development of the infrastructure would be costly, but the benefits could be massive.
“We’re not trying to get into the space business where it’s at, we’re trying to play a leading role in where space is going,” he said. “There are some things in the testing stage that we’re waiting to see if it makes sense for us, and then we can share with people what it is.”
But the plan has drawn pushback over environmental concerns. Dennis Ferraro, the board president of Citizens for a Safe & Clean Lake Superior, a community group that opposes the project, pointed to launch failures at other spaceports that have damaged or polluted nearby ecosystems.
“If we start industrializing the coastline on the shores of Lake Superior, Katy, bar the door. What’s next after a rocket launch site?” he said.
A spokesperson for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, which awarded the grant, did not make officials available for an interview.
Other states — including Alabama, Florida and Maine — have established agencies or public-private partnerships tasked with growing the space industry. This year, Maine lawmakers voted to establish the Maine Space Port Corp., a public-private partnership that will seek to create a complex that hosts launches, research-and-development operations, and data analytics enterprises. Backers say Maine’s location makes it ideal for launches into polar orbits.
‘Forever chemicals’ upended a Maine farm — and point to larger problem
“The state government had to demonstrate to the investment and business community that it was very serious about increasing the state’s involvement in the new space economy,” said Terry Shehata, executive director of the Maine Space Grant Consortium, a nonprofit group funded by NASA’s grant program to boost aerospace research.
But some in Maine are wary.
The town of Jonesport voted late last year to temporarily ban commercial rocket launches, after a company announced plans to build a launch site.
Locals in the fishing industry led the opposition, worried that launch operations on a nearby island would interfere with their jobs and damage their gear, the Portland Press Herald reported.
Some analysts are challenging spaceports’ economic viability.
“There are 14 licensed spaceports in the U.S., and most of them are not seeing traffic,” said Phil Smith, program manager and senior analyst with BryceTech, an analytics and engineering firm. “Taxpayers want to see return on investment, and they haven’t seen that. Much of the space industry’s growth is coming from big batches of small satellites on large rockets.”
James Causey, executive director of the Global Spaceport Alliance, a membership organization that supports the planning and operation of such launch sites, countered that skeptics are underestimating how quickly the commercial space industry is poised to grow.
“In the time it takes to build a spaceport to the point where it will actually have launch operations, demand will be there,” he said.
Stateline is an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts. | 2022-07-31T12:56:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The space boom raises environmental questions back on Earth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/31/spaceports-environmental-harm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/31/spaceports-environmental-harm/ |
Can the US Housing Crisis Be Fixed By Abolishing Zoning?
HOUSTON, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 07: A ‘For Rent’ sign is posted near a home on February 07, 2022 in Houston, Texas. Since March 2020, the estimated median rent of new leases has increased by double digits in several Texas cities. The increase in sales prices has made it more difficult for people to buy a home, as a result increasing the number of people looking to rent. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) (Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America)
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.Virginia Postrel: The lack of affordable housing in major US cities has impeded social mobility, fueled inflation and worsened economic inequality. You’re the author of a new book, “Arbitrary Lines,” which looks at the history of zoning and the role it’s played in the housing crisis. You emphasize that zoning is just one aspect of city planning. So, what is zoning?
M. Nolan Gray, author, “Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It”: Zoning is trying to do two basic things. The first is to segregate land use into categories: residential, commercial and industrial. And within each of those categories, there are going to be dozens of subcategories. So, for example, in Los Angeles, there are residential districts where you can only have single-family homes; or there are residential districts where you can have small apartment buildings or larger apartment buildings. Within commercial zones, there are areas where you can have offices, others where you can have retail.
The second piece of zoning is regulating density. Zoning places strict constraints on how much housing you can build even in places where housing is allowed, or how much commercial floor area you can have even where retail is allowed.
VP: Is zoning a specifically US phenomenon?
NG: Most developed countries have something resembling zoning. They will say industrial building is not allowed in certain quarters of the city, or certain portions of the metropolitan area are going to be reserved for agriculture. But US zoning is unique in at least two ways. The first is single-family zoning. No other zoning system in the developed world, to my knowledge, demarcates specific areas only for single-family housing.
The second way that US zoning is unique is the complete orientation around the car. It’s often illegal to build an apartment building without a parking garage, or it’s illegal to build a commercial strip without a large parking lot.
VP: What are the costs that we’re paying socially for the zoning regimes that we have?
NG: Zoning has four big costs. First, it increases housing prices. It does so in three ways: by allowing less housing to be built; requiring the housing that is built to be more expensive and generally larger than it might otherwise have been; and slowing down the whole process.
The second big cost of zoning is that it limits mobility into high-opportunity regions. The housing crisis is most advanced in affluent and extremely productive places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston. These are places that, historically, poor or working-class Americans could move to and find opportunity. But because the housing is so incredibly expensive, it’s hard for a normal person to move to, for example, the Bay Area. Now Americans move from rich places to poorer, less productive places. And we’re all poorer as a result.
That third piece is the segregation element. Segregation was a core objective of zoning.
VP: Racial segregation?
NG: Class-based segregation. Zoning says, “In this neighborhood, you can only have a home if it’s on a 10,000-square foot lot. If you can’t afford that, then you don’t get to live there.” Of course, in the US context, class maps onto race, particularly black-white segregation. Zoning to this day maintains a high degree of economic segregation that would not have existed otherwise.
The fourth is the sustainability piece. Not everybody wants to live in an apartment or take a train to work or ride a bike to work. But many millions of Americans do. And most local zoning codes simply don’t allow for this, by limiting residential housing near, say, grocery stores or office buildings. Car ownership is written into law by zoning.
VP: Pushing people out of high-productivity coastal cities often also increases their energy use and environmental impacts.
NG: When you live in L.A., you become very aware of just how pleasant the climate is. Even the mid-Atlantic states, in places like New York and Philadelphia, it’s still temperate. Where energy consumption is most extreme is where we’re both originally from: the South. We’ve basically forced millions of Americans to move to those places where their energy consumption is going to go through the roof.
VP: You write about the origins of zoning in both New York and Berkeley, California. Can you explain what drove it?
NG: Both reflect the “Baptists and bootleggers” coalition that gets us zoning. The “Baptists and bootleggers” idea is that political coalitions will normally have someone who’s cynically invested in the policy — the bootlegger who supports prohibition because he can make money off of it — and then the Baptist who provides the political movement with moral cover.
Start with the “Baptists.” During the Progressive Era there was this notion that cities and markets are too scary and chaotic. Wouldn’t it be great if we got all the smartest people in the room to come up with a big master plan for what’s going to be allowed on every single lot in our city for the next 50 years? Most modern people look back and think that’s a little crazy. But that was the ethos.
The bootleggers were the landlords who — in the Manhattan context — think, “Way too much office supply is being built in lower Manhattan and it’s lowering the value of my assets.” In the Berkeley case, if you read the zoning promotional materials, one paragraph will say, “We need to adopt zoning so we can keep industry out of residential neighborhoods.” With modern eyes, you read that and think, Yeah, that makes sense. You don’t want an oil refinery next to your house. But then the next paragraph explains what industries they’re concerned about. It’s Chinese laundries. Or dance halls that are bringing African Americans into the neighborhood.
In New York City, shopkeepers on Fifth Avenue were worried about loft manufacturing moving closer to the shopping district. Again, you read that with modern eyes and think, OK, factories. There must have been smoke or noise or vibrations. But the shopkeepers’ specific concern was that poor Jewish factory girls are coming to window-shop along the corridor, and they’re scaring off our elite clientele. Zoning is much more of a social project than it is a good-government process.
VP: You repeatedly make the point that zoning “cannot build a building. It can only ever stop something from being built.” Why is that an important distinction?
NG: When Minneapolis abolished single-family zoning recently, some of the media coverage said that it was banning new single-family homes. But that’s not what they did. They got rid of single-family zoning, which was just a prohibition on apartments. They were getting rid of a prohibition.
In L.A., there are a lot of conversations about getting rid of minimum parking requirements. And people say, “Come on, you’ve got to have somewhere to park.” But getting rid of minimum parking requirements isn’t saying to developers that you’re not allowed to build any more parking. It’s saying that we’re not going to force you to build any parking. We’re not going to mandate things that you wouldn’t otherwise have done. It’s a really important difference.
VP: Sometimes Republicans portray zoning liberalization as an attack on homeownership or suburbs. But one of the points that you make in your book is that it’s happening in conservative places, such as Arkansas.
NG: Northwest Arkansas has done a lot of reforms. Fayetteville shows that these are important issues for midsize and small cities. You can get rid of minimum parking requirements for commercial properties and it’ll be easier to redevelop your main streets and fill some of those empty storefronts. If you allow accessory dwelling units on every residential property, your town is not going to turn into Kowloon Walled City. But a few more seniors will be able to stay in their homes.
VP: Houston is the great American un-zoned city. Why doesn’t Houston have zoning and why isn’t it a disaster, with tanneries next to bungalows?
NG: Houston made basically every planning mistake you could have made in the 20th century. They built the giant freeways. They did some ill-conceived urban renewal. They maybe weren’t sensitive enough to environmental planning. But they avoided one really, really big mistake: they were the only major US city that didn’t adopt zoning.
The reason is that they were also the only major city that actually put it to a referendum. They put it to a referendum three times, and voters in every case turned them down.
The sky is not falling in Houston. It’s America’s most affordable and most diverse city. It has an extremely low rate of homelessness, because when there are a lot of cheap apartments, even people who might be struggling with mental illness or drug addiction can still keep themselves housed.
There are a few things that make Houston work. One is that there are certain mechanisms that naturally separate the most incompatible uses. Take the leather tanning facility. Yeah, I don’t want one of those next to my home. And guess what? The leather tanning people don’t want to be next to my home either. Industrial facilities want to be near the port, near main rail lines, near freeway interchanges. They don’t want to be next to someone who’s going to complain and launch a nuisance suit and just generally be a headache for them. Commercial buildings generally want to be on major corridors. Homes generally want to be on quiet side streets. The big offices want to be at central locations. So there’s some natural self-sorting.
Houston also has a private system of land-use regulation. If a group of homeowners wants to have much stricter land-use regulation, they can opt into it. They have to convince their neighbors to sign on to a deed restriction. They can control development within their little tiny bubble. But it’s quite different from zoning. It leaves the vast majority of the city free to reinvent itself and adapt to changing needs.
VP: The title of your book is “Arbitrary Lines.” Why that emphasis on arbitrariness?
NG: Things like “floor area ratios” feel very scientific. Things like parking spaces-per-unit feel very scientific. And they’re presented in zoning ordinances, or by planners who are still drinking the Kool-Aid, as if these are authoritative measures that represent some reality intrinsic to the universe. But you scratch ever so slightly at the surface, you realize that these were completely arbitrary standards pulled out of a hat. And they dramatically limit where and how Americans can live their lives. Once you appreciate that, the idea that they should be abolished becomes significantly less extreme.
VP: I’m like you: I like dynamism in cities. But some of us tend to downplay the emotional attachment that people have to their homes, to the feel of their neighborhoods, to the landscapes that trigger their memories, to neighbors that they identify with. These concerns aren’t the exclusive territory of rich white people. How do you address them?
NG: People do have an intuitive conservatism about what happens around their community. I don’t think that’s worth mocking or dismissing. It’s appropriate to say there should be some preservation of outstanding monuments or culturally important places. People absolutely should have a say in what their community looks like. But we’ve spent the last 50 or so years really privileging people who have this extremely sentimental, extremely conservative view of their communities and their neighborhoods — this idea of, I want everything to stay the same, I like it the way it is. It’s weird when people are living in the heart of a city like New York City or Los Angeles, places that are only great because they can remain dynamic and because they can change. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what a city is: a living, dynamic thing that is maintained and kept great by the individual plans of the millions of people who inhabit it and engage with it. The more you try to put that in a straitjacket, the more dysfunctional cities will become.More From Bloomberg Opinion:
The Housing Market Is Healthier Than You Think : Conor Sen
The Home Improvement Boom Is Over: Brooke Sutherland
Welcome to the Era of Big Box Apartment Buildings: Justin Fox | 2022-07-31T14:26:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can the US Housing Crisis Be Fixed By Abolishing Zoning? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/can-the-us-housing-crisis-be-fixedby-abolishing-zoning/2022/07/31/81a74e6c-10d1-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/can-the-us-housing-crisis-be-fixedby-abolishing-zoning/2022/07/31/81a74e6c-10d1-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
By Anna Bryson, Richmond Times-Dispatch | AP
Howard Eberly, 4th generation owner of Four Mile Creek Farm in Henrico County, Va., on Friday, July 22, 2022, is donating 28 acres to Capital Region Land Conservancy so the land will be protected forever against the threats of development. The Battle of New Market Heights was fought on the property. (Alexa Welch Edlund/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)
VARINA, Va. — Growing up in Varina in the 1940s and ’50s, Howard Eberly played on his family’s farm, swam in the creek and found “treasures” on the land. Turns out, some of those treasures are significant historic artifacts. | 2022-07-31T14:27:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Farmland where Civil War battle occurred to be preserved - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/farmland-where-civil-war-battle-occurred-to-be-preserved/2022/07/31/ec0d3470-10d0-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/farmland-where-civil-war-battle-occurred-to-be-preserved/2022/07/31/ec0d3470-10d0-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Amanda Nunes dominates Julianna Peña for a piece of UFC history
Amanda Nunes celebrates after defeating Julianna Peña in their bantamweight title bout during UFC 277. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Seven months ago, after losing her bantamweight belt in a stunning loss to Julianna Peña, Amanda Nunes made serious changes.
She left the American Top Team gym where she had long trained, moving to a private gym she calls “Lioness Studio” and training under Roger Krahl. He was in her corner for some of her biggest fights, including the one in which she knocked out Ronda Rousey.
On Saturday night in Dallas’s American Airlines Center, the moves paid off as Nunes reclaimed the UFC bantamweight title she lost to Peña in December, taking a unanimous decision (50-45, 50-44, 50-43) in the main event of UFC 277 and claiming a part of MMA history.
“The lioness, if they don’t get the prey the first time, I set the traps better and I know I’d get it the second time,” Nunes said afterward as she held her young daughter in the ring.
Nunes, whose 15 UFC wins are the most in promotion history, won her 10th title fight — the most among women in UFC history and fifth most overall.
Nunes left Peña bloodied as she struggled to thwart Nunes’s change to a southpaw stance, with the right hand and foot forward, then leading with right jabs following with a left cross right hook. That, along with her wrestling technique in later rounds, was the key, she said.
“The main thing was my southpaw,” Nunes said. “I know I was gonna catch her with that tonight. I knew she was not gonna be able to adjust to that. She’s not a striker. … She was so confused. I’m not very good yet with my southpaw. I told my coach, ‘I’m gonna see how I feel.’ I tried tonight, and I felt good.”
Using the stance, Nunes (22-5 MMA, 15-2 UFC) dropped Peña (11-5, 7-3) several times in the early going and then took down Peña with her wrestling moves. She knocked Peña down three times in the second round, a UFC women’s record for knockdowns in a round, according to ESPN Stats & Information. She led Peña 85-60 in significant strikes and took her down six times in eight attempts.
After the fight, Peña headed off to receive medical attention for facial cuts, according to UFC President Dana White.
“Julianna’s got a big chunk missing from her forehead,” he said in the UFC 277 post-fight news conference. “She’s going to see a plastic surgeon right now, take some time to heal, and then I don’t know. She got pretty banged up tonight. It was like five or six knockdowns in the first two rounds. She was hurt. She needs to take some time off, relax, spend some time with her daughter and then we’ll go from there.”
Nunes became the first to regain the UFC bantamweight title after losing it, but it came at a cost. Her right eye was swollen nearly shut and she used crutches to get to the post-fight news conference.
Nunes, who plans to get a little rest and visit Brazilian family she has not seen in years because of the coronavirus pandemic, called it “the best day ever” and added that “the best thing I did was make my gym. In my gym, I feel like I’m safe. I feel like I can grow and evolve.” | 2022-07-31T15:58:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amanda Nunes dominates Julianna Pena in UFC 277 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/amanda-nunes-defeats-julianna-pena/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/amanda-nunes-defeats-julianna-pena/ |
Just as important as a vacation destination: The books you read there
I brought a retired Chicago cop, an Irish bachelor farmer and some shambolic street toughs with me on my recent vacation to Portugal. They all appear in a novel by Tana French called “The Searcher,” which I packed in my carry-on luggage last week.
Why would I bring a book set in rural Ireland to Portugal when displayed nearby as I was shopping at Politics & Prose was a novel with a more apropos title: “Two Nights in Lisbon”? Well, I wasn’t sure I wanted another person’s descriptions of the city I’d be visiting interfering with my own experiences. Plus, the book jacket said Chris Pavone’s new novel is about a husband who mysteriously disappears during a trip with his wife to the Portuguese capital. That’s just the sort of crazy thing that would happen to me. I didn’t want to tempt fate.
But it did make me wonder: What makes a good vacation read? Is it a novel set in the city you’re in that provides a frisson of recognition every time you stumble upon a street corner or plaza where some plot point occurs? Is it a nonfiction book about that place that helps you understand its history, culture or architecture? Is it a biography of someone closely associated with that city?
Or is it something else entirely: an unrelated palate cleanser chosen to help reset the mind after a frenzied day of sightseeing? A vacation is supposed to be an escape. Would your escape benefit from escapist literature?
For me, picking the right book(s) to take on vacation is nearly as much fun as the vacation itself. I don’t always get it right. I managed to finish the first-person account by a survivor of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism, but it was a poor choice for a beach house on the Outer Banks. Somehow, though, “Moby Dick” was perfect for a rainy weekend at Chincoteague in the 1980s with my then-girlfriend. Would the relationship survive our being stuck in a small condo, each of us in our own corners, in our own heads? (Reader, I married her.)
Reading has the magical ability to transport us. Your body’s in one place, your mind in another. The setting of a book may be more important than the physical setting of the person reading it — I’d rather read a good book in a bad setting than a bad book in a good setting — but that doesn’t mean the two are unrelated. Just as the right wine can enhance a meal, so the right setting can enhance a book — and vice versa.
Occasionally, it all comes together: reading’s version of the Aristotelian unity of time, place and action. And it’s not only while on vacation. I sometimes like to read in the bathtub, where I can luxuriate in the amniotic suds, drying my fingers on a towel to turn the pages. I loved reading Jasper Fforde’s “Early Riser” — a fantasy novel about a world gripped by an ice age, where most humans hibernate to get through winter — as steam rose from the tub and frost painted the window pane.
I knew the Tana French paperback wouldn’t last me the whole vacation, and I looked forward to buying something in country, so to speak — if I could find a Portuguese bookstore that sold books in English. In Porto we visited Livrario Lello, which has been called the world’s most beautiful bookstore. It’s an art nouveau masterpiece, a jewel box of carved-wood curlicues, stained-glass windows and a curving staircase painted crimson. Being inside the store made me want to drink absinthe.
