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In March 1929, the National Bureau of Economic Research published its first estimate of the start and end dates of what it called “contractions” or “recessions,” going back to 1855. The private think tank, then based in New York, continued to assign dates to peaks and troughs of the US business cycle in subsequent years, while the NBER researcher who compiled the first set went on to design a system of national income accounts for the Commerce Department. In 1942 Commerce supplemented these for purposes of better understanding the wartime economy with a measure called gross national product, with regular quarterly reporting of GNP beginning in 1947.
If you’ve been wondering why recessions in the US are more or less officially determined by a panel of economists at NBER and not, as in many countries, by the simple rule-of-thumb of two consecutive quarters of declining real gross domestic product (which supplanted GNP as the headline economic growth metric in 1991 in the US and well before then elsewhere(1)), here’s the reason: Some guy at NBER was determining when recessions started and ended before GDP existed, after which he went on to help invent GDP.
The NBER is thus largely responsible for the modern understanding of and nomenclature surrounding the business cycle, as well as some of the measurement apparatus. It may even be partly responsible for the strong political salience of recessions in the US, where they have often accompanied or immediately preceded changes in party control of the White House (in contrast to say, Germany, where incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel won resoundingly in the wake of the Great Recession in 2009). That doesn’t mean its recession determinations are right, especially since the business cycle ceased to be the focus of its research decades ago. But the organization’s pioneering role in determining what recessions are does seem relevant to the discussion over whether we’re in one now.
The NBER was founded in 1920 by a conservative AT&T Inc. executive and a liberal Hickey-Freeman Co. executive who’d been a Socialist Labor Party activist in his younger days. They hoped that better data could resolve some of their economic disputes. The first research director they selected was Wesley Clair Mitchell, a Columbia University economist who bore the external markings of a lefty intellectual — he had been the star student of famed capitalism-critic Thorstein Veblen, lived in Greenwich Village and was married to a famed progressive educator — but was resolutely neutral in his academic work, which centered around the business cycle.
Mitchell offered no grand theories, just the hope that accumulating more and better data about the economy’s ups and downs could increase understanding. At NBER he was able to put smart young researchers to work on this, notably Simon Kuznets, who had emigrated to the US from Ukraine in 1922 and immediately distinguished himself as Mitchell’s student at Columbia. It was Kuznets who, near the beginning of a 34-year affiliation with NBER, compiled a list of recession dates under Mitchell’s supervision in 1929 and then, at the behest of the Commerce Department in the 1930s, devised the system of national income accounts that, with a nudge from innovators across the Atlantic, eventually spawned GDP.
For the latter work, Kuznets received the third Nobel Prize awarded in economics, in 1971. Meanwhile, Mitchell’s handpicked successor at NBER, Arthur Burns, went on to great prominence as an adviser to Republican presidents and then chairman of the Federal Reserve. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s influential 1963 “Monetary History of the United States” was an NBER project.
The organization’s empiricist obsession with the business cycle began to fall out of favor among academic economists after World War II. In a famously withering review of Burns and Mitchell’s 1946 book, “Measuring Business Cycles,” mathematical economist Tjalling Koopmans (winner of the economics Nobel in 1975) complained that in it “the movements of economic variables are studied as if they were eruptions of a mysterious volcano whose boiling caldron can never be penetrated.”
He had a point! It’s not just that the why of the business cycle is mostly ignored in the book, the what isn’t exactly made crystal clear either. “Our definition presents business cycles as a consensus among expansions in ‘many’ economic activities, followed by ‘similarly general’ recessions, contractions, and revivals,” Burns and Mitchell write. “How ‘general’ these movements are, what types of activity share in them and what do not, how the consensus differs from one cyclical phase to another, and from one business cycle to the next, can be learned only by empirical observation.” Got that?
At one point the pair do suggest that the “simplest method” of determining the timing of a business cycle “would be to mark off the months in which the specific cycles of an acceptable measure of aggregate economic activity reached successive peaks and troughs,” and note that quarterly and even monthly estimates of just such a measure, GNP, were under development. We’re still waiting on official monthly GNP or GDP numbers, though, and the quarterly ones are subject to revisions years and even decades afterwards that can flip positive quarterly changes to negative and vice versa.
The NBER determinations of recession dates, while they don’t ignore GDP, have thus tended to focus on more-timely and less-prone-to-revision monthly data series. An ever-shifting array of data series, it turns out. As University of California at Berkeley economists Christina Romer and David Romer described in a historical review presented at the January 2020 annual meeting of the American Economic Association (video here, pdf download here), the unemployment rate has gone in and out of favor as a recession metric while NBER researchers have through the decades cited such measures as bank debits outside New York City, freight-car loadings, business failures, corporate profits after taxes and imports, as well as more obvious ones like nonfarm payroll employment, industrial production and personal income.
This hodge-podge of justifications didn’t seem to diminish the impact of the NBER’s recession determinations, with Harvard economist Jason Furman recently dredging up an array of media mentions from the 1960s and 1970s that make clear that its verdicts — in those days often the work of a single staffer, Geoffrey Moore — were seen as definitive.
When Harvard’s Martin Feldstein became NBER’s president in 1977, he moved the organization’s headquarters to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and repositioned it from a focus on business cycles and a few other macroeconomic topics to policy-relevant academic research on all manner of economic questions (three-quarters of its $34 million budget in the 2020-2021 fiscal year came from government research grants, with the US Department of Health and Human Services and National Science Foundation the chief funders and the GDP-measurers at the Commerce Department not represented at all). But Feldstein, who took a leave from NBER and Harvard to serve as chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984 and remained a leading Republican economic sage until his death in 2019, was publicity-savvy enough to retain the organization’s responsibility for determining recessions. The Business Cycle Dating Committee that he created in 1978, composed mostly of outside economists, has if anything attracted more attention than its predecessors, in part because it announces its decisions in a consistent way while earlier recession calls were sometimes tucked in the back of NBER publications.
Right now the committee is holding fire despite two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, partly because it always waits a while before making a recession call but also because, as several current and former members made clear to Bloomberg’s Steve Matthews last week, the negative GDP readings are so far at odds with most key monthly economic indicators and those indicators carry more weight.
By now I think it should be clear that this reticence to declare a recession is not the result of some plot organized by the Biden administration and the liberal media. But yeah, it is kind of confusing and possibly unnecessary. As Christina and David Romer — who happen both to be members of the Business Cycle Dating Committee — put it in their January 2020 paper:
If a modern time-series econometrician with no knowledge of the history of business cycle dating or the concept of a recession were handed the time series for postwar U.S. GDP growth, they would conclude that the data pointed to a division of short-run fluctuations into two types of periods that correspond closely to the recessions and expansions identified by NBER researchers over the past century.
That speaks well for the NBER researchers, but it also raises the question of why we can’t just leave the work to an econometric model. The Romers point to a much-cited 1989 paper by University of California at San Diego economist James D. Hamilton that used a statistical technique known as Markov switching to differentiate between two different regimes of GNP growth in the US, identifying periods of negative growth that pretty much coincided with the NBER recession dates. In an August 2020 revision of their paper, the Romers updated the model with GDP numbers through 2019 with similar results and got an even better fit by adding nonfarm payroll employment and the unemployment rate to the mix.
They also proposed an approach that aims to identify periods of economic slack rather than decline, in part because periods of negative growth will become more common in developed countries as population growth slows or turns negative, while if Japan’s experience so far is any guide these won’t always be accompanied by rising unemployment or other signs of distress. In this case, GDP growth, employment and unemployment are compared to trend rates estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.
I’ve asked the Romers for the current recession probabilities churned out by their models, and will update here if I get them. But with employment growth still strong as of June and unemployment nearly a percentage point below the CBO’s noncyclical (formerly known as natural) rate, any model that includes those metrics is unlikely to conclude that the US is in a recession — yet.
(1) The difference is that GDP includes output produced in the US by foreign entities and ignores output produced overseas by US entities, while GNP does the opposite. | 2022-08-04T11:25:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blame History, Not Biden, for Making Recession Calls So Hard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blame-history-not-biden-for-making-recession-calls-so-hard/2022/08/04/63ab3362-13e5-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blame-history-not-biden-for-making-recession-calls-so-hard/2022/08/04/63ab3362-13e5-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
D.C. Catholic school principal, former teacher of year, sentenced for theft
Bridget Coates, who turned around St. Thomas More Catholic School in southeast Washington and attended 2016 State of the Union address, embezzled $175,000
A former D.C. Catholic school principal and 2005 teacher of the year was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in prison for embezzling at least $175,000 over five years from a parent-teacher fund for low-income students and spending it for personal use, prosecutors announced.
Bridget Coates, 49, of Falls Church, pleaded guilty in April to one count of wire fraud after stealing funds from 2012 until she resigned in 2018 as principal of St. Thomas More Catholic School in Southeast Washington.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ordered Coates to forfeit and pay back $175,000 in restitution to the Archdiocese of Washington.
In court filings, Coates, who said her family has served the archdiocese for seven generations, admitted writing 66 unauthorized checks from the Home School Association and depositing the money into her personal bank account. Coates took $14,000 to qualify for a loan to buy her home in Virginia in 2013. She also admitted to using the money to spend more than $19,463 on goods by luxury fashion designers such as Louis Vuitton, Karen Millen, Kate Spade and Michael Kors, prosecutors said.
Coates gave herself another $85,000 that may have gone to school-related expenses that prosecutors did not count against her at sentencing, and the school has filed a $260,000 insurance claim, according to sentencing papers.
U.S. prosecutors Jeffrey S. Nestler and Marco Crocetti asked for a 33-month sentence, saying Coates abused the trust of parents in an “ongoing and brazen” scheme that diverted money meant to enrich the education and lives of low-income students.
Defense attorney Robert L. Jenkins Jr., asked for home confinement, calling Coates’s crime a complete aberration in the life of a gifted educator who turned around a failing K-8 school of about 150 pupils in one of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods. Only 20 percent of eighth-graders met the Catholic high school entrance test requirements when she began and 100 percent did when she left, supporters said.
Coates grew “emotionally overwhelmed” by her work and mental health challenges, Jenkins wrote. In one of more than 50 letters of support, the Rev. Patrick A. Smith, pastor of Saint Augustine Catholic Church and School in Northwest Washington, added that Coates’s “passion and compassion for the children of her school was both her biggest strength and greatest liability.”
Coates established a high school placement test preparation class on Saturdays, taught classes when teacher staffs were short and was president-elect of a Catholic school elementary principals committee when she resigned, supporters said. She started extracurricular programs, including a choir that was asked to perform by leaders of Congress, and was invited with students to attend President Barack Obama’s 2016 State of the Union address, supporters said.
Like many educators, Coates provided gifts, food and supplies to support students, teachers and school events without compensation, Jenkins wrote. But unlike many, Coates also coped with drug dealing, child abuse, multiple shootings at and near the school, law enforcement raids of employees who turned out to be fugitives, and the closure of many majority- or all-Black Catholic schools, supporters said.
Coates said in a 14-page letter to the judge that she also struggled personally with illness, unsafe housing, hoarding, depression, and an unhealthy obsession with work and the appearance of success while her private life spiraled into loneliness and eating problems.
“All this led her to a very depressing and dark place, and when she needed support the most, it was surprisingly absent in a faith-based environment from those around her,” Patrick said.
In her letter, Coates apologized to her victims, Home School Association leaders, her students, their families, teachers and staff.
“I loved my students as if they were my own and I am so sorry that I hurt them with my actions,” Coates wrote, adding, “My students looked to me to do the right thing and I failed them.”
A victim impact statement submitted to the court from the St. Thomas More school did not ask for a specific sentence, but stated: “We pray that this process will enable Ms. Coates to face the human consequences of her actions and give her an opportunity to rehabilitate herself.” | 2022-08-04T11:26:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Catholic school principal, former teacher of year, sentenced for theft - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/dc-catholic-school-principal-former-teacher-year-sentenced-theft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/dc-catholic-school-principal-former-teacher-year-sentenced-theft/ |
Conservatives pioneered direct mail to stoke discontent. It worked.
How the right keeps fueling division on the most fraught issues with great electoral success
Perspective by L. Benjamin Rolsky
L. Benjamin Rolsky is an affiliated fellow at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and a history teacher at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, N.J.
A 2019 Virginia mailer.
With the 2022 midterm elections heating up, conservative direct-mail campaigns have started efforts to target high-profile Democratic politicians, notably President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.). In fact, a recent mailing encouraged recipients to open an 8-by-11 envelope to “learn why politicians like these are to blame for increased crime.” And the instructions were abundantly clear: “Please complete and return the enclosed survey within three business days.”
Such mailings are part of a larger campaign launched by political action committee Citizens Behind the Badge to expose how “anti-police politicians in 2022 are handcuffing police and emboldening criminals.” The mailing possesses multiple components: a bombastic cover page, a multiple-question survey, a passionately written letter and an appeal for funds.
This type of hyper-specific, sensational messaging is a tried-and-true political strategy with deep roots. American conservatives, in particular, have relied on direct-mail marketing with clear goals: to raise money, advertise programs, mobilize pressure on public officials and recruit new members for citizen action groups and PACs. Most importantly, the medium has allowed political consultants and advertisers to channel discontent and resentment into the public square as their preferred form of political engagement. Rather than winning people over with ideas exclusively, this tactic enables the right to stoke discontent and fear to great effect — all in the name of winning elections.
Barry Goldwater’s famous presidential defeat in 1964 ironically gave birth to the modern form of direct mail. As part of the newly formed organization Young Americans for Freedom, conservative consultant Richard Viguerie began his political career organizing Goldwater’s direct-mail campaign. Despite Goldwater’s loss, the mailing lists that came out of the campaign proved to be invaluable for future conservative candidates, including the disgruntled Southern Democrat George Wallace, who ran as a third-party candidate for president in 1968, and later as a conservative Democrat in 1972 and 1976. Viguerie’s lists made Wallace a viable candidate because they drew from a wellspring of consistent conservative donors willing to give. For example, between 1974 and 1976, Viguerie raised more than $6 million for the Wallace campaign alone.
During the 1970s, New Right strategists, notably Viguerie and Kevin Phillips, realized that direct mail was the perfect delivery system for the bombastic “social issues” of the day, which included issues such as the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and civil rights. Viguerie set about composing copy for the highest conservative bidder. In 1974, he wrote a series of letters for fellow New Rightist Howard Phillips’s Conservative Caucus. “Dear friend,” the letter began, “are you as sick and tired of liberal politicians as I am? Force children to be bused; appoint judges who turn murderers and rapists loose on the public; force your children to study from school books that are anti-God, anti-American … If so, why don’t you join the Conservative Caucus?”
Political operatives had long used such fear, intimidation and doubt to win elections by encouraging political participation that depended less on informed deliberation, and more on one’s immediate fight-or-flight response. But during the 1970s, New Right consultants and operatives, experts in both copywriting and advertising, realized that they could better market conservative ideas to the American people by matching their message to a particular communicative medium. In this case, direct mail: abrasive by both choice and strategy.
The goal? To apply cutting-edge marketing principles to the conservative movement by drawing upon outrage and resentment through single-issue politics, thereby bypassing more “liberal” mainstream media circuits like television news. As such, silent majorities based on law-and-order politics could be stitched together largely outside the view of the public eye — including Democrats and liberals alike. This is one reason the religious right appears to be always and ever on the proverbial “rise.” It returns to the fore when seemingly least expected.
Direct mail also helped New Right operatives coordinate between conservative American citizens and newly developed political action committees by raising money for the latest New Right causes. For example, in 1979, Viguerie and consultant Paul Weyrich began courting evangelist Jerry Falwell for a leadership role in a PAC that would soon be known as “Moral Majority.” Its purpose? To organize conservative Protestants politically in a manner that arguably had never been done before, as part of an imagined community known collectively as the religious right.
Indeed, the brilliance of direct mail was how Viguerie connected multiple mailing lists within one conservative constellation — all while raising money. Individuals who gave to one cause (like the National Rifle Association) were often tethered together with those who gave to an entirely different cause (like Moral Majority), but both were united under a New Right banner, or more appropriately, a mailing list. “Moral people didn’t get anywhere until they discovered direct mail,” Viguerie once remarked. “Now we can go directly to our people; people who will be with us on abortion or gun control or prayer in school — whatever the issue might be — through direct mail.”
This is what made New Right organizing so effective — it focused on issues that hit readers in the gut, allowing movement leaders to organize resentments, fears and feelings of discontent and then turn them into legitimate political grievances. It was, as political scientist Larry Sabato once observed, the “poisoned pen of politics.” Citizens began to see politics as one liberal calamity after another, without knowing exactly why.
Former president Donald Trump embodies everything direct mail is about, down to the proverbial shock value of its unique blend of information, entertainment and fact. It helped him win the presidency in 2016 — and the Republican Party today continues to rely on direct mail to continue its abrasive approach to social issues.
But it is important to remember that such divisive issues exist in public life because conservative consultants and operatives have learned how to match issue selection to technique, to great economic and electoral effect. This particular skill is as much about presenting substantive ideas to the American public as it is about the presentation itself. “We’re trying to make money,” Viguerie once admitted in an interview, “but we’re also concerned with perpetuating a political philosophy.”
Since the advent of the internet and, more recently, social media, such techniques have only become more sophisticated and ubiquitous in American public life. While millions of Americans still receive direct mail at their respective addresses, much of the copywriting and labor have migrated to virtual spaces, especially through personalized email. The goal remains the same, however: to remind recipients of their interests, and to give them ways to actualize them politically. And the other side of the aisle has yet to catch up. As one Democratic strategist of the 1970s noted: “Liberals used mail to pay the bills. Conservatives used it to move the country.” Hard to argue any differently — especially today. | 2022-08-04T11:26:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Conservatives pioneered direct mail to stoke discontent. It worked. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/04/conservatives-pioneered-direct-mail-stoke-discontent-it-has-worked/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/04/conservatives-pioneered-direct-mail-stoke-discontent-it-has-worked/ |
The policing of pregnancy and homeland security are intimately enmeshed
Why the post-Dobbs abortion landscape is so different from pre-Roe
Perspective by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz is F. Wendell Miller associate professor of communication studies and gender, women’s and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa and author of "Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime."
Police surround the Arizona Capitol on June 24 in Phoenix after protesters reached the front of the Senate building following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
To be pregnant in the United States is now more dangerous than ever. This is not simply due to rising maternal mortality, a broken health-care system or the fact that criminalizing abortion renders pregnant women or other pregnant people acutely vulnerable. These facts are compounded by the perilous combination of pregnancy, policing and digital surveillance in what is now a post-Roe America.
Recent headlines have focused on how contemporary digital surveillance renders seeking abortion care intensely fraught in the shifting post-Roe legal landscape. Data, experts note, can be easily acquired and weaponized against anyone who does not carry a pregnancy successfully to term. This is neither a dystopian hypothetical, nor is it a new trend. The criminalization of pregnancy has been steadily on the rise for decades, intensifying acutely alongside the rise of U.S. homeland security culture.
While the policing of pregnancy and the homeland security state may seem unrelated, they are in fact intimately enmeshed. Reproductive surveillance, coercion and control is a durable and devastating pattern in U.S. history — and one that has historically intensified alongside nationalism and perceived threats to the nation.
Our dystopian present is deeply rooted in how motherhood has long been imagined as a vehicle for the nation. Consider a few examples from history. The strict regulation of reproduction proved critical to the founding of the U.S. republic as a white-supremacist colonial state. Historian Linda Kerber notes that, in lieu of enfranchisement, wealthy White women were to perform citizenship through mothering — to birth those who would inherit and shape the fledgling nation. Early Colonial bans on interracial marriage and the strict enforcement of White women’s fidelity all but ensured a growing White population.
White women’s compulsory motherhood stood in stark contrast to the sexual and reproductive abuse of Black and Indigenous women in the early republic. Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts documents how enslaved Black women were denied motherhood. Their children were born into bondage and designated enslaver property by law. Thus, White men’s rape of enslaved Black women was a key weapon in perpetuating slavery and establishing White wealth across generations. The colonization of the Americas more broadly relied on sexual and reproductive violence, with White colonizers leaving detailed accounts of rape and murder of Indigenous women, attesting to its centrality in the broader project of White nation-building.
The mechanisms of reproductive control shifted alongside social and political changes, but reflected enduring investments in the United States as a White nation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the establishment of Native boarding schools destroyed Indigenous families and communities through forced child removal. Widespread anxieties over White women’s sexual freedom in particular prompted passage of the draconian Comstock laws in 1873, which prohibited the circulation of information related to sexual and reproductive health. At the turn of the 20th century, President Teddy Roosevelt famously decried “race suicide,” centering a decline in White birthrates in his domestic agenda as the popularity of eugenics and scientific racism rose precipitously.
After World War II, the White suburban baby boom was greeted with widespread pronatalist enthusiasm. This happened even as cultural panics erupted regarding “overpopulation,” fueling the expansion of state eugenics programs that targeted women of color, people with disabilities and immigrants in particular. More than 60,000 people were sterilized against their will in the United States during the 20th century. Latinas, Black women, Indigenous women, queer people and people with disabilities were disproportionately targeted. As middle-class White women’s reproductivity was lauded as an emblem of postwar patriotism, poor women and women of color struggled against a state that forcibly curtailed their capacity to bear children at all — another example of reproductive regulation in service of a narrow vision of the nation.