Livrario Lello has become such a must-see that a line stretches out the door and you need a timed-entry ticket — 5 euros, good toward any purchase — just to get in.
The store isn’t organized like your typical Barnes and Noble. None of the titles are stamped in embossed foil like the thrillers that decorate airport newsstands. Lello chooses to organize books in unique ways, including by authors who have won the Nobel Prize in literature, deceased authors who should have won it, and those alive who might still. There’s a special section devoted to books by the only Portuguese Nobel laureate: José Saramago (1998).
To be honest, I knew nothing about the guy. But I figured: When in Rome … I picked up a paperback copy of “Blindness” and began reading: “The amber light came on. Two of the cars accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up.”
Saramago never says where this city street is — in which country the novel’s events take place — but now that I’d been in Portugal (was there still!), I could imagine it in Portugal, around the corner from my hotel, near the tram stop, by the bakery …
“Yes,” I thought, carrying the book to the cashier, “this will do quite nicely.”
What are words for?
How do you decide what books you bring on vacation? Have you had an especially sublime experience with your choice — or a lousy one? Send the details — with “Reading Material” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com. | 2022-07-31T16:24:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Choosing the right book for a vacation is as fun as the trip itself - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/vacation-book-club/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/vacation-book-club/ |
Manchin won’t say if he would support Biden in 2024
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.V.) arrives at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on July 21. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) would not commit to supporting President Biden for reelection in 2024 during multiple interviews Sunday, saying he was “not getting involved in that.”
Manchin also refused to say whether he hoped Democrats would keep control of the House and Senate after this year’s midterm elections, insisting that he could work with lawmakers from either party.
“You know, I’m not making those choices or decisions on that. I’m going to work with whatever I have,” Manchin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about Democrats’ prospects in the midterm elections.
“I think the Democrats have great candidates that are running. They’re good people I’ve worked with,” he added. “And I have a tremendous amount of respect and friendship with my Republican colleagues. So I can work on either side very easily.”
When asked to clarify whether he did not care about the outcome of the midterm elections, Manchin stayed circumspect.
“Whatever the voters choose. I can’t decide what’s going to happen in Kansas or California or Texas. I really can’t,” he said. “I’ve always taken the approach: Whoever you send me, that’s your representative and I respect them. And I respect the state for the people they send, and I give it my best to work with them, to do the best for my country. I don’t play the politics that way. I don’t like it that way. That’s not who I am.”
On ABC’s “This Week,” Manchin was similarly noncommittal when host Jonathan Karl asked whether he would commit to supporting Biden if he is the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024.
“Everybody’s worried about the election. That’s the problem,” Manchin replied. “It’s a 2022 election, 2024 election. I’m not getting involved in...”
“No, no, but this is a simple question,” Karl interrupted. “Would you...”
“It’s not. I’m not getting involved in that, Jon,” Manchin said. “I’m really not.”
In an evenly divided Senate, key parts of Biden’s agenda have often succeeded or failed on Manchin’s leaning. Last year, Manchin said he would not support federal voting rights legislation that his party argued was critical for preserving democracy, and the West Virginia senator almost single-handedly put the brakes on Biden’s Build Back Better plan, a $2 trillion social spending package.
Manchin’s equivocations on Biden and his own party came as he appeared on all five major Sunday political shows to promote his role in the success of one of the president’s own initiatives.
Days ago, Manchin announced that he had brokered a surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the “Inflation Reduction Act,” a massive climate, health-care and taxes bill. Though smaller than the Build Back Better plan, the new agreement still aims to achieve many of the same goals, including lowering the cost of prescription drug prices, establishing a corporate minimum tax and spending about $433 billion on climate change and clean energy production.
“This type of legislation wouldn’t happen unless the president of the United States was involved,” Manchin said on “This Week.” “And he gave — he gave his blessing and signed off on it. I can assure you that. And I appreciate that more than anybody knows, because this has been tough.”
Karl then asked if Manchin would rule out voting for a Republican for president. Manchin paused briefly.
“I’m not getting into the 2024 election,” he said. After some additional back and forth, Manchin added: “It’s been a long haul. So I’m not going — I’m not getting into the 2022 or 2024. Whoever is my president, that’s my president. And Joe Biden’s my president right now.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Manchin was asked whether he would back Biden in 2024.
“I’m not getting involved in any election right now: 2022, 2024, I’m not speculating on [that],” Manchin said. “President Biden is my president right now. I’m going to work with him and his administration, to the best of my ability.”
Tony Romm and Christian Davenport contributed to this report. | 2022-07-31T17:25:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sen. Joe Manchin won’t say if he would support Joe Biden for reelection in 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/manchin-biden-democrats-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/manchin-biden-democrats-midterm-elections/ |
In concert, the Weeknd dazzles with a well-tuned sense of the theatrical
At FedEx Field on Saturday night, the multihyphenate performer demonstrated the dramatic flair that has characterized his rise over the past decade
The Weeknd performs at his "After Hours Til Dawn" tour at FedEx Field on July 30. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
Despite the dark clouds that blanketed the night sky above FedEx Field on Saturday, a moon shone bright and full, suspended above the crowd, with a constellation of smartphone lights winking across the stadium. The brightest star, the Weeknd, emerged onstage and rose to the top of a hazy reproduction of the Toronto skyline.
Pulsing stage lights kept pace with the wall of gleaming synths surrounding the 32-year-old multihyphenate as he opened with the plaintive “Alone Again” off his character-driven 2020 album, “After Hours.” He wore a plastic mask, yet his marble-smooth vocals sculpted timeless idols to desire, desperation and alienation.
Just last year, the Weeknd celebrated the 10th anniversary of his influential debut mixtape, “House of Balloons” — with its brooding bass lines and despondent lyrics — marking the start of his impact on contemporary R&B and pop music.
In 2012, Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. the Weeknd, inked a deal with Republic Records and went on to compile his first three mixtapes into a single album, “Trilogy.” His first studio album, 2013’s “Kiss Land,” felt less like a debut and more like the liminal space of an expanding soundscape — a muddled, darkwave exploration reaching for something more. His blockbuster second album, 2015’s “Beauty Behind the Madness,” debuted at No. 1 with era-defining hits such as “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills.” With “Starboy” (2016), he developed a more distinct stage persona with clear visual and sonic direction. It crystallized with the 2019 hit “Blinding Lights,” the “After Hours” single and its dizzying exhale of ’80s-inspired synths and athletic vocals.
As his musical palette grows, so, too, do the Weeknd’s cinematic leanings. It was fitting that his sold-out show felt full-screen theatrical, casting himself as the leading man and ominously veiled background dancers as a sort of Greek chorus that haunts his journey. His stage evoked the movie poster from “Metropolis.”
With the Weeknd’s energy and magnetism, the nearly two-hour set felt well-paced. The flames that shot out from the side of the stage added a Dante’s “Inferno” feel to “The Hills.” A seamless transition from slinky (“Out of Time”) to sparkling (“I Feel It Coming”) kept the grooving nonstop and euphoric. Closing with “Blinding Lights” (as beams of light pierced the clouds and the provided wrist lights in the audience blinked) the Weeknd glistened through it all. | 2022-07-31T17:29:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Weeknd dazzles at FedEx Field concert - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/31/weeknd-tour-review-dc-fedex-july-30/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/31/weeknd-tour-review-dc-fedex-july-30/ |
The benefits they seek are not universal
Demonstrators gather April 25 outside the Supreme Court as the case of former Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy is argued before the court. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Regarding the July 27 front-page article “School-prayer fight blurs church-and-state line”:
Those “working to blur the line dividing prayer and pedagogy” are wearing blinders; they see only their renewed hope that one day the United States will be, officially, a Christian country. From personal experience as a member of a minority religion and professional experience as a school psychologist, I am painfully aware that the children of minority religions will not be experiencing the “emotional, spiritual … benefits” the Christians are promising.
Betty Wachtel, Durham, N.H.
With all of the emphasis on safe spaces in schools and workplaces, spaces that are purged of triggers to the sensitivities of students and co-workers, the Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District to bar a public school district from creating a space free of religious expression to protect the sensitivities of atheists is troubling.
Surely, those parents who object to curriculums that seek to proselytize on subjects such as LGBTQ rights or critical race theory should stand with parents who object to the indoctrination of their children with the unscientific fictions that are religious faiths. On the bright side, I presume the Kennedy decision has now made the period after the end of a football game a public forum for individual expression of religious belief or, more important, nonbelief.
John J. Duffy, Bethesda
In the 1940s and 1950s, I attended public school in Massachusetts. Each morning, the teacher read a Bible passage and led us in the Lord’s Prayer. The students were predominantly Roman Catholic. At that time, Protestants had an added portion to the prayer. The few Protestants in the class began to feel embarrassed, so they stopped saying their additional words. One day, I asked our teacher why the Catholics had shortened the prayer. My (obviously non-Catholic) teacher responded that Catholics believe that their church is the “kingdom and the power and glory.” For years, I believed this erroneous idea. After all, “the teacher told me.”
Another clear memory is of the one Jewish girl in the class. One day, a boy raised his hand after the spoken prayer, pointed to the Jewish child and said, “She didn’t say the prayer.” The teacher’s response was “Well, she doesn’t believe the same as the rest of us.” Years later, that girl told me that was her worst childhood memory.
These events well illustrate the immense damage to children when religion is inserted into the schools. No teacher or coach can be totally objective or knowledgeable about the many faiths represented in our classrooms. The “moments of silence” without direction are still the best solution. Prayer in the schools and on the sports fields can continue, silently, by every student who wishes to pray. Others can quietly review their spelling words or think about game strategy. And no children will be harmed or pitted against their parents’ beliefs.
Priscilla Kirby, Springfield | 2022-07-31T18:39:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The benefits they seek are not universal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/benefits-they-seek-are-not-universal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/benefits-they-seek-are-not-universal/ |
Democrats should stop meddling in Republican primaries
Maryland Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick) at a May 15, 2020, rally. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
You know that feeling you have when you are sure somebody is doing something wrong but you just can’t put your finger on it as to why? Well, that’s exactly how I was feeling about the Democratic Party’s strategy of trying to bolster Trump Republican candidates in their primary elections under the theory that such candidates would be weaker challengers to the Democratic candidates in the general election.
But, thanks to Henry Olsen and his July 27 op-ed, “Democratic meddling in GOP primaries has reached a new level of absurdity,” I can now articulate why what I knew in my gut was wrong is, in fact, wrong. As a lifelong Democrat, I am appalled by former president Donald Trump, Trumpism and Trump acolytes and believe that our No. 1 priority is to do everything in our power to eliminate this scourge so that Trumpism becomes just a small blip in our country’s political history. As such, doing anything to make such candidates appealing to Republican voters is counter to this critical objective.
To me, the cost of supporting such individuals in their primary elections, even if it could improve the chances of a Democratic general-election victory, is just too high. In fact, this “ends justifies the means” behavior is something I would have expected only from the Republican Party. My wife and I agree that until we are assured that the Democratic fundraising organizations will not use our dollars to further this strategy, our largesse (albeit modest) will go elsewhere.
Mitchell Batt, Rockville | 2022-07-31T18:39:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats should stop meddling in Republican primaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/democrats-should-stop-meddling-republican-primaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/democrats-should-stop-meddling-republican-primaries/ |
Indiana’s cruel abortion bill is a warning of post-Roe reality
Supporters of abortion rights demonstrate outside the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis during a special session on July 29. (Jenna Watson/The Indianapolis Star via AP)
The choice was between cruel and crueler. Cruel won, barely.
On Saturday, the Indiana Senate voted to make abortion illegal in the state. The measure passed with the bare minimum number of votes — not because lawmakers flinched at outlawing abortion but because so many of them believed the bill, with its exceptions for rape and incest, wasn’t strict enough.
Opinion: I provide abortions in Indiana. I don't believe in turning patients away.
Welcome to the new abortion debate, in which no restriction short of an absolute, unyielding ban will satisfy some abortion opponents. So much for the gauzy vision of a European-style consensus in which states would make abortion freely available up to a certain point in pregnancy, say 15 weeks, the limit imposed by the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority used in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a vehicle for eliminating abortion rights. The legislative landscape is still unfolding, but the new reality is that abortion is likely to be prohibited or unavailable after the first few weeks of pregnancy in almost half the states.
Abortion is now banned in these states. See where the laws have changed.
Indiana is one of the first to consider abortion legislation in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, so the fate of the measure that passed Saturday is instructive. Republicans enjoy a comfortable supermajority in the state legislature, with 39 of 50 Senate seats. But Indiana Republicans were a party divided — 18 voted to eliminate the exceptions for rape and incest — and ultimately just 26 voted for final passage. Now the measure heads to the Republican-dominated House, which has a chance to make it even worse.
To some extent, antiabortion forces are like the dog that caught the car — after all these years of cost-free railing against Roe, they are in the uncomfortable position of having to make real-world, and politically dicey, choices about what restrictions to impose in its absence.
So is it good news that the most extreme forces didn’t prevail — at least for now? Or is it bad news that what they deemed unacceptable is itself so extreme? Yes and yes, but count me more worried than relieved. The debate in Indiana shows why.
The bill would make abortion illegal in almost all cases. It carves out an exception for cases of rape and incest — but even then only up to eight weeks of pregnancy, 12 weeks if the victim is under 16. How generous.
Another is if the pregnancy would result in “substantial permanent impairment of the life of the mother.” Do you know what that means? Me neither — and neither will a doctor, facing the possibility of felony charges carrying a sentence of up to six years in prison. Who’s going to risk performing an abortion under these circumstances, unless the risk of maternal death is undeniable?
Opinion: The pro-life movement can't stop at the unborn
So you might have thought that antiabortion activists would be delighted with this measure. Not even close. Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, decried it as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to expand abortion on demand in the state of Indiana.”
Expanding abortion on demand? This is ridiculous on its face. Under Indiana’s existing law, women can obtain abortions at up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. Any women, with no need to demonstrate “substantial permanent impairment” of anything. Including their autonomy.
Retropolis: States may revive abortion laws from a time when women couldn't vote
The measure got tougher and tougher as it made its way through the legislative process — just not tough enough for some. An analysis by Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr., the longtime general counsel of the National Right to Life Committee, cited the problem posed by “the refusal of radical Democrat Prosecutors … to prosecute illegal abortions under any new Indiana abortion law.” So lawmakers added a provision allowing the state attorney general to bring cases where local prosecutors refuse. Not good enough.
The measure required that those seeking abortions because of rape or incest file affidavits, signed “under the penalties of perjury,” attesting to what happened. “This results in a huge loophole where any woman or girl could easily falsely claim rape or incest with the result of abortion on demand throughout pregnancy,” Bopp warned.
So lawmakers added a provision requiring that the affidavits be notarized. No dice. Antiabortion activists insisted that the rape had to be reported to authorities — otherwise, lawmakers would be “denying women the help they need,” according to a statement by Indiana Right to Life President Mike Fichter. As if women can’t decide for themselves whether they want to report a rape. As if they’re all a bunch of liars whose loose morality got them into this predicament in the first place.
Ruth Marcus: The radical conservative majority's damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone
This is what is deemed inadequate. “We did not wait 50 years for the full reversal of Roe vs. Wade for this,” Fichter said.
Believe him. The antiabortion movement persisted for a half-century in fighting Roe. It secured the elimination of an established constitutional right. It will keep going, I fear, until it achieves the ultimate objective: a nationwide ban.
“We won’t stop at Roe,” protesters chanted in Indiana as the measure was debated. Trust them: They won’t. Be warned. Be prepared. | 2022-07-31T18:39:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Indiana’s cruel abortion bill is a warning of post-Roe reality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/indiana-abortion-bill-cruel-new-reality/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/indiana-abortion-bill-cruel-new-reality/ |
Six million died. We still don’t know how the pandemic began.
A security guard stands outside the shuttered Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)
The pandemic — death knell to more than 6 million people and perhaps as many as 20 million indirectly — still hides its origin. While scientists have struggled mightily to confront threats to human health, attempts to discover how it all began and why remain skimpy and inconclusive. The outbreak started in China, but leaders there covered up the human transmissibility of the virus at first, then mounted a propaganda campaign insisting it originated outside China.
What really happened in Wuhan, and why? The answers could help prevent and plan for a future pandemic.
One school of thought is that the coronavirus jumped from bats to humans, perhaps with an intermediate animal host, a zoonotic spillover event, which has happened often in the past. Another is that research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including dangerous “gain of function” experiments, resulted in a laboratory accident or inadvertent leak. Perhaps there was a combination of both, such as a researcher handling bats who became infected and then spread the virus.
Two new research papers in Science revive the questions. One, by University of California San Diego’s Jonathan E. Pekar and colleagues, concludes that there were two jumps of the virus to humans in late 2019. The second paper, by University of Arizona professor Michael Worobey and colleagues, focuses on the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which sold wildlife and farmed animals, live and butchered. Scrutinizing the location of early human cases of the virus, including 155 with reliable longitude and latitude data, the researchers found a high density of cases near, and surrounding, the market. The paper concludes the market was “the early epicenter” of the pandemic and suggests the virus “likely emerged from the live wildlife trade in China.”
In a preprint in February, the University of Arizona professor claimed to have found “dispositive evidence” that the virus spilled over from the live wildlife trade. His revised, peer-reviewed paper is more cautious, saying the research “does not establish that the pandemic originated” in the market. Events “upstream of the market, as well as exact circumstances at the market, remain obscure,” he acknowledges.
And so much is obscure. In the early chaos of the outbreak, sick patients were turned away from hospitals and not properly counted, so the population plots might not contain the whole story. After the pandemic picked up steam in early 2020, China made no known effort to go back and look for additional early cases from November and December, which might have provided important clues about the origin. Environmental samples point to animals being sold in a corner of the market, but there are no live animal samples to identify which species carried the virus. The Worobey team drew population data from the joint China-World Health Organization mission to China, which published its findings in 2021. At a news conference in Wuhan at the end of the mission, the WHO team leader, Peter Ben Embarek, called a lab leak “extremely unlikely,” but he later told Danish television he was under pressure from China to dismiss the hypothesis, which it calls “a false claim.” A second WHO group is now investigating.
We hope they — or others — get to probe on the ground in Wuhan and elsewhere. China’s leaders should end the stonewalling and open the doors. | 2022-07-31T18:39:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Six million died. We still don’t know how the pandemic began. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/six-million-died-we-still-dont-know-how-pandemic-began/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/31/six-million-died-we-still-dont-know-how-pandemic-began/ |
Not just fun in the sun: Rehoboth lifeguards on a century of service
Ana Villabona (left) and Anthony Giuseppetti (right) watch over the beach Sunday morning from their lifeguard stand in Rehoboth Beach, Del. (Kyle Grantham for The Washington Post)
Ah, to be a lifeguard in Rehoboth. What a dream job. Paid to sit in a bathing suit all day, work on a tan, be ogled by beachgoers and occasionally whistle at the dopes who think climbing on the slick jetties is a fine idea. What could be easier?
Except, of course, that’s only half the picture. And this weekend, as the Rehoboth Beach Patrol celebrated its 100th anniversary, generations of guards who descended on the town were eager to share stories about the other half: the riptide rescues, the punishing daily workouts, the long rainy days on duty, the lost kids (and lost parents), the jellyfish stings, the airborne beach umbrellas. Did we mention the jetty climbers?
If it were easy, anyone could do it. Instead, only a select few make it their summer calling. The patrol’s centennial reunion (technically, it’s Year 101, but the festivities were pushed back because of covid) was a time to reconnect with old friends, reminisce about glory days on the stand and wonder what ever happened to those six-pack abs of yore.
The anniversary was also a time to take in the changes the past century has brought to the job of the lifeguard and, notably, the makeup of the patrol itself. Rehoboth, a town where President Biden has a summer home and that bills itself as the nation’s summer capital because of the many Washingtonians who vacation there, has changed a lot in 100 years, and the patrol has changed with it.
Jeff Giles knows about the history of Rehoboth’s lifeguards. And he’s invested in their future. Giles, 59, lifeguarded in Rehoboth from 1981 to 1986 before pursuing a career in law enforcement. But after retiring, the pull of the beach was strong.
Last year, Giles took the top job as captain of the 65-member patrol that guards Rehoboth’s two-mile shoreline and works to keep safe the thousands who visit it every day from May through September. The record on that front has been impressive: Since the patrol’s beginning in 1921 with just two lifeguards, there has been just one drowning in Rehoboth while guards were on duty.
Safety is his top priority, but Giles has also made a concerted effort to connect patrol alumni with current guards. He invites them in to talk about their career paths and how their guard experience influenced the choices they made.
For him, there’s a thread that connects the beach patrol members of different eras.
“The common denominator is still the same for lifeguards 50 years ago and the lifeguards right now,” he said. “You still have to have a human sitting on the stand paying attention — and, on the rough days, being ready to go. And it takes a certain mind-set to do that.”
For Giles the best thing about Saturday night’s reunion was seeing the young guards interacting with the old ones. “They told me they realized this is bigger than just a job,” Giles said. “This is something that connects you for life.”
If some aspects of the job are the same, much has also changed. For decades, the patrol was all men. And almost exclusively White. Many Delaware beaches were segregated until the 196os, and Rehoboth was no exception. Now the squad is more diverse, and close to half of the guards are women.
Wellington “Buddy” Hicks Jr., a Rehoboth lifeguard from 1955 to 1962, was one of the first Black lifeguards on the force. Though he guarded what was then designated a beach for non-Whites, he and the White lifeguards regularly assisted one another on saves and beach patrol.
“To guard the beach and make sure swimmers were safe was a great experience for me,” said Hicks, 89. “And I made great friends with the other guards. We all got along and helped each other.”
Bill Collick, another African American lifeguard, joined the patrol in 1969 after the beaches had been desegregated. Collick, who would later go on to be the head football coach and athletic director at Delaware State University, said he never felt anything but welcomed as a member of Rehoboth’s beach patrol.
“When I look at the people that I met there and the structure and the camaraderie, it’s like we really had an esprit de corps there,” said Collick, 71. “You had the opportunity to be around people who were all doing what we wanted to do.”
Like many lifeguards of his era, Collick credits the leadership of Frank Coveleski, a successful high school football coach who took charge of the Rehoboth Beach Patrol in the early 1950s.
Coveleski’s son John, 70, who was a Rehoboth lifeguard throughout the 1970s, said his dad demanded excellence and attention to detail. And he sought out the best.
Many of the guards, John Coveleski said, went on to become accomplished leaders, doctors, educators, first responders, judges and entrepreneurs. And when they all get back together, “it’s like you just saw them yesterday. You pick up right where you left off.”
Herb Miller, 84, was one of the oldest lifeguards to return for the reunion. When he was on the Rehoboth Beach Patrol in the 1950s, Miller made $49.95 a month. He rented out a room for $7 a week and paid another $7 a week for meals. That included just one glass of milk per meal.
Miller followed strict rules as a guard. Never turn your back to the water. Don’t jump off the stand to talk to people on the beach. Blow your Acme Thunderer whistle to warn swimmers away from the dangerous jetties.
The job, Miller said, was to closely watch everything, keep swimmers where they should be and avoid having to go in the ocean.
“I tell young guards, a good lifeguard never gets wet,” Miller said. “If you’re managing your beach properly, you should never have to get wet.”
But there was one order Miller and the other guards didn’t exactly want to enforce. On Delaware beaches in the late ’50s, bathing suits were tame one-piece affairs. The exotic bikini was known only from movies and magazines. But one day, a French tourist showed up wearing a bikini and some complaints were registered.
At the morning briefing the next day, the guards were told that if the woman wore a bikini on their beach, they would have to ask her to cover up.
“Well none of the guards wanted to do that,” Miller remembered. “It was a delight to see her.”
Jerry Rapkin, who at 92 is the patrol’s oldest alumni and almost as old as the patrol itself, started as a junior lifeguard at Rehoboth during World War II, when Coast Guard troops would patrol the beach on horseback to watch for enemy submarines and German spies.
“It’s great to have somebody my age still involved,” said Rapkin, who after being a guard went on to graduate from the Naval Academy and serve 27 years in the Navy before retiring as a captain. He now lives in Annapolis with his wife and said the reunion “brings back good memories and is a chance to mingle with people I’ve known for a long time.”
For Debbie Marson, who grew up in Alexandria and went to Rehoboth every summer with her family, being a lifeguard was a dream job. She wrote five letters to the captain begging to be allowed on the patrol. He finally relented. But it was 1980. The squad had added its first female guard only the year before. Change was slow and not always friendly.
“The first day somebody said, ‘Stupid girl, who let them on the patrol?’ ” remembers Marson, who now lives in Falls Church. “It was not welcoming, but it changed shortly thereafter. For the most part, I think I was welcomed and included, and then once I was no longer a rookie, I could boss anybody around.”
Lauren DeAngelis, 58, now a nurse anesthetist in Northern Virginia, became a lifeguard the year after Marson. She, too, grew up dreaming about one day having that job. As a preteen, she would make lunch and bring it to the guards on duty. And she would occasionally sit on the stand and pretend to guard.
When she finally got the job for real, she was thrilled to be one of the first women.
“I didn’t feel like I was groundbreaking, but I was really proud,” DeAngelis said. “When I was on the stand, I took it very seriously.”
The legacy of those first female guards is now evident in a force that is almost half women.
Ana Villabona had just finished her junior year of high school in 2017 when she applied for the patrol. She almost didn’t make it. On her first day of training, she passed out. On her second day, she stopped altogether. An older guard sat her down: You have to decide, he told her, if this is something you really want to do. Do you have the drive?
“I remember telling my friend, ‘I’ve got to prove I’m not just the person that passed out and quit the next day,’ ” Villabona said. “ ‘I’ve really got to get back out there.’ And so that first couple of days was definitely a changing point for me in my life.”
Now 22, Villabona is the patrol’s senior lieutenant and is in charge of the training program for rookie lifeguards. She graduated from West Virginia University in the spring with a degree in public health. She’s proud, she says, to be a Latina woman in one of the squad’s top positions. The women who came before her on the squad are always with her in spirit.
“I think about them all the time. I could not imagine coming in to work every day and really, you know, trying to have to prove that you deserved being there, that you earned your spot,” she said. “I think if they hadn’t joined the patrol at the time they did and, you know, put their foot down as much as they did, we definitely wouldn’t have the women numbers that we have now.”
Many former guards, men and women, say their jobs weren’t always taken seriously. “Baywatch” didn’t help. The hit television show about a California beach patrol glamorized guard life in a way that often felt remote to Rehoboth guards.
Mike Querey, 50, was a lifeguard in Rehoboth from 1990 to 1995, when “Baywatch” was in its prime, and remembers it caused a lot of people to think guards were frivolous. “We had to overcome that mental model of, ‘Oh yeah, you just run around and look pretty and stuff,’ ” he said. “We’re like, ‘No, we save people all the time.’ ”
The demands of the job, Querey said, were a lot harder than people thought. Training for the squad’s rookie test was like “military boot camp.” And like many former lifeguards, Querey says the job never leaves you. Decades later, it’s hard for him to go to the beach without staring out at the surf, wondering where the trouble might come from and warning people away from it.
On days when the Atlantic is a gently lapping lake, the job can be dull. But when the nasty waves roll in, crashing thunder on Rehoboth’s precipitous shoreline, every bit of that intense training comes into play. All of the guards remember their most demanding saves, battling the relentless churn of the surf to snag a struggling swimmer beyond the break and return them safely to the beach.
It’s thrilling. And rewarding. And exhausting. But for tired lifeguards, there’s no time to rest.
Get back in the chair. Scan the water. Spot the lost kids. Put on more sunscreen. Whistle the dopes away from the jetty.
What could be easier? | 2022-07-31T18:39:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rehoboth lifeguards reflect on a century of service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/rehoboth-beach-patrol-anniversary-reunion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/31/rehoboth-beach-patrol-anniversary-reunion/ |
By Louie Estrada
The Boston Celtics' Bill Russell (6) goes up against St. Louis Hawks' Charlie Share (70) to score a basket in Boston. (AP)
Throughout his basketball career, Bill Russell compiled a legacy of championship achievement unparalleled in any sport. As the dominant defensive player of his generation, he won an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. basketball team in 1956, then over the next 13 years led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA championships.
As the cornerstone of the franchise’s dynasty of the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Russell won enduring renown as the most successful player in the history of team sports. When the Celtics named him head coach in 1966, he became the first Black man to hold that role in a major professional sport in the United States.
Mr. Russell, who died July 31 at 88, was indomitable on and off the court and one of the most fascinating public figures to straddle sports and civil rights. He was intensely driven and innovative as an athlete, notably when pitted in electrifying matchups against Wilt Chamberlain, the dominant scorer of the era. Their rivalry elevated the popularity of the National Basketball Association.
In his prime, the goateed, broad-shouldered Mr. Russell was 220 pounds of lean muscle stretched over a 6-foot-9 frame. Fast and agile, he had a superior vertical leap and used his 7-foot-4 wingspan to block shots with his arm outstretched like a bowsprit. With his athletic shot-blocking and rebounding skills, he revolutionized the way basketball was played on defense.
Mr. Russell’s physical gifts were complemented by an intellectual curiosity about other aspects of the game, such as shot trajectory, rebounding angles, human psychology and gamesmanship. He was known to needle opponents on the court, engage in trash talk, research players’ habits and aggressively block shots early in games. He once wrote that he knew he couldn’t block all shots but that a few resounding blocks were more than enough to throw an opposing player off his game.
“The only thing we know for sure about superiority in sports in the United States of America in the 20th century,” journalist Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1999, “is that Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics teams he led stand alone as the ultimate winners.”
Amid the celebration of his prowess as a player, Mr. Russell also struggled with the festering problems of prejudice and segregation. Born in the Jim Crow South, he was often described as private, introspective, prickly and principled, a man who searched for ways, as he once wrote in a book introduction, for his children to grow up “as we could not … equal … and understanding.”
As early as 1958, he accused the NBA of using a quota system to limit the number of Black players on each team. He took part in civil rights marches with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. but questioned the nonviolent strategy of the movement, arguing that African Americans had a right to defend themselves.
When civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Miss., in 1963, Mr. Russell accepted an offer by Evers’s older brother, Charles, to run a youth basketball camp in Jackson, to bring White and Black children together. He received death threats but refused to back away from his views.
Mr. Russell’s steely outward personality and pointed manner of speaking didn’t endear him to some fans in Boston, which had a long history of racism. The Boston Red Sox baseball team didn’t integrate until 1959, and protests in Boston over federal court-ordered school desegregation in the 1970s were among the most violent in the country.
Many fans perceived Mr. Russell to be aloof because for years he refused to sign autographs, preferring a handshake and conversation. He described Boston as a “flea market of racism” in his 1979 book, “Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinionated Man.”
Despite his success with the Celtics — the team had never won a championship before his arrival — Mr. Russell did not receive local business endorsements and found himself shut out of exclusive neighborhoods when he was looking to buy a house. In 1968, his suburban Boston home was broken into and ransacked. Racial epithets were written on the walls, and feces were left on his bed.
“It had all varieties, old and new, and in their most virulent form,” he wrote in “Second Wind. “The city had corrupt, city hall-crony racists, brick-throwing, send-’em-back-to-Africa racists, and in the university areas phony radical-chic racists. … Other than that, I liked the city.”
He refused to sign off on a public ceremony in 1972 to retire his Celtics jersey, and in 1975 he declined to attend his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, upset that he would be the first African American player to be enshrined.
“We foolishly lionize athletes and make them heroes because they can hit a ball or catch one,” Mr. Russell once said. “The only athletes we should bother with attaching any particular importance to are those like [Muhammad] Ali, whom we can admire for themselves and not for their incidental athletic abilities.”
In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Mr. Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for both his athletic accomplishments and his advocacy for human rights.
Faced bigotry
William Felton Russell was born in Monroe, La., on Feb. 12, 1934, and his father worked in a paper bag factory. His childhood was filled with searing memories of prejudice, with daily indignities and outright threats directed at his mother and father.
When he was 9, his family moved to Oakland, Calif., in the hope of escaping the institutionalized segregation of the South. His father found work in a war production plant. Mr. Russell described the public housing projects of Oakland as tough and dangerous but paradise compared with Louisiana.
His parents separated, and his mother died a few years later. Throughout childhood, he and his older brother, Charlie Russell Jr., who became a playwright, leaned on each other for support.
Tall and uncoordinated as a youth, Mr. Russell tried organized basketball for the first time in junior high school but failed to make the team. He later got a spot on his high school’s junior varsity team only because of a sympathetic coach. It was a turn of events that likely spared his life from the violent streets of the inner city. “If I hadn’t had basketball,” he later said, “all my energies and frustrations would surely have been carried in some other direction.”
Mr. Russell received only one college scholarship offer, from the University of San Francisco, a small Jesuit school that had no history of athletic excellence. Mr. Russell led the USF Dons to consecutive NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956 and was acclaimed as a first-team all-American both years. One of his college teammates, K.C. Jones, joined him on the Celtics and had a Hall of Fame career in his own right.
In addition to starring on the basketball court, Mr. Russell was one of the country’s premier high jumpers in the 1950s.
Despite Mr. Russell’s success at the amateur level, some NBA scouts remained dubious of the value a defense-oriented center. At the time, centers were coveted for putting up big numbers on the scoreboard, which Mr. Russell never did.
Celtics coach Red Auerbach didn’t harbor such doubts. He engineered a trade to acquire the draft rights to Mr. Russell in 1956, sensing how his style of play could help the team’s roster of future Hall of Famers, including Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey.
After missing almost half his rookie season, while leading to the U.S. Olympic basketball team to a gold medal, Mr. Russell quickly claimed a spot in the Celtics lineup and helped lead the team to its first NBA championship in 1957.
An ankle injury sidelined Mr. Russell in his second year, when the Celtics lost in the NBA finals to the St. Louis Hawks. Boston then won eight consecutive titles under Auerbach and two more in 1967-1968 and 1968-1969, after Mr. Russell had taken over as player-coach, becoming the first Black head coach in major professional sports.
None of the championships came easily. Mr. Russell was such an intense competitor that he threw up in the locker room before each game. When he took the court, he awed crowds by shutting down opposing teams’ offenses almost single-handedly.
Sometimes, while guarding an opponent with the ball, he would purposely allow that player to drive around him for a seemingly easy layup, then recover in time to turn and swat the ball away from behind.
Other times, Mr. Russell would block shots multiple times on the same possession, as if he were playing in a one-man game of volleyball. When he secured a defensive rebound, he often made a quick left-handed pass to his teammates streaking down the wooden parquet flooring at Boston Garden on a fast break.
After Chamberlain entered the NBA in 1959, the rivalry between the two — who were close friends — became a highlight of the league. Chamberlain may have posted better individual statistics, but Mr. Russell’s team came away with most of the victories.
Chamberlain played on only one NBA championship team (the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers) during Mr. Russell’s 13 years with the Celtics.
“If he got 62 [points] and we won that wouldn’t mean anything,” Mr. Russell said of Chamberlain in a 1997 television interview with Bob Costas. “But if he got 62 and won the game, that bothered me.”
In his professional career, Mr. Russell scored 14,522 career points (15.1 points a game) and grabbed 21,620 rebounds. His average of 22.5 rebounds per game ranks second only to Chamberlain’s 22.9 in NBA history.
Mr. Russell also set the standard for shot-blocking, even though the NBA didn’t record blocked shots as an official statistic until 1973, after he had retired.
During his career, Mr. Russell made 12 NBA All-Star Game appearances, earned five rebounding titles and was named the league’s most valuable player five times. In 1980, the country’s basketball writers voted him “the greatest player in the history of the NBA.”
Mr. Russell retired from basketball in 1969, drove his car across the country and settled in Mercer Island, Wash. After a period of solitude, he worked as a network broadcast commentator for NBA games and acted in a handful of films and television shows before returning to basketball as coach and general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics from 1973 to 1977. He was coach of the Sacramento Kings in 1987 and vice president of the team’s basketball operations until 1989.
His marriages to Rose Swisher, his college sweetheart, and Dorothy Anstett ended in divorce. His third wife, Marilyn Nault, died in 2009. Survivors include three children from his first marriage, Karen, William and Jacob.
In a sign that relations between Mr. Russell and Boston were beginning to improve, Mr. Russell made several trips back to Boston, including for a 1999 ceremony when the Celtics re-retired his No. 6. At other gatherings, he appeared before standing ovations with his old teammates — among them Sam Jones, John Havlicek and Tom Heinsohn — to mark the anniversaries of their championships.
In 2013, a statue of Mr. Russell was unveiled at Boston’s City Hall Plaza. He agreed to the monument only after city officials pledged to establish a grant to fund a youth mentoring program. The statue shows Mr. Russell, knees bent, with ball in his hands ready to make a chest pass, an image of the consummate unselfish teammate. The stone is engraved with a quotation from Mr. Russell: “The most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.” | 2022-07-31T18:43:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Russell, basketball great, dies at 88 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/bill-russell-basketball-civil-rights-celtics-dies-88/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/bill-russell-basketball-civil-rights-celtics-dies-88/ |
Death toll for Kentucky floods climbs to 26, with more storms coming
A home sits almost completely submerged along KY-15 on July 28. (Arden S. Barnes for The Washington Post)
The death toll from severe flooding in eastern Kentucky has risen to 26 people, including several children, and the governor said more fatalities are expected as search-and-rescue teams go door-to-door in the Appalachian foothills to assess the damage.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said rescue crews were continuing to search for survivors as the rain resumed on Sunday, and that authorities had unconfirmed reports of additional deaths.