In the 21st century, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ushered in a new era of security in the United States. It prompted seismic shifts in the formal architecture of the state and the proliferation of surveillance and policing in the name of protecting the “homeland.” Among other changes, the 2002 Homeland Security Act initiated the largest restructuring of government in more than 50 years, creating the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) central to its operations. Federal expenditures dedicated to homeland security skyrocketed, and a lucrative security industry has grown exponentially in the decades since, with global revenue projected at $172.5 billion this year alone.
With unprecedented scale, investment and technological capacity, the homeland security state became a point of proliferation for modes of surveillance and policing that have long been imposed on poor communities and communities of color in the United States. Despite the fact that far-right extremists pose the greatest terrorist threat to the United States, and have for some time, DHS continues to target Muslim Americans and immigrants for surveillance and punishment. An increasingly militarized police force is deployed to stifle the cries of unarmed protesters from Occupy Wall Street to Standing Rock to Black Lives Matter — even as the violence of white supremacy is afforded ample license to threaten the very core of our democracy.
This takes place in a cultural context of surging White Christian nationalism that rehearses familiar tropes about “anchor babies” and stokes fears over being “replaced.” The policies and technologies at DHS’s disposal have been entwined with the same concerns that long drove reproductive control: making the United States a White nation.
The state’s obsession with security in the DHS era has helped drive the uptick in and uneven distribution of pregnancy surveillance and prosecutions in the United States.
In recent years, pregnant women have been criminalized for falling down a flight of stairs, disclosing substance use disorders, refusing a Caesarean, miscarrying in a high school bathroom, suffering stillbirth and attempting suicide. These stories point to a disturbing pattern of state abuse that especially targets women of color, immigrants and low-income women for pregnancy criminalization and punishment — holding individuals simultaneously responsible for and powerless over their pregnancies. It is a logic that positions pregnant individuals against the fetuses they carry, diminishing the rights and needs of women and pregnant people as the state claims a vested interest in fetal protection. All of this was evident even pre-Dobbs. Which is to say: All of this took place in a world where pregnancy termination was still recognized as a constitutional right. The criminalization of abortion in the homeland security state will both aid and sanction these trends.
The recent history of the homeland security state provides the broader cultural context for a new era of reproductive violence that includes, but is not limited to, the evisceration of Roe. For example, we have witnessed the cruelty of an immigration system that forcibly sterilizes women in ICE custody and separates children from their primary caregivers at the U.S.-Mexico border — a policy implemented as a strategy of migrant maternal deterrence specifically, but one that draws on a long pattern of family policing more broadly.
The presence and the force of homeland security as a powerful mechanism of the state and a mode of thinking justifies intrusion and violations of privacy in general — and, as is the case in Dobbs, the denial of a right to privacy altogether. We tend to think of homeland security in fairly narrow terms — and specifically, vis-a-vis the war on terror — but it has long since included reproductive coercion and control.
History tells us who will suffer most. Women, immigrants, poor people, people of color and LGBTQ people will continue to bear the brunt of reproductive surveillance and punishment. All of this is deeply anti-democratic. The loss of bodily autonomy and the expansion of state policing coincide meaningfully with other forces that diminish the political power of the people, including attacks on voting rights, gun control and freedom of assembly. In this way, the loss of Roe in the homeland security state is not simply the loss of an essential right to reproductive health care and bodily autonomy. Also at stake is the capacity to fight for those rights at all. | 2022-08-04T11:26:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The policing of pregnancy and homeland security are intimately enmeshed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/04/policing-pregnancy-homeland-security-are-intimately-enmeshed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/04/policing-pregnancy-homeland-security-are-intimately-enmeshed/ |
By Vijai Nathan
Marquita is 38 and is a data scientist. She also operates a luxury transportation service. She is looking for someone who is “handsome, tall, kind, ambitious” and a “great listener.” Jayson is 38 and an assistant school principal. He is seeking someone who’s “a business executive” or in “upper management” and “who loves sports, … the outdoors and beaches.” (Daniele Seiss)
“I wanted to meet someone who I wouldn’t meet in my regular routine,” said Jayson, 38, about his decision to sign up for Date Lab. “I was married for seven years, and I’m not a slide-into-somebody’s-DMs kind of person.” The Annapolis resident, who works as an assistant school principal, hopes in future relationships he will be “unapologetically” himself.
As an African American man, he has tended to tone himself down in “professional and academic arenas.” “I wasn’t fully myself out of fear that I would scare people off,” he said. But he is not doing that anymore. “I like to laugh, talk trash and make inappropriate jokes.”
We matched Jayson with Marquita, 38, a D.C. resident who works as a data scientist during the day and operates a luxury transportation service in the evenings. When Marquita, who is ready to settle down and find a partner, submitted her online application she wasn’t familiar with Date Lab and didn’t realize that her date would be written about in The Washington Post. She decided to go ahead anyway but was still “definitely nervous,” she said. Plus, “it was my first blind date ever.”
She has been in a long-term relationship but has never been married. She recently took a break from dating apps because of a “bad run of incompatibilities.” The other way that she has met potential mates is when she’s driving and “men roll down their window and say ‘Hey beautiful!’ and we hold up traffic while we exchange numbers.”
We sent the duo to Dauphine’s, a restaurant specializing in New Orleans cuisine, in downtown Washington. Marquita arrived a few minutes past 7 p.m. and spotted a man at the bar. “I was like, ‘Oh my God! I’m not attracted to him!’ ” she said. Much to her relief, the host led her past the bar to the second floor to meet Jayson.
Jayson, who saw Marquita entering the restaurant, recalled that “it was a good first impression. She’s an attractive woman.” Marquita said Jayson was “nice-looking.” She appreciated that Jayson broke the ice during the photo shoot and made her comfortable. “We were laughing and talking during the pictures, and things lightened up,” she said.
Over drinks — sparkling water for him, wine for her — they talked about their jobs and families. “At the root of who we are, we are both hard-working and independent people,” said Jayson. “She is an independent woman and I’m attracted to that.” Marquita, who went to college in Baltimore, told me she felt she “connected” to him when he talked about growing up in West Baltimore.
Around 8, things started to take a turn for Marquita. “I felt like he talked about himself a lot, a whole lot. He went from college all the way up to marriage in the first hour, and I didn’t get a word in. That was a red flag for me.” Part of the problem could have been that the restaurant was loud, Jayson said. “It was hard to hear across the table. I didn’t wanna be full-on awkward and move my chair right next to her.”
However, Marquita could hear him loud and clear. “He said he’s not looking for a relationship; he said he never wants to be married again. I’m really looking for someone to match with. He just wants to get back in the dating pool.”
“She asked me if I would like to get married again, and it’s a hard firm no,” said Jayson. “I saw that take her back a little bit.” About two hours into the evening, he showed her a picture of his three boys — ages 18, 7 and 5. “I think it shocked her a little that I was so open with being a father, but I’m going to be who I am — and who I am is a father.”
While Marquita respected his commitment to fatherhood, she “didn’t feel like it was a compatible match. I have no kids, never been married and live in D.C. He’s got three kids, just got divorced and lives near Annapolis. I can do one kid, but I don’t want an already made family.”
At the end of the date, Jayson said he made the move to exchange numbers. “I said, ‘Hey, take my number and hit me up anytime if you want to.’ And she said, ‘I am a traditionalist and you should ask for my number.’ And I thought, ‘She’s spicy, I kind of like that.’ ” So, he formally asked for her number.
Jayson told me he’d like to hang out with Marquita again but without “any romantic expectations.” I asked him if he had any red flags during the date and he said no, but “I feel that she’ll probably have red flags on me.”
Jayson: 3.5 [out of 5].
Marquita: 3.
They exchanged friendly texts but made no further plans.
Vijai Nathan is a writer and comedian in Washington.
Date Lab: The night’s playlist didn’t match the vibe | 2022-08-04T11:26:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Date Lab: It started off well. Then it took a turn. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/04/date-lab-it-started-off-well-then-it-took-turn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/04/date-lab-it-started-off-well-then-it-took-turn/ |
Video of the 2-year-old’s interaction with the restaurant mascot has gone viral, racking up 3.6 million views by early Thursday
“Thank you! Thank you! It’s great to be here with you to celebrate these amazing birthday stars!” Chuck E. said over the loudspeaker.
Safa’s mother, Natyana Muhammad, captured the exchange in a 15-second clip that had racked up 3.6 million views by early Thursday. Muhammad claims the employee playing Chuck E. Cheese on July 30 at the franchise in Wayne, N.J., “racially discriminated” against her daughter, giving out high-fives to several White children before they “PURPOSELY ignored my black baby.” In a tweet, she said that the employee ignored her when she confronted them and that the manager working that day “made excuses” about what happened to her daughter.
“She's so sweet, she's so cool, she's so smart,” Muhammad, 29, told WABC. “And that was actually my first time witnessing someone ignore her or make her feel like she's invisible.”
Chuck E. Cheese did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post early Thursday, but in a statement to NJ.com, the company said it is “saddened” when customers like the Muhammads have “a less than perfect experience.” Chuck E. Cheese thanked the Muhammad family for alerting them to what happened and giving the restaurant manager a chance to apologize and “address their concerns in person.”
“Our goal is to create an inclusive experience for children and parents of all ages, races, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, and learning differences,” the statement said. “Our mission is to provide a fun and a safe place ‘Where A Kid Can Be A Kid,’ and all cast members are trained to ensure that we live up to this promise.”
The alleged snub at Chuck E. Cheese comes after a pair of similar incidents at a Sesame Street-themed amusement park near Philadelphia. On June 18, four employees dressed as characters ignored a 5-year-old Black girl during a meet-and-greet, according to a $25 million federal lawsuit alleging the theme park has engaged in “pervasive and appalling race discrimination,” the Associated Press reported.
In a separate incident about a month later, a woman posted a nine-second video that shows an employee at the same amusement park dressed as Rosita — a turquoise Muppet from Mexico who debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1991 — giving several parkgoers high-fives before seemingly blowing off her Black daughter and niece as the girls clamored for hugs, The Post reported. A day after the video was posted, Sesame Place Philadelphia apologized, saying the employee didn’t intentionally ignore the girls and was “devastated about the misunderstanding.”
Sesame Place apologizes after Muppet seems to snub Black girls in video
Muhammad told NBC News that Safa was attending a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Because her daughter had never seen the company’s mascot, Muhammad started recording, excited to capture her toddler’s reaction.
After the alleged snub, Muhammad stopped rolling, approached Chuck E., tapped him on the shoulder and let him know her daughter was standing right there. “And he ignored me,” she said.
“Her demeanor changed from — she was excited, happy, jumping, high-five — to when it was time to take a picture, just stood beside him,” Muhammad said, imitating how her daughter became physically closed off.
“I hugged her, told her that I loved her and she never has to—”
The mother’s voice cracked, emotion halting her for just a moment.
“ — beg for love. Because she is loved — by many.” | 2022-08-04T11:26:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chuck E. Cheese mascot intentionally 'ignored my black baby,' mom claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/chuck-e-cheese-racial-snub/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/chuck-e-cheese-racial-snub/ |
Interviews with primary voters show fatigue with Trump’s divisiveness and interest in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Former president Donald Trump makes an appearance at a rally in support of GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters and other Republicans on July 22 in Prescott Valley, Ariz. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
PHOENIX — Dianne Kennedy voted a straight Trump ticket in Tuesday’s Arizona primary, casting her ballot for the former president’s endorsed candidates in every race.
But when it comes to Donald Trump’s own potential White House run in 2024, Kennedy isn’t sure if she’d support him again.
“There’s so much hatred toward him, it’ll just tear up the country,” Kennedy said in an interview outside her polling place in Paradise Valley, Ariz., near Phoenix. “If he does run, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Tuesday’s primary results across the country were unquestionably a show of strength for Trump’s enduring influence over the GOP. His preferred candidates, all of whom embrace his false claims of mass fraud in the 2020 election, led up and down the ballot in Arizona. State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who resisted Trump’s demands to overturn the election and testified to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, lost his primary for a state Senate seat. In Michigan, pro-impeachment Rep. Peter Meijer lost his reelection bid, and Trump’s pick also won the gubernatorial primary.
But interviews with dozens of Republican primary voters here suggest that voting for Trump’s preferred midterm candidates is not the same as eagerly wishing to vote again for Trump himself. While these voters continued to express support for Trump and his agenda, many doubted he would be the best nominee for president and showed openness to potential rivals, most often Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Such views align with recent polls and focus groups suggesting softening enthusiasm for a third Trump campaign. A New York Times-Siena College poll in July found that 49 percent of Republican primary voters said they would support Trump again. In focus groups since the Jan. 6 committee hearings began, anti-Trump Republican strategist Sarah Longwell observed a distinct drop-off in Trump’s support, with no participants wanting him to run again, after dozens of panels in which half the people supported Trump and the rest were open to it.
Longwell said these voters aren’t being persuaded by the hearings so much as they’re exhausted with the Trump circus and bored of his fixation on the 2020 election, when they would rather hear him attack Biden and blame the Democrats for inflation.
“Now it’s like there’s people who are hard nos explaining to the soft pro-Trump-running-again people why it’s a bad idea,” Longwell, who co-hosts the Bulwark’s “Focus Group” podcast, said in a recent interview. “And if you’ve done as many of these as I have, that is a notable difference.”
Longwell cautioned that she had seen past instances of people drifting away from Trump after major news events such as his defense of white-supremacist marchers in Charlottesville or his suggestion that injecting bleach could treat the coronavirus. One reason this time might be different is that voters now have other leaders to choose from, such as DeSantis, who Longwell said is the most frequently named alternative.
Arizona, in particular, has been a hotbed of fervor for Trump and his false election claims. Fox News’ early call that Joe Biden won the state — the second Democratic presidential nominee to do so since 1948 — enraged Trump and led him to claim in an election night speech that the race was being stolen. He pressured state and party officials to reject the results, and Republican state lawmakers launched a widely panned review of Maricopa County’s ballots that still ultimately agreed that Biden won. Trump’s endorsed candidates in the state have championed the former president’s claims, including Kari Lake for governor, Blake Masters for U.S. Senate and Mark Finchem for secretary of state.
Even here, though, and even among people who supported Trump’s candidates and their election falsehoods, voters expressed fatigue with Trump’s brashness and divisiveness.
“I’d prefer he didn’t run again because it’s not good for the country,” a woman named Kelly who declined to give her last name after voting at a church in Scottsdale. “He can get more things done with honey. He rubbed people the wrong way.” Asked about possible alternatives, she offered that “the Florida guy is good.”
Richard Smouse, a retired software engineer who voted for Trump’s endorsed candidates on Tuesday at a pool in Chandler, Ariz., said he’s not opposed to Trump running again but is open to others as well. “We definitely need a strong candidate,” Smouse said. “There are other strong candidates, like Ron DeSantis.”
The distancing from Trump reflects longer-running ambivalence among some Republicans who liked aspects of his presidency but often cringed at his conduct. Greg Skidmore, a 49-year-old accountant in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, said Trump has done good things but thinks he “rattles too much and does too much on Twitter.” He said he would like to see DeSantis run.
“I just think he’s got what it takes, from the candidates that are possibly going to run in 2024 that could possibly beat Trump,” Skidmore said.
Robbie Hodges, an aerospace engineer who also voted at the pool in Chandler, said he liked Trump’s accomplishments but would rather have a president who can work across the aisle. “I don’t like that he’s so divisive,” Hodges said. “Stuff needs to be done, and I don’t know if he can when half the country is so against him.”
Hodges said DeSantis can also be “harsh for some” but is “able to explain himself better” than Trump.
Emily Cook, 56, a Republican from the Mesa area who works in health care, said she voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, followed his endorsements in the Arizona primary, and is “undecided” about whether she believes Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. But for 2024, she’s eying DeSantis, citing his legislative agenda and fewer controversies.
“I worry if they both run, they’ll split the vote and neither one of them will win; that’s my fear,” she said. “Of the two, at this moment, I would lean to Ron DeSantis, but I could flip-flop.”
Some Trump supporters said their allegiance was undimmed. Derek Dana, who also voted for all of Trump’s picks on Tuesday, said he would love for Trump to run in 2024 — “hopefully sooner,” a reference to reports that Trump may announce his campaign before the midterms in November.
Gigi Marteney, a 53-year-old Republican who is a mental health specialist for children, said she heeded Trump’s endorsements and would vote for him a third time. She also expressed interest in DeSantis, 43, for his appeal as a younger candidate.
“He’s much younger,” Marteney said. “We need someone who’s going to relate to the younger people, too.”
Other Republican voters had hardened in their opposition to Trump. A man who identified himself as Chris and declined to give his last name came to vote in Scottsdale with a mock-up ballot that he and his wife had prepared, with none of Trump’s picks selected.
“I’m a Republican, but I dislike Trump and his endorsements,” he said. “His criteria seems to be ‘who believes I won the election.’ I voted for him both times, but since then I really do not like him now and definitely prefer he not run again.”
David James, a Republican voter in Chandler, said he voted against Trump’s picks because of their claims about widespread voter fraud. “There’s no voter fraud; the courts have already proven that,” James said, alluding to the Trump campaign’s failed lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 results.
Even though he’s a Republican and voted for Trump in 2016, James said he expects to vote for Democrats this fall. | 2022-08-04T11:27:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump voters back his candidates, but some aren't sold on a 2024 bid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/trump-voters-soften-2024-presidential-bid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/trump-voters-soften-2024-presidential-bid/ |
50 years ago, Uganda ordered its entire Asian population to leave
A new data set explores mass expulsions around the world
Analysis by Meghan Garrity
Fifty years ago, on Aug. 4, 1972, Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of the country’s entire Asian population, giving them just 90 days to leave. Amin accused Asians of refusing to integrate, evading taxes, discriminating against African traders and encouraging corruption. Like nationalist mantras we hear around the world today, he declared that the economy should be in the hands of Indigenous African Ugandans.
In 1970s East Africa, “Asians” referred to a broad spectrum of people with origins in the Indian subcontinent. They arrived in Uganda with British colonization — first as indentured laborers, and later as immigrants from British-controlled India. Preferential colonial policies helped this group dominate retail trade, commerce and the skilled professions. After Ugandan independence in 1962, Asian “middlemen” were a daily reminder to Africans of the legacy of colonial rule — and the exclusion of the Indigenous population in the management of their own economy.
Many of the over 50,000 Asians expelled were British nationals, but they had restricted passports that did not grant automatic entry to Britain. But nearly 20,000 were Ugandan citizens. They became stateless with the expulsion decree — denied their Ugandan nationality and not considered nationals of any other country. Expelled Asians could depart with just $120 and a maximum of 485 lbs. of personal effects. Nearly all fled to distant countries they had never known, from Britain and India to Austria, Morocco, Canada and even Latin American countries.
This wasn’t an isolated incident
According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, at the end of 2021 nearly 90 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide. What makes Uganda’s expulsion of 50,000 Asians distinct? Unlike most displaced people, the Asians expelled from Uganda weren’t fleeing conflict or natural disasters.
Instead, the forced displacement that year is what political scientists call a mass expulsion. That’s when a government implements an ethnically targeted policy to remove a group of people, en masse, without individual legal evaluations and refuses to allow them to return. Although mass expulsions are rare, they continue to happen.
In a new data set published in the Journal of Peace Research, I document 139 mass expulsion events around the world from 1900 to 2020. Far from an isolated case, the Ugandan Asian story is illustrative of a much larger problem. Over the past 50 years governments have initiated expulsions at an average rate of 1.56 per year — and expelled over 30 million citizens and noncitizens.
What countries expel?
Mass expulsions occur all over the world. Since 1900, most expulsions have occurred in Europe (37 percent). Sub-Saharan African countries have implemented about a third (31 percent) of expulsions since the turn of the 20th century, followed by governments in the Middle East and North Africa (10 percent), East Asia and Pacific (10 percent), and Latin America and the Caribbean (10 percent).
Are mass expulsions implemented only by “unquestionably evil” dictators, as The Washington Post obituary described Idi Amin? Far from it. Authoritarian and democratic regimes alike have adopted mass expulsion policies. In fact, 46 percent of expelling regimes since 1900 were what political scientists call anocracies — countries with a mix of democratic and authoritarian features. Authoritarian regimes like Amin’s Uganda comprised 37 percent of expulsion cases. And democratic countries, including the United States, France and the Dominican Republic, account for 17 percent of the cases in the data set.
Who is targeted for expulsion?
In Uganda, Amin’s initial expulsion decree targeted Asians with foreign citizenship, but he later expanded the order to include Asians with Ugandan citizenship as well. Amin was not unique in this regard. Governments often claim to exclusively expel noncitizens, but also sweep up citizens. This was the case in the United States in the 1930s and again in the mid-1950s when the government simultaneously expelled Mexicans and Mexican Americans with U.S. citizenship. Since the foundation of expulsion is the removal of certain identity groups, legal status is irrelevant (or at least less relevant) to the expelling regime.
While mass expulsion is a less extreme policy than other elimination strategies, like genocide, it’s still devastating for those affected. Uganda’s Asian expellees lost their livelihoods and life savings overnight. In the mass scramble to depart, families were separated and communities torn apart. Economic devastation, political disenfranchisement and loss of social ties were some of the individual consequences of the expulsion.
Why are Africans dissatisfied with democracy? Think corruption.
But is expulsion effective?
Given the public pressure in Uganda to return the economy to Black Africans, Amin’s “economic war” on the Asian community was domestically very popular. Yet Amin’s approach did not change life for most Ugandans. Though only 1,500 Asians remained at the end of the 90-day expulsion deadline, unequal asset redistribution left the poorest Ugandans — peasants, pastoralists and urban workers — in the same difficult economic situation as before. Amin’s military allies co-opted the income and assets of the departing Asians. And Uganda’s stable and prosperous economy turned to shambles.
Since expulsion does not address the root causes of problems governments claim to resolve, it’s not uncommon to see the same group targeted for expulsion multiple times. This was the case with Mexicans in the United States (in the 1930s and 1954-1955); Haitians in the Dominican Republic (1991, 1996, 1999 and 2015), and the Congolese in Angola (2003, 2008, 2011 and 2018).
In Uganda’s case, Amin fled the country in 1979. In 1986, President Yoweri Museveni invited the expelled Asians to return. To this day there is a vibrant Asian community in Uganda.
Lessons from Uganda 50 years on
Reflecting on the 1972 experience of Asians in Uganda allows for refocused attention on these types of policies today. Amin’s expulsion may seem anachronistic but is emblematic of expulsion events around the world. In fact, countries expelled over 2 million people in the five years from 2015 to 2020.
Immigration policies are contentious, but per international law no country can deny a citizen their right to nationality, nor force a noncitizen out of the country without an individual evaluation of their case. Yet 50 years after Uganda’s crisis, mass expulsion persists.
Meghan Garrity (@mmgarrity) is a political scientist who researches ethnic conflict, forced migration and nationalism. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. | 2022-08-04T11:27:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mass expulsions are rare, but continue to happen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/uganda-idi-amin-asians-1992/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/uganda-idi-amin-asians-1992/ |
Faiths unite against gun violence on anniversary of Sikh temple shooting
Family members of those killed at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin attend a vigil in 2013 to mark the first anniversary of the mass shooting. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Just weeks after his mother was killed by a white supremacist in a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., Harpreet Singh Saini testified before a U.S. Senate panel. His goal was to lobby the federal government to start tracking hate crimes against Sikhs. He was just 18.
The shooter “killed my mother while she prayed. He shot and killed five more men. All of them were fathers, and all of them had a turban like me. Now people know all of our names,” Saini said during that 2012 testimony. A seventh person later died from their injuries.
“This was not supposed to be our American story,” Saini said then.
“I asked the government to give my mother the dignity of being a statistic,” he says now, looking back.
Three years after his testimony, the FBI began to officially track hate crimes motivated by anti-Sikh bias.
He was 12. He had just moved to America. Then his Sikh father was murdered.
Now, to memorialize Friday’s 10th anniversary of the Aug. 5, 2012, mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin — which remains the deadliest act of anti-Sikh hate in U.S. history — Sikhs are standing in solidarity with other faith communities that have since fallen victim to mass gun violence and white supremacy.
The temple, or gurdwara, will hold a 48-hour continuous prayer service beginning Friday. It also plans to host an interfaith bridge-building workshop, a “Who are Sikhs?” presentation and turban-tying demonstrations. A candlelight vigil Friday will honor those who died 10 years ago. Religious leaders, along with local and federal law enforcement officials, will discuss ways to respond to hate crimes against places of worship.
Since the shooting, the Sikh Coalition has encouraged its supporters throughout the country to devote at least one day each year to seva, or selfless service. The National Day of Seva has been ongoing since 2013 to honor the lives lost at Oak Creek, and this year, Sikhs and their supporters are hosting community service events in cities across the country, from Los Angeles and Salt Lake City to Indianapolis and Detroit. Volunteers will be serving hot meals, providing school supplies and planting trees.
After the FedEx shooting, Sikhs in Indianapolis feel targeted — again
They’re also urging Congress to move forward with three pieces of legislation that seek to protect minority religious communities. One measure would expand the availability of information on domestic terrorism. Another would provide federal grants for houses of worship seeking to increase building security. The third would close a loophole barring the Justice Department from prosecuting certain hate crimes.
To Rucha Kaur, community development director for the Sikh Coalition, a big “part of the Sikh ethos is to step up and serve.”
“I think it’s important to make sure that we’re being inclusive, that we’re recognizing that hate and violence is a problem across many communities. I think it’s really important that we all stand in solidarity together,” Kaur said.
It’s also about celebrating the community’s resilience and the spirit of chardi kala, or eternal optimism, Kaur said.
“Just recognizing Oak Creek and remembering Oak Creek is really important. It often gets forgotten when we talk about such absolute mindless tragedies in this country,” Kaur said.
‘Breathe! Push!’ Watch this Sikh activist’s powerful prayer for America.
Pardeep Kaleka, executive director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, and civil litigator James L. Santelle called the Oak Creek attack “a warning of the increasingly public and violent role that white supremacy would play in the next decade” in a recent column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Kaleka’s father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, was one of the people killed in the shooting.
In an online congressional hearing convened in late July by the Sikh Coalition, multiple clergy impacted by mass shootings spoke about the strength of interfaith connections. Among them were Pastor Eric S.C. Manning of the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine Black worshipers were shot and killed in a 2015 mass shooting, and Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshipers were slain in 2018.
Myers said that soon after tragedy struck at his synagogue, “the Sikh community reached out to us instantly — both locally and nationally.”
“That’s when I came to learn that we have so much more in common than what separates us. They warmly welcomed me to a club that no one wants to belong to,” Myers said. “I came to realize there was much strength I can draw upon from that community, to help me in my process of grieving and moving forward.”
When mass shootings target a marginalized group, trauma ripples through those communities
Manning began as pastor for Mother Emanuel a year after its shooting. And when the shooting happened at Tree of Life, he recalled at the hearing, he reached out to Myers “to lend a voice and to say that we’re here.”
Manning said the church began to embrace a ministry of presence to stand with communities “who go through these type of hateful acts where racism comes up and we are murdered because of either our religious affiliation, our color.”
“I try to be there to listen and to be a part of the collective body — to share and to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” Manning said.
For Saini, now 28, one consequence of the shooting that killed his mother is that Sikhs have to be more cautious. The gurdwara now has a security guard. “This is sad, because gurdwaras are supposed to be open to anyone,” he said.
How security transformed a temple in Wisconsin after bloodshed
“Sometimes it feels like what happened in Oak Creek was ignored,” Saini, who was also present at the July congressional hearing, said. “It has been really painful to watch other communities like Pittsburgh and Charleston go through what we went through.”
Ten years ago, his older brother was the one supposed to testify, he said. But Saini had a difficult time grieving after the shooting. His brother recommended he speak instead, as a way to cope with their mother’s death and “get his feelings out.”
Their mother was warm and loving and “gave her all every day” to provide for her sons, Saini said. He holds on to a joyous memory of traveling with her to India just before the shooting.
“For those of us who lost loved ones,” he said, “it means missing them and honoring their memories every day.” | 2022-08-04T11:28:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sikhs mark 10th anniversary of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, temple shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/04/oak-creek-sikh-temple-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/04/oak-creek-sikh-temple-shooting/ |
U.S. Air Force pilots will use augmented reality helmets to train against the most advanced Chinese and Russian fighter jets
The U.S. military is investing billions into virtual reality, artificial intelligence and algorithms to modernize the way it fights wars. (Shutterstock)
In the near future, “Top Gun” may get a reboot.
Roughly one year from now, fighter pilots will begin flying with helmets outfitted with visors that can augment reality and place digital replicas of enemy fighter jets in their field of vision. For the first time, pilots will get to fly in the air and practice maneuvering against imitations of highly advanced aircraft made by countries like China and Russia.
It’s also part of the U.S. military’s investment of billions into virtual reality, artificial intelligence and algorithms to modernize the way it fights wars.
The pilot training solution, created by military technology start-up Red6, will be rolled out to the Air Force first as part of the company’s $70 million contract with the branch. Company and former military officials say the technology will be a safe, cheap and realistic way to ensure America’s pilots are prepared to battle the best fighter planes in the world.
“Better, faster, cheaper,” said Daniel Robinson, founder and chief executive of Red6. “This is the way we’ll train [pilots] in the future.”
The military wants ‘robot ships’ to replace sailors in battle
For decades, the way America trains its fighter pilots has changed little. Aviators from the Air Force and Navy often start their training flying on a Northrop T-38 jet, often using a similar syllabus to one that’s been around since the 1960s. From there, they train on planes — such as F-22 or F-35 fighter jets — that they’ll fly during their career.
A crucial component to training is imitating battle. To do so, the military provides its pilots a combination of flight simulators and actual flying to sharpen their skills. The Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, widely known as “Top Gun,” inspired a blockbuster movie franchise that introduced millions to pilot training techniques.
But the military faces significant issues in training fighter pilots. Using simulators cannot replicate the feel of being in the air and maneuvering against an opponent, said Red6 board chairman and retired Air Force Gen. Mike Holmes, though they are budget friendly. On the other hand, putting pilots in the air to train is costly — ranging anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000 per flying hour depending on the aircraft — and dangerous. Pilot accidents have been on the rise, reports indicate, with 72 in fiscal 2020.
Moreover, when pilots go up in the air to sharpen their combat techniques, the military typically contracts opponents for the fight. These companies that pretend to be aggressors often rely on aircraft that aren’t as sophisticated as fifth-generation fighter jets used by Chinese and Russian militaries.
Holmes said this is worrisome. For two decades, pilots have trained to fight against targets in the Middle East. But now, China and Russia are higher priorities, and the United States is less prepared to battle against their more capable, and highly advanced, fighter jet squadrons.
“To keep relevant,” he said, “we’re going to have to push up our training game over the next several years.”
Robinson, a former fighter pilot with the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force, said the idea for Red6 and its augmented reality training program occurred in 2017. That’s when he met his company co-founder, Glenn Snyder, who had created a virtual reality system to help train racecar drivers by simulating various racetracks.
Robinson said he reached out to the U.S. Air Force, which acknowledged it was looking for better, cheaper ways to train pilots. From there, Robinson and his team set about adapting the car racing virtual reality technology to flight simulation.
The helmets resemble normal ones, but the visors display fighting scenarios that pilots can react to in the air — all while seeing the world around them. They use proprietary data from a private-sector military intelligence company, Janes, and U.S. government intelligence agencies, to ensure their digital models are close to real life simulations.
The military wants AI to replace human decision-making in battle
Allowing pilots to train against accurate simulations in the air, rather than other human pilots would be safer for pilots, Robinson said.
In August of 2021, Red6 was awarded a $70 million, five-year contract with the Air Force to deploy the technology. Going forward, it could also be used by other branches including the Navy, company officials said.
Charlie Plumb, a retired naval aviator who flew at “Top Gun” and is on Red6’s advisory board, said simulating dogfighting scenarios with advanced enemy aircraft in the air is imperative to keeping pilots safe in real-life combat situations.
Plumb, who flew an F-4 fighter jet and was shot down in Vietnam, tortured and held captive for over six years, said better training would have helped him. In the Vietnam War, much of the plane fighting happened at low-level altitudes, which required pilots to have better mastery of turning sharply left and right while getting into position to fire a missile at the enemy.
“I didn’t know how to do that,” he said. Plumb does not have a financial stake in the company.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, said an augmented reality training tool that allows pilots to train in the air against simulated enemy aircraft is budget conscious and sensible.
“It’s certainly promising,” said Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Microsoft wins $21 billion Army contract for augmented reality headsets
He added that the technology will still require testing for safety.
Sorin Adam Matei, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of technology and military operations, was more skeptical of the value of the technology. When it comes to augmented reality, he said, it’s more important to make augmented reality solutions for infantry soldiers than for pilots.
“With pilots, augmented reality ... it is and is not that big of a deal,” he said. “We would like our pilots to make decisions before … they need to look down and see that there’s a plane below them.” | 2022-08-04T11:28:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Air Force will use augmented reality for fighter pilot training - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/04/virtual-reality-fighter-pilot-helmet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/04/virtual-reality-fighter-pilot-helmet/ |
Federal funding for high-speed internet expansion could make fiber-optic service easier to find
Fiber-optic internet (often just known as “fiber”) can be staggeringly faster than the DSL, cable or satellite internet connections that many Americans rely on.
It’s also pretty uncommon, relatively speaking. According to a January study from the Fiber Broadband Association, 43 percent of U.S. households can access fiber internet service — but that may soon start to change.
Between a presidential push to expand high-speed internet access and a handful of recent broadband funding announcements from different agencies, fiber service could become much more readily available. That’s especially valuable for corners of the country where reliable internet access is hard to find.
But who’s going to bury all these new cables in the ground? And what does any of this mean for you?
Here’s what you should know about fiber internet and how the government’s internet-for-all push could affect you.
What makes fiber internet different?
For years, American households have largely relied on copper telephone wires or coaxial connections from cable companies to get online. Problem is, there are limits to how quickly data can move through those metallic mediums, not to mention limits on how far signals can go through them before they begin to degrade.
Fiber is different. Instead of relying on metal wires, fiber-optic cables are made of hundreds of hairlike glass strands where data is being moved in the form of light pulses at super fast speeds.
That means the volume of data that can move through a fiber optic cable over time, also known as bandwidth, can be much larger than what you may be getting from your current internet connection. That’s why many fiber home internet providers can offer upload and download speeds of 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) or more, while the average fixed home internet connection in the United States sits at around 225 megabits per second — or about 23 percent as fast as a gigabit fiber connection.
“We don’t really know the upper bounds of a fiber wire yet,” said Chao Jun Liu, a legislative associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We’re still discovering that.”
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There’s another benefit here, too: symmetry. It’s very common for a household to be able to download things faster than it can upload them, and for most people, that’s not really an issue. But as we begin pushing more data out into the world, be it through Twitch streams, YouTube uploads or something else, upload speeds become more of a concern. And as we collectively embrace more new gadgets, the need for bandwidth to keep them all connected grows, too.
That, proponents say, is why a switch to fiber internet is so important.
“Copper is pretty much obsolete. It’s done,” Liu said. “Cable is hitting an upper limit that we will likely meet within the next decade. Fiber could probably meet our needs for the next 30 years, if not 50.”
Why all the fuss over fiber now?
There's going to be a lot more of it.
The sprawling infrastructure bill President Biden signed last year allocated $65 billion to expanding high-speed internet access to all Americans, and the bulk of that money will flow to states and U.S. territories through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program — or BEAD, for short.
BEAD is being handled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and it made clear in a document called a notice of funding opportunity what kind of internet connection it prefers.
“With respect to the deployment of last-mile broadband infrastructure, the Program prioritizes projects designed to provide fiber connectivity directly to the end user,” the notice reads. To help make that happen, each participating state is eligible for a minimum of $100 million in funding, while territories like Guam and American Samoa are entitled to $25 million.
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BEAD isn’t the only internet access expansion program that has a fondness for fiber — even if the word itself isn’t always prominent. Earlier this summer, the Treasury Department’s Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund began awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to states that developed plans to deliver “service that reliably meets or exceeds symmetrical download and upload speeds of 100 Mbps” when at all feasible.
“Whenever you run into 100/100, that’s just code for fiber,” says Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for Consumer Reports.
Who is actually laying all these new cables?
Lots of people.
In some parts of the country, rural electric co-ops — like the ones that lit up farms and rural enclaves in the 1930s — have been begun extending fiber internet connections to their communities. And in Utah, a consortium of cities teamed up to form the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, better known these days as UTOPIA Fiber, to build municipal “open” fiber networks around the state.
Internet service providers like AT&T and Charter also play a major role in laying down these fiber optic cables — usually under a few feet of earth — or stringing them up on telephone or utility poles when possible. But, encouraged by the promise of federal funds, smaller providers are getting into the mix, too.
Uprise Fiber, a small ISP with headquarters in Reno, Nevada, received $27.1 million from the Agriculture Department to help it build fiber internet connections in Pershing County, a roughly 6,000-square-mile chunk of the state’s northwest corner.
“We look at a city like Lovelock, and they are being choked because they can’t grow,” Uprise CEO Sam Sanders said, referring to the seat of Pershing County. The process of digging up the earth and running fiber through the county will be “tough and expensive” and is expected to take about five years, but Sanders is hard-pressed to think of a place more in need of an upgrade.
What does this mean for my home internet service?
It really depends on where you live.
If you’re in a rural area with few options for proper, fast internet connections, you’re exactly the kind of person the federal government’s broadband expansion initiatives are meant to help. But exactly how soon you’ll see a new internet provider to sign up with comes down to your state or territory — when it applied for federal funding, it had to submit a five-year plan for how it plans to use the grant money. Change is coming, but it’ll probably take a while.
If you’re in a suburb, or a metropolitan area, and you already have a reasonably stable internet connection, the effects of this forthcoming broadband push can be harder to suss out.
BEAD’s guidelines for requesting funding mention that, in addition to connecting “unserved” communities where internet speeds don’t meet the broadband standard, states can also use that money for “underserved” locations — that is, places where download speeds don’t exceed 100 Mbps and upload speeds don’t exceed 20 Mbps.
FCC calls 25 Mbps ‘broadband’ speed. The push is on to up it to 100.
That scope means the money meant for high-speed internet projects probably won’t solely go to rural towns and communities. And that could lead to stiffer competition for incumbent internet providers in more places.
The government’s broadband expansion plans will “give a lot of smaller [providers] and cities the money to build out their networks, and that will generate competition against the big ISPs that have been around forever,” Liu of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
Research has shown that there’s a tendency for internet prices to go down and speeds to go up when a provider has even a single competitor, so there’s a chance that your choice of plans — or your monthly bill — could get better. | 2022-08-04T11:28:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How fiber might replace America's lousiest Internet connections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/04/what-is-fiber-internet-explained-infrastructure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/04/what-is-fiber-internet-explained-infrastructure/ |
Thursday briefing: What’s next for the abortion rights movement; Jackie Walorski; Alex Jones defamation trial; and more
The abortion rights victory in Kansas will shape the movement’s next steps.
Why? The scale of the win surprised many people. Almost 60% of voters wanted to keep abortion protections in the state’s constitution, with nearly twice as many people voting than in the 2018 primaries.
Why it matters: Abortion votes are planned in other states, including Kentucky and California, and it could become a dominant issue in this year’s midterm elections.
There’s a drastic teacher shortage across the U.S.
How big is the problem? Some Texas school districts are switching to four-day weeks; Florida is asking veterans without training to step in; and Arizona is allowing college students to teach.
What’s causing this? Experts say it’s a combination of low pay, exhaustion and a feeling of being increasingly under attack.
This is especially bad timing: Students are still trying to recover academically because of the pandemic, and this could set them back even more.
An Indiana congresswoman was killed in a car crash yesterday.
What we know: A vehicle swerved and hit the SUV carrying Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski and two staff members head-on in Indiana. The staff members and the other vehicle’s driver also died.
Who was she? The 58-year-old had served in Congress since 2013 and was the top Republican on the House Ethics Committee.
Finland and Sweden moved one step closer to joining NATO.
The details: The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to admit the Nordic nations into the Western military alliance, a move that would further isolate Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
Later today: WNBA star Brittney Griner returns to court in Moscow, where a verdict is expected soon. She faces 10 years in prison on drug charges.
Threats against election workers continue to grow.
What to know: More than 1,000 have been reported to the Justice Department over the past year, an official testified yesterday. Experts said many threats go unreported, so the real number is probably higher.
What to watch today: Tennessee has primary elections, with a competitive Republican House race on the ballot.
Alex Jones said the Sandy Hook shooting was “100% real” in court yesterday.
Why this matters: The far-right broadcaster and Infowars founder spent years claiming the 2012 school shooting was a “hoax.”
That’s why he’s in court: Families of victims say Jones profited from those false claims and want him to pay. It follows his string of legal losses in defamation cases related to Sandy Hook.
What’s next: The case is now with the jury; the families are seeking $150 million in damages.
Surgeons used virtual reality to separate conjoined twins in Brazil.
Experts had called it impossible: The almost 4-year-olds were connected at the head and shared intertwined brains and vital veins. The final surgery took place in June, but doctors waited to talk about it while the boys recovered.
How they did it: Months of preparation and a “trial surgery” with a team in London, using 3D and virtual reality models to rehearse the procedures.
And now … Hollywood’s “nepo babies” know what you think of them: They have some thoughts. | 2022-08-04T11:28:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Thursday, August 4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/08/04/what-to-know-for-august-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/08/04/what-to-know-for-august-4/ |
Russian prosecutor in Brittney Griner case asks for 9-and-a-half year sente...
U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner is awaiting sentencing in a Russian court for illegal possession of cannabis. (Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)
A Russian prosecutor on Thursday asked a judge to sentence WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner to nine-and-a-half years in prison for drug charges, and the defense team in her trial said the judge was expected to hand down her sentence by evening.
In seeking close to the 10-year maximum, the state’s request ignored the athlete’s plea of leniency. Griner pleaded guilty in July to carrying vape cartridges with cannabis oil into the country.