Because of hazardous conditions such as downed power lines, as well as spotty cellphone service, he said some affected areas are inaccessible and the state doesn’t have a “firm grasp” on the number of missing.
“Our death toll right now is at 26, but I know of several additional bodies, and we know it’s going to grow,” Beshear told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “With the level of water, we’re going to be finding bodies for weeks, many of them swept hundreds of yards, maybe a quarter-mile-plus from where they were lost.”
In some families, everyone in their household perished, the governor said. The state was doubling the National Guard to search for victims, he said.
One of the more tragic stories has been the death of four siblings who had clambered onto their roof to escape rising floodwaters. After the roof collapsed, the family clung to tree branches, according to an account in the Lexington Herald-Leader. A swell of water swept the children away.
The disaster has led to flash flooding, landslides and mudslides. The storms displaced hundreds of residents and caused “hundreds of millions of dollars” in damage, the governor said in a YouTube video posted Sunday. He has said it could take years to rebuild in the region. Kentucky Power reported on Twitter that as of midday Sunday, power had been restored to about 50 percent of customers who had lost it.
The Kentucky floods were caused by 1-in-1,000 year rainstorms that scientists say are emblematic of the type of extreme weather that will become more common as the Earth warms.
Explainer: How two 1-in-1,000 year rain events hit the U.S. in two days
On “Meet the Press,” Beshear addressed the extreme weather — including an unusual spate of tornadoes in December that devastated parts of Kentucky and other states — and said officials must ensure that the state’s “roads, our bridges, our culverts, our flood walls can withstand greater intensity.”
Rural water and wastewater systems are easily overwhelmed, he said, and upgrading their infrastructure is “so expensive.” He said the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure legislation passed last year were a “good start” and allowed the state to afford improvements “that we haven’t been able to do before.”
“But if we truly want to be more resilient, it is going to take a major federal investment as well as here in the state,” Beshear said.
The National Weather Service is predicting several rounds of showers and storms for the area from Sunday through Tuesday, with flash flooding possible. A “brief dry period” is expected Wednesday, but Thursday could bring more rain.
Beshear urged residents to take precautions.
“Next couple days are going to be hard,” he said in the YouTube video. “We’ve got rain and maybe even a lot of rain that’s going to hit the same areas. Please pray for the people in these areas and if you are in the areas that are going to get hit by rain, make sure you stay safe. Make sure you have a place that is higher ground. Go to a shelter.” | 2022-07-31T19:00:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kentucky flooding kills 26, as more rain and storms batter the region - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/kentucky-flood-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/kentucky-flood-climate/ |
In his resignation letter, Adam Graham cited harassment and violence that he faced in the short time he served as mayor of The Village, Okla. (September Dawn Bottoms/for The Washington Post)
An Oklahoma city’s first openly gay mayor resigned. Then came the fallout.
THE VILLAGE, Okla. — Adam Graham had been mayor less than a month when he saw them: Two police officers from the next city over, the wealthiest in Oklahoma, stopping a Black driver in his middle-class community.
As the first openly gay leader of The Village, he’d pledged to create a “welcoming” city. And for years, he said, residents had told him about being racially profiled, especially when they passed through the mansion-lined streets of Nichols Hills.
So, on that late May evening, Graham, 29, said he slowed to a halt in his black SUV, lowered the window and asked: “What are you doing, officers? Are you aware that you’re in The Village?”
What happened next fiercely divided this community of nearly 9,000, drawing international scrutiny that felt humiliating to some and cathartic to others as simmering frustrations burst into the open. Oklahoma lost one of its six LGBTQ elected officials when Graham announced this month he was stepping down, citing harassment and fear for his safety.
At a time of deepening polarization in the United States, the fallout in The Village points to troubling consequences on the cul-de-sac level: Not even old friends are immune to the forces pitting us against each other.
Polls reveal perceptions of major events — the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, the protests ignited by the death of George Floyd — vary widely along partisan lines. Less explored is the impact in our own backyards, the strains on bonds that are supposed to trump politics.
“Unfortunately, certain elements of the population have recently become emboldened to pursue threats and attacks bordering on violence,” Graham wrote in his July 18 resignation letter. “I no longer feel safe to serve in my capacity as mayor.”
Before he said someone had followed him on the street, before he suspected someone had slashed one of his tires, before he said a man threw coffee at him and called him a gay slur, the police lights caught Graham’s eye.
“My gut, my heart — every part of me told me to do it,” he said in an interview at his ranch-style house. “My gut told me: ‘Just go over there and ask a question, Adam.’ ”
In a clip of body camera footage provided by the Nichols Hills police to The Washington Post, Graham can be seen pulling up in his Volkswagen Tiguan SUV across the street from what officers later described as a traffic stop.
“Excuse me?” asked one officer, a White man, apparently to Graham.
“You need to go on. Go on,” said the other officer, a Black woman.
A passenger in the stopped car appears to be saying: “I just want to go home.”
No other dialogue can be heard in the 32-second footage. “Nothing can be heard from Mr. Graham as he was too far away for the body cameras to pick up his voice,” Nichols Hills Police Chief Steven Cox said in an email. Some audio was muted, he added, to protect the privacy of the passengers.
In a second clip, the White officer walks to Graham’s car. Graham’s dog, a goldendoodle named Ralph, is visible first on the screen, his fluffy head protruding from the back seat window. Then Graham comes into focus behind the steering wheel. His expression is neutral.
“Okay,” the officer says. “Okay. Well, I appreciate your understanding of where we are because I know exactly where I am as well.”
“Okay,” Graham said.
“When I turn to stop somebody and they continue on from Nichols Hills into The Village,” the officer said, “I have a right to continue stopping them.”
“All right,” Graham said.
“Thank you, sir,” the officer replies. The footage ends.
Following that exchange, Graham said he left the scene. Cox, the police chief, said there is no more footage of Graham. When asked for a transcript of the former mayor’s words in the muted segments, Cox said the body cameras didn’t capture any other dialogue.
That night, Corporal Brandon Edwards sent an email to the police chief, flagging what he called “Mr. Graham’s very unprofessional interference in my traffic stop.”
The officers had pursued a car traveling 43 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone, Edwards wrote. A man who had identified himself as the mayor of The Village was “extremely rude and confrontational" to the point where Edwards doubted he was actually the mayor, “considering how unbecoming his actions were."
The officer with Edwards on the scene said she’d heard Graham yelling: “Get out of here. Get out of this city.”
“His presence directly agitated an already uncooperative driver,” Edwards wrote, according to a copy of the email shared by Nichols Hills police, “and put our safety at risk when it didn’t need to be.”
The Nichols Hills city manager soon told his counterpart in The Village about it, passing along Edwards’s email.
Most of The Village’s city council members thought Graham should apologize — or at least issue a statement explaining himself. They found the actions outlined in the email inappropriate, even dangerous, and feared losing backup from Nichols Hills. The two cities had long helped each other out, and The Village had maybe three officers on patrol at any given time.
“He distracted them when he did that,” one council member, 75-year-old C. Scott “Bubba” Symes, said. “In my mind, anything could have happened.”
Symes had a “heart-to-heart conversation” with Graham, he said, telling him that he knew several officers personally. It was unfair to paint all cops as bad guys, he said. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? He’d been close enough to feel the impact. Remember who was running into harm’s way?
The police are trained to use “deadly force against deadly force,” Symes recalls telling Graham. “When you interfere, somebody could have pulled out a gun and shot you — or the police officer."
Though the council member was an old friend, Graham said he felt threatened by that conversation. He remembers Symes saying: “If that would have happened in The Village, I would hope they’d have shot you.” (Symes denied saying that.)
Graham also disputed the Nichols Hills officers’ version of events. In his memory, he was calm yet direct — not “extremely rude." He said he didn’t yell at the officers and does not remember identifying himself as mayor. But his custom license plate features his initials, AG. Many people in that neighborhood, he added, know his car and Ralph.
The harassment
After George Floyd’s death launched protests worldwide, Graham said he’d thought a lot about how police have historically treated Black people. Black men make up 4 percent of Oklahoma’s population, but they represent 21 percent of those killed in police shootings since 2015, according to Washington Post data.
According to data shared by the Nichols Hills police, 30 percent of people who received citations and warnings in Nichols Hills from June 30 of last year to July 1 were Black, despite the city being less than one percent Black. Cox said officers don’t stop vehicles based on race or “any other reason than a violation of law,” adding that a diverse population drives through Nichols Hills, which borders Oklahoma’s biggest city.
“I see young Black men pulled over by the Nichols Hills police all the time,” Graham said. “I worry about them.”
As someone who began a slow process of coming out in his mid-20s, Graham said he understood the toll of discrimination. Getting into politics, he said, was his way of trying to protect the vulnerable. He won a city council seat in 2018 before his fellow members appointed him mayor, a title they voted on each year.
Graham’s day job was running campaigns for pro-LGBTQ candidates in the South. As mayor, he had declared June as Pride Month in The Village and vowed to outlaw conversion therapy, a practice still underway in parts of Oklahoma.
His colleagues described him as cordial with law enforcement, recalling a time he’d hand-delivered BBQ to The Village’s police department.
Graham said he’d thought about apologizing to the Nichols Hills officers. Perhaps he should have stuck to recording video.
Then the local newspaper published a front-page story: Village Mayor Interrupts NHills Traffic Stop With Verbal Altercation.
People yelled at him during the next city council meeting, saying he was anti-law enforcement and behaving in a way that embarrassed them. Graham’s sexual orientation never came up, but the intensity of the criticism was disturbing, said Tammy Conover, 59, an artist in The Village.
“If he was a straight man, nothing ever would have been said,” Conover said. “All the time people are saying, ‘We’re Christians,’ but we are so hateful. So mean.”
Graham told the city council that he did not want to comment. Privately, he felt the meeting had gotten too heated and worried saying more could fuel the fire.
The next week, he said, he discovered a four-inch gash in one of his tires. He suspected someone had slashed it. But Symes’s comments kept him from seeking a police report, he said.
After that, he noticed a man in a plum-colored Toyota truck trailing him one evening while he was walking Ralph. Graham said he motioned for him to pass, he said, but the man just silently stared at him.
“I felt shock,” Graham recalled, tears welling. “To be followed while walking, I felt very vulnerable. I should have called somebody. … I just didn’t feel safe. I just wanted it to go away.”
Then came the breaking point. Graham said he was heading to his car in the parking lot behind the Starbucks in Nichols Hills on July 16 when a man said, “You’re the f----t mayor” and tossed an iced drink at his pants. Graham said he remembers only the humiliation, no witnesses, and hurried home.
Two days later, he handed his resignation letter to the city manager and posted a copy on Twitter.
“In the last month, I’ve been followed home from meetings, threatened while walking my dog, harassed at Starbucks and have had my tires slashed,” he wrote in his letter. “Unfortunately, these malicious, bad-faith attacks are escalating.”
Reporters called from around the world. “Good Morning America” reached out. The Village’s website crashed.
“I had a choice," he said. "I could issue a blanket apology that doesn’t mean jack crap, or I could issue a statement that I believed to be true and factual and from my heart.”
Council members said they felt blind-sided. People questioned the veracity of Graham’s claims on Facebook, accusing him of exploiting his sexual orientation for attention.
“A small city in Oklahoma chased out a gay mayor?” asked Symes. “It’s such a farce. We may be Oklahomans, there may be some cowboys out here, but we don’t think like that anymore.”
The council appointed a new mayor, 36-year-old Sonny Wilkinson.
He didn’t doubt that Graham dealt with bigotry. As a straight man, he said, he didn’t know what that’s like. Any issue involving the police, meanwhile, was a recipe for discord.
“It’s the divisiveness,” he said. “You’re either for the police or against the police.”
Wilkinson played a voicemail that The Village police chief had received after Graham quit: “What did you do to protect the mayor?" the anonymous caller said. "Nothing! You sat on your bald, fat, homophobic ass and did nothing!”
“We are just not having conversations anymore,” Wilkinson said. “We are just yelling.”
The listening session
Monday evening, July 25. The Village Library. For those who still need to be heard.
Twenty-eight people filed into the air-conditioned confines of Room B, which someone had decorated with a purple construction-paper octopus. The city council member who called this meeting, 58-year-old Sean Cummings, joked that he was not responsible for the ocean theme, but please, take a seat.
“Let’s just do a circle,” he told the group. “Get those feelings out there. Try to keep it civil.”
They’d go counter-clockwise with the microphone. A retired teacher who introduced herself as Connie went first.
“I have been really happy with Adam,” she said. “He cared — more than any of the other board members…”
Next was Tricia, who runs a summer program at a Catholic school. Graham had told her about the Starbucks incident, she said. He had sounded so upset. So shaken.
“I do not understand," she said, “how people cannot believe the things that have happened to this man."
The woman to Tricia’s left scrunched up her face. She took the mic and countered: “He brought national attention to us for his own agenda that started with his own wrongdoing.”
Next went a man who said his family worked in law enforcement. He wondered: Was the relationship with Nichols Hills police still intact?
Next went a college student named Jakob, who has worked on political campaigns with Graham. He wore winged eyeliner and black high heels.
“I just wanted to show my face, so that you all see that I am human and so is Adam,” he said. “It is not easy to be gay, especially openly gay in Oklahoma — and especially as an elected official.”
Next went a woman who said The Village didn’t deserve this reputational hit. People here mow each other’s lawns for free.
“It’s the best place to live,” she said.
Next came Melodie, an Air Force veteran, who said she’d lived here for 29 years.
“Some of you don’t know your history if you think The Village has always been wonderful," she said.
Remember segregation? Remember the public pools filled with concrete so Black kids couldn’t use them?
“As a Black woman, I can tell you,” she said. “I worked at the mall as a kid, and my mom used to tell me: Don’t drive through Nichols Hills. And don’t drive through The Village.”
Then came time for the city council member to take the mic. Closing remarks.
“He resigned on freakin’ Twitter,” Cummings said, raising his voice. “I found out my mayor resigned on Twitter. Come on, man! Are we not supposed to be upset about that?”
The uproar has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, he said.
“I don’t give two hoots whether he’s gay!”
Graham could have been arrested, Cummings said. He could have gotten somebody killed. And regarding the harassment, where were the police reports? What could anyone do about slashed tires without a police report?
“Let’s pretend that all the harassment occurred,” Cummings said. “We don’t know if it has anything to do with ... whatever ... and we don’t know if it happened.”
“Are you saying that it didn’t happen?” interjected a young man.
The room erupted in shouting.
“Will you open your ears?”
“I’m trying to get to the reality. I don’t know what it is.”
Steven Rich contributed to this report. | 2022-07-31T19:00:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adam Graham, an Oklahoma city’s first openly gay mayor, resigned. Then came the fallout. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/oklahoma-mayor-resigns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/31/oklahoma-mayor-resigns/ |
FILE - Boston Celtics’ Bill Russell, left, holds a corsage sent to the dressing room as he celebrates with Celtics coach Red Auerbach after defeating the Los Angeles Lakers, 95-93, to win their eighth-straight NBA Championship, in Boston, in this April 29, 1966, photo. The NBA great Bill Russell has died at age 88. His family said on social media that Russell died on Sunday, July 31, 2022. Russell anchored a Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 titles in 13 years. (AP Photo/File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-07-31T19:01:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Russell career statistics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/bill-russell-career-statistics/2022/07/31/a043a458-10fc-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/bill-russell-career-statistics/2022/07/31/a043a458-10fc-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Ms. Nichols reprised Uhura, promoted from lieutenant to commander, in six feature films between 1979 and 1991 that helped make “Star Trek” a juggernaut. She was joined by much of the original cast, which included Shatner as the heroic captain, James T. Kirk, and Leonard Nimoy as the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer Spock, DeForest Kelley as the acerbic Dr. McCoy, George Takei as the Enterprise’s helmsman Sulu, James Doohan as the chief engineer Scotty, and Walter Koenig as the navigator Chekov. | 2022-07-31T19:18:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in ‘Star Trek’ franchise, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/nichelle-nichols-ukura-star-trek-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/nichelle-nichols-ukura-star-trek-dead/ |
Nichelle Nichols, an actress whose role as the communications chief Uhura in the original “Star Trek” franchise in the 1960s helped break ground on TV by showing a Black woman in a position of authority and who shared with co-star William Shatner one of the first interracial kisses on American prime-time television, died July 30 in Silver City, N.M. She was 89.
Ms. Nichols reprised Uhura, promoted from lieutenant to commander, in six feature films between 1979 and 1991 that helped make “Star Trek” a juggernaut. She was joined by much of the original cast, which included Shatner as the heroic captain, James T. Kirk, and Leonard Nimoy as the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer Spock; DeForest Kelley as the acerbic Dr. McCoy; George Takei as the Enterprise’s helmsman, Sulu; James Doohan as the chief engineer, Scotty; and Walter Koenig as the navigator, Chekov.
In her 1994 memoir, “Beyond Uhura,” she said that, during filming, her lines and those of other supporting actors were routinely cut. She blamed Shatner, whom she called an “insensitive, hurtful egotist” who used his star billing to hog the spotlight. She also said studio personnel tried to undermine her contract negotiating power by hiding her ample fan mail. | 2022-07-31T20:32:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nichelle Nichols, Uhura in ‘Star Trek’ franchise, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/nichelle-nichols-uhura-star-trek-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/31/nichelle-nichols-uhura-star-trek-dead/ |
NBA great Bill Russell died Sunday at the age of 88. (Matt York/AP)
Bill Russell, the NBA’s greatest champion as a player and its first Black coach, died Sunday at 88, leading those inside and outside the basketball community to remember his storied career, his civil rights activism, his gracious personality and his distinctive laugh.
The Boston Celtics center, who was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach, won a record 11 titles in a playing career that spanned from 1956 to 1969, in addition to five MVP awards. In recognition of his dominance, the NBA named its Finals MVP award in his honor. Beyond the hardwood, Russell was a vocal proponent of civil rights, earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011.
“I often called him basketball’s Babe Ruth for how he transcended time. Bill was the ultimate winner and consummate teammate, and his influence on the NBA will be felt forever.”
In a 2021 address, Obama noted how Russell’s legacy extended beyond sports, recounting the Celtics’ 1961 boycott of a game after a Kentucky coffee shop refused to serve Black players. Obama called it “an act of civil disobedience that still echoes to this day.”
“As tall as Bill Russell stood, his legacy rises far higher — both as a player and as a person,” Obama said Sunday. “He was a civil rights trailblazer — marching with Dr. King and standing with Muhammad Ali. For decades, Bill endured insults and vandalism, but never let it stop him from speaking up for what’s right. I learned so much from the way he played, the way he coached, and the way he lived his life.”
On the court, Russell’s 11 rings as a player — a standard that has never been approached in the modern era — earned him a special respect among the game’s greats.
Michael Jordan, who won six titles with the Chicago Bulls and is currently the only Black principal owner in the NBA, said that Russell was a “pioneer” who “paved the way and set an example for every Black player who came into the league after him, including me.”
Los Angeles Lakers icon Magic Johnson, a five-time champion, said that he was “heartbroken to hear about the passing of the greatest winner the game of basketball has ever seen, a legend, Hall of Famer, mentor and my friend for over 30 years.”
Russell’s passing prompted tributes from the Celtics, who posted an image with his No. 6 jersey number underneath 11 shamrocks, to represent his 11 titles as a player, and above two additional shamrocks, to represent his two titles as a coach. Longtime Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan noted that Russell was a perfect 21-0 in his career in “winner-take-all games,” spanning his NCAA career at the University of San Francisco, where he won two titles; the 1956 Olympics, where he won a gold medal; and with the Celtics, where he was a perfect 10-0 in Game 7s.
“Thank [you] for setting the bar, for [your] kind words of wisdom,” Celtics legend Paul Pierce wrote. “Thank [you] for that great laugh [you] had. I can go on all day about what [you] meant to me.”
Jaylen Brown, a Celtics forward who led a protest march in Atlanta following George Floyd’s death, added: “Thank you for paving the way and inspiring so many. Today is a sad day but also a great day to celebrate his legacy and what he stood for.”
Though Russell retired as a coach in 1988, he remained a fixture at NBA events, most notably during his annual presentation of the Finals MVP trophy, and he appeared to savor his role as the league’s elder statesman. In 2017, Russell was honored with a lifetime achievement award, and he took the stage alongside fellow Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, David Robinson, Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo.
Russell, leaning on a cane for support, pointed at each of the five centers in turn, before declaring: “I would kick your a--.”
Quips like that were usually accompanied by what Jack McCallum, a longtime Sports Illustrated writer, called Russell’s “famous cackle.” In a 1987 feature, McCallum wrote how Russell would “throw back his head” and “open his mouth” before unleashing his belly laugh. There was a mischievous side to the icon, who also delighted in flipping the bird at his basketball colleagues in hopes of making them laugh.
In somber moments, Russell’s gravitas had a healing quality. When Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, were among the victims of a tragic helicopter crash in 2020, Russell attended a game between the Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. Despite the longtime rivalry between the franchises, Russell made a point to wear Bryant’s No. 24 Lakers jersey as he sat courtside at Staples Center.
“I would do anything to honor Kobe and Gianna. I am always a Celtic. We had a deeper connection: 2+4 does = 6,” Russell explained, referencing his own jersey number. “We had much love and respect for one another!” | 2022-07-31T20:32:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Obama remember Bill Russell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-michael-jordan-obama/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-michael-jordan-obama/ |
Bill Russell goes up for a shot against the St. Louis Hawks in 1951. (AP Photo) (Associated Press/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
1934: Bill Russell is born in Louisiana
1952-1956: The USF years
1956: Olympic success and the NBA follow
1956-1969: The Celtics’ luck takes a turn
1958 through the 1960s: A thoughtful activist emerges
1959: A rivalry is born
1966: Another first
1969: One career ends, others begin
1972 and 1975: Refusing accolades (for a while)
2009: A big award gets the Russell imprint
2010: The Medal of Freedom
July 31, 2022: A storied life ends
Bill Russell, the Hall of Fame basketball player, consummate winner and eloquent advocate for racial equality, died Sunday at age 88. Here’s a look at a life journey that began in Louisiana and took him to glory in the Olympics and NBA — and to a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his leadership off the court.
Charles and Katie Russell welcome William Felton Russell on Feb. 12 in Monroe, a town in northern Louisiana. When Russell is 9, his family moves to Oakland, Calif., and lives in the city’s public housing projects.
Russell tours with a California high school all-star team in 1952 and then enters the University of San Francisco, a small Jesuit school, on a basketball scholarship, the only offer he received.
With Russell, the Dons start winning … and winning … and winning, running off a streak of 55 straight victories and two national championships. Russell is named the NCAA tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in 1955 and is a two-time all-American.
Russell is a member of the United States’ gold medal-winning team at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
He is a first-round pick, second overall, by the St. Louis Hawks in the 1956 NBA draft, but the Hawks eye Celtics center Ed Macauley and forward Cliff Hagan, who had not yet played for Boston because of his military service. Red Auerbach, the Celtics’ coach and mastermind, covets Russell for his defensive ability. Auerbach agrees to a trade and acquires the draft rights to Russell.
The Celtics weren’t finished. In that draft, the team also gets K.C. Jones (Russell’s USF teammate) and Tommy Heinsohn; all three end up in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Because he played in the Summer Olympics, Russell could not sign with the Celtics until December, and his first game is Dec. 22, 1956, against the Hawks. The Celtics had never won an NBA championship, and he silences critics with defensive play that brings the team an NBA title in his first season. (When he breaks his ankle the following year, the Celtics lose in the championship series.)
Starting in 1959, the Celtics win eight straight championships, something no team has come close to doing since. In 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1965, Russell is the league’s MVP. During 13 seasons with the Celtics, the team advances to the Finals 12 times, winning 11 championships.
Russell was regarded by many as the NBA’s greatest player until the arrival of Michael Jordan, but his forte was defense. He finished with 21,620 career rebounds and led the league in rebounding four times. He had 51 rebounds in one game and 49 in two others and posted 12 straight seasons with 1,400 or more rebounds. Although he never averaged as many as 19 points in a season, he scored at a 15.1-point clip, with 4.3 assists per game, over for his career.
Despite the championships, Russell wasn’t always regarded with affection and respect, particularly in Boston, with its history of racism. He had an unorthodox style for a superstar, preferring to shake hands and speak with fans rather than sign autographs. In his 1979 book “Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinionated Man,” he referred to Boston as a “flea market of racism.”
In 1958, he begins speaking out about injustices, accusing the league of using a quota system to limit the number of Black players on each team. He marches with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but questions the emphasis on nonviolence, saying African Americans have the right to defend themselves.
Russell attends the March on Washington in 1963, when King gives his “I Have a Dream” speech, and he supports Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the military.
After the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 in Jackson, Miss., Russell runs a youth basketball camp in the city to unite White and Black children. He receives death threats but did not back down.
Russell’s close friend, Wilt Chamberlain, enters the league and the fun begins, with Chamberlain compiling gaudy offensive statistics but playing on only one NBA championship team (the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers) during Russell’s years with the Celtics. “If he got 62 [points] and we won, that wouldn’t mean anything,” Russell tells Bob Costas in 1997. “But if he got 62 and won the game, that bothered me.”
Auerbach retires in 1966 and Russell, while still playing, becomes the first Black head coach in NBA history.
Russell retires and settles in Mercer Island, Wash. He works at times on telecasts of NBA games, and even does some acting. Then he answers the call of the Seattle SuperSonics, becoming their coach and general manager from 1973 to 1977. He coaches the Sacramento Kings in 1987 and is vice president of the team’s basketball operations until 1989.
Against his will, Russell’s number is retired by the Celtics and he refuses to attend the ceremony. He also refuses to attend his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975 as a protest that he would be the first African American player to be enshrined.
However, in 1999 he returns to Boston for a ceremony in which his No. 6 was “re-retired.”
A statue of Russell is unveiled in City Hall Plaza in 2013, something Russell agrees to in exchange for a promise by city officials to fund a program to mentor youth. It’s inscribed with a quote that captures how he played: “The most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”
The award given to the MVP of the NBA Finals, something Russell never won, is named the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award. “This is one of my proudest moments in basketball,” he says, “because I determined early in my career, the only important statistic in basketball is the final score.”
He is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by Barack Obama for his athletic accomplishments and his advocacy for human rights.
Russell, called by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver “the greatest champion in all of team sports,” dies at 88. | 2022-07-31T22:03:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Russell's life was filled with championships and activism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-timeline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-timeline/ |
Bill Russell was the greatest winner any sport has ever seen
Perspective by John Feinstein
Bill Russell and Coach Red Auerbach built an unmatched dynasty with the Boston Celtics. (AP) (AP)
Red Auerbach had nothing but respect for Michael Jordan. The NBA coaching icon often was asked whether Jordan was the greatest of all time, and he would quickly agree.
“Jordan’s the greatest player of all time — no doubt about it,” Auerbach would reply. “But if I was starting a team and the idea was to win championships, I’d take Russell first.”
That’s because Bill Russell, who died Sunday at 88, was the greatest winner of all time — in any major sport. Jordan won six NBA championships, an NCAA title and two Olympic gold medals. Russell won 11 NBA titles, two NCAA championships and an Olympic gold medal.
Russell played 21 winner-take-all games and went 21-0. Jordan lost his last game at North Carolina to Indiana in the NCAA tournament’s round of 16.
That’s not meant to knock Jordan but to back up Auerbach’s point: It went beyond numbers. Russell did something that few centers ever have: He made everyone around him better. He was a defensive genius, the first to understand why blocking a shot by keeping it in play was so much better than hammering the ball into the third row. His teammates knew they could gamble on defense because Russell was backing them up in the paint.
He wasn’t a great scorer — he averaged 15.1 points in his 13-season NBA career — but he didn’t need to be because he had great scorers around him with the Boston Celtics. He was an extraordinary rebounder, grabbing 22.5 per game. Only Wilt Chamberlain finished with more rebounds than Russell’s 21,620. He also averaged 4.3 assists. A lot of great centers never gave the ball up — Russell did so willingly. The NBA didn’t begin to track blocked shots until after Russell retired, so there’s no way to know how many he denied. This much is almost certain: His blocks surely turned into more points than those of anyone else who has ever played the game.
“It was almost like starting a fast break when he blocked a shot,” Sam Jones, his longtime teammate, once said. “There were times when I’d see someone going in his direction and I’d start towards the other end because I knew the ball was about to be coming that way.”
There was far more to Russell than his remarkable statistics. He became the first Black man to coach a major pro sports franchise when he took over the Celtics from Auerbach in 1966 and proceeded to win two NBA titles in three years — aided, no doubt, by the fact that his center was Bill Russell. He was an advocate for civil rights his entire life, having faced racism from the time he was a youth in Louisiana right through his playing days in Boston.
He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 and was an inspiration throughout his life because he spoke up on political issues long before it was considered acceptable for athletes — especially Black athletes — to do so.
Auerbach played a crucial role in Russell’s career, landing him in 1956 out of the University of San Francisco after he led the Dons to back-to-back national titles and 55 straight victories. There were no scouts in those days, but Bill Reinhart, Auerbach’s college coach at George Washington, had faced Russell’s team during a tournament in 1954.
“He called me and said, ‘When he gets out of college next year, you must find a way to get him,’ ” Auerbach remembered. “ ‘This is the center who will make you a championship team.’ ”
At that point, the Celtics were good but had not won the NBA title. In 1956, they had the sixth draft pick, and Russell was considered a lock to be the No. 1 choice. Auerbach traded two future Hall of Famers — Ed Macauley and the rights to Cliff Hagan — to the St. Louis Hawks to move up to No. 2. But Rochester Royals owner Les Harrison, whose team had the No. 1 pick, told Auerbach he couldn’t trade it because he would be accused in the local media of trying to save money.
“He told me, ‘They’ll run me out of town if I trade that pick,’ ” Auerbach said years later.
Auerbach came up with a solution. He convinced Celtics owner Walter Brown, who happened to own the Ice Capades, to promise Harrison that the Ice Capades would play Rochester for one week the next year if Harrison didn’t take Russell with the No. 1 pick. Harrison took Duquesne’s Sihugo Green, Russell went second, the Ice Capades played to sellout crowds in Rochester, and a year later the Royals moved to Cincinnati.
The Celtics won their first title in 1957 and 11 of 13 championships before Russell retired in 1969. They won 10 Game 7s in those years.
After retiring, Russell coached in Seattle and briefly for Sacramento, but he always remained close to the Celtics and Auerbach. When Auerbach died in 2006, Russell flew from Seattle to Washington for his wake even though, under orders from Auerbach, there would be no speakers or formal program. In 2009, Russell wrote a book titled “Red and Me.” The subtitle summed up their relationship: “My Coach, My Lifelong Friend.”
Auerbach loved to tell Russell stories. Often, he said, Russell would get tired of drills and would “ruin practice” by blocking every shot that came near him. Sometimes Auerbach would tell Russell to go home early; other days he called off practice completely. “There really wasn’t much point to practicing,” Auerbach said, “if he wasn’t there.”
But what Auerbach loved most was to sit back and listen to people argue about whether Russell would be as dominant in the 21st century as he was in the 1950s and ’60s.
“How would he do guarding Shaq?” people would ask, wondering how the 6-foot-10 inch, 215-pound Russell would fare against the 7-1, 325-pound Shaquille O’Neal.
Auerbach would puff on his cigar and smile. “First of all, he did okay guarding Wilt Chamberlain, who was as big as Shaq and was better offensively,” he would say. He would pause to let that sink in — then remind people, if needed, that Russell won 11 titles to Chamberlain’s two.
Then he would deliver the coup de grace: “How in the world would Shaq guard Russell? He would run him right into the floor. And when all was said and done, you know whose team would win the game? Russell’s — because Russell’s team always won when it mattered.”
No one won more games that mattered than Bill Russell. And 53 years after he played his last game, he still mattered — and always will. | 2022-07-31T22:03:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Russell was the greatest winner in sports history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-winner-nba-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-winner-nba-history/ |
These Commanders coaches and players have the most to prove in 2022
Commanders defensive tackle Daron Payne enters a critical season in Washington in 2022. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The Washington Commanders don’t have a quarterback competition this year. They don’t have a competition for most starting jobs. They don’t even have a kicker competition.
Many premium jobs are already settled, allowing the team to use training camp to fill in a few remaining roles and find critical pieces for depth.
But even so, many players (and coaches) begin the third year of Coach Ron Rivera’s tenure with plenty to prove, especially as the Commanders seek their first winning season under Rivera and try to show their culture change is real.
Here’s who is under significant pressure heading into the season:
Ron Rivera, head coach
At the end of last season, Rivera stressed to his players the importance of their offseason, of staying on top of workouts and maintaining their health to begin the new season right.
“Truth of the matter is Year 3 is big,” he told his players in a video the team posted. “Year 3 is big for a football team going forward.”
Rivera has made a number of significant improvements to the club and has the respect of players and coaches. But over the past two seasons, Washington has posted a .424 win percentage, which ranks 22nd in the NFL.
Rivera told The Post in a recent interview that he personally doesn’t feel pressure and is confident his team has overcome the maturity issues of last year. And the reality is time could be running out. Rivera signed a five-year contract in 2020, but after two years of losing, there’s undoubtedly a greater expectation to start winning, to bring fans back into the stadium and to help the franchise make money.
“The pressure more so anything else is just winning,” the coach said last week. “It’s being successful. And if it comes to a number, then so be it, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s about going out there playing hard, playing physical, and doing the best you can to win.”
Carson Wentz, QB
Rivera has told Wentz repeatedly that he is wanted with the Commanders, which is perhaps an attempt to quash any notion that the trade to acquire the quarterback in March was a desperation move. The team did want an upgrade at quarterback and does feel Wentz is one. But many questions remain about his ability and long-term future.
In 2017, Wentz started 13 games to help the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl, led the league with a touchdown percentage of 7.5, was fourth in the league with a 101.9 passer rating and was widely considered the top candidate for MVP before a knee injury ended his season. Although he had a solid 2021 in Indianapolis, he’s been traded successive seasons by the Eagles and Colts.
Washington acquired Wentz, who will turn 30 in December, after agreeing to take on his full $22 million salary and $29.3 million cap charge for this season. The move was bold, considering his recent history. And his play in training camp so far has yet to calm any concerns about his consistency on the field.
But with his salary-cap figure, he’s all but guaranteed to be the Commanders’ starter this season (barring injury or complete implosion). After this season, he has no guaranteed salary and no guarantee of staying in Washington. The Commanders could cut him and face no lingering cap charges.
His future as a starter in the NFL and the Commanders’ future at quarterback are in his hands.
Daron Payne, DT
The veteran defensive tackle and former first-round draft pick has been a staple on the interior of the Commanders’ line for four seasons. The team exercised Payne’s fifth-year option ($8.529 million) for this season, but it also gave fellow defensive tackle Jonathan Allen a four-year, $72 million extension. And with Montez Sweat’s contract coming up and Chase Young’s right behind him, Payne’s future is uncertain.
Payne declined to participate in some on-field drills during the offseason, presumably as a “hold in” for a new contract. But he’s been all over the field in training camp so far.
Carson Wentz believes in the Commanders’ vision. He’s the key to clearing it up.
Whether he stays in Washington will depend on a number of factors, including the Commanders’ cap health and their confidence in the younger players, such as Phidarian Mathis. It will also depend heavily on Payne’s play. An impressive season could land him a new contract. Or, at only 25 years old, he could price himself out of Washington.
Cole Holcomb, LB
Rivera indicated at the end of last season that Holcomb wasn’t the team’s first choice to play the “Mike,” or middle linebacker, position. Holcomb, 26, had been lobbying for the gig and over the years has shown the improvement to at least warrant a competition for the job in camp. But during the offseason, the team’s tune changed, and Rivera and General Manager Martin Mayhew began to pump up Holcomb as the right man for the job.
That doesn’t mean the job is his for the near-term or distant future. It does mean, however, that this season comes with pressure.
Cole Holcomb is bringing more speed and a new mullet to his third season in Washington
The Commanders drafted Jamin Davis in the first round last year to develop into the “Mike,” which is essentially the quarterback of the defense. But the coaching staff realized Davis is better suited to play outside. Now, Holcomb has a chance to secure a starting job at a spot that has given the Commanders fits over the years. If he can, he could soon be in line for a pay bump. This is the last year on his rookie deal, and unless Washington extends him, he’ll be a free agent in March.
Jack Del Rio, defensive coordinator
In 2020, Del Rio’s first season in Washington, he turned a group that ranked near the bottom of the NFL in most defensive categories into one that sat near the top. Young was named defensive rookie of the year, the starting defensive line composed of all first-round picks was smothering, and the team as a whole finished second in scoring, fourth in total yards allowed and second in passing yards.
Del Rio’s experience as a coordinator and as a head coach was a boon that year, as Rivera battled cancer and relied heavily on his assistants to lead the team.
But the following season, Washington slipped back to the bottom of the barrel. Much of that could be attributed to coronavirus issues late in the season, when more than two dozen players (mostly defenders) had to miss time, and to an influx of new players, especially in the secondary. But Del Rio compounded the on-field struggles with controversial comments on social media, prompting a fine from Rivera and leading to his exit from Twitter.