The prosecutor’s call for a tough sentence for Griner — as well as a fine of 1 million rubles ($16,590) — came amid calls from the United States for Russia to seriously weigh its offer on a prisoner exchange to bring her home.
One of Griner’s lawyers, Maria Blagovolina of Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin & Partners, disputed the severity of the charges and argued that investigators made errors in her case.
The prosecution contends that the 0.702 grams of cannabis found in Griner’s luggage after she landed at Sheremetyevo International Airport in February was a “significant amount.” Griner testified last week that she was in a hurry when she packed, had no idea the items were in her bags and did not intend to break Russian law.
She testified that she uses cannabis oil in the United States for treatment of chronic pain from injuries but knew that carrying cannabis into Russia was illegal. She said she flew to Russia despite U.S. State Department warnings about such travel because she did not want to let her Russian team down. The Phoenix Mercury start plays for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the WNBA offseason.
Blinken, Lavrov discussed potential prisoner exchange for Griner, Whelan
The administration’s announcement of its proposed deal appears to be an effort to curb criticisms of its handling of the Griner case. But the Kremlin has told Washington to refrain from “megaphone diplomacy,” with Russian Foreign Ministry officials repeatedly warning that public calls will not help her cause.
“We’ve made a serious proposal, made a serious offer,” Kirby said. "And we urge the Russians to take that offer because it was done with sincerity, and we know we can back it up.”
Bloomberg has reported that as part of an exchange, Moscow may seek the release of a wealthy Russian businessman close to the Kremlin, Vladislav Klyushin, who pleaded not guilty in a Boston court in January over an alleged $82 million insider trading scam. Klyushin claimed the case against him was “politically motivated” because of his ties to the Russian government. | 2022-08-04T12:26:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian prosecutor in Brittney Griner case asks for 9-and-a-half year sentence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/brittney-griner-russia-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/brittney-griner-russia-court/ |
LaQuandra Nesbitt, left, then-director of the D.C. Department of Health, speaks about monkeypox on July 18 as Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) listens. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Standing in front of a crowd last month along the District’s 14th Street corridor, outgoing D.C. Health director LaQuandra Nesbitt warned of an emerging viral outbreak facing the city and detailed her department’s strategy to get residents vaccinated.
It was a familiar scene, with new circumstances.
Nesbitt became an unexpected face of D.C. city government more than two years ago as the coronavirus pandemic brought public health decisions under daily scrutiny, often bearing the brunt of criticism from residents and D.C. Council members who disagreed with her rationale.
Now, as the District evolves into a hot spot for monkeypox, it will have to tackle this latest public health crisis without Nesbitt, who stepped down last month, ending her nearly eight-year run at the helm.
As Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) begins her search for a new director, advocates for the gay and bisexual men in the city — who carry the highest risk for monkeypox — say the department’s next leader should build on the public health strategy Nesbitt’s team established for coronavirus that has generally been effective: partnering with community organizations to reach residents who may distrust city government or lack access to resources.
And while they’ve noticed a smoother rollout overall with the monkeypox vaccine compared to coronavirus, they felt that some savvy residents eligible for the inoculation had an easier time accessing shots when they first became available, reigniting conversations about health equity.
“I feel very remorseful for the many people who used Nesbitt as a punching bag for the mistakes D.C. had [during coronavirus], she did the best she could do and was not the only decision-maker,” said longtime education advocate Mysiki Valentine, who is Black and gay. “I hope the next director will have experience in [our underserved neighborhoods]; the city needs to take a grass-roots approach to change outcomes for Black and Brown communities.”
Nesbitt, 44, got into science at the urging of her mother, a blue-collar worker who was convinced that careers in STEM had the strongest future. After dabbling in engineering and biochemistry, Nesbitt leaned into family medicine, earning her medical degree from Wayne State University and master’s of public health from Harvard — even when she encountered barriers. As a 5-foot-9 Black woman — taller in the heels she prefers — Nesbitt occasionally dealt with inappropriate comments from her medical school colleagues.
“It got to the point where people who trained me would tell me I was intimidating — what do you want me to do with that?” she recalled in an interview, describing a microaggression frequently aimed toward Black women in professional settings. “I would just seek training and opportunity from people who weren’t bothered by that.”
As she trained for her degrees, Nesbitt realized that specializing in family medicine meant she could help a wide array of patients: treating a 6-month-old in one moment before evaluating a 70-year-old with chronic health conditions the next. Her desire to create a broad impact through her work ultimately drew her to policy and city government: She joined D.C. Health as a senior deputy policy director in 2008, and went on to lead the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness in 2011. Bowser, upon being first elected as D.C.’s mayor, brought Nesbitt back to lead the health department in 2015.
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Nesbitt’s tenure coincided with significant reductions in infant mortality as well as in new HIV cases in the city, though progress there slowed during the pandemic, and Black and Latino residents still account for a disproportionate share of cases. Nesbitt in 2015 also established the department’s Office of Health Equity, tasked with dismantling barriers to health care and access, particularly in communities east of the Anacostia River.
But at no point was her role as visible as it was during the height of the pandemic, when she appeared almost daily next to Bowser, updating residents about changing trends and policies, notably when credible information about the deadly virus was scarce and public anxiety was at its highest.
In a statement, D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), whose committee oversees the health department, thanked Nesbitt for “leading the District through the toughest time of the covid pandemic when there was not much information being shared from the Trump administration.”
“It was a scramble just to get supplies, implement vaccination policies and establish testing centers across the District amidst mass chaos,” Gray added. “I respect the difficult decisions she had to make to slow down the spread of covid-19.”
As Nesbitt’s profile grew during the pandemic, however, so did public critique — often in the form of questions from reporters and council members about her department’s recommendations to impose or relax mandates and restrictions and how much coronavirus data the city disclosed to the public.
At times, those conversations grew contentious: In May, when several members of the council approached her with questions about a lapse in city data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nesbitt in a letter accused the lawmakers of “undercutting trust in DC Health and public health.”
D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt to step down from role
Nesbit recalled a “harsh, accusatory” discussion with the council in January 2021 about the department’s process for equitably distributing coronavirus vaccine appointments, when doses first became available to the city’s seniors. At that time, seniors from the most affluent wards were making up a disproportionate share of limited vaccine appointments, even trekking across the District to clinics the city had opened in poorer neighborhoods, where outcomes from the virus were more severe.
Some council members, lamenting the unequal toll of the virus across the District, called on D.C. Health to reserve vaccine appointments for people who lived in specific, hard-hit neighborhoods instead of on a first-come, first-served basis. Nesbitt initially responded that it was pejorative to suggest that Black residents were less capable of successfully making an appointment, but the department eventually changed the registration process, allowing only residents of certain Zip codes to sign up for vaccines on select days. Outcomes improved.
“We learned that people with resources and means would drive into communities of color that they had never gone to before to get vaccines — you saw people go from Ward 3 to Ward 8 — and the public viewed that as if the health department did not have an equitable strategy, that was inaccurate,” Nesbitt said at the news conference about monkeypox last month. “But we applied that as a lesson learned. Now, scheduling is done for people of color and not just simply the location.”
Appointments gone in minutes
D.C. Health has already made several adjustments to how it disseminates monkeypox vaccine doses, which are in short supply since they first became available in June. Last week, the department shifted to a single-dose strategy to immunize a greater number of residents. Advocates have generally applauded that move, as well as the department’s overall messaging about monkeypox, which includes a focus on educating high-risk groups.
But just like with the coronavirus, they noticed that more privileged residents seemed to have an early advantage in obtaining the shots.
In late June and early July, before it established a preregistration system for the vaccine, D.C. Health primarily advertised its limited number of monkeypox vaccine appointments through social media, causing a rush that sometimes led to them being snatched up within minutes.
“I had White, gay friends tell me they had multiple devices open in front of them, and they were able to refresh them all at the same time to get their appointments,” said Matthew Rose, a Black, gay activist in the District. “You’re doing this against a whole backdrop of covid and saying we’re going to focus on health equity. Yet those early days for monkeypox did not look equitable.”
The health department is prioritizing racial and ethnic minorities through its preregistration system, Nesbitt said; the city has sought to administer 35 percent of its vaccine doses to Black, African American and Latino men who also meet the other eligibility criteria.
“We want to make sure we’re not in a position in D.C. or nationally where vaccine doses are disproportionately going to affluent communities or are only accessed by gay, White males in monogamous relationships who are not demonstrating other risk factors,” Nesbitt added.
Thus far, results have been mixed: while Black residents made up about one-fourth of the city’s monkeypox cases, they only received about 14 percent of the vaccine doses that had been administered toward the end of July, Nesbitt said. In mid-July, the health department reported that White D.C. residents made up 76 percent of monkeypox vaccinations and 65 percent of cases.
Just like the city relied on churches, community organizations and other credible messengers to cut through coronavirus vaccine misinformation and to lower barriers to access that disproportionately hurt Black residents, Nesbitt is hoping groups that serve the Black LGBTQ-plus community can help close some of the gaps with monkeypox as vaccine appointments become more readily available, and to help minimize stigma related to the virus.
“There are likely Black queer men who won’t get the vaccine because people are not supposed to know they are queer. That’s why it’s even more critical that we eliminate the stigma around monkeypox and bring vaccine doses to the community,” Valentine said. “People need to feel safe getting these vaccine doses; D.C. needs to depend more on those community organizations.”
A spirit of collaboration
After Nesbitt announced her resignation last month, Bowser vowed to launch a nationwide search for D.C. Health’s new director. In the interim, she selected Sharon Lewis, formerly a senior deputy director at the department, to take over.
To properly address disparities in health outcomes that have long persisted in the District, and to lighten challenges in future public health emergencies, advocates say the department’s next leader should have experience working in the city’s underserved neighborhoods — an important step in earning the trust of people who have frequently felt left out of public health conversations altogether.
“Nesbitt did a lot of amazing stuff for the city, but there’s still equity gaps between different races,” Rose said. The next director, he added, “must do the hard work of talking to people who are most impacted and figure out what they need.”
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, a civil rights and urban advocacy organization, said that during the pandemic, many city and health department leaders saw the benefits of tapping into organizations that already had inroads with vulnerable community members — increasing access to services while helping wary residents buy into messaging around health care.
Ideally, D.C. Health’s next director “wouldn’t require a tremendous amount of on-the-job training,” Morial said, and would have familiarity with the city, particularly in areas where health outcomes are the poorest.
“Obviously, they’ve got to go to Dr. Nesbitt and say, ‘Hey, I’m starting out, tell me what I need to know. Any mistakes you made? Anything you wish you had done differently?’” he added. “You need community-based organizations, faith-based organizations working with, talking to and providing access to people. Government can’t do it alone, hospitals can’t do it alone, you need infrastructure that people trust.”
As she departs from D.C. Health, Nesbitt is left with a similar assessment.
“My hope is that as the agency moves forward, we’ll see greater collaboration on these health issues that are so critically important for the city to solve, in our partnerships and across government,” she said. “When we have that spirit of collegiality and are leading with the people in mind, first, we can get things done.” | 2022-08-04T12:31:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As D.C. Health leader departs, vaccine equity again comes into focus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/dc-health-director-nesbitt-depart-monkeypox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/dc-health-director-nesbitt-depart-monkeypox/ |
The United States’ team is ranked Number 1, but England’s team looks promising for next year’s World Cup.
Rachel Daly of England's national women's soccer team celebrates with teammates at London's Trafalgar Square on Monday after winning the UEFA European Women's Championship on Sunday. The team, known as the Lionesses, beat tough teams from Sweden and Spain before defeating Germany in the final. (Harriet Lander/Getty Images)
Watch out America, the Lionesses are coming.
The Lionesses are England’s national women’s soccer team. They won the Women’s Euro Championship this week in high style.
The Lionesses roared through the group matches and then came back in dramatic fashion on a long-distance blast in extra time to beat a strong Spanish team, 2-1, in the tournament quarterfinals. The Lionesses then stormed past traditional women’s soccer power Sweden, 4-0, in a semifinal game that featured a spectacular back-heel goal by England’s Alessia Russo.
American soccer star Abby Wambach, who scored 184 goals in international play during her career, tweeted about Russo’s goal, “I dreamt of scoring a goal like that my whole life. Never happened. Alessia Russo take a bow.”
England has taken the team to heart throughout the tournament. Crowds packed Wembley Stadium, and millions more people watched the matches on television. English soccer fans seemed to love the team’s attacking style of play.
There was even a debate in the country about whether the women’s team should be called “the Lions” like the English men’s team. The controversy seems to have settled down, however, when some commentators pointed out that lionesses (female lions) do most of the hunting and caring of the young cubs.
“Lions are the lazy ones, who lay around in the sun all day,” said Nadine Dorries, who is England’s secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport.
The Lionesses kept up their ferocious fight in the finals, beating the powerhouse German team, 2-1, on a wild and scrambling goal in the 110th minute of the overtime match.
England’s 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II sent her congratulations to the team in a statement that said, “You have all set an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations.”
The Euro tournament may be a warning to the United States women’s national soccer team. European nations and professional teams are investing more money in the women’s game. The European women’s teams are getting better and could be a major challenge for the U.S. women’s team when the World Cup is played in Australia and New Zealand starting in July 2023.
The Lionesses may be like the 1999 U.S. women’s World Cup team. That team, with stars such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Kristine Lilly, won the World Cup that was played in the United States. But more than that, the team got American sports fans, and millions of American girls, interested in women’s soccer.
For women, World Cup soccer has a surprisingly short history
That interest undoubtedly has helped the U.S. women’s national team, which is rated Number 1 in the world and has won four World Cups as well as four Olympic gold medals.
But watch out America, the Lionesses — and the rest of Europe — are coming. | 2022-08-04T12:35:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | European champion Lionesses get England fired up about women’s soccer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/04/lionesses-boost-womens-soccer-in-england/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/04/lionesses-boost-womens-soccer-in-england/ |
Let’s talk about science fiction and horror by new, promising writers
In our final column for The Post, we revisit books we have savored and many more that we hope to read
Review by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar
(Pink Narcissus; Tordotcom; Solaris)
When we began this column, which we pitched as a conversation between two friends, we didn’t quite know how long we would be allowed to be nerdy in front of the world. It has been a privilege to discuss books here for the past three years, but, alas, it’s time for fresh blood — for the blood is the life! Our farewell column is devoted to new authors we discovered and fell in love with during our time writing for The Post — and others we hope you’ll seek out after we have moved on.
Silvia: Premee Mohamed wrote a number of short stories before turning to novels. With “Beneath the Rising” (2020) and its sequels, she has demonstrated an interest in vibrant science fiction that skews a little Lovecraft — things coming for us from the void! Zin E. Rocklyn, another name to watch, explored a similar space last year with “Flowers for the Sea” (2021) in which a refugee from a flooded kingdom is trapped on an ark, and there are shades of cosmic horror.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel puts a feminist twist on ‘Dr. Moreau’
Horror of a different stripe permeates the pages of Eric LaRocca’s tales. He started in the small-press scene and is making the jump to a larger imprint with a September reprint of “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes.” The novella that lends its title to this collection centers on two women exchanging increasingly disturbing messages in a chatroom. Gabino Iglesias is also getting a big press unveiling with the supernatural thriller “The Devil Takes You Home.”
Lavie: Of the new writers we discovered during the writing of this column, Lavanya Lakshminarayan was a favorite. Her novel “The Ten-Percent Thief” is due in 2023, and it’s an ambitious science-fiction mosaic novel set in a future Bangalore. Samit Basu’s “The City Inside,” a near-future dystopian tale of surveillance set in India, was published this year, and I’m excited to see what he’ll produce next. I also enjoyed the wonderfully vivid short stories of Nadia Afifi; she has novels out with a small press and, I hope, more to come.
I’ve been a big fan of E.J. Swift since she began publishing with “Osiris” a few years ago. She writes literary sf with environmental themes, and her latest, “The Coral Bones,” is an ambitious tale set over three timelines. I raved about Tlotlo Tsamaase’s debut, “The Silence of the Wilting Skin,” and I am eager for her next outing.
Silvia: Suyi Davies Okungbowa has shown a knack for expansive world-building with “Son of the Storm,” the first in an African-inspired fantasy series. It reminds me of all the best aspects of Charles R. Saunders’ “Imaro” books from the 1980s.
Science fiction, fantasy, thriller? Books we love but can’t define.
I wrote a novel about music and magic (“Signal to Noise”), so it’s perhaps no surprise that I was taken with the concept of Alex Jennings’s recently released “The Ballad of Perilous Graves,” which centers on an alternate version of New Orleans where music is magic and the fate of the world might depend on songs.
Last but not least, I am glad to see that Mariana Enriquez, who already made a splash with two short story collections, is now poised for the publication of her first novel in English. The evocatively titled “Our Share of Night” (2023) is a haunting generational horror story. It’s a delight to see American publishers beginning to recognize that Latin American authors exist beyond the boundaries of magic realism, and, hopefully, Enriquez paves the way for more authors to get their chance at translation.
Lavie: Translation remains a major stumbling block for publishers, and it is often small presses that pick up the slack. Fans of near-future sf will welcome Francesco Verso’s “The Roamers,” in a translation from Italian by Jennifer Delare, and I am hopeful publishers will pick up Shimon Adaf’s sf masterpiece, “Kfor,” following publication of his “Lost Detective” trilogy this year in a translation from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan. Adaf’s backlist is some of the most impressive cross-genre work I’ve read. I would also love to see Han Song’s masterpiece, “Subway,” finally translated from Chinese, following Eric J. Guignard’s impressive “Exploring Dark Short Fiction #5: A Primer to Han Song” collection in 2020. If you’re not familiar with his work, Han Song is one of the foremost Chinese sf writers working today.
The sf field is vibrant and diversifying quickly. Of the new writers popping up in the short-story magazines, Zahra Mukhi (“I Call Upon the Night as Witness”) and Mário de Seabra Coelho’s (“Ootheca”) are impressive. I suspect we’ll be hearing these names again. How about you, dear reader: Who is your favorite new writer?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new book is “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.” Her previous works include “Mexican Gothic,” “Velvet Was the Night” and “The Return of the Sorceress.” Lavie Tidhar’s most recent novels are “The Escapement” and “The Hood.” | 2022-08-04T12:52:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar discuss favorite sf and horror - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/04/science-fiction-horror-best/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/04/science-fiction-horror-best/ |
The central bank projects the United Kingdom will enter into a recession by the end of 2022
The Bank of England raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points on Thursday, its largest increase in 27 years. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The Bank of England raised its primary interest rate by half a percentage point — its largest increase since 1995 — and projected the United Kingdom would be in a recession before the end of he year.
The rate hike was announced Thursday in a statement following a Wednesday meeting of the bank’s monetary policy committee. It received the support of eight out of nine committee members, while the ninth member preferred a more modest rate hike of 0.25 percent.
Central bankers also warned that the United Kingdom would enter into a recession by the last quarter of 2022, pointing to spiking energy prices that have weighed on Europe’s economy since Russia attacked Ukraine.
“The latest rise in gas prices has led to another significant deterioration in the outlook for activity in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe,” the bank wrote in its announcement.
Changing the core interest rate represents one of the strongest tools available to policymakers as they seek to tamp down inflation. Increasing the rate is meant to make it more expensive to borrow, something that slows down business investment, homebuying, and debt-fueled transactions more broadly. Higher interest rates are intended to decrease the rate of inflation, but some economists worry that they can also increase the risk of recession as investment falters.
The Bank of England follows the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has been raising rates at a faster clip. Last week, the Fed raised interest rates by 0.75 percent, its fourth hike this year, as it argued that short-term economic pain is the only way to avoid longer-lasting problems.
The U.S. rate-raising campaign has met with repeated stock-market sell-offs as investors recalibrate their portfolios in line with each change. The Dow Jones industrial average is down more than 10 percent year to date even after its more recent rallies.
England’s FTSE 100 index, which tracks the 100 most capitalized companies on the London Stock Exchange, was up 0.5 percent on the news Thursday. | 2022-08-04T12:52:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bank of England delivers biggest interest rate increase since 1995 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/04/bank-of-england-interest-rates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/04/bank-of-england-interest-rates/ |
Similarly, journalist Wesley Lowery tweeted:
jon stewart is an excellent example of the power of celebrity when [it’s] wielded strategically and unrelentingly on a single issue - and also, it says a lot about our system that an issue like *this would require a celebrity’s unrelenting advocacy for years in order to be addressed
Lowery is right. It does say something about the US political system and about democracy in general. But it isn’t necessarily something bad.
Here’s the history. The people involved in the American Revolution wanted to establish what they called republican government — some form of rule by all citizens, or what we usually call democracy. This wasn’t new to the 18th century US; there is a long line of political theorists and political participants who had similar republican views.
All of this can be extremely frustrating to those aware of injustices who can’t manage to get them addressed, especially when they believe the majority is on their side. But democracy isn’t the rule of majorities. It’s the rule of the people, all of them (yes, all, not just Madison’s narrow idea of “all”), right or wrong. That this often comes down to majority vote is fine. The Madisonian goal, however, isn’t to translate majority opinion into government policy; indeed, Madison expresses doubt (in “Federalist No. 10”) that majorities as such even exist in the large polities he was imagining, which are surely much smaller than what the US has become. The goal is self-government. And if that makes something that “should” be easy into something much harder? It might be a trade-off worth making.
Pelosi Has Nailed the Optics of Her Taiwan Trip: Matthew Brooker
Democrats’ Climate Bill Is a Clean Energy Dream. That’s Not Enough.: Tyler Cowen
Democrats Need More Joe Manchins: Matthew Yglesias | 2022-08-04T12:57:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democracy Is Hard. It’s Supposed to Be. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/democracy-is-hard-its-supposed-to-be/2022/08/04/f88afab0-13f1-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/democracy-is-hard-its-supposed-to-be/2022/08/04/f88afab0-13f1-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
The US needs more of this. (Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden has put housing at the top of his pile of priorities. In June, the White House came up with a laundry list of efforts to address the shortage, from providing incentives for states and localities to relax zoning restrictions to deploying money from the 2021 Covid rescue package toward affordable housing and investing to maintain public housing that is falling into disrepair.
But for all the oomph the president and his advisers hope to signal, the laundry list is not up to the task. “Small carrots,” noted Gilles Duranton, an economist who specializes in real estate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The administration, he added, is “chasing trillions with billions.”
America faces a housing shortage mainly because existing homeowners don’t want anybody to build more homes — at least not in their vicinity. And they have the power to bend the political system to their will. Think of the state referenda and city council meetings that put caps on building heights, impose green spaces around new construction and require that homes sit on a minimum of as much as two acres — enough space to raise a couple of cows.
These restrictions raise building costs and hence the price of housing, pushing it above the means of young families and other first-time homebuyers. Current homeowners know that if the restrictions went away, the price of their homes would fall.
Research on the greater Boston area by economists at the University of Warwick, the University of Toronto and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that the number of housing units rises sharply when density constraints are relaxed — whether by allowing more multifamily buildings, relaxing height limits or simply allowing building on smaller lots. Rents in multifamily buildings fall as much as $144 a month for each new unit added due to the new rules.
The problem is that the value of single-family homes also falls, in part because the added housing weighs on perceived neighborhood quality: House prices drop by 9.17% per unit when density regulations are relaxed and multifamily homes are allowed. “While lowering housing costs through zoning reforms may help first-time homebuyers and lower-income renters,” the economists wrote, “it comes at the expense of — and thus will likely generate substantial political opposition from — current homeowners.”
What will it take to reduce the opposition? Homeowners can be bribed. Or, to put it in a nicer way, they might relent if they are made whole, compensated for the declining value of their homes. The problem is that such a bribe would cost much more money than the American political system seems willing to tolerate.
Duranton and the Spanish economist Diego Puga tried to get their heads around this amount by putting a price tag on the regulations that limit housing construction in more than 100 cities across the US. Using 2010 data, they took the value of farmland near city borders, which had not been subjected to zoning limits and other municipal regulations, and added the typical local construction costs for single-family homes plus a gross profit for the developer of 17%.
Then they compared this number with the market price of a similar house in the city. The difference, averaging about $100,000 per home (up to half a million dollars in cities such as San Francisco and San Jose, California), amounts to the cost of regulations. Multiplying that by the number of homes in urban America produced a staggering total cost of $12 trillion. The price of our NIMBY housing politics.
This number comes from more than 10 years ago, when the housing market was still reeling from its 2008 implosion. Today, the price tag is probably much larger. Say we decide that half of the housing restrictions make some sense, perhaps from an environmental perspective, the unnecessary half would have cost homeowners $6 trillion, somewhat less than half a year’s worth of gross domestic product.
Compare that with the most expensive policy in the federal government’s housing arsenal: the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, before it was slashed as part of President Donald Trump’s tax reform, it was worth just $66 billion. And nothing in the Biden administration’s current list of initiatives is even near that large.
Can something be done on the cheap? The kind of competitive grant process envisioned by the Biden administration to encourage municipalities to loosen housing restrictions, at a cost of a couple of billion dollars, might encourage more building in, say, Dallas — where regulations are relatively lax and housing is already comparatively cheap. But to spark a building boom in the super-expensive cities will require real money.
In 2018, Minneapolis became the first city to loosen single-family zoning and allow two- and three-unit houses on some land previously zoned for single-family use. Berkeley and Sacramento, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as the state of Oregon, followed suit.
But nothing much happened in these places. Indeed, the changes may have been politically possible only because they wouldn’t work. The research in Boston found that allowing builders to put up multifamily buildings, without accompanying changes to allow greater density, had a negligible impact on housing. In Minneapolis, the Star Tribune reported last year, only 23 building permits had been issued for new duplexes and triplexes in areas where they would not have been allowed before the change.
“Simply lifting bans on multifamily housing may not actually create more housing options,” wrote Sara Bronin, who teaches law and architecture at Cornell University. Many other hurdles — mandatory public hearings, rules on lot configuration, building size and occupancy regulations — are also at work. “These zoning requirements kill housing by a thousand cuts.”
This is costing us dearly. Bloated housing values segregate American society. They are forcing a huge transfer of resources from the young who don’t yet own homes to the old who do. What’s more, economic research has established that workers get a productivity boost when they move to a large busy city such as Los Angeles or New York. To the extent that housing costs prevent this from happening, they make the nation poorer.
Unfortunately, it seems we cannot afford the bribe.
• House Inventories May Not Save Prices After All: Jonathan Levin | 2022-08-04T12:57:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The US Should Bribe Homeowners to Accept Greater Density - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-us-should-bribe-homeowners-to-accept-greater-density/2022/08/04/ca8fbc80-13ed-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-us-should-bribe-homeowners-to-accept-greater-density/2022/08/04/ca8fbc80-13ed-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Analysis by Matthew Brooker | Bloomberg
The stock fell 34% on Wednesday, settling back to a more reasonable market cap of $203.5 billion. At that $1,100 closing level (a mere 141 times the IPO price), the company is still trading on a price-earnings ratio of 3,836 times, which is what investment analysts sometimes like to call “richly valued.” The party may not be over. The shares had a similar drop of 36% as recently as July 25. Since then, they’ve risen 25 times.
Matthew Brooker is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering finance and politics in Asia. A former editor and bureau chief for Bloomberg News and deputy business editor for the South China Morning Post, he is a CFA charterholder. | 2022-08-04T12:57:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This $200 Billion Bubble Stock Is No GameStop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-200-billion-bubble-stock-is-no-gamestop/2022/08/04/715421a0-13f3-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-200-billion-bubble-stock-is-no-gamestop/2022/08/04/715421a0-13f3-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Odessa Kelly in Washington, D.C. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
She’s a long shot for Congress — but trying to make history anyway
Odessa Kelly, who could be the first openly gay Black congresswoman, is running in Tennessee’s newly redrawn 7th District
It was the kind of summer afternoon every D.C. resident is familiar with: lazy in the sense that the air isn’t inclined to move, even under the whirring fan of a neighborhood bar; sweat pools at the backs of your knees if you sit down long enough.
But you wouldn’t know that by looking at Odessa Kelly.
When Kelly recently stepped into As You Are, a queer bar in Southeast D.C., she cut a cool, confident and very tall figure, wearing a white polka-dot blazer over a white T-shirt, skinny blue jeans and white loafers. And crowning her long locs was a massive pair of black headphones, from which she’d been playing Kendrick Lamar and Pusha T.
Since declaring her candidacy for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, the former college basketball player, public servant, activist and mother of two has been thinking a lot about how to best present herself.
“As an openly gay Black woman, 6-foot-tall, you know, masculine-leaning, I want to make sure I show up well,” said Kelly, 40.
If elected in November, Kelly would make history on multiple fronts: She would be the first Black woman to represent Tennessee and the first openly gay Black woman to be elected to Congress, ever. (This could be true of three other candidates this year: Aisha Mills and Queen Johnson in New York and Kimberly Walker in Florida, according to the LGBTQ political advocacy group Victory Fund.)
It’s the kind of history Kelly says her hometown of Nashville is ready to make. But to get there, Kelly not only has to defeat a well-established Republican incumbent, she has to win a redrawn district that voting rights advocates have called among the most gerrymandered in the country.
It is a battle emblematic of the South’s political tensions: Liberal urban areas that are quickly growing, diversifying and gaining political influence versus a powerful conservative infrastructure that has been able to maintain its power, in part, by redrawing electoral maps and increasing voter restrictions.
If Kelly is sweating the odds, she isn’t showing it. Her background has only increased her willingness to fight despite the challenges.
“Running up the hill might be hard,” Kelly said of her chances. “You just prep to run up the hill harder.”
Even under the best of circumstances, Kelly would have been an outside shot to win a congressional seat. When Kelly announced her candidacy last year, she was slated to represent Tennessee’s 5th District, an area that encompasses all of Nashville — a Democratic stronghold in the state for nearly 150 years. She had expected to face a tough primary against longtime Rep. Jim Cooper (D).
But that was before the Tennessee state legislature drew a new election map, which was approved this year. It slices the city of Nashville, home to fewer than 700,000 people, into three parts, dispersing one of the few Democratic districts in the state into three conservative-leaning ones.
How redistricting is shaping the 2022 U.S. House map
Kelly is now the sole Democrat running to represent what has become the 7th Congressional District, which extends from the Kentucky border through the state’s center and down to the edge of Alabama.
During a midterm election in which the Democratic majority in Congress balances on a razor’s edge, splitting a solid Democratic district into three Republican seats would not only diminish the voting power of Nashville, one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, but it could also help shift power back to House Republicans by the end of the year.
State Republicans have denied that the new district lines are gerrymandered.
“The recommended maps are fair and legal, disturb no currently serving legislator and preserve, as much as possible, current district composition,” Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R) said in January, Nashville’s WKRN TV reported.
But Democrats and voting rights advocates have called the redistricting a brazen attempt to dilute Black political power in the state.
In January, Cooper told the Tennessean: “Gerrymandering is an extinction event for the political life of Nashville.” Cooper has represented the city for nearly 20 years, but after the new map was released, he opted not to run for reelection.
“Nashville has no representation anymore,” said Allison Anoll, assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Instead, the new districts — which affect 2.5 million Tennesseans, according to Anoll — mean Nashville’s residents must compete for attention and resources with counties that have vastly different populations and interests.
Sekou Franklin, a professor of political science at Middle Tennessee State University, framed the impact this way: Future lawmakers “don’t have to step foot in Nashville to govern.”
That would be “devastating” for the entire city, but it would effectively silence Black Nashville residents, Franklin added. Republicans could campaign on wedge issues that have appealed to conservative, White voters and still “win” Black communities.
Kelly won’t let that happen, she said.
A homegrown activist, Kelly prides herself on her roots in East Nashville — a historically Black part of the city. But her 14-year stint as a public servant began with “some shady stuff” her father pulled on her, Kelly said.
“I’m right out of college, waiting for the WNBA to call me so I can go hoop, living off of credit cards,” Kelly recalled. On her 23rd birthday, her dad gave her a box wrapped with a big bow. But when she opened it, she found nothing but a pair of scissors — “for me to cut up my credit cards” — and a job application.
For Kelly, it was a wake-up call to start the next phase of her life. Her dad had suggestions: She was great with people, why not work at her local community center?
She fell in love with the work at Napier Community Center, Kelly said. She spent time with the neighborhood’s senior citizens, from whom she learned how to play piano and Cutthroat Spades. In the afternoons, the center became a hub for the neighborhood’s youth.
“I could have retired doing that job,” Kelly said. But after 14 years, two kids and climbing her way up to management, Kelly found she was still living paycheck to paycheck.
She was also witnessing the kind of systemic problems that felt beyond her ability to control as a community center worker, she said: entrenched poverty, over-policing, gun violence. In 2015, Kelly began working in advocacy, going to community and activist meetings and speaking up about the problems she was seeing.
She got especially interested in labor issues and co-founded the advocacy coalition Stand Up Nashville in 2016. She has since been credited with a couple of big labor wins, including a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that would guarantee the city’s new Major League Soccer stadium would come with substantial community investments.
Like other liberal candidates, Kelly is campaigning on expanding affordable housing, Medicare-for-all, LGBTQ rights and building the kind of green-energy infrastructure that advocates say would help reverse climate change.
But it’s her approach that may make her stand out. Kelly often cusses up a storm, sandwiched with the kind of talk familiar to D.C. policy wonks: procurement policies, labor contracts, infrastructure. She hopes to normalize those kinds of conversations among constituents, she said: “A lot of time, we have bad politicians because we don’t know what to expect from them. So we don’t have an accurate measuring stick.”
But she faces substantial challenges outside of Tennessee’s electoral maps. She has raised over $700,000 — more than the preceding Democratic candidates combined, according to her campaign — but her Republican opponent, Rep. Mark Green, has reportedly raised more than $1.3 million for this election cycle.
She also has to do what Green doesn’t need to: pull together a broad, multiracial coalition and turn out the vote at high levels, Franklin said.
Mobilizing these voters is tough during a midterm election, but Kelly is facing another head wind. Enthusiasm for Democrats seems to have waned nationally and in the state, Franklin added.
Kelly said she believes, with sustained organizing, Tennessee could follow in Georgia’s footsteps in 2020 — when a decade of Democratic mobilizing efforts paid off with two Senate seats and a win for President Biden.
But Franklin is skeptical: In terms of a unified Democratic infrastructure, the state has “a long way to go” before it could catch up with Georgia. Georgia also has among the highest rates of Black voters — the cornerstone of the Democratic base in the South.
Despite the odds, though, experts say Kelly’s campaign isn’t a fool’s errand: In a storied city in danger of losing its political voice, it’s important for marginalized voters to see candidates fighting for them.
“It’s always important to have challengers, to have a race that shows differences in candidates. That’s part of what we think makes a democracy a democracy,” said Anoll, of Vanderbilt. She also said Kelly’s run could fuel the kind of organizing push needed to help Democrats win back representation in the state.
Franklin sees an important symbolic message in Kelly’s campaign. As a queer, progressive Black woman, Kelly represents a version of the American South that has always been present but overlooked.
“Even with all the racial terrorism that existed historically in Tennessee, we have the alternative history, or the more complicated history, of resistance,” he added.
For her part, Kelly is not only game for the challenge, she said she’s confident in her chances. She hopes her teen daughter, who is touring colleges campuses, will go to Howard University — not just because it’s a historically Black college, but because Kelly wants her close by if she’s elected.
And she expects to be out on the basketball court, too.
“I can’t wait to get to Congress and dunk on Ted Cruz and any other Republican who thinks they’re a baller,” Kelly said. “And I will take anybody on my team. Congresswoman Waters, I’ll take her. I’m taking all the OGs. We’re going to go out there and ball on people.”
“Give me the ball. I’m open,” Kelly continues. “I cannot wait.” | 2022-08-04T12:57:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Odessa Kelly of Tennessee could be first openly gay Black congresswoman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/odessa-kelly-tennessee-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/odessa-kelly-tennessee-congress/ |
A new U.S. intelligence finding says that Russian operatives may plant U.S.-provided ammunition on the scene of an attack responsible for the death of 53 Ukrainians
A destroyed building at a prison in eastern Ukraine where at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed last week. (AP)
KYIV, Ukraine — The United States believes Russia is putting together fabricated evidence to make it appear that Ukraine is responsible for last week’s mass killings at a Russian-controlled prison in eastern Ukraine, according to a new U.S. intelligence finding.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence matter, which was first reported by the Associated Press.
On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he will appoint a fact-finding mission to investigate the killings in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine.
Liz Sly, Mary Ilyushina, David Walker and David Stern contributed to this report. Ilyushina reported from Riga, Stern from Kyiv and Walker from London. | 2022-08-04T12:57:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S.: Russia plans to fabricate evidence in Olenivka prison killings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/us-russia-olenivka-prison-evidence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/us-russia-olenivka-prison-evidence/ |
Abortion rights supporters demonstrate outside the House chambers in the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis on Aug. 2. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Indiana and Idaho, two deep-red states, are now front and center in the battle against forced-birth laws. Those who seek to deprive women of their fundamental rights got a rude awakening from the stunning pro-choice victory in Kansas and the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Idaho’s forced-birth law.
Indiana is poised this week to pass one of the most draconian forced-birth laws in the country. Doctors in the state have been providing abortion for Indiana residents and for women traveling from forced-birth states. That will end if the bill passes.
The bill in its current form would ban abortions from the moment of conception unless “necessary to prevent a substantial permanent impairment of the life” of the woman, or unless performed within 10 weeks of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest (before many women know they are pregnant). As Katie Watson, a medical ethics professor at Northwestern University, tells me, “It would be barbaric for Indiana to partner with rapists and further traumatize crime victims.” She adds that depriving victims access to abortion would be “a second assault on children and women, this time by the state that is supposed to protect them.”
Moreover, since terms such as “substantial impairment” are not medical terms, doctors will be left to puzzle out what is “necessary” to meet the standard. For example, does increased risk of death from hypertension count?
The debate in the state legislature was illuminating for Katie McHugh, an Indiana OB/GYN. “While lawmakers prattled on about the future life a fetus might have, there was no talk about the person who is pregnant,” she tells me. "What about the pregnant person’s life and all the important things they’ve already done?” Since the Supreme Court decided women lack fundamental rights, it’s unsurprising that legislators are not focusing on the trauma and suffering they are inflicting.
If Indiana’s ban passes, women there will join the thousands of Americans in other states stranded and without access to the procedure. McHugh says that on a single day, she provided abortions for patients from Alabama, Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky and Texas. If the ban passes, she will need to send them and her Indiana patients who don’t qualify for a exception elsewhere, likely Illinois. She has applied for a medical license in Illinois so she can treat patients there. Even still, Illinois clinics will struggle to absorb the thousands of women who will arrive for abortion care.
In light of the Kansas constitutional initiative’s resounding defeat, Indiana lawmakers should ask themselves: Do they really want to be on the wrong side of an issue that drives so many pro-choice voters to the polls?
Meanwhile, the Justice Department on Tuesday sued Idaho for its near-total abortion ban, arguing it violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires emergency rooms to screen, treat and stabilize patients in medical emergencies. The Justice Department argues that when a pregnant woman’s health is in serious jeopardy, the doctor is obligated under federal law to perform the abortion. But that doctor would be in violation of Idaho’s law, which holds physicians criminally liable for providing abortions.
In announcing the lawsuit, Attorney General Merrick Garland affirmed, “Any state law that prevents a hospital from fulfilling its obligations under EMTALA violates federal law.” He also suggested this won’t be the last suit: “On the day Roe and Casey were overturned, we promised that the Justice Department would work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom. That is what we are doing, and that is what we will continue to do.”
The complaint explains that Idaho’s statute is designed to snare unwary doctors and chill performance of necessary medical care: “The mere performance of an abortion — even in an emergency, life-saving scenario — would subject a provider to criminal prosecution and require the provider to raise one of the law’s narrow affirmative defenses at trial.” That’s right: The state makes it the responsibility of the doctor to prove it is not an illegal abortion.
Moreover, the two affirmative defenses are so tightly drawn as to subject nearly all doctors to the threat of conviction, loss of license and jail time. The complaint explains:
Specifically, the accused physician would have to prove to a jury: (1) that “[t]he physician determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” or (2) in cases of rape or incest, that the woman, or, if a minor, the woman or her parent or guardian, “has reported the act of rape or incest to a law enforcement agency” and the physician, prior to performing the abortion, received a copy of a police report (or, in the case of a minor, a police report or report to child protective services) regarding “the act of rape or incest.”
Imagine a woman who has had an incomplete miscarriage and is at risk of infection and hemorrhaging. Who knows whether an abortion would be “necessary to prevent death”? Doctors might say, well, she might not die, so better not risk conviction and loss of license by providing the appropriate treatment. And if the rape victim or incest victim — even a child — hasn’t made a police report, she is out of luck. She’ll have to endure the trauma of forced pregnancy and labor, no matter the impact on her physical and mental health.
The Justice Department’s action serves as a shot across the bow of all states that passed or are considering abortion bans. Forced-birth extremists better be prepared to defend their monstrous legislation in court — as well as before voters in November. | 2022-08-04T12:58:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Red states, don’t expect your forced-birth laws to go unchallenged - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/indiana-idaho-abortion-justice-department-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/indiana-idaho-abortion-justice-department-lawsuit/ |
Jim Tyrer, then a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, during a 1970 game against the Baltimore Colts. (Diamond Images/Getty Images)
As a young man driving the highways of the Midwest for his sales job, Brad Tyrer would fend off road hypnosis with the radio, navigating the dial as he drove and tuning in whenever he heard his father’s name on sports talk shows.
“I can’t remember how many times I’d be out in the middle of nowhere doing my job driving and there’d be a discussion about NFL Hall of Fame people and they’d mention my dad,” Tyrer said. “It was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing about him in the middle of Iowa’ and they’re talking about why he’s not in the Hall of Fame and it was just kind of curious.”
Jim Tyrer, a standout offensive tackle at Ohio State, played in the AFL for the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs from 1961-73 and spent one season with Washington before retiring after the 1974 season. He was a big part of what made those Texans/Chiefs offenses go when they won three AFL titles, lost to the Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl and won Super Bowl IV. A member of the all-time AFL team, Tyrer seemed a shoo-in to join eight of his former teammates in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which this weekend will hold its annual induction ceremony in Canton, Ohio. Yet he fell short of the necessary votes in 1981, the only time his name has come up for a vote.