With the core veteran defensive backs returning and Young’s eventual return from an ACL injury, the Commanders defense appears to have the pieces bounce back this season — on paper, at least. If not, fingers could be pointed at Del Rio — if broader, more drastic changes aren’t considered first.
Antonio Gibson, RB: Gibson, 24, is still Washington’s leading back and is coming off a 1,000-plus yard rushing season. But the wait for a true breakout season continues. The third-year back has dealt with significant injuries — turf toe as a rookie, a fracture in his shin last season — and is being eased into camp this year because of a hamstring issue. Health will be key, but if Gibson can stay available (and if he can fumble less often), he could develop into a top playmaker.
Montez Sweat, DE: The Commanders picked up Sweat’s fifth-year option for 2023, but the start of a player’s last season is when talk of a longer-term extension comes into play. Young will be out for Week 1 and maybe longer, making Sweat the key playmaker on the edge. A productive season for the soon-to-be 26-year-old could go a long way.
Dyami Brown, WR: Brown, 22, starred in camp last year, but the shine didn’t last throughout the season. It rarely does for rookie wideouts who are adjusting to play speed and expansive playbooks. But with Wentz, who has the arm to air it out downfield, Brown has a chance to let his vertical speed and acrobatic catches open up the offense. Still, there is plenty of competition for the final receiver spots on the 53-man roster. | 2022-07-31T22:03:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | These Washington Commanders players have the most to prove in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/washington-commanders-pressure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/washington-commanders-pressure/ |
Bill Russell made America better by demanding better from America
Boston Celtics' legend Bill Russell wore his Presidential Medal of Freedom during the 2011 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles. (Danny Moloshok/Reuters)
Five years ago, at an NBA awards ceremony, Bill Russell walked onto a stage graced with legendary giants. Behind him stood Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, David Robinson and Dikembe Mutombo. Russell stepped to the microphone, turned and pointed his index finger at all five, one by one. Then he cupped his left hand next to his face to share a special message.
“I would kick your a--,” basketball’s greatest winner told them.
The room exploded. All those regal big men laughed, but they didn’t dare argue. Russell saved the grandest reaction for last, filling the air with his signature high-pitched cackle. It was the final time a huge national audience got to hear that cackle.
My God, we’re going to miss that cackle.
One of the most important lives in the history of sport and celebrity ended Sunday. Russell died at age 88, leaving behind a sprawling legacy of greatness as a player, coach, civil rights activist and humanitarian. While it is fair to debate whether better individual basketball players have taken the court, Russell is an incomparable figure after factoring in team success at all levels (high school, college, Olympics and the NBA), leadership, adaptability, mental strength and societal impact off the floor. He was a star who did the dirty work, a defensive savant who led the Boston Celtics to 11 championships by excelling at whatever winning required. And he was a star who did the important work, a disrupter who demanded better from America and confronted racism without fear or fatigue.
Feinstein: Bill Russell was the greatest winner any sport has ever seen
He was a fully dimensional Black athlete more than a half century before it was okay to be one. In the 1960s, vandals broke into his house in the Boston suburbs, scrawled hatred on the walls and left feces in his bed. But there was no intimidating Russell. On the court, he went head to head with Wilt Chamberlain, a towering rival who, at 7 feet 1 and 275 pounds, was four inches taller and 60 pounds heavier than Russell. Still, Russell’s Celtics dominated the postseason matchups against Chamberlain’s teams. Though Chamberlain was an unstoppable force, Russell bested him with savvy, gamesmanship and his advanced understanding of the nuances of team play. He was just as astute in real life, too.
Silver liked to refer to Russell as “basketball’s Babe Ruth for how he transcended time.” Russell and Chamberlain were among the pioneers in transforming the game into a more vertical show, one in which tall men with astounding leaping ability did unimaginable things in the air. Russell reserved most of his athleticism for practical purposes: rebounding and blocking shots. He combined his physical skill with his mind, studying the manner in which errant shots ricocheted off the rim and developing strategies for when and how to block shots.
There was artistry and calculation in everything Russell did. Sometimes, early in games, he would seemingly come from nowhere and reject shots well into the crowd to terrify opponents. Mostly, though, he was a master at self-control while blocking shots, preferring to tap the ball to himself or a teammate so that the Celtics could gain possession. He knew that keeping the ball inbounds was more beneficial than the thrill of swatting it as far as he could. It actually added to the fear factor when an offensive player had to consider that a shot in the vicinity of Russell could function the same as a turnover.
In paying his respects Sunday, Michael Jordan said of Russell, “He paved the way and set an example for every Black player who came into the league after him, including me.” When Russell retired from the NBA in 1969, Jordan was 6 years old. Abdul-Jabbar was about to enter the league the next season. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were 10 years from beginning their rivalry in the NCAA championship game. His heyday with Red Auerbach and Boston’s all-star cast was so long ago, and recency bias has diminished some appreciation of the enormity of his influence. But considering all that the NBA — and sports in general — has become, Russell belongs among a handful of most significant athletic icons ever to walk the planet.
He was a defining sports figure during a defining time in American history, speaking up during the same era in which Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Jim Brown and Abdul-Jabbar refused to stay silent. Russell was 13 when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, and he used Robinson’s example as a blueprint for his career. When Robinson died, Russell was a pallbearer at his funeral. On July 19, Russell wrote his last message on Twitter, wishing Robinson’s widow, Rachel, a happy 100th birthday.
Eleven years ago, when President Barack Obama awarded Russell with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he reflected on the big man’s legacy.
“Bill Russell, the man, is someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men,” Obama said during the ceremony. “He marched with King; he stood by Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the Black Celtics, he refused to play in the scheduled game. He endured insults and vandalism, but he kept on focusing on making the teammates who he loved better players and made possible the success of so many who would follow.”
There’s an old video in which Russell tells the story of playing golf with Jordan and playfully arguing with him the summer after the Chicago Bulls had won one of their six titles.
“You know we’re going to go after your record,” Jordan told Russell.
“Which one?” Russell shot back.
Russell continued: “You know, we won 11, but we won eight straight. I don’t think you’ll live long enough to get either one of those.”
Jordan reminded Russell that the NBA had only eight teams for most of the center’s career and had expanded to just 12 by the end. Different from a 30-team league, Jordan said. His Airness thought he had him. But Russell was just getting started. He offered an argument about expansion and dilution.
“Think about it this way,” Russell remembered saying to him. “When I was a rookie, there were 80 jobs in professional basketball, so a lot of good players didn’t make it. If there were 12 teams, you wouldn’t win a championship. You did a great job penetrating and you dished out to [John] Paxson, and he hit the open shot, won the game. If there were 12 teams in the league, he couldn’t make that shot. He said, ‘Why not?’ Because he would be up in the stands. And that is not a knock on him, but it’s about the quality of the NBA.”
That was Bill Russell: smart, agile, resolute. When he fought for championships and equality as a player, he was often considered aloof, even ornery. But just when society thought it had him pegged, he would say something funny and let out that booming cackle.
People had to laugh, too, even if the joke was on them. And it usually was. There was no beating Russell, on the court or in any of life’s arenas. It was best to help him find joy because he had a way of making it infectious. | 2022-07-31T22:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Russell was a fully dimensional Black athlete - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-black-athlete/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/bill-russell-black-athlete/ |
Major legal fights loom over abortion pills, travel out of state
The reversal of Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years is expected to trigger a new set of legal challenges for which there is little precedent
Caroline Kitchener
Abortion rights activists gather outside the Supreme Court in December. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, in denouncing their colleagues’ decision to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, warned last month that returning this polarizing issue to the states would give rise to greater controversy in the months and years to come.
Among the looming disputes, they noted: Can states ban mail-order medication used to terminate pregnancies or bar their residents from traveling elsewhere to do so?
“Far from removing the court from the abortion issue,” Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “the majority puts the court at the center of the coming ‘interjurisdictional abortion wars.’ ”
The overturning of Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years is expected to trigger a new set of legal challenges for which there is little precedent, observers say, further roiling the nation’s bitter political landscape and compounding chaos as Republican-led states move quickly to curtail access to reproductive care. It is possible, if not probable, that one or both of these questions will eventually work its way back to the high court.
“Judges and scholars, and most recently the Supreme Court, have long claimed that abortion law will become simpler if Roe is overturned,” law professors David S. Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouché wrote in a timely draft academic article cited by the dissenting justices, “but that is woefully naive.”
As a result of the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortions — both the surgical procedure and via medication — are banned or mostly banned in 13 states. Several others are expected to follow in coming weeks.
The Biden administration has pledged to ensure access to abortion medication, which is used in more than half of all terminated pregnancies in the United States, and prohibit states from preventing their residents from traveling out-of-state for care. But a month after the Dobbs ruling, administration officials are still debating how they can deliver on that promise beyond the president’s executive order to protect access. A White House meeting Friday with public-interest lawyers was designed to encourage legal representation for those seeking or offering reproductive health services.
Democratic leaders and liberal activists have called on President Biden to take bolder action, especially on medication abortion. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said in an interview that he has directly urged the president to make clear that abortion providers in states controlled by Democrats should be able to ship pills to patients anywhere in the country, whether the patient’s state has enacted a ban. Pritzker advised the president to assert federal authority over the U.S. mail system, he said, and specify that no one will be prosecuted for prescribing or receiving them.
“People ought to be able to receive their medication in the privacy of their own home even if they live in a state where the procedure is not allowed,” Pritzker added, saying Biden appeared “very receptive” to the idea.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pritzker’s characterization of the conversation.
Republican state attorneys general are preparing for a court fight, said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), accusing Biden and the White House of exhibiting a “consistent disrespect for the law and the constitution and the Supreme Court.”
“We’re anticipating that he’s going to do this,” Marshall said.
Already, the manufacturer of the abortion medication mifepristone has sued the state of Mississippi and promised that additional lawsuits would be filed in other states. It remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will intervene in one of those cases or file its own legal challenges.
The Justice Department has activated a “reproductive rights task force” to monitor and push back on state and local efforts to further restrict abortion, but officials have not fully detailed their plans. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during Friday’s White House event that “when we learn that states are infringing on federal protections, we will consider every tool at our disposal to affirm those protections — including filing affirmative suits, filing statements of interest, and intervening in private litigation.”
The Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone in 2000, finding it safe and effective to end an early pregnancy. The medication, now authorized for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, is used with a second drug, misoprostol, to induce an abortion.
Among the unresolved questions is whether FDA approval of medication preempts state action. Legal experts say it is unclear whether the federal government would succeed if it challenged state restrictions on abortion medication, and that it will depend on how those measures are written.
Garland said soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe that states may not ban mifepristone “based on a disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment.” The agency is charged with evaluating the safety and efficacy of drugs, and federal law generally preempts state law when two measures are in conflict.
Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor, said it was important for Garland to make a strong statement but that it is not a panacea in uncertain legal terrain.
“Even though the administration has said states can’t ban mifepristone on the grounds that it is somehow unsafe, that doesn’t mean they can’t ban it for other purposes. That’s an open question,” said Murray, who was written extensively about reproductive rights.
An administration heath official said the White House and the FDA realize that if states succeed in banning the abortion pill, or imposing sharp restrictions, the federal government’s authority on a range of medications could be undermined.
“If states want to ban vaccines, can they?” asked the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the issue. “What if a state were run by Scientologists?” the official said, referring to the movement that has long opposed psychiatric medications.
The FDA lifted some restrictions on abortion pills in December, permitting providers to send medication through the mail in states that do not prohibit telemedicine for abortions. At least 19 states ban the use of telehealth for medication abortion, and Republican lawmakers in more than a half-dozen states have introduced or passed legislation to ban or severely restrict abortion medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
The federal case in Mississippi, filed before the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Dobbs, offers a window into the coming legal disputes over abortion pill access.
GenBioPro, which sells mifepristone, initially sued Mississippi in 2020 over additional requirements the state imposed, including a waiting period and counseling. The office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) said in recent court filings that the Supreme Court’s decision allowing states to ban abortion strengthens the state’s position. The case is not about the drug’s safety but the state’s authority over abortion “regardless of the means by which the abortion is induced,” Fitch’s office wrote.
Mississippi’s trigger law, which took effect in July and bans nearly all abortions, makes no distinction between surgical abortions or abortions induced by medication, the office said.
Gwyn Williams, an attorney for GenBioPro, said the FDA has the power to decide which medications are safe. Individual states, she said, “do not get to legislate away the power Congress granted to FDA.” The company, she said, intends to file additional legal challenges in other states.
Legal experts point to one of the few cases to raise similar questions. In 2014, Massachusetts tried to ban an FDA-approved opioid called Zohydro. Then-FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg recalled recently that she was deeply worried by the “rationale and the precedent it could set.” At the time, she warned Massachusetts officials that the move could prompt other states to ban “such vital medical products as birth control or RU-486,” the abortion pill.
A District Court judge sided with the opioid manufacturer and said the FDA’s approval preempted state law. Massachusetts withdrew its regulations and did not appeal, meaning other judges are not required to follow the same legal reasoning.
Lawrence O. Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said FDA approval of drugs, including in the abortion context, “should supersede any state restrictions” because the agency is responsible for setting a national uniform standard for what drug patients can get access to in the United States.
The Biden administration has an “extraordinarily strong legal claim,” he said. “Any other decision could open a floodgate of states making their own choices of FDA-approved medication, and that would be disastrous for the health and safety of Americans.”
Even so, he said the same conservative majority of the Supreme Court that erased the constitutional right to abortion “might just say, states license medical providers and can make judgments about what those providers can and can’t do.”
Ed Whelan, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said federal preemption does not mean states are barred from dictating how — or whether — certain drugs can be used.
“Assume that the FDA approved a drug for use in physician-assisted suicide,” he wrote recently in National Review. “Why would anyone imagine that FDA approval overrode state laws barring physician-assisted suicide? Why should it be any different here?”
Out-of-state travel
In a separate opinion concurring with the Supreme Court majority in June, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote that the court’s decision does not mean a state may block a resident from traveling to another jurisdiction to obtain an abortion. He characterized the legal question as “not especially difficult as a constitutional matter” based on the “constitutional right to interstate travel.”
But Republican state lawmakers and national antiabortion groups have put forward plans to restrict out-of-state abortions and modeled those proposals on the Texas six-week abortion ban crafted to evade judicial review. A Missouri bill, which failed to pass during the 2022 legislative session, would have imposed civil liability on anyone who helped a resident travel out of state to obtain an abortion. South Dakota’s governor has said she is open to such proposals, and an Arkansas senator has also expressed interest in similar legislation.
The Justice Department has emphasized that the Supreme Court’s ruling does not prevent women from traveling across state lines to terminate a pregnancy. Citing “bedrock constitutional principles,” Garland said individuals residing in states where access to reproductive care is banned “must remain free to seek that care in states where it is legal.”
Legal experts, though, say these constitutional defenses are subject to debate and have not been tested in court. Even if the Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging such restrictions, litigation takes time.
“It’s not going to be instantaneous,” said Murray, the law professor. “In the meantime, what you have is a landscape of confusion, chaos and uncertainty where patients don’t know what their rights are and physicians don’t know how their medical judgment will interact with laws on the ground. That climate of fear and confusion can be just as effective as an outright ban.” | 2022-07-31T23:00:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Roe, legal fights loom over abortion pills and out-of-state travel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/abortion-medication-lawsuits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/abortion-medication-lawsuits/ |
Netflix sues ‘Bridgerton’ musical creators for infringement
Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in Season 1 of Netflix's "Bridgerton." (Liam Daniel/Netflix)
Netflix has filed a lawsuit against the creators of “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” which recently made its stage debut at the Kennedy Center, for copyright and trademark infringement of its Emmy-nominated series “Bridgerton.”
The production company claims that the musical’s composers, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, continued to perform and financially profit using “verbatim dialogue, character traits and expression, and other elements” from the period romance drama without licensing from Netflix, production company Shondaland or “Bridgerton” book author Julia Quinn, according to a complaint filed through the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday.
“Netflix owns the exclusive right to create Bridgerton songs, musicals, or any other derivative works based on Bridgerton,” the streaming network says in its complaint. “Barlow & Bear cannot take that right—made valuable by others’ hard work—for themselves, without permission.”
When Netflix offered to negotiate a license to allow Barlow and Bear to perform the show and continue distributing albums, the pair refused, the complaint says. Representatives for Barlow and Bear were not immediately available for comment.
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical” began as a viral TikTok at the beginning of last year as an answer to the question, “What if ‘Bridgerton’ was a musical?” In the initial video, which has 2.4 million views, Barlow sang “Daphne’s Song,” now called “Ocean Away,” in which she portrays one of the main characters in “Bridgerton.”
Since that initial success, Barlow partnered with Bear to write 15 show-inspired songs that make up the unofficial musical’s soundtrack, including “Lady Whistledown” and “Burn for You.”
The soundtrack shot to the top of the iTunes pop albums chart when it debuted in September 2021, and it won this year’s Grammy for best musical theater album, the first TikTok-originated project to win the award. The win also made Barlow, 23, and Bear, 20, the youngest nominees and winners of the category.
The lawsuit comes as the musical parody has arrived on the theatrical stage, holding its first live performance last Tuesday at the Kennedy Center.
The performance featured big names in theater, including Kelli O’Hara, best known for her role in “The King and I,” and Solea Pfeiffer, who played Eliza in the first national tour of “Hamilton.” Another show is scheduled for Sept. 20 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
This musical is not the only TikTok performance with such ambitions. “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical” became so popular that creators streamed a recorded performance of it at the beginning of last year to raise money for the Entertainment Community Fund, formerly known as the Actors Fund. | 2022-07-31T23:35:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Netflix sues ‘Bridgerton’ musical creators for infringement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/31/netflix-sues-bridgerton-musical-creators/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/31/netflix-sues-bridgerton-musical-creators/ |
Elena Delle Donne and the Mystics bounce back, take rematch from Storm
Mystics forward Elena Delle Donne was a factor in the second half of the back-to-back to help Washington to a win. (Terrance Williams for The Washington Post)
With less than a minute left, Elena Delle Donne dribbled up the court as another former WNBA MVP (and ex-teammate) squared up in a defensive stance. She gave a hesitation dribble and burst toward the baseline with her left hand as Tina Charles shuffled her feet. Charles cut off the baseline as 13-time all-star Sue Bird hurried to help, but none of that mattered.
Delle Donne spun, split two of the best to play the game, took contact from Charles and double-clutched before putting up a half-hook that rattled through the rim with 46.5 seconds remaining.
The basket brought the Washington Mystics’ final points in a 78-75 victory over the Seattle Storm in the rematch as Washington bounced back from Saturday’s loss. Delle Donne missed a short runner over Ezi Magbegor with 14.9 seconds left Saturday; a basket would have given the Mystics a one-point lead. In the end, Washington fell by five in a matchup with major postseason implications.
“We just kind of felt like I could get it going on the block, especially towards the end of the game,” Delle Donne said. “I was seeing [double teams] on the block through the whole game. But towards the end of the game, other teams get nervous and need to close out on shooters. So I felt like if I caught it and went fast, I would have an opportunity to score the ball. And I just made sure this time to finish — unlike yesterday. Got to learn from your mistakes.”
Last time out: Mystics’ comeback falls short as Storm gets leg up in standings
The teams are now tied for fourth in the WNBA at 19-12, but the Storm holds the tiebreaker for playoff seeding and would host if they meet in the first round. Five games remain, but the teams are on track to fill the No. 4 and No. 5 playoff slots with the third-place Connecticut Sun (20-10) a game-and-a-half ahead of both.
Sunday’s victory let the Mystics avoid a three-game season sweep.
“If we play them in the playoffs, knowing that we can beat them is big, knowing that we can defend them,” Mystics Coach Mike Thibault said. “They’re hard to defend. They have a lot of players who have played together for a while, so their offensive rhythm is pretty good right now. I think that’s a confidence booster for us.”
There were 13 lead changes Sunday — five in the third quarter alone — and nine ties as the teams punched and counterpunched all afternoon. Seattle’s Breanna Stewart, the 2018 league MVP, missed what would have been a game-tying three-pointer with 4.4 seconds remaining, and Gabby Williams missed a desperation heave with less than a second left.
The Mystics’ Ariel Atkins carried the load early and matched Stewart with a game-high 23 points. Delle Donne had just six points in the first half but finished with 17 points and six rebounds after the Mystics made an effort to get her more involved after halftime. Natasha Cloud had 11 points and 10 rebounds as the WNBA’s assists leader racked up 21 in the two games this weekend, including 10 on Sunday. Jewell Loyd scored 15 points for the Storm, and Bird posted 12 points and seven assists.
Playoff bound
The Mystics became the fifth team to clinch a playoff spot when the Atlanta Dream lost Saturday. Their inclusion in the postseason seemed to be a given for most of the season, but Atkins wouldn’t take that for granted.
“It means a lot to me,” she said. “We didn’t make playoffs last year. I don’t know if y’all remember that, but I remember it. I remember how all that felt. So it’s big. It’s not an easy thing to do in this league.”
Feeling better and better
Delle Donne played 32 minutes 36 seconds, her third most of the season while on a load management routine with her surgically repaired back. That was even more impressive considering it came on the second day of a back-to-back. Thibault said she asked to play more minutes, and the plan is for her to be in action Tuesday against the visiting Las Vegas Aces.
“Really exciting to be able to get through a back-to-back,” Delle Donne said. “This was a huge challenge that we kind of wanted to see how I’d respond, and I’m doing well. After the game [Saturday], I got a couple of hours of treatment, and then today I came in super early to get my work in. I’ll spend some time after. And then [Monday is] a great recovery day and then we have a really good Vegas team coming in. So I’m excited about the way I’m able to respond at this point in the season.”
The challenge continues
Over the next seven days, the Mystics face the Aces (22-8), the Chicago Sky (23-7) and the Los Angeles Sparks (12-16 entering Sunday night). Those are the top two teams in the league, and Los Angeles holds the eighth and final playoff slot.
The Mystics have additional motivation to knock the Sparks out of the playoff picture: Washington can swap for Los Angeles’s first-round pick thanks to the trade that sent the Dream the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft — and Thibault would love for that to be a lottery pick.
Cloud became the 32nd player in WNBA history to reach 1,000 assists; she’s now at 1,001. Atkins notched her 29th game with 10-plus points to tie the Aces’ Kelsey Plum for the league lead. | 2022-07-31T23:35:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics win rematch with Storm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/mystics-storm-elena-delle-donne/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/mystics-storm-elena-delle-donne/ |
England women end nation’s 56-year soccer title drought with Euro win
England's Chloe Kelly, center, celebrates her goal with Lauren Hemp, left, and Jill Scott. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)
England ended more than a half-century of frustration with a 2-1 victory over Germany on Sunday in the final of the Women’s European Championship.
Chloe Kelly played the hero’s role for the Lionesses with a goal in extra time that proved to be the game-winner. England’s previous triumph in the final of a major international competition came in 1966, when the men’s team won the World Cup with a defeat of Germany in extra time.
A record crowd of 87,192 — the largest ever for either a men’s or women’s match in the history of the Euro tournament — was in attendance at London’s Wembley Stadium to watch England complete its title quest on home turf.
“It’s the proudest moment of my life,” England captain Leah Williamson said afterward, “so I’m going to lap it up and take every single second in. The legacy of this tournament and this team is a change in society. We’ve brought everyone together.”
CHAMPIONS 🏴🦁 pic.twitter.com/vMXTwhBxfz
The victory set off raucous celebrations not just on the field and in the stands, but also in pubs and at watch parties across England. The home side’s quest attracted enormous interest in the soccer-mad nation, and the Lionesses did their part to bring the women’s game further into the spotlight.
“It shows that after all these years, women’s football is something to care about and something to scream about,” a 24-year-old fan, Becca Stewart, told the Associated Press. “We did it — the men couldn’t do it, but we did!”
Another fan, Mary Caine, who attended the game with her 8-year-old daughter, referred to the “It’s coming home” rallying cry that has marked recent tournament runs by the English men’s side.
England players gatecrash Sarina Wiegman’s press conference singing “it’s coming home”😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/0MZFPTAX9p
— Kathryn Batte (@KathrynBatte) July 31, 2022
“The girls finally brought football home,” Caine told the AP. “We’re delighted! It’s historic. It was magic in there and a breakthrough moment for women’s sport.”
After a scoreless first half, the Lionesses earned the first goal of the match when Ella Toone broke unmarked past Germany’s defense in the 62nd minute, fielded a long pass and chipped the ball over goalkeeper Merle Frohms. Germany brought the match back to level on a goal in the 79th minute by Lina Magull, who adroitly redirected a low cross into the six-yard box from teammate Tabea Wassmuth.
That led to a nerve-racking extra 30 minutes for a pair of squads that had given evidence during the match of the physical strain of their respective marches through the tournament.
England, in particular, has seen more than its share of heartbreak after full time on the international stage, most recently just over one year ago at Wembley, when the men’s team lost to Italy in a penalty kick shootout in the final of last summer’s European Championship.
From 2021: England’s trip to Euro 2020 final means dreams of football finally coming home could be reality
Kelly changed that narrative, however, on an England corner kick in the 110th minute. When the ball fell to the grass in the goal area, she boxed out a German defender and poked it into the net on her second swipe.
A 24-year-old who plays club soccer for Manchester City in the English Women’s Super League, Kelly used her goal celebration to channel Brandi Chastain. As with the American icon, who converted the tournament-winning penalty shootout attempt in the 1999 Women’s World Cup, Kelly whipped off her jersey in delight.
“I see you [Kelly,] well done,” Chastain wrote on Twitter. “Enjoy the free rounds of pints and dinners for the rest of your life from all of England. Cheers!”
As with the 22-year-old Toone, Kelly had been substituted into Sunday’s game after halftime. A torn knee ligament tear in a May 2021 club match had sidelined Kelly for nearly a year, and she acknowledged last month that she used the prospect of a chance to compete for the European title as motivation during her recovery.
“This is what dreams are made of,” Kelly said Sunday. “I always believed I’d be here but to score the winner — wow. These girls are special, and what a special group of staff.”
It was the first major international championship for the English women, who lost to Germany in the 2009 Euro final and to Sweden in the 1984 final.
Germany had emerged victorious in all eight of its previous appearances in the Euro final, most recently in 2013. The 2017 title was won by the Netherlands; the 2021 tournament was postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Before Sunday’s match began, Germany suffered a blow when captain Alexandra Popp had to be scratched from the lineup. Popp, who scored two goals in the semifinal and was tied for the tournament lead with six overall, suffered what was described as “a muscular problem” during warm-ups and was replaced by Lea Schüller.
“We were close, but England withstood the pressure. Congratulations to them,” said Germany Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg. “We are very sad that we lost. … Alexandra Popp would have triggered something against our opponents with her presence. But it just didn’t work out.”
Among those sending messages of congratulations to the Lionesses was Queen Elizabeth II, who said in a statement, “Your success goes far beyond the trophy you have so deservedly earned. You have all set an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations. It is my hope that you will be as proud of the impact you have had on your sport as you are of the result today.”
“It’s such a privilege to be part of this,” said England midfielder Jill Scott. “The younger players have been fantastic — they play with freedom, they love the game of football. The celebrations are going to be big.” | 2022-08-01T00:09:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | England women end 56-year title drought with Euro win vs. Germany - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/england-germany-womens-euros/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/england-germany-womens-euros/ |
Ruling in Deshaun Watson disciplinary case is expected Monday
Deshaun Watson is in training camp with the Browns. (David Dermer/AP)
The initial ruling in the disciplinary case of Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson is likely to be delivered Monday to the NFL and the NFL Players Association, according to a person familiar with the situation.
That ruling is being made by Sue L. Robinson, a former U.S. district judge who is the disciplinary officer jointly appointed by the league and the players union. She conducted a three-day hearing in Delaware that concluded June 30, then had each side submit a post-hearing brief. Another person connected to the case also said a ruling is expected early this week.
The NFL argued to Robinson for an indefinite suspension of a least one full season under the league’s personal conduct policy by which Watson would be required to apply for reinstatement, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The NFLPA is believed to have argued for no suspension.
Brewer: The Cardinals don’t trust Kyler Murray, so how can Murray trust the Cardinals?
If Robinson rules Watson violated the personal conduct policy and imposes discipline, either the league or the union can appeal to Commissioner Roger Goodell or a person designated by him. If she rules Watson did not violate the conduct policy, the case is closed.
The NFLPA and Watson said in a joint statement Sunday night that Robinson “held a full and fair hearing, has read thousands of pages of investigative documents and reviewed arguments from both sides impartially” and urged all parties to abide by her ruling, without an appeal to Goodell.
“Every player, owner, business partner and stakeholder deserves to know that our process is legitimate and will not be tarnished based on the whims of the League office,” the statement by the NFLPA and Watson said. “This is why, regardless of her decision, Deshaun and the NFLPA will stand by her ruling and we call on the NFL to do the same.”
Watson was accused of sexual misconduct in more than two dozen civil suits. He has denied the allegations and has not been charged with a crime. Watson reached settlements in 20 of the 24 then-active lawsuits against him, according to Tony Buzbee, the attorney for the women.
Buzbee later announced settlements by 30 women with the Houston Texans, Watson’s former team. One of the women had filed a lawsuit accusing the Texans of enabling Watson’s alleged behavior.
This is the first case being decided by Robinson under the revised version of the personal conduct policy put in place by the 2020 collective bargaining agreement. Goodell previously was empowered to make the initial disciplinary ruling and resolve any appeal.
Watson is in training camp with the Browns. He was traded from the Texans this offseason and signed a five-year contract worth a guaranteed $230 million. | 2022-08-01T00:35:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deshaun Watson discipline ruling is expected Monday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/deshaun-watson-nfl-discipline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/31/deshaun-watson-nfl-discipline/ |
What the Hong Kong Dollar Peg Is and Why It Matters
Analysis by Tian Chen and Chester Yung | Bloomberg
A Hong Kong five-hundred dollar banknote, Chinese one-hundred yuan banknotes and U.S. one-hundred dollar banknotes are arranged for a photograph in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, April 15, 2019. China’s holdings of Treasury securities rose for a third month as the Asian nation took on more U.S. government debt amid the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1983, the Hong Kong dollar is usually a dull currency. Except when it isn’t, like this year. When the US Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March to combat historically high inflation, fund outflows from the Hong Kong dollar market intensified as investors chased higher yields. Consequently, interbank liquidity -- the pool of Hong Kong dollars in the system -- shrank rapidly as the city fought to maintain the peg, drawing market attention and concern about the impact on the struggling local economy.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the de-facto central bank, has a mandate to keep the currency trading at HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar. The current band was set in 2005 and has never been broken. When it gets too close to one end or the other, the HKMA intervenes, either by buying or selling the city’s dollars. When HKMA uses its foreign exchange reserves to buy Hong Kong dollars from the commercial banks, the aggregate balance of Hong Kong dollars in the banking system -- interbank liquidity -- goes down accordingly. From May 11 through late July, the HKMA bought a total of HK$172 billion ($22 billion), shrinking the balance by more than half. That tighter liquidity pushes up local borrowing costs.
2. Why does keeping the peg matter?
First and foremost, it’s considered an anchor for financial stability. A stable currency is important for an open economy like Hong Kong, where trade and logistics are key drivers. Investors park their money in Hong Kong because the currency is relatively safe and easily convertible -- one of the reasons the city became a global financial center in the first place. Breaking the peg would upset that whole equation.
3. What usually moves the Hong Kong dollar?
Often it’s when local borrowing costs don’t move in tandem with the US. For example, the gap between the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor) and its US counterpart (dollar Libor”) widened significantly after the Fed began its aggressive rate hikes, because liquidity in Hong Kong was still very ample. (Hibor and Libor represent a daily average of what banks say they would charge to lend to one another.) That gap makes it attractive for traders to borrow in Hong Kong dollars to buy US dollars to earn the higher yield. That so-called carry trade can push the local currency toward its weak end of HK$7.85, prompting the HKMA to intervene.
4. What’s the concern now?
Less liquidity as a result of defending the peg has led to increased borrowing costs this year for companies and individuals in Hong Kong at a time when stringent Covid-19 restrictions, especially regarding travel, continue to weigh on the economy and hurt employment. In addition, Hong Kong’s property sector is already under pressure from an exodus of Hong Kong residents, whether for pandemic-related or political reasons after Beijing tightened its grip on the city in 2020. Higher mortgage costs won’t help.
5. Should people be worried about the peg?
Officials in Hong Kong say no. Financial Secretary Paul Chan said in July that the city’s “huge” foreign exchange reserves -- about $440 billion, equivalent to about 1.7 times the monetary base of the Hong Kong dollar -- are enough to maintain the currency peg. Sustained periods of outflows have occurred before during previous bouts of stress such as the global financial crisis, SARS epidemic and during US-China tensions under then-President Donald Trump. At that time, Chan noted that China’s central bank also can provide US dollars through a currency swap line should Washington ever impose sanctions on the city. China has the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves at more than $3 trillion. John Greenwood, the architect of Hong Kong’s dollar peg and now an independent consultant at International Monetary Monitor, said that because the city has a currency board tasked solely with maintaining the peg, rather than a central bank that conducts domestic monetary policy, “speculation against the Hong Kong dollar always fails.”
6. Why not peg the Hong Kong dollar to the Chinese yuan instead?
There are various factors to support the status quo. The US dollar is fully convertible and can be traded freely in large amounts on foreign exchange markets. The yuan doesn’t fit that bill for now. The US dollar also dominates as an international reserve currency, while the yuan still has a ways to go to boost its reserve status. Hong Kong’s de facto central bank chief Eddie Yue said the peg has worked well for nearly 40 years and there are no plans to change it. However, Hong Kong has tended over the years to adopt currency arrangements that facilitate cross-border trade with the mainland. Pegging the local dollar to the yuan “could be a long-term possibility” -- if the yuan were used more in Hong Kong and internationally, Goldman Sachs Group economists including Hui Shan and Andrew Tilton wrote in May. Politics could be another driver, if Hong Kong were to lose its semi-autonomous status and be integrated into the mainland. As George Magnus, an economist and associate at the University of Oxford China Centre, put it: “It’s China’s choice whether it wants to keep the peg in place.” | 2022-08-01T01:06:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Hong Kong Dollar Peg Is and Why It Matters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-is-and-why-it-matters/2022/07/31/aed9e01e-112d-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-is-and-why-it-matters/2022/07/31/aed9e01e-112d-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Part of silos damaged in 2020 blast topples
A section of Beirut’s massive port grain silos, shredded in the 2020 explosion, collapsed in a huge cloud of dust on Sunday after a weeks-long fire, triggered by grains that had fermented and ignited in the summer heat.
The northern block of the silos toppled after what sounded like a blast. It was not clear whether anyone was injured.
The 50-year-old, 157-foot-tall silos had withstood the force of the explosion two years ago, effectively shielding the western part of Beirut from the blast, which killed over 200 people, injured more than 6,000 and badly damaged entire neighborhoods.
In July, a fire broke out in the northern block of the silos because of the fermenting grains. Firefighters and soldiers were unable to put it out, and it smoldered for weeks, releasing a nasty smell that spread widely. The environment and health ministries last week issued instructions to residents living near the port to stay indoors in well-ventilated spaces.
The silo collapse on Sunday comes just days ahead of the second anniversary of 2020 blast, one of the largest explosions in Lebanon’s troubled history. It occurred less than a year after an uprising rocked the country, with hundreds of thousands protesting entrenched sectarian political parties. The blast also precipitated Lebanon’s economic crisis, costing billions of dollars in damage and destroying thousands of tons of grain.
U.N. peacekeepers kill 2, wound at least 15
U.N. peacekeepers returning from leave opened fire at a border post between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, killing at least two people and wounding at least 15, the U.N. mission and Congolese officials said Sunday.
Bintou Keita, head of the U.N. mission in Congo and special representative of the U.N. secretary general, said she was shocked by the shootings in Kasindi, a border town in Congo’s North Kivu province. She said it was not clear why the peacekeepers opened fire.
She said the soldiers’ home country has been contacted so that legal proceedings can begin. Their nationality was not given.
Congo’s government condemned the shootings, confirming a provisional toll of two dead and 15 wounded.
Protesters accuse the peacekeepers of failing to protect civilians amid rising violence. The mission has more than 16,000 uniformed personnel in Congo, according to the United Nations.
Sadr followers camp at parliament for 2nd day
The protesters — followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — pledged to hold an open-ended sit-in to derail efforts by their rivals from Iran-backed political groups to form Iraq’s next government. Their demands are lofty: early elections, constitutional amendments and the ouster of Sadr’s opponents.
The developments have plunged Iraq deeper into a political crisis as a power struggle unfolds between the country’s two major Shiite groups.
Sadr has not visited the scene but has egged his loyalists on, tweeting Sunday that the sit-in was “a great opportunity to radically challenge the political system, the constitution, and the elections.” The Shiite cleric called on all Iraqis to join the “revolution,” an indication that the sit-in is likely to become a drawn-out event.
On Saturday, protesters used ropes and chains to topple concrete walls around the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, then flooded into the assembly building. It was the second such breach last week, but this time they did not disperse peacefully.
The takeover of parliament showed that Sadr was using his large grass-roots following as a pressure tactic against his rivals in the Coordination Framework — an alliance of Shiite parties backed by Iran — after his party was not able to form a government despite having won the largest number of seats in federal elections held in October.