Rick Gosselin, a 19-year member of the Hall’s senior committee and former NFL and general columnist at the Dallas Morning News, in an email described Tyrer as “the most qualified candidate in the senior pool. There are hundreds of players in that pool and Tyrer is the only one that was a six-time, first team all-pro. If you are the best at what you do for six NFL seasons, you are a worthy Hall of Fame candidate. Beyond worthy, in fact.”
Then came the early morning hours of Sept. 15, 1980, when, as three of their four children slept in their suburban Kansas City home, the 41-year-old Tyrer shot his 40-year-old wife, Martha, to death in their bedroom before turning the gun on himself.
“We all knew after this happened that something had not been right,” Jim Tyrer’s youngest daughter, Stefanie, said. “This wasn’t the man that we knew. ... You feel like there should have been something you could have done or something you should have recognized. Even though I was 12 or 13, there’s still a little bit of guilt. Why didn’t we pick up on something or why didn’t we know more? … He probably didn’t understand what was happening to him, either.”
What they remember
If Jim Tyrer is never selected for the Hall of Fame, his legacy is secure in the lives of his and Martha’s children. To help remind people of their father’s prowess, if nothing else, the children told their parents’ story, one entwined with their own resilience and success, in an emotional documentary by filmmaker Kevin Patrick Allen. All these years later, their memories of the shots that awakened them, and how they hid until emerging to discover the horrific scene, can naturally result in tears.
They recall Martha as a wonderful mother who attended all of their games, with Jim doing the same as often as he could. But like so many former athletes in a story now all too familiar, Tyrer struggled to navigate life after sports, finding himself spiraling financially at a time when some professional athletes needed offseason jobs to make ends meet.
“I was a 17-year-old,” Brad, the elder of the Tyrers’ two boys and a high school football player, recalled of the evening before Sept. 14, 1980. “I was into myself. I knew my dad went to work and came home at night, but I didn’t really know exactly what he was doing. The night that it happened, I was in my room lifting weights pretty hard because I was trying to get bigger — I was actually measuring my biceps.
“My dad came in, probably around 9, and he basically had the conversation you have with your oldest son,” he continued, choking up a bit. “He had the conversation with me like he knew he was never going to see me again. At the time, it was just so out of context and I was kind of focused on something else. Looking back, I remember that conversation really well. He was saying, ‘You’ve been a good son and I’m proud of you. You need to take care of your brother and sisters.’ It was just out of the blue. I was like, ‘Okay, Dad.’ That was probably about a 20-minute talk, but I know he already knew that he was going to do something.”
Jim Tyrer had spent his last afternoon at a Chiefs game with 11-year-old Jason. The baby of the family, Jason Tyrer recalled that his father was loving but not overly affectionate until that game. “He didn’t hug us a lot, but that game he did. I got this kind of — it felt unusual, you know?”
‘Not even a half-inch thick’
Jim Tyrer, who stood 6 feet 6 and weighed around 300 pounds, was known for having a huge head that caused teammates to jokingly refer to him as “The Pumpkin.” Teammates “would joke that Martha would hire his head out to kids on Halloween,” tackle Dave Hill told The Washington Post in 1980. Ben Davidson, the Raiders’ formidable defensive end, once joked that Tyrer “basically wore a big red trash can as a helmet.”
At a time when blockers could not use their hands and there was scant awareness of the dangers of concussions, repeated head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or CTE — the head was a weapon that Tyrer wielded fearlessly while playing in 180 consecutive games. Stefanie, a pediatric surgical nurse at a Kansas City hospital, was a week shy of her 13th birthday at the time of the shootings. She recalls her father’s special, huge helmet from Ohio State, one marked with his name because no others fit him.
Tyrer was never diagnosed with CTE, which was not recognized by scientists until 2005 and can only be determined postmortem. Tyrer’s autopsy notes that “no intrinsic abnormalities” were identified in his brain, but, “the more we’ve learned and the more we know,” Stefanie said, “I certainly am comforted by what I truly think happened to him.”
Tina Tyrer Moore, the eldest of the four children who was in college at the time of her parents’ deaths, has one of his old helmets. The padding, she said, “is not even a half-inch thick.”
Brad doesn’t remember any specific conversations about whether his father suffered concussions, but he did recall “quite a bit of talk about ‘head pain’ and it seemed that pain had to do with helmets that were too small to fit my dad’s head,” he wrote in an email. “Because they couldn’t get an outer helmet shell large enough, I somewhat remember that they would remove material from the inside (padding and suspension) to allow for more room inside.”
Tina recalls hearing her father complain about headaches and consulting a physician, too.
Brad remembers “a lot of talk about my dad’s head aching ... but the thought was that it was due to a tight helmet, not head trauma.”
Coming to grips with tragedy
Martha’s parents, Truman and Lucille Cline, moved in with their three grandchildren, who were at home after their parents’ deaths, and provided love and security. Tina moved back to the area, leaving the University of Missouri to be close to the family, and went on to become a successful hairstylist. Truman, a Purdue engineering graduate, was the example the children needed of overcoming tragic loss. He had lost both legs and an arm in an auto accident as a young man and went on to become an inventor who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. The Clines were the embodiment of resilience, delivering a message that “we’ve got to keep going,” Brad said.
Now a 59-year-old businessman and father of two sons who lives in Louisville, Brad focused for a while on football and, days after his parents’ deaths, was back on the field at Rockhurst High, a Jesuit all-boys school that is traditionally a Missouri football power. Led by quarterback David Cone, the four-time World Series winning pitcher, the team had state championship aspirations that year and the field was where Brad felt he belonged.
Days later, he kicked what turned out to be the winning field goal in a game against Shawnee Mission West. A born-again Christian, he made his own peace with the worst night of his life just days after it occurred.
“After the funerals, everybody came over to our house and it was just packed,” he said. “Everyone was there — [Chiefs owner] Lamar Hunt and his wife, tons of players and their wives, all kinds of people just packed into this house. To get away from everybody, I went outside and sat down on the concrete patio slab. I put my head down and was kind of whimpering when God came up to me and it was like, ‘Snap to it. Why are you sad? You had two great parents for 17 years. You know nothing. You’ve got nothing to be sad about.’ And it was like a lightbulb went on. I was at peace right then and there with it.”
Jason, who went on to play for two state-championship teams at Rockhurst, played football at the University of Kansas. The father of three boys, he owns a flooring company in the Kansas City area.
The circumstances surrounding both his death and the murder of his wife changed Tyrer’s Hall of Fame trajectory. His chances remained slim as recently as this year, when the Hall’s Board of Trustees increased the number of senior inductees from one to three because of a backlog of candidates whose careers ended more than 25 years ago. For the 2023-2025 classes, a maximum of three inductees per year can be chosen and the selection committee recently chose only wide receiver Otis Taylor, from those same Chiefs teams, to advance to the next round of voting.
A few years ago, the four Tyrer children divided up their father’s things and were reminded again of just how great a player he was. They shared their story in the documentary, but are realistic about their father’s Hall of Fame chances.
“None of us really had been upset or frustrated,” Brad said. “I would think about it, but only every now and then. … We as a group have talked about it and naively thought, ‘Maybe? Who knows?’ As we thought more about it and learned more about it, we thought that maybe if Kevin did the film and if word got out, maybe Dad would get a second look.”
The Tyrers find comfort in the knowledge that much of their father’s football legacy is secure. He is in Ohio State’s Hall of Fame as well as that of the Chiefs. And he is featured in a Pro Football Hall of Fame display of members of the AFL’s all-time team. But they would like acknowledgment, if not recognition, for Martha. They know players’ wives bear a heavy burden and play an underappreciated role.
If it doesn’t come, they have reached a level of understanding. Stefanie refers to this as “perspective,” which to her meant choosing not to have children, preferring to help other youths instead.
“I have a lot of context to compare myself with in a sense that I see some kids who are in such difficult situations,” she said. “I know that my story is nothing compared to the lives that they are living or the challenges that are ahead of them. That gives me a lot of perspective — it shaped how I view the world.”
With that foundation came a sense of understanding of what happened that early September morning nearly 42 years ago.
“I don’t think any of us think we’ve led remarkable lives in terms of what we went through,” Brad said. “I think we all just have lived life, the lives our parents would have brought us up to live.” | 2022-08-04T13:45:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jim Tyrer's murder-suicide and the family he left behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/05/jim-tyrer-murder-suicide-legacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/05/jim-tyrer-murder-suicide-legacy/ |
Darius Adamczyk, chief executive officer of Honeywell International Inc., speaks during an interview in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017. In October, Honeywell International Inc. posted expanded profit margins and the biggest sales gain in three years as new CEO Adamczyk prepared to shed two businesses. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
The onus to pull the trigger on acquisitions is now squarely on Adamczyk, who is even more cautious by nature than his mentor, Dave Cote, who liked to repeat that investors told him when he took over as CEO of an ailing Honeywell in 2001: “Please don’t blow the money.’’
Honeywell certainly has the money. The maker of goods as diverse as jet engines and warehouse automation equipment has $9 billion of cash on hand and could take on more debt if needed to acquire a large company. The company has discussed having cash and debt capacity of up to $27 billion that could be used for acquisitions.
Unlike in other sectors, investors expect multi-industrial companies to manage their collection of businesses like a portfolio manager would stocks, but with real assets. That means growing through acquisitions and exiting markets that have lost their luster through divestitures.
Adamczyk, 56, has done the latter, but not much of the former. In his second year as CEO, Adamczyk spun out the last of the company’s automotive businesses (now Garrett Motion) and even had the temerity to sell the residential electronics unit (now Resideo Technologies) that included the iconic Honeywell thermostat, the product that launched the 137-year-old conglomerate.
But Adamczyk hasn’t been on the purchase side of any large deals. The biggest acquisition on his watch was the $1.3 billion purchase of software maker Sparta Systems, which was completed in February 2021. Honeywell has snapped up a few other fairly small companies, the biggest of which was Transnorm Beteiligungen GmbH, a German maker of automation equipment, for about $490 million.
The argument about prohibitively high valuations is undercut a bit when considering a competitor like Emerson Electric, which contributed $6 billion for a majority stake in a company that combined its industrial software business with Aspen Technology Inc. and $1.6 billion for Open Systems International within the last two years. And those are just the big ones as Emerson CEO Lal Karsanbhai pursues the trend of industrial companies pivoting toward software.
With the spinoffs that Adamczyk completed at the end of 2018, Honeywell’s sales dropped by about $5 billion in 2019 from a record $41.8 billion the previous year. The pandemic hit the company’s aerospace and energy businesses hard, and sales sank to $34.4 billion last year.
While Honeywell has a reputation for using its research prowess to create businesses within the company, that won’t be enough to quell the clamor for dealmaking that will inevitably begin to build. Adamczyk acknowledged this, in a way, to investors during the company’s July 28 earnings conference call when he gave analysts a deeper explanation of why he created a chief operating officer position. (Any notion that naming Vimal Kapur as COO is some kind of imminent succession move should be written off as rank speculation.) Adamczyk said that he was getting too involved in the operations of Honeywell’s multiple businesses, which was taking him away from strategic work like brand-building, customer outreach, business development and, yes, acquisitions.
M&A “is an area that I probably should be spending a little bit more time in,’’ he said on the call.
That’s good news for investors who want to see Honeywell do more deals. But it begs the question of why Adamczyk needs to get more personally involved to come up with targets. He has a team dedicated to examining deals, and in a company as sprawling as Honeywell, the executives and managers closer to the factories and the customers are in the best position to pinpoint targets.
Maybe it’s about Adamczyk putting in more time on a few needle-moving, strategic deals. Here’s one that analyst RBC Capital Markets analyst Deane Dray has in mind and is quite intriguing on paper: Some variation of Honeywell snapping up General Electric Co.’s aerospace unit (which is one of the three main pieces into which CEO Larry Culp is breaking up the iconic conglomerate), merging it with its own aerospace unit and spinning out the combined businesses into a stand-alone powerhouse supplier to all the aircraft manufacturers.
Now that would turn Adamczyk into a deep-end diver and not just a CEO who dips his toe into the shallow end of the M&A pool.
• Consumer-Facing Manufacturers Feel the Pinch: Brooke Sutherland
• It’s Time for GE to Let Go of GE: Brooke Sutherland & Ben Schott | 2022-08-04T14:29:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Honeywell CEO Should Tap Into His Inner Dealmaker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/honeywell-ceo-should-tap-into-his-inner-dealmaker/2022/08/04/5cc53e34-13fa-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/honeywell-ceo-should-tap-into-his-inner-dealmaker/2022/08/04/5cc53e34-13fa-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Michael Andor Brodeur
U Street’s Archipelago is among the 10 bars participating in this year’s Tiki Trail D.C. Customers earn stamps by ordering rum drinks and tiki cocktails at each location through Sept. 5. (Dayna Smith for The Washington Post)
Burger Battle at the Wharf: The Wharf’s restaurants are known for a variety of cuisines — Mediterranean, Vietnamese, oysters — but what unites them is burgers. The D.C. Burger Battle features seven restaurants, including Rappahannock Oyster Co., Kirwan’s and the Brighton, and two Capitol Hill neighbors serving special sliders to raise money for D.C. nonprofit So Others Might Eat. Guests sample the mini burgers while listening to live music and sipping beer and seltzer, then vote for a favorite. Tickets include burgers and three drink tickets. 7 to 10 p.m. $45.
Maren Morris at Merriweather Post Pavilion: Maren Morris further explores the boundaries of pop and country with her latest album, “Humble Quest.” Songs such as the catchy “Tall Guys” are poised for radio play with rollicking, toe-tapping melodies: “I can wear my heels real high / I’m a lover of all types / But there’s something ’bout tall guys, tall guys.” Morris enlisted the production prowess of sought-after pop producer Greg Kurstin, whose lengthy list of accolades includes a Grammy Award for Adele’s 2015 song “Hello” and a nomination for Kelly Clarkson’s 2011 song “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You).” Still, even with its pop sensibilities, “Humble Quest” feels like a return to form for Morris. Sandwiched in between the lighter pop tracks are reflective country ballads such as “I Can’t Love You Anymore,” in which Morris muses on a Midwest lover: “Shoulda known what I was getting in / Fallin’ for a boy from Michigan.” 8 p.m. $45-$125.
[Maren Morris on being ‘kind’ and ‘ruthless’ as a country star]
Anniversary Weekend at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery: Two institutions are celebrating anniversaries in Baltimore this weekend. The Guinness Open Gate Brewery, which debuted as a tasting room in Halethorpe in 2017 before unveiling a brewery, bar, restaurant and gift shop in summer 2018, continues its four-year anniversary celebrations Thursday through Sunday. There are exclusive beers on tap, including a barrel-aged wild ale and a passionfruit-and-jalapeno amber ale. Modern rock band Starcrush performs Friday at 5 p.m., and singer Joi Carter takes the stage at 5 on Saturday. The weekend also features guided tours and tastings, a “Perfect Pint Academy” class for those who want to learn to pour a pint of Guinness (Saturday) and a four-course beer dinner (Sunday). Meanwhile, the Baltimore Orioles, who are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Oriole Park at Camden Yards this weekend, are also getting in on the act: Orioles Hall of Famer Chris Hoiles bartends from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday for “Brews and O’s,” and the Birdland Road Show visits Friday at 6 p.m. with ticket giveaways. Thursday through Sunday. Entry to the brewery is free; classes, tours and the beer dinner have additional charges.
Tiki Trail D.C.: What kind of treasure hunt leads to tropical cocktails and boozy rum drinks? The D.C. Tiki Trail. First launched in 2017 by Brian Nixon of McClellan’s Retreat, the event this year features 10 participating bars, including Archipelago, Service Bar, Tiki on 18th and the Green Zone. Purchase a Tiki Trail map, then order a designated Tiki Trail cocktail to receive a stamp. Those who collect all 10 stamps are invited to a special party in September. Fifty percent of registration benefits Another Round Another Rally, which offers scholarships and grants to underrepresented members of the hospitality industry. Through Sept. 5. $20 for Tiki Trail map; individual cocktail prices vary.
Hip Hop and Shakespeare Workshops at the National Building Museum: Artist Malik Work demonstrates how Shakespeare’s timeless verse fuses with hip-hop beats during these three hour-long classes, showing how the bard and modern rappers use imagery and rhythm in their storytelling. This program is part of “The Playhouse,” the National Building Museum’s annual Summer Block Party installation, and participation is free with museum admission. Friday at 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. $7-$10.
Immerse yourself in Shakespeare with tours, poetry and on-stage games
Cocktails and Conversations Artist Talk: Shop Made in DC supports local creators by selling their crafts, apparel and baked goods, but in the second-floor gallery space of its Georgetown location, it’s offering a spotlight to allow customers to hear directly from artists as part of the shop’s “Bold” series. Three speakers — artists Beezy Young, Bria Edwards and Emily Fussner — discuss their daring works and the messages they carry in a conversation moderated by D.C. painter Nora Lieberman. Cocktails will be available during the talk. 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Free.
Gil Shaham with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap: Lately, there have been all sorts of chances to hear the National Symphony Orchestra outside of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The group has performed throughout the spring at the newly opened Capital One Hall and the Anthem on the Southwest D.C. waterfront, but the Filene Center remains a great satellite stage for the orchestra. After recent shows featuring the NSO performing the score for Harry Potter, Star Wars and Toy Story films, conductor Ruth Reinhardt closes the orchestra’s summer vacation with violinist Gil Shaham performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, along with a rousing run through Dvorak’s Ninth, the “New World” symphony. 8 p.m. $27-$72.
‘Slay Them’ Drag Competition at Red Bear Brewing: Red Bear’s monthly amateur drag contest returns for its second season, which finds 2021-22 champion Evry Pleasure hosting alongside Desiree Dik. Audience members vote for their favorite performer on the first Friday of the month between August and January, with the winners going head to head for the crown in March 2023. (Each monthly winner also takes home $100 and a future booking at the NoMa brewery.) After the competition, stick around for a dance party with DJ Twink. 9 p.m. Free.
Pink Sweat$ at the Theater at MGM National Harbor: David Bowden was born on Valentine’s Day, an astrological coincidence that seems to inform the music he makes under the moniker Pink Sweat$: old-school R&B that strips away the contemporary scene’s hip-hop infatuation and is perfect for dimmed lights and romantic nights. On his gentle debut album “Pink Planet,” Bowden focused on instant-classic melodies and heart-on-sleeve sentiments that were complemented by unassuming, in-the-room instrumentation. This year’s “Pink Moon” expanded the collaborator list, allowing him to juxtapose his style with 6lack and Blxst and duet with like-minded singers Kirby and Sabrina Claudio. Curiously, Bowden grew up in a religious household — his father is a minister, his mother a gospel singer — and he wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music until he was 17. But while he rejected the gospel music his parents favored, something must have seeped in: Listen to how he mixes the sacred and profane on “Spiritual,” about a lover with “holiness” in her eyes. 8 p.m. $168-$778.
D.C. Funk Parade on the U Street Corridor: The D.C. Funk Parade started as an anything-goes parade and celebration of U Street, with marching bands and conga lines and costumed dancers banging pots and pans. Before and after the parade, there were performances on outdoor stages and late-night parties at neighborhood clubs. This year, though, the parade itself is on ice, and no streets will be closed to traffic. (Organizers the MusicianShip announced earlier this year that the event is changing its name to the D.C. Funk Festival in 2023.) The Day Festival, originally scheduled for May 7 but postponed because of bad weather, features 18 artists, topped by go-go bounce beat trailblazers Critical Condition Band (CCB) and the Naptown Brass Band. The focus is on four “activation areas” with music and dancing along the heart of U Street: the main stage at the African American Civil War Memorial at Vermont and U, a “soul station” with additional artists at Lee’s Flower Shop at 11th and U, a community corner with hands-on activities and a farmers market at the Reeves Center at 14th and U, and “Brews and Beats” with DJs and craft beer at Right Proper Brewing near Sixth and T streets. And if you didn’t get enough funk during the festival, an after-party begins at 5 p.m. at the Brixton. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
Dog Days of Summer Sidewalk Sale: For more than two decades, small businesses in Logan Circle, Dupont Circle and U Street have joined forces for one of the area’s largest sidewalk sales. Browse vintage home goods at Miss Pixie’s, find a new plant at Rewild, grab a new skateboard at Crushed or find a treasure at the Dupont Little Flea Market, among dozens of participants. Since shopping is hard work, there are plenty of opportunities to refuel, including $5 hot dogs at Garden District, frozen dog treats at Ice Cream Jubilee and a fundraiser for the Humane Rescue Alliance at the Aslin Beer Garden. Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free.
Mundy at the Black Cat: For Mundy — a self-described “punk pixie” who lives in the forest — staying connected to and surrounded by nature is central to not just their artistry but their personal actualization. During the pandemic, Mundy started working on farms and became the manager of a flower farm. They also learned to use the music software that allowed for the piecemeal recording of “Future Nature.” The album showcases Mundy’s melodramatic, jazzy vocals and funk-punk-new-wave-soul sound, bounding from the slow-burning protest anthem “Velvet Revolution” to the bass-powered electro-pop of “My Way” to the synth-soaked, Baltimore club-nodding “Meow Monster.” The record release show at the Black Cat serves as Mundy’s reemergence in a reawakening music scene, but also a celebration of a wide range of local artists, including a DJ set by Farrah Flosscett, live painting by Lisa Marie Thalhammer and a performance by drag artist Pussy Noir. 8 p.m. $20.
Interview: ‘Punk pixie’ Mundy brings an art-inspired show to the Black Cat
Kennedy Center Culture Caucus Summer Festival: If you’re a fan of yoga and arts markets, the Kennedy Center might be the last place you’d think to look for weekend plans. But this week’s installment of its summer events series, the Alt-Fusion Festival, features both, and the day’s diversity doesn’t stop there. The festival also includes a talk on how funding a creative practice influences art, a set by DJs Shiva and K-Meta, and performances by local artists such as Kassim, whose genre defies description. In fact, that’s the theme of the day: celebrating artists of the DMV whose experimental work doesn’t fit neatly into one category. 2 to 8:30 p.m. Free.
The rapper whose essence is soul
Immigrant-Owned Mini-Markt at Heurich House: Christian Heurich arrived in the U.S. as a German immigrant in 1866. By 1873, he had opened his own brewery, and he eventually became the second-largest landowner in D.C. The Heurich House Museum, which shares Heurich’s story and legacy, hopes to help other immigrants follow in his footsteps. This pop-up market in the museum’s beer garden hosts 10 immigrant-owned businesses, organized with nonprofit KAMA DC, which provides immigrants with a platform to share their skills. Admission is free, but tickets have a pay-what-you-can option. 3 to 8 p.m. Free.
Water Lantern Festival at National Harbor: See the Potomac in a whole new light as thousands of glowing water lanterns float along during this family-friendly festival at National Harbor. Tickets include everything needed to build and decorate an LED lantern, as well as covering the cost of removing lanterns from the river afterward. The lantern launch is set for sunset, but there will be food trucks and music beforehand. Snag tickets ahead of time for a discount: Prices go up after Friday. Saturday and Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. $25.99- $44.99; youth tickets start at $11.99.
The In-Cider Jazz Jam: The Capitol Cider House usually offers customers board games, a spacious patio and guided tastings, but this week, it’s letting guests provide the entertainment. After an hour-long performance by the cidery’s house jazz band — bassist Jeff Cuny, pianist Alfred Yun and percussionist Julian Berkowitz — the stage is open to any musicians in the audience with a guitar, voice or horn to improv together. The art goes beyond music, too: Works by local acrylic artist Elizabeth Kim will be on exhibit and available for purchase. Eats from food truck Pop-Up Poutine, including cheese curds and smoked sandwiches, are on sale alongside the hard cider. 3 to 6 p.m. Free.
‘What I See’: The Black Flag Photographs of Glen Friedman at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: Glen E. Friedman’s work has always been ahead of his time, whether it was shooting photos of skateboarders Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva in the 1970s, taking early photos of the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy for Def Jam or documenting the punk scene through iconic images of Black Flag, Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat. Friedman’s latest project is a collection of his photos of Black Flag — more than 300 in all — in a book called “What I See.” He’ll discuss the work with Ian MacKaye, whom Friedman has worked with since the Minor Threat days, and present a slide show of his favorite images. “What I See” will be available for purchase through Solid State Books, and Friedman will sign copies after the presentation. 6:30 to 8 p.m. Free; registration required.
NMWA xChange: Curators’ Choice on Recent Acquisitions: The National Museum of Women in the Arts is closed during a two-year renovation, but the museum’s team is staying connected with the public through a monthly talk show broadcast online. In August, tune in for a 45-minute Zoom session to hear NMWA curators share their favorite pieces that have been added to the collection since the museum closed and get a preview of the new acquisitions that might be on display in the expanded galleries when the downtown museum reopens in 2023. Noon to 12:45 p.m. Free; registration required.
‘The Warriors’ at Franklin Square: The annual Can I Kick It? outdoor movie series concludes with a true classic: “The Warriors,” about a gritty New York City overrun with costumed street gangs. As the 1979 film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones provides a score of vintage hip-hop and funk set to the action on screen. DJ Whorocdaspot provides a pre-movie set. Arrive early to score free snacks and drinks from Whole Foods. Music begins at 7:30 p.m.; film begins around 8:30 p.m. Free.
1979 Post review: ‘Abstracted epic of gang warfare’
Corpse flower at the Enid A. Haupt Garden: Who wouldn’t go out of their way to see, and smell, an eight-foot-high flower that reeks of rotten flesh? The U.S. Botanic Garden has lent one of its popular corpse flowers to Smithsonian Gardens, which has put the plant on display in the Enid A. Haupt Garden, near the National Museum of African Art. In an Instagram post earlier this week, the Botanic Garden predicted that Amorphophallus titanum would bloom around Aug. 10, “plus or minus 2-3 days,” unleashing its powerful stench to draw flies and other “corpse-attracted pollinators.” Word of warning: The aroma is most powerful in the evening and early morning. Estimated peak bloom is Wednesday, but follow Smithsonian Gardens’ Instagram, @smithsoniangardens, for updates. The garden is open from dawn to dusk.
Leon Bridges at the Anthem: Across three albums, Leon Bridges has sounded like a perfectly coifed soul man gradually traveling through time, dabbling in retro stylings influenced by Sam Cooke and Otis Redding before embracing everything from Marvin Gaye to D’Angelo, with a fair share of disco diversions. On last year’s “Gold-Diggers Sound,” Bridges sounds as modern as ever but with the well-practiced precision of his previous music. Named after Gold-Diggers, the East Hollywood bar-hotel-recording studio where a residency grew into actual residence during the writing and recording of the album, “Gold-Diggers Sound” sees Bridges collaborate with the likes of Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin, multi-hyphenates at the equilibrium point of jazz and hip-hop. Particularly poignant is the 808s and heartbreak of “Sweeter,” a collaboration with Martin released in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police. “Hoping for a life more sweeter, instead I’m just a story repeating,” a weary Bridges sings. “I wish I had another day, but it’s just another day.” 8 p.m. $65.
D.C. Punk Archive Library Rooftop Shows at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: “What’s more punk than the public library?” is more than a clever T-shirt slogan — it’s a way of life at the D.C. Public Library. The D.C. Punk Archive, established in 2014, is a public collection of records, fliers, zines, set lists and artifacts dating back to 1976 that tell the story of the city’s dynamic punk and indie music scene. But the library also works to make sure punk isn’t relegated to the dusty shelf of history: This summer, it has hosted monthly concerts on the rooftop of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown. The final show of the series features Big Cry Country and Bacchae. It’s free, all-ages and open to anyone who shows up. What’s more punk than that? 6:30 to 8 p.m. Free. | 2022-08-04T14:29:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Funk Parade, outdoor festivals and events in the D.C. area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/best-things-do-dc-area-week-aug-4-10/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/best-things-do-dc-area-week-aug-4-10/ |
A Taliban militant at a checkpoint outside the former U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, in October.
By Lorenzo Tugnoli
As I got off the plane at Kabul’s international airport in September, a group of Taliban fighters was on the tarmac. All of them were wearing Afghan special forces uniforms and carried U.S.-made weapons left behind in the chaos of America’s rushed withdrawal. Six weeks prior, I had left a country run by a Western-backed government, where I had carried out several photography assignments in the past year. So I had missed the Aug. 15 fall of Kabul to the Islamic insurgents.
Taliban fighters with gear left behind by U.S. forces provide security for a Taliban politician at the Kabul airport in September.
Now I was back in a place I had first started photographing in 2009.
From top: Writing outside the former U.S. embassy in Kabul in September reads “Oh my country, congratulations for your freedom!” Vendors sell Taliban flags outside the Central Bank of Afghanistan. Images of women have been painted over outside many beauty parlors.
I had met with the Taliban before.
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I had done embeds with the group in 2019 and 2020, when I photographed its commanders and fighters. Their attitude toward foreign journalists, once they were in control of Kabul, was generally friendly and inquisitive. They were happy to have publicity. But their takeover was difficult for me to process. For the losing side, the long years of death, pain and struggle now seemed pointless; the U.S. promises of democracy and civil rights, particularly for women, rang hollow, as the old order and its institutions were quickly swept away.
A burqa-clad woman sits near a blast wall in an area formerly called Massoud Square in Kabul in September. Named after Ahmed Shah Massoud, who fought against the Taliban up to his assassination on Sept. 9, 2001, the square is awaiting a new name.
From top: The market in Kabul’s old city. Street sellers outside a hospital in central Kabul in September. Families buying and selling silverware and household utensils in Kabul in March. Men arrested by the Taliban are held at the Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul in October. The prison used to hold thousands of Taliban captured by the previous government.
Some aspects of the urban landscape remained the same.
People had returned to their jobs, and the rush-hour traffic was back to its usual madness — but much was different. Around the city, the symbols of the previous government had been erased. The blast walls of the former American Embassy, once covered with pro-government imagery, were now painted over with the Taliban flag and a new slogan: “Oh my country, congratulations for your freedom!” Around the former so-called Green Zone, which used to be heavily patrolled by security forces and where photography invariably raised scrutiny, nobody minded my camera anymore.
From top: Sheikh Mohammad Khalid, leader of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, speaks at Abdul Rahman Mosque during Friday prayers in Kabul in September. A Taliban member at the mosque in September. Gathering for Friday prayers. After the Taliban took over the capital, it replaced the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the ministry of virtue and vice.
A new atmosphere of stern religiosity permeated Kabul.
Gone were Western-looking clothes, the cleanshaven bureaucrats and hip youngsters in their skinny jeans and cool haircuts. Men now wore traditional clothing — the shalwar kameez — and they were growing beards. Women were seen less often in public since many had lost their jobs, especially in the public sector. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was shut down, and its building now housed the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the religious police who enforce the Taliban version of sharia law.
The growing poverty also stood out.
From top: A woman in front of the former U.S. embassy in Kabul in September. A 7-month-old named Sama was malnourished in March. The hospital in Kabul gave her family therapeutic food packets for home treatments. A doctor sees a malnourished child at the Indira Gandhi hospital in Kabul in March. Students at a girls’ high school in Kabul in September. In March, girls were banned from attending classes beyond sixth grade.
With all their possessions scattered on blankets by the roadside, families were attempting to sell their appliances for any cash they could get. Others waited in long lines outside banks to withdraw their savings. In the main currency exchange market, traders counted bundles of Afghan bank notes that were quickly losing value.
A Taliban poster hangs outside a police station in Kabul in October. Many police stations have been taken over by the Taliban, with members now policing each area of the city.
Taliban fighters were in every corner of the capital.
They were often accessible to journalists. A Taliban commander recently released from prison was eager to talk to me about his experiences. That said, not all Taliban members were welcoming to foreigners. One afternoon in October, I was wandering in what used to be known as Bush Bazaar, named after the U.S. president who launched the invasion. It is now called Mujahideen Bazaar. I approached a group of fighters busy shopping. Some of them were curious, but their commander asked me in English to leave. They were part of the infamous Haqqani network, a splinter group of the Taliban known for kidnappings and terrorist attacks against U.S. forces. My interpreter and I did as we were told.
From top: Customers queue in front of a Kabul bank from the early hours of the morning in September. The currency exchange market in Kabul in October. The Mujahideen Bazaar — formerly known as the Bush Bazaar, named after the U.S. president who launched the invasion.
The economy kept crashing under the weight of foreign sanctions.
In the months that followed the fall of Kabul, the Taliban struggled to transform from an irregular militia to a functioning government. Hospitals in Kabul and around the country swelled with malnourished children, many of whom were sent home with packets of therapeutic food because of the lack of beds.
From top: Scenes from a public Taliban flag-raising ceremony.
But there was no doubt the Taliban had won.
I stayed in Afghanistan through November, then returned twice in 2022. In March, I watched a crowd of Taliban militants climb a hill in the diplomatic enclave in Kabul. In an elaborate ceremony, a 130-foot-wide Taliban flag was raised where the old Afghan republic flag used to fly. As the flag ascended, jubilant militiamen flooded the stage, brandishing their guns and taking pictures with their phones. It was a moment I never thought I would photograph.
Men near the Qargha Lake in October. The area outside of Kabul is a popular tourist destination for families on the weekends. The Taliban recently banned men and women from visiting amusement parks on the same day and in some parts of the country from dining out together.
Lorenzo Tugnoli is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist based in Barcelona. He is a contract photographer for The Post.
Design and development by Frank Hulley-Jones. Editing by Olivier Laurent, Madison Walls and Brandon Ferrill. Copy editing by Jennifer Abella. | 2022-08-04T14:29:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Afghanistan looks like since the Taliban takeover - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/interactive/2022/afghanistan-taliban-takeover/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/interactive/2022/afghanistan-taliban-takeover/ |
New movies to stream this week: ‘Prey’ and more
Amber Midthunder in “Prey.” (20th Century Studios)
The seventh movie in the Predator franchise (if you count the two Alien vs. Predator crossovers), “Prey” is a little bit different: It’s set not in the future, but in September 1719, in the Great Plains of North America, and it centers on a young Comanche woman (Amber Midthunder) as the heroine. Midthunder’s Naru enlivens the female-empowerment plot, in which her character is mocked by her fellow tribespeople for wanting to do something other than cook. (She’s a great tracker, is handy with an ax and knows herbal medicine.) When a representative from the earlier films’ race of extraterrestrial hunters (Dane DiLiegro) lands in her backyard — equipped with his (its?) now-familiar dreadlocks, helmet, buglike mandible, heat vision, retractable wrist blades and chameleon-like cloaking technology that turns all that into something resembling lethal walking gelatin — Naru decides to go on the hunt. “You want to hunt something that’s hunting you?” her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) asks incredulously. Why, yes. Yes, she does. It’s not a new story at this point by any means, but director Dan Trachtenberg (“10 Cloverfield Lane”), working from a script by TV writer Patrick Aison (“Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan”), keeps things moving. Meaning: The story is constantly on the go, not emotionally compelling. And that’s just enough for this sort of thing. R. Available on Hulu. Contains strong, bloody violence. In English and some Comanche without subtitles. 120 minutes.
“Anaïs in Love” is a French drama about a young woman (Anaïs Demoustier) and her “winding voyage toward self-discovery,” according to the New York Times. Although the protagonist at first may try your patience, according to the Times, it isn’t necessary to like Anaïs. “What’s crucial is that you stick with her, that you listen to what she says and doesn’t say, that you look beneath the skittishness to get a handle on what drives this woman — that you see her for who she is.” Unrated. Available on Apple TV Plus, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, DirecTV and other on-demand platforms. In French with subtitles. 98 minutes.
Telling the story of the 2018 Thai cave rescue using reconstructions and news footage of the event, “Cave Rescue” is a reedited version of a movie called “The Cave,” which was originally released in Thailand in 2019. The new version of the film, which includes footage shot at the original locations, also features appearances by several people involved in the rescue, including Irish cave diver Jim Warny. PG-13. Available on demand. Contains some strong language. 100 minutes.
“Gone in the Night” stars Winona Ryder and John Gallagher Jr. as a couple who check in at their rental cabin in the woods, only to discover that the remote getaway has been double-booked by a mysterious young couple (Owen Teague and Brianne Tju). When Gallagher’s character goes missing, according to Variety, “What at first looks like a standard missing-person suspense tale turns out to have a more complicated agenda — but it is so haphazardly advanced and clumsily articulated, the film itself seems to be fumbling around for a cohering structure or mood.” R. Available on demand. Contains strong language throughout and brief bloody images. 90 minutes.
Robert Patrick and Nick Stahl, both veterans of the Terminator movie franchise, star in “What Josiah Saw,” a film about the reunion of a damaged family at a remote farmhouse. About this “sharp, sleazy sluice of Southern Gothic horror,” the Guardian writes that it has “a stubborn, almost literary feel for character that accumulates a baleful momentum by the time the finale hits.” Unrated. Available on Shudder. 120 minutes. | 2022-08-04T14:29:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New movies to stream from home this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/04/august-5-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/04/august-5-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ |
R. Kelly has roughly $28,000 in a prison account while a judge ordered him to pay $140,000 as part of his sentence
Singer R. Kelly, shown in 2019 arriving at the Leighton Criminal Court in Chicago for arraignment on sex-related charges, is one of the federal prisoners who owes court-ordered fees and has a sizable amount of money in a federal prison account. (Amr Alfiky/AP)
Jack Donson, a retired Bureau of Prisons case manager coordinator who now consults on the federal prison system, said the issue highlights a “dysfunctional” culture at the prison bureau, with officials focused on preserving the flow of money through commissary accounts — known within the agency as the “Trust Fund.”
Bureau of Prisons inmate accounts hold more than $100 million, with little payment to victims
Over the last year, The Washington Post revealed that some high-profile inmates, including Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, had sizable prison account balances yet paid very little of what they owed to their victims. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco issued a directive to study the issue and make changes to the program.
The controversy over inmate funds centers on two separate but related pools of money. The first are deposit accounts, in which the nation’s nearly 140,000 federal inmates can keep an unlimited amount of money. These accounts are not subject to many of the regulations and scrutiny of regular bank accounts because the agency does not consider itself a bank. The total amount of money in the deposit accounts ballooned from $86 million to more than $140 million in 2021, in large part because prisoners received coronavirus stimulus payments, people familiar with the matter said.
The second pool of money is the commissary accounts, or Trust Fund — a means for inmates to buy things, like phone or email access, sodas and candy, with money from their deposit funds.
The Trust Fund also operates as a kind of business, using the significant markups it charges inmates on purchases to pay for agency staff. Last year, the Trust Fund paid $82 million to fund 652 positions at the Bureau of Prisons — $49.5 million in salaries and $32.5 million in benefits, according to agency records.
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In a written statement, the agency drew a sharp line between the two pools of money, insisting the inmate deposit fund does not profit off inmates’ money, while not acknowledging that the Trust Fund money generates tens of millions of dollars a year that is used for salaries and benefits.
The agency said “all inmate deposits are held in trust by the Bureau of Prisons in non-interest bearing U.S. Treasury accounts and remain there unless the funds are withdrawn by the inmate or the inmate is released. Since the funds are held in trust, the BOP does not invest or derive any kind of income from the funds in these accounts.”
Separately, through the public records request, the agency acknowledged that the commissary money — the Trust Fund — does earn interest for the Bureau of Prisons.
For years, the Bureau of Prisons has argued that whatever balance inmates may have in their accounts, they should only be required to pay $25 every three months — just over $8 a month — to any court-ordered victim restitution.
In early July, as Monaco’s office considered how much to increase what inmates have to pay toward court judgments, senior Bureau of Prisons officials asserted that no more than 25 percent of an inmate’s prison account should be taken, people familiar with the conversations said. The officials noted that reducing the amount of money in the accounts could also reduce the amount in the Trust Fund, thus cutting into the agency’s revenue, these people said.
Under the 25 percent limit, Kelly, for example, would have to turn over about $7,000 from his prison account, while he would keep about $21,000.
The agency’s proposal was met with resistance from other parts of the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the debate, which is ongoing. Monaco’s office is considering an option in which the maximum amount taken from a prisoner to pay court orders would range from 25 to 75 percent, depending on the overall account balance.
A disabled man got a second chance after 27 years in prison. Then he went missing.
Critics of the Bureau of Prisons system say the agency’s accounts often shield money that should go to court-ordered restitution or child support. Under the current rules, prosecutors have to ask a federal judge to order the agency to turn over significant amounts.
“It is a gross conflict for BOP to put its own interests before those of victims and children,” Wojdylo said in an interview.
“BOP has a responsibility to make sure inmates are making good on their judgments owed ... victim restitution, child support and the like,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said this week after being told of The Post’s findings. “These important judgments should not go ignored while BOP is taking a cut from inmates buying snacks at the commissary.”
In the Tsarnaev and Nassar cases, prosecutors eventually filed court papers seeking a judge’s order to force the agency to turn over funds to cover larger payments. Before they did so, Nassar had spent more than $10,000 from his prison account on other purchases, according to a court filing, while paying victims about $100 a year. He had been ordered to pay tens of thousands in restitution.
By the time prosecutors asked a judge to seize Tsarnaev’s prison funds in January, he had received $21,000 in deposits, including $1,400 in covid relief funds from the federal government. He had spent all but about $4,000 of the money on purchases from the Trust Fund. | 2022-08-04T14:29:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. inmates accounts generate cash to pay for Bureau of Prison jobs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/federal-prisons-money-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/federal-prisons-money-victims/ |
Voting underway in Tenn., posing tests over abortion, support for Trump
Voters on Thursday will nominate a slate of midterm candidates, including those in new congressional districts drawn to create a Republican advantage.
Campaign signs are posted outside a polling location in Nashville on the first day of early voting on July 15. (Jonathan Mattise/AP)
Voters in Tennessee on Thursday will nominate a slate of midterm candidates, including those in new congressional districts drawn to create a Republican advantage. And in the state’s most populous county, a race for prosecutor has become a partisan showdown over abortion rights and voting rights.
Thursday’s primaries will set the stage for races up and down the ballot. Republican Gov. Bill Lee has no primary challenger and national Democrats haven’t targeted his reelection race in the conservative-leaning state; three candidates, including Memphis city councilman J.B. Smiley Jr., are seeking the Democratic nomination. Early voting, which ended last week, was off 24 percent from the same period in 2018, when Lee won a chaotic Republican primary.
Lee and the Republican supermajority in Nashville enacted a broad conservative agenda, including a trigger law that will ban abortion in the state following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Lee also signed off on a congressional map that nudged Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) into retirement, by splitting up his traditionally liberal 5th Congressional District.
“I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville,” Cooper said in January, when the map was finalized.
Rep. Jim Cooper announces he will not run for reelection, accusing GOP of ‘dismembering’ his Nashville district
The new 5th Congressional District stretches from Nashville to take in deep-red counties south of the city; in 2020, President Donald Trump carried the new seat by double digits. Nine Republicans are competing for what’s now a safe red seat in Congress, while Democratic state Sen. Heidi Campbell is unchallenged for her party’s nomination.
Trump has stayed out of the GOP primary since Morgan Ortagus, a veteran of his administration’s State Department, was removed from the ballot over residency issues. Beth Harwell, a former state House speaker, has outraised the field and adopted the Trump brand, emphasizing that the former president put her on the Tennessee Valley Authority.
“I respect a lot of what Donald Trump did, but his endorsement is not what I want,” Harwell said at a June 27 debate in one of the conservative counties newly added to the district. “I want the endorsement of the people of the 5th Congressional District.”
Support for Trump was a major theme of that debate, as it had been throughout the race. Onstage with Harwell, Maury County Mayor Andy Nogles called the Biden administration “a criminal enterprise,” adding that the president and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should be “impeached and then tried for treason.”
Stewart Parks, a real estate agent who joined the crowds in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, and was later arrested in connection with his appearance there, went further than Ogles, embracing false claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. “I’m the only candidate in this race that has not called him president,” Parks said of Biden. “He is not the legal president of United States of America.”
While Harwell has raised more from individual donors than her rivals, most of the on-air spending has focused on Nogles. Conservative super PACs have spent nearly $1.3 million on pro-Nogles advertising, and anti-Nogles PACs have tried to match it. One of them, Conservative Americans PAC, has spent more than $700,000 on TV ads that call Nogles a “phony” over his support for a gas tax increase.
The winner of the primary will begin as a favorite in the November general election.
In Shelby County, Thursday’s vote will determine who becomes district attorney. Amy Weirich, a Republican appointed in 2011 and then elected to an 8-year term, faces Democrat Steven Mulroy, who has criticized her handling of a voter fraud case and said he wouldn’t prioritize abortion cases if he got the job.
While President Biden carried the county by 30 points in 2020, turnout in midterm year primaries has historically been low, which helped Weirich eight years ago. Both candidates have tried to mobilize their partisan bases and nationalize the campaign.
Weirich has run a TV ad that splices together a photo of Mulroy at a Starbucks unionization rally with an unrelated clip of protesters marching to “defund the police.” Mulroy’s ads link the incumbent to Trump, with images of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to dramatize the point: “Both break the rules and are out of control.”
Mulroy’s campaign has garnered support from racial justice advocates in other parts of the country, including the family of George Floyd and the singer John Legend. Weirich, who has been endorsed by local police and sheriff organizations, has warned that Mulroy would let criminals out of jail and add to a crime rate that has risen since 2020. | 2022-08-04T14:30:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voting underway in Tenn., posing tests over abortion, support for Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/tennessee-primaries-abortion-republicans-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/tennessee-primaries-abortion-republicans-democrats/ |
Regime says it will investigate the U.S. drone strike that killed the al-Qaeda leader
Taliban fighters in Kabul on Aug. 2 stand guard in the neighborhood where a U.S. drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. (EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
KABUL — The Taliban regime said Thursday it was not aware that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was staying in the Afghan capital, four days after President Biden announced that a U.S. drone strike killed Zawahiri early Sunday at a house he was occupying in central Kabul.
In their first formal response to the attack, issued on WhatsApp and Twitter, Taliban officials strongly condemned the U.S. strike. The United States “invaded our territory” and violated international principles, the Taliban said in a statement. It warned that “if such action is repeated, the responsibility for any consequences will be on the United States.”
At the same time, the Taliban insisted that there is “no threat to any country, including America, from the soil of Afghanistan.” It said the Afghan government wants to “implement the Doha pact,” a peace agreement in 2020 between U.S. and Taliban officials that included a Taliban pledge not to harbor extremist groups such as al-Qaeda.
The statement also said that Taliban leaders have ordered several investigative agencies to “conduct a comprehensive and serious investigation” into the incident.
The statement was issued after senior Taliban figures reportedly held high-level meetings to decide how to respond to the drone strike. By saying it was unaware of Zawahiri’s “arrival or stay” in the capital, the Taliban seemed to be issuing a broader denial of its ties with al-Qaeda in general. U.S. and U.N. intelligence assessments have said those ties are strong and ongoing.
Administration officials in Washington have described a painstaking, months-long surveillance effort that preceded the drone strike, in part to ensure that the target was correct and in part to prevent civilian casualties. The house where Zawahiri was reported killed is in an upscale urban district with large mansions built close to each other.
The official denial of Zawahiri’s presence seemed aimed in part at saving face after the humiliation of being unable to protect a senior guest and at lowering tensions with the United States despite the statement’s pro forma condemnation.
In addition, Zawahiri’s death raises an awkward internal religious issue for the Taliban because of Muslim customs requiring quick burials and large formal funerals for dignitaries. Although Zawahiri did not wield as much authority in al-Qaeda as his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, his relations with the Taliban were old and deep.
In the past several days, many experts have said the embarrassment of the drone strike might drive the Taliban toward a more hard-line posture and even a closer relationship with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, despite its pledge in the Doha agreement to renounce them.
‘The Zawahiri killing, perpetrated by a unilateral U.S. military action, has embarrassed the Taliban and exploded their myth that they don’t have ties to al-Qaeda,” said Michael Kugelman, an expert on the region at the Wilson International Center in Washington.
“If they stay quiet about the raid and don’t take a confrontational position toward the U.S., they risk antagonizing their rank and file and alienating militant allies,” Kugelman said. “The Taliban can’t afford those outcomes at a moment when they’re already struggling to consolidate domestic legitimacy and manage an acute economic crisis.” | 2022-08-04T14:30:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taliban denies knowing of al-Qaeda presence after Zawahiri killed in Kabul - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/taliban-qaeda-zawahiri-kabul/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/taliban-qaeda-zawahiri-kabul/ |
The Transportation Department has proposed new rules for delayed or canceled flights
Courtney Beesch
The Department of Transportation has proposed new rules to better protect travelers in case their flight is delayed, canceled or otherwise significantly changed — a response to the “flood of air travel service complaints” the department has received since the covid-19 pandemic began, it said in a news release.
By defining when a flight can be considered canceled or significantly changed, the proposal aims to plug a gap in the Department of Transportation’s ability to prevent what it considers unfair practices in the transportation industry — and to force carriers to refund consumers who are victims of these practices.
If enacted, it would be the “biggest expansion of travelers’ rights in decades,” Scott Keyes, founder of a website that helps travelers find cheap flights, wrote on Twitter.
What are the proposed rules?
Under the proposal — which is subject to a 90-day public consultation period — airlines and ticket agents would have to refund consumers when they “significantly” change their flights.
This would apply to domestic flights that are delayed by three or more hours, or international flights that are delayed by six or more hours. It would also apply if the departure or arrival airport is changed, if extra connections are added or if the class of service or type of plane is changed — downgrading someone from business to economy class, or putting them in an aircraft with fewer amenities than expected for instance.
“When Americans buy an airline ticket, they should get to their destination safely, reliably, and affordably,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in the news release. “This new proposed rule would protect the rights of travelers and help ensure they get the timely refunds they deserve from the airlines.”
The new rules would also require that airlines issue credits with no expiration date to ticket-holders who decide not to travel because they are sick or because of government restrictions on travel — including, for example, the imposition of a quarantine requirement for arriving passengers. In the case of airlines that receive future government bailouts, the rule would require them to issue refunds rather than credits.
But there are restrictions. For example, if someone books a flight but new public health restrictions are later imposed that would render the trip “meaningless,” that person would be entitled to a non-expiring voucher or credit. But if someone fails to check what’s needed to travel — PCR tests for instance — and is unable to go, they won’t be eligible.
How are they different from the current rules?
Under current rules, travelers to and from the United States are already entitled to a refund if their flight is canceled or significantly delayed and they choose not to take another option, or if they are involuntarily downgraded to a lower-tier service than what they paid for.
But since the Department of Transportation doesn’t define “significant delay,” in practice, whether travelers were entitled to a refund depended on “many factors — including the length of the delay, the length of the flight,” and travelers’ individual circumstances, it said. If a complaint is filed, the case-by-case process for the department to determine if a refund is needed takes a long time, it warns consumers.
Vacations gone wrong: 6 stories of epic travel fails
The lack of clarity around what constitutes a canceled or significantly delayed flight has led to “inconsistency among carriers on when passengers are entitled to refunds,” the department said in the news release.
Meanwhile, passengers who choose not to travel because they are sick or because they are particularly vulnerable to getting sick are generally not protected under current Department of Transportation rules. Because of this, people who are sick and could infect others — or those who are at particular risk of getting seriously ill — may choose to travel anyway so as not to lose the money they spent on their ticket. “These types of actions by consumers are not in the public interest,” the department said.
When would this go into effect?
The proposal from the Department of Transportation has a while to go before it could be enacted. After the 90-day public consultation period ends, the department will review the comments and decide whether to continue with the proposed rule as is, make changes to it or withdraw it.
Anyone can submit a comment, including businesses affected by the rule. If the rules are enacted, businesses can apply for an exemption, which the department will only consider if it finds “unique circumstances not considered during rulemaking.”
What are my rights if my flight is delayed now?
Travelers have reported a jump in travel woes this summer — from canceled or delayed flights to lost luggage and strikes — as many countries have eased or eliminated all pandemic-related restrictions, leading to more demand, and airports and airlines have been unable to cope.
From traveling light to booking your flight directly through the airline, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind during particularly messy travel seasons. (Video: The Washington Post)
Close to 550,000 flights have been delayed this year so far in the United States, according to Department of Transportation data — more than twice as many such flights in all of 2021. More than 88,000 flights were canceled — 3.22 percent of all flights, compared to 1.56 percent of flights last year.
You’re also entitled to compensation if you have been denied boarding because your flight was overbooked and you didn’t volunteer to give up your seat. Airlines are allowed to overbook flights, and there is no minimum they must offer when asking travelers if anyone is willing to take a later flight. Recently, passengers have reported that airlines have been offering thousands of dollars for people to volunteer to be bumped from flights.
How to get refunds if your flight is canceled | 2022-08-04T14:54:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DOT proposes new airline refund rules amid travel chaos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/04/airline-refunds-department-transport-rules/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/04/airline-refunds-department-transport-rules/ |
A D.C. police car at a scene in Washington. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
A man was struck and killed by a vehicle Wednesday afternoon in the Foggy Bottom area of Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police.
The crash occurred about 4:10 p.m. in the 2100 block of Virginia Avenue NW, near several federal buildings and the Edward J. Kelly Park. Police said the man died at a hospital.
A police spokesman said it appears the man was crossing the street when he was struck. Further details of the crash were not immediately available Thursday morning, including whether the crash occurred at an intersection.
Police said the driver of the vehicle remained at the scene and that the crash is under investigation. No charges have been filed. The dead man’s identity has not been released pending notification of his relatives.
D.C. police say 21 people have been killed this year in traffic-related crashes, down from 25 by this date in 2021. | 2022-08-04T15:07:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian killed in crash in Northwest Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/fatal-pedestrian-crash-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/fatal-pedestrian-crash-dc/ |
Man fatally shot in Congress Heights area of Southeast Washington
A man was fatally shot early Thursday in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police.
The shooting occurred about 12:20 a.m. in the 3300 block of 14th Place SE, near the Congress Heights Metro station.
Police had no other immediate details of the shooting and have not released the victim’s name pending notification of relatives.
As of Thursday, there have been 128 homicides in the District this year, a 12 percent increase from this period in 2021. | 2022-08-04T15:07:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot in Southeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/shooting-fatal-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/shooting-fatal-dc/ |
A fresh look at Ruth Asawa’s extraordinary life
Review by Reagan Upshaw
Ruth Asawa in 1957. (© 2022 Imogen Cunningham Trust. Artwork © 2021 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / ARS,)
How’s this for an artist’s CV? Spent childhood working on family farm. Spent time in prison camp. Attended avant-garde art school. Learned to make wire baskets, incorporating looped wire technique into her sculptures. Married a fellow student (wedding ring designed by Buckminster Fuller). Moved to San Francisco. Had six children in nine years. Had solo and group shows in New York but ceased exhibiting there because of shipping difficulties. Had solo show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Invented recipe for making baker’s clay from flour, salt and water for her children’s art projects, a mixture that became widely used in schools. Designed fountains, murals and sculptures as public commissions. Co-founded an organization to embed artists-in-residence at San Francisco public schools. Co-founded Scroungers Center for Reusable Art Parts (SCRAP), which collected, recycled and distributed art materials otherwise destined for landfill to artists, schools and community groups. Led a movement to establish San Francisco’s first public arts high school (it would later be renamed for her). Had major museum retrospective and insisted that each of her children and grandchildren contribute a work to the exhibition. Lived to see one of her sculptures sell for more than a million dollars at auction.
Such is a brief summary of the improbable and awe-inspiring life of Ruth Asawa (1926-2013). Not well known to the American art public, Asawa’s work is even less well known in Europe. On the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of her work in England and Norway, the show’s co-curators, Emma Ridgway and Vibece Salthe, have edited a book of essays about her life, “Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe.”
Asawa was born in Norwalk, Calif., to Japanese immigrant parents who farmed on rented land, as Asian immigrants were forbidden by California law to own farmland. Her artistic talents were recognized by her grade school teachers, but she was first instructed by professional artists in an unlikely setting: the internment camp where Asawa and her family were incarcerated at the beginning of World War II. Japanese -American artists in the camp who had worked as animators for Walt Disney gave art classes to other prisoners.
Bauhaus designers changed the way the world looks. But did they make it better?
The camp may have had another effect on Asawa’s career: Internees were put to work creating camouflage netting for the military, inserting strips of green and brown cloth into mesh. John R. Blakinger, one of the book’s contributors, compares the labor involved in making such nets to the construction of Asawa’s basket-like hanging wire sculptures: “In both processes, the hands work quickly, methodically, intuitively, constructing a mesh-like lattice that merges form and space, positive and negative, figure and ground.”
Released from the camp in 1943, Asawa was allowed to study at Milwaukee State Teachers College for three years, only to be told that she could not finish the certification program, as no school would accept a teacher trainee of Japanese heritage. When some artist friends told her about a new art school in the hills of North Carolina, Black Mountain College, she enrolled in 1946. With her formidable work ethic, she fell naturally into its collegial, communal atmosphere. Asawa later said, “My teachers at Black Mountain College were practicing artists, including Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, and Buckminster Fuller. They taught me that there is no separation between studying, performing the daily chores of living, and creating one’s own work.” Fuller would become a lifelong friend.
Asawa fell in love with another student at the college, an aspiring architect named Albert Lanier, and the couple married in 1949, only a year after the California Supreme Court ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. Settling in San Francisco, they began the production of countless art projects and six babies, eventually settling in a rambling home in San Francisco’s Noe Valley.
The book features an interview with four of her children, which gives some idea of their family life. Asawa expected the children to help with household chores, gardening and preparing artistic materials, including spooling wire for her sculptures. They would continue to assist her later in life, from preparing models for casting to writing grant proposals
The hanging wire sculptures are Asawa’s most sought-after works today. (One went for more than $5 million in 2020.) They were a fortuitous choice, suited to the time constraints of a mother of young children. A generation earlier, painter Marguerite Zorach had briefly concentrated her energies on embroidered works, where the design could be quickly sketched and the picture completed, stitch by stitch, whenever there were a few quiet minutes to spare from children and household duties. In the same way, Asawa’s sculptures could be completed as time permitted, although, as she liked to say, “Insomnia is nothing more than a fear of losing time.”
“Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe” is an inspiring story of a life well lived, complete with happy ending. Along with deep dives into art and design, it includes recipes for making potato prints, baker’s clay and milk-carton sculptures, things she taught countless students. “When you put a seed in the ground, the seed doesn’t say, ‘Well, it’s eight hours, I’m going to stop growing,’ ” Asawa once said. “That’s why I think that every minute we’re attached to the earth, we should be doing something.” An admirable motto, one by which she truly lived.
Reagan Upshaw is an art dealer and critic in Beacon, N.Y.
Citizen of the Universe
By Emma Ridgway, Vibece Salthe, Sigrun Åsebø, John R. Blakinger and Emily Pringle
Thames & Hudson. 192 pp. $40 | 2022-08-04T16:00:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/04/ruth-asawa-art-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/04/ruth-asawa-art-book/ |
Discount stores, sales, coupons: Parents are making back-to-school shopping work despite decades-high inflation
Shoppers look for school supplies at a Target in South Miami, Fla., on July 27. The National Retail Federation estimates U.S. households will spend $864 on average to clothe and equip their children for the new academic year. (Marta Lavandier/AP)
The back-to-school bins in Jonelle Wood’s attic have been full since the end of June, with enough paper, pencils and clothing to last her three school-age children into next fall. All for $245.
She siphons a bit of cash from each paycheck to pick up gear year-round, timed to sales at Walmart and Target, and coupons and cash-back rewards at CVS and Walgreens. “If I didn’t do it like this, I couldn’t afford [it] when it came around to school time,” she said.
Many Americans have become similarly savvy as they work through their back-to-school lists in this era of raging inflation, Deloitte and JLL research shows. They are tracking sales, flocking to discount stores and working extra shifts. Many also started shopping months earlier than usual to get ahead of a season that the National Retail Federation estimates will run the typical U.S. household $864.
They also are paying attention to the industry, said Chip West, a retail and consumer behavior expert at the marketing solutions company Vericast. The supply chain bottlenecks that once plagued retailers have given way to inventory pileups for many big-box stores, forcing them to slash prices to clear out the excess.
“They know that there’s more deals to be had out there,” West said. “They’re looking for more of those promotions and sales and coupons to help them save money.”
The stakes are high for retailers: Americans spent a record $37 billion in 2021, according to the National Retail Federation, which expects comparable numbers this year.
While government data showed consumer spending climbed a healthy 1.1 percent in June, consumer sentiment — as measured by the University of Michigan — hit a record low of 50 that month. Because consumer spending makes up more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy, economists and policymakers are closely watching for any sign of retrenchment and possible recession.
The season is also a barometer for the crucial holiday shopping season, West said. If families can cover costs for the new school year, they’re more likely to spend during the holidays, especially if they start shopping early and spread out costs over several months.
“As long as inflationary pressures remain high, the consumer behavior and sentiment we are witnessing for back-to-school shopping could easily carry over into the holiday shopping season,” he said.
But Stephen Rogers, managing director of Deloitte’s Consumer Industry Center, said consumers will spend despite higher prices — inflation jumped 9.1 percent in June, year over year — because they view school-related expenses as necessities.
“Parents will always make it happen for their kids,” he said.
Michelle Cain, the mother of a 9-year-old and 6-year-old twins in a Chicago suburb, is meticulous in her search for bargains. She keeps a spreadsheet of the items her children will need and employs research techniques normally reserved for big-ticket purchases such as a car or an appliance. Going item by item, Cain compares prices at Walmart, Target, Amazon and any other stores running big sales, she said, and adds them to the cart before deciding whether it’s worth buying them all at one place or shopping at multiple stores.
Cain, 40, routinely shares her findings in Facebook groups — notifying parents when backpacks are half off or markers are marked down a few dollars — and stretches her shopping between pay cycles. Not including clothes, Cain says she spent about $100 per child this year.
A survey from JLL found that nearly 60 percent of shoppers plan to look for sales and coupons this year, and 50 percent will focus on essential items and buy less. Discount retailers are attracting new customers, including those who have never shopped at a dollar store before, West said. In May, both Dollar General and Dollar Tree raised their sales forecasts for 2022, bolstered by changing shopper habits due to inflation.
Amanda Frey, 39, said she cut out unnecessary expenses when shopping for her 8- and 16-year-old this summer. Unlike other years, when the children would get a fresh pair of shoes and glossy folders with patterns and characters, this year they’ll have to wear the ones they already own and use plain notebooks. She also sifted through their closets to make a list of things they absolutely needed. Even then, she chose the most cost-effective shopping option.
“My daughter shopped at consignment shops where I had credits from turning in her older clothes, instead of shopping for new things,” said Frey, who lives in St. Marys, a town of about 18,000 people in southeastern Georgia.
Wood, 36, of Oklahoma, has been taking full advantage of the big markdowns. She said she found her 16-year-old son’s favorite pants at Walmart for $1 a piece.
“He’s got 15 pairs,” Wood said. “A couple bigger and then some that fit him now.”
The supply chain disruptions of 2021 that left the school supplies aisles bare and led to back orders for computers and tablets shouldn’t be an issue this year, said Darcy MacClaren, the head of digital supply chain at SAP North America, because manufacturers and stores are more prepared.
“Technology [and] your basic school supplies are pretty stable,” she said, and should be readily available. But discounts could fall away as the summer comes to a close and stores stop restocking seasonal