Iranian border guards, Taliban forces reportedly clash: Iranian border guards clashed with the Afghan Taliban, Iranian media reported, the latest cross-border exchange since the Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan a year ago. Iran's semiofficial Tasnim news agency quoted Iran's deputy interior minister as saying that the Taliban forces first opened fire on Iranian guards, forcing them to return fire until the exchange subsided about an hour and a half later. Clashes have repeatedly erupted between Iranian security forces and Afghan Taliban forces along the border since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021. | 2022-08-01T01:06:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 31, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-31-2022/2022/07/31/bde34a4c-10d2-11ed-b403-f31960ffb1d0_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-31-2022/2022/07/31/bde34a4c-10d2-11ed-b403-f31960ffb1d0_story.html |
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Henrik Stenson’s decision that cost him the Ryder Cup captaincy paid large and immediate dividends when the Swede won the LIV Golf Invitational at Bedminster and picked up more than $4 million for three days’ work.
IRVINE, Scotland — Ayaka Furue of Japan ran off six straight birdies in the middle of her round and rallied from a four-shot deficit with a 10-under 62 to win the Women’s Scottish Open for her first LPGA Tour title. | 2022-08-01T01:07:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Finau wins again on PGA Tour, Stenson cashes in on LIV Golf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/finau-wins-again-on-pga-tour-stenson-cashes-in-on-liv-golf/2022/07/31/8c0c5288-112d-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/finau-wins-again-on-pga-tour-stenson-cashes-in-on-liv-golf/2022/07/31/8c0c5288-112d-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Kansas City Royals’ Whit Merrifield (15) is congratulated by manager Mike Matheny, second from right, after scoring against the Los Angeles Angels during the seventh inning of a baseball game, Monday, July 25, 2022, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)
PHOENIX — This is always a stressful time of year for Major League Baseball’s 30 general managers, who are evaluating talent, juggling financial implications and trying to figure out ways to make their teams better as Tuesday’s trade deadline approaches. | 2022-08-01T01:07:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | COVID-19 vaccinations add new twist to MLB trade deadline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/covid-19-vaccinations-add-new-twist-to-mlb-trade-deadline/2022/07/31/05df59ec-112a-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/covid-19-vaccinations-add-new-twist-to-mlb-trade-deadline/2022/07/31/05df59ec-112a-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
From flying elevators to 100-mile long skyscrapers to a floating, zero-carbon port, it seems to owe more to Coruscant and Wakanda than to any urban forms outside of science fiction.
Even Neom’s financials are superlative. The first phase of the project until 2030 will cost $1.2 trillion riyals ($320 billion), with half of that amount provided by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told reporters in Jeddah this week. By 2030, he expects some 1.5 million people to be living in the twin horizontal skyscrapers, called The Line.
Believe it or not, those numbers aren’t as implausible as they seem. Take China Evergrande Group, the vast Chinese developer that’s mired in vague restructuring plans after ratings companies labeled it a defaulter last year. Neom’s promise to eventually become home to 10 million people seems, if anything, modest next to Evergrande’s boast that it’s housed 12 million. Evergrande’s investment cash outflow, net of divestments, has been 605 billion yuan ($89 billion) since 2010, about 28% of Neom’s budget. Given China’s income levels and construction costs have been about 40% of Saudi Arabia’s over the past decade, that suggests a budget that’s on the generous side, but far from insane.
The foundations of its business model, moreover, were essentially solid. Some 200 million people moved to China’s cities over the past decade, while nominal gross domestic product per head doubled. That’s a compelling story of organic urban growth. Indeed, much of Evergrande’s downfall can be attributed to the way that it tried to buck organic trends for political reasons. Beijing wants to see rural migrants move to smaller, so-called “Tier-3” cities in preference to its crowded, dynamic east coast metropolises. Evergrande’s land bank became more and more concentrated in such lower-quality locations. That attempt to reverse the gravitational pull of the country’s economic power centers was always likely to end in tears.
The lesson Saudi Arabia should draw from Evergrande is that infrastructure and property development work best when they follow the people, rather than trying to lead them. The kingdom will benefit far more from the humdrum metro networks being built in Riyadh, Mecca, Medina and Jeddah, and from its long-delayed cross-country rail corridor, than from another aborted construction project on the shores of the Red Sea to join its predecessor, the King Abdullah Economic City. Similarly, actually fulfilling its plans to tap its vast and barely utilized solar and wind resource would provide cheaper power locally while freeing up petroleum for export.
Mohammed bin Salman has his work cut out fixing his country’s sprawling, congested cities for a population of some 36 million expected to grow by a third by 2050.That task is hard enough amid signs that oil demand may go into decline, even as Saudi Arabia’s supply potential appears to be maxing out. That would be a far better use of the kingdom’s cashflows than a vast folly in the desert. For all Evergrande’s mistakes, it never tried to build its castles in the air.
• Saudi Megaproject Is Big on Hubris and Low on Practicality: Bobby Ghosh
• How Saudi Arabia Can Thrive in a Post-Oil World: David Fickling | 2022-08-01T02:37:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As One Evergrande Falls, Another Rises in the Saudi Desert - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/as-one-evergrande-falls-another-rises-in-the-saudi-desert/2022/07/31/616a8b64-1135-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/as-one-evergrande-falls-another-rises-in-the-saudi-desert/2022/07/31/616a8b64-1135-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
About 200 Chinese companies whose shares trade in the US, including JD.com Inc. and Baidu Inc., face delisting because American regulators aren’t able to verify their financial audits. While China and the US continue to negotiate access to audits, there are signs that Chinese companies are preparing for the eventuality of expulsion from the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Already, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it will seek a primary listing in Hong Kong, a move that could be the precursor to its eventual departure.
In March, the SEC started publishing its “provisional list” of companies identified as running afoul of the requirements. By the end of July the list had grown to more than 100 companies, including Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo Inc. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. In all, the PCAOB says that in the 13-month period ending Dec. 31, 2021, 15 audit firms it oversees signed audit reports for 192 businesses based in China or Hong Kong -- none of which can be reviewed by the regulator. The companies say Chinese national security law prohibits them from turning over audit papers.
In April, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said it would modify a 2009 rule that restricted the sharing of financial data by offshore-listed firms, potentially opening an avenue for Chinese companies to comply with the US demand. It also said it would provide assistance for cooperation with foreign regulators. Negotiations on the logistics for on-site inspections in China were said to be underway. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in late July that an agreement was needed “very soon” to avoid delistings. Access to audit papers isn’t the only issue prompting delistings. Ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. decided to delist from the NYSE in December under pressure from Chinese regulators who feared the company’s vast troves of data would be exposed to foreign powers.
4. How soon could Chinese companies be delisted?
Nothing is going to happen this year or even in 2023, since a company would be delisted only after three consecutive years of non-compliance with audit inspections. A delisted company could return by certifying that it had retained a registered public accounting firm approved by the SEC.
Major private firms like Alibaba could probably argue that they are not, although others with substantial state ownership may have a harder time. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which reports to Congress, says China considers eight companies listed on major US exchanges to be “national-level Chinese state-owned enterprises.” They are PetroChina Co., China Life Insurance Co., China Petroleum & Chemical, China Southern Airlines Co., Huaneng Power International Inc., Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., China Eastern Airlines Corp. and SINOPEC Shanghai Petrochemical Co. | 2022-08-01T04:09:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Driving the US-China Spat Over Audits and Delisting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-driving-the-us-china-spat-over-audits-and-delisting/2022/07/31/51328b08-1143-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-driving-the-us-china-spat-over-audits-and-delisting/2022/07/31/51328b08-1143-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Russia says it’ll withdraw from International Space Station after 2024
A couple months after launching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tried to justify his war by pointing to the Western Balkans. In a meeting with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Putin pointed to the legacy of the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia in 1999, a bombing campaign that hit targets across what was then combined Serbia and Montenegro in a bid to halt Serbia’s onslaught against ethnic Kosovar Albanians fighting for autonomy. The brief war and subsequent peacekeeping operation led to the emergence of the independent nation of Kosovo.
The Western alliance’s actions then, Putin suggested, were no different than what his forces sought to do now in attempting to guarantee the independence of two pro-Kremlin separatist entities in the eastern Ukrainian region known as Donbas. “Very many states of the West recognized [Kosovo] as an independent state,” Putin told Guterres. “We did the same in respect of the republics of Donbas.”
There are plenty of reasons to scoff at this analogy, not least because Russia still does not recognize Kosovo’s independence and vociferously decried NATO’s war against their Serbian ally. NATO airstrikes led to Serbian civilian casualties, but they also helped stave off further rounds of violent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and stabilize a crisis that had already seen thousands killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced. Putin’s invasion, meanwhile, is defined by the Kremlin’s genocidal rhetoric as well as garish reports of atrocities carried out by Russian troops. It has led to millions of Ukrainians fleeing their homes.
Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani sees an all-together different parallel. The NATO-enabled victory of Kosovo’s fighters over the regime of then-Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was part of a broader struggle for human rights, the rule of law and democratic principles. “Twenty-three years ago these values were at stake in Kosovo and beyond,” Osmani told me during a Thursday interview in Washington. “Twenty-three years on, it’s the same — these values are at stake in Ukraine.”
Russia’s campaign in Ukraine doesn’t deserve any patina of international legitimacy. It reflects simply, in Osmani’s view, the “sick, imperial tendencies” of the Russian president.
Putin makes his imperial pretensions clear
Osmani was in Washington this past week along with her country’s prime minister, Albin Kurti. They had meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and inked a landmark investment deal with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government entity, which committed $237 million in funding for Kosovo’s energy infrastructure.
But in her conversation with Today’s WorldView, Osmani also warned of the wider perils facing her region, where Russian influence has historically played an outsize role.
“Putin’s aim is to expand the conflict in other parts of the world,” she said. “Since his aim has constantly been to destabilize Europe, we can expect that one of his targets might be the Western Balkans.”
Just this weekend, tensions flared between Kosovo and Serbia. Ethnic Serbs in northern municipalities in Kosovo blockaded roads and skirmished with detachments of police in response to Kosovo authorities’ decision to require vehicles that enter from Serbia to replace their license plates with Kosovo plates; the reverse is necessary for vehicles from Kosovo entering Serbia.
The bureaucratic dispute belied the far greater tensions simmering beneath. Top officials engaged in a war of words. Kurti accused Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic of instigating the violence. Vucic said the two parties had “never been in a more complex situation than today” but vowed Serbian victory regardless. The small NATO mission in Kosovo felt compelled to issue a statement, saying it was “prepared to intervene if stability is jeopardized.”
Also of immediate concern is the situation in Bosnia, whose complex political arrangement that cobbled together its ethnic Bosniak, Croat and Serb populations is looking wobblier than ever. Analysts believe Milorad Dodik, the leader of the semiautonomous ethnic Serb republic within the Bosnian federation, is pushing for a more clear-cut breakaway that could unleash new turmoil in the region. His efforts find close support in both Moscow and Belgrade.
Serbia is, after all, a historic Russian ally and, in Osmani’s words, “fertile ground” for Putin’s influence operations. While most of Europe’s leaders have pursued hostile measures against the Kremlin, Vucic has not. He refused to join the E.U. sanctions regime on Russia. He inked a lucrative gas deal with Moscow earlier this summer even as the rest of the continent is trying to wean itself off Russian energy exports. And as his own nationalist rule has led to an erosion of Serbian democracy and mounting concerns over press freedom, Vucic has also allowed Russian state propaganda outfits to remain operating in Serbia. They play a significant role in fueling polarization in the region.
Analysts point to a wider malaise. “In place of the vision of joining a peaceful, prosperous Europe, there is a growing sense of stagnation in which each country’s historical grievances and unfinished business fester as perennial features of election campaigns and potential conflict triggers,” noted a recent report from the International Crisis Group. “Leaders fan the flames with divisive rhetoric, trying to divert attention from sluggish economies, low living standards, corruption and nepotism.”
Pro-Putin European leaders reassert their power
Osmani views Vucic’s behavior as that of an autocrat who shouldn’t be appeased. Beyond Serbia’s territorial claims in Kosovo, she points to Belgrade’s hand in the instability provoked in Bosnia as well as the alleged pro-Kremlin effort to foment a coup in Montenegro in 2016 to stop its accession into NATO (The attempt failed and some of its alleged ringleaders have been jailed). Lingering visions of a “greater Serbia” animate Vucic’s movement.
On Sunday, a ruling party member of Serbia’s parliament even tweeted that Serbia may “also be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans,” invoking the same spurious framing through which Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine. Vucic “looks at our countries as temporary countries and tries to deny our very existence,” Osmani said. It is “the very way Putin looks at Ukraine, Moldova and other countries. It is exactly the same strategy.”
Serbia, unlike Russia, is a candidate for European Union membership and occupies a more complicated position within Europe. But the new geopolitics triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed Vucic into a corner.
“They have chosen their path,” Osmani said. “At this time, the Putin path and the European Union path are two different paths and have never been further apart and you can’t walk on both.
“When you have a neighbor that chooses to be on the wrong side of history at this very difficult time for Europe and beyond, it damages the rest of us as well.”
Kosovo, meanwhile, knows which direction it wants to go, but it has a complicated road ahead. It lacks U.N. recognition; Russia’s Security Council veto remains a fundamental impediment; and a considerable chunk of the international community has yet to acknowledge its status as a sovereign, independent nation — including five countries within the European Union.
Osmani believes that may change in the current environment, with the war in Ukraine also giving a boost to Kosovo’s “Euro-Atlantic integration.” She cited Finland and Sweden’s dramatic accession bids to NATO.
“As we all know, to be safe is to be in NATO,” Osmani said, urging the alliance’s member states to “start accelerated steps … toward welcoming also Kosovo and Bosnia into NATO.”
Earlier this year, the European Union also fast-tracked the process to confer candidate status to Ukraine, a mark of the continent’s admiration for the Ukrainian struggle. Some critics in the Western Balkans feared this would only further delay their own nations’ stagnating membership bids.
But Osmani disagrees. “For way too long, we felt and heard the enlargement fatigue within the European Union,” she said. “The openness the European Union has shown toward Ukraine has turned the tide in a way that finally the E.U. sees the enlargement process as a geostrategic process rather than a bureaucratic one.”
And what should that strategic vision be?
“A Europe whole and free and at peace is impossible without the Western Balkans,” Osmani said. | 2022-08-01T04:17:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Western Balkans: The next frontier in Putin’s fight with the West - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/01/western-balkans-kosovo-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/01/western-balkans-kosovo-ukraine/ |
The big bugaboo? I'm in a very tight financial position and I don't have the capacity to rent a pet-friendly shared workspace in the area.
I also don't have the financial means to send my puppy to day care every day. My vet said they could recommend some anti-anxiety medications for her.
Broke: If you rent your apartment from the unit’s owner, you should contact your landlord regarding any rent decrease or compensation while work is being done next door. If you are a co-op owner, you should contact your building’s manager and the co-op board to inquire about any possible redress.
Dear Amy: My father, who is 83, keeps trying to get me to mend fences with my sister. My sister isn’t asking for a reconciliation. She doesn’t call, and is never in touch with me.
This isn’t a recent rift, but something that has grown over the last 30 years. I chose to keep my distance from her because she constantly puts me down. I have pointed this out to my father. Frankly, I just want to be left alone.
I do want to keep in contact with my elderly parents, so I stay in touch with them, but what can I say to my father, other than to get flat-out angry? I don’t understand why he always takes her side.
Distance: Every parent wants their children to get along. This desire simply goes along with parenting. I hope you will be understanding and patient with your father.
Perceptive: I don’t diagnose people through these pages. Mainly — I’m not qualified! | 2022-08-01T04:44:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I have a new puppy and a loud renovation next door - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/01/ask-amy-neighbor-loud-renovation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/01/ask-amy-neighbor-loud-renovation/ |
The impetus is also coming from within — there’s fear that groupthink will befall partners if they all come from the same demographic, went to the same schools and live in the same neighborhoods. That homogeneity could lead firms to miss both risks and opportunities.
Hence the continuing array of initiatives both at buyout firms and at their investments. Carlyle Group Inc. recently formed a network for its portfolio-company bosses to share insights on what works to promote diversity and inclusion. Advent International demands that the boards of its investments set a diversity and inclusion policy for which they’re accountable, while Blackstone Inc. has set a target for boardroom diversity in new investments made from 2021 (where these firms have controlling stakes).
In turn, there’s an awareness that the benefits of buyouts need to be shared more widely. KKR & Co. has been granting equity to rank-and-file staff in some portfolio companies. It’s also invited workers at one of its investments to decide how $1 million could be spent each year to improve their day-to-day experience.
Applying private equity’s “what gets measured gets done” philosophy to equality means expanding the key performance indicators by which the management teams of leveraged buyouts are assessed — for example, requiring that candidate slates include women and minorities, that advancement through an organization is audited and that employees receive training to raise awareness of bias.
This may add additional process and operating cost, but it comes with financial and reputational returns. A 2018 study of venture capital investments since 1990 by Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali of Harvard Business School found that the more similar investment partners were in terms of educational background, the lower the performance of their investments. Shared ethnicity had an even more powerful effect on reducing investment gains. Differences emerged in the quality of decision-making around recruitment and strategic development of the target company.
It’s the same story in private equity. Carlyle reviewed its US portfolio companies in 2020 and found that the average three-year earnings growth of those with two or more female, Black, Hispanic or Asian board members was faster than firms with no diversity.
A 2006 study by the late Katherine W. Phillips of Columbia University and her colleagues offers one explanation for why. They set up a murder-mystery game to be played by racially diverse and non-diverse teams. Each participant had a set of clues, some of which were common to their team and some of which were unique. The diverse teams significantly outperformed the homogenous teams, spending more time in discussion and sharing more of the information they held.
Phillips concluded that being with similar people fosters a misplaced assumption that everyone knows the same things and thinks the same way, which hampers collaboration and innovation. Reviewing other research with similar findings, she argued that an awareness of difference makes people assume they must work harder to reach consensus. So, while research has found that social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, there’s a compensating behavioral effect.
“They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes,” Phillips wrote. “The pain associated with diversity … produces the gain.” It’s an argument that buyout barons get.
Of course, the wheels of this industry turn slowly. It will take time for the pipeline to change the dynamics at the highest level. The proof of private equity’s commitment will come when it brings its recent investments to the stock market later this decade. These should be led by much more diverse teams than they have in the past. We’ll see. | 2022-08-01T05:40:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buyout Barons Need to Keep Diversity in the Spreadsheet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/buyout-barons-need-to-keep-diversity-in-the-spreadsheet/2022/08/01/9c998c18-1157-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/buyout-barons-need-to-keep-diversity-in-the-spreadsheet/2022/08/01/9c998c18-1157-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
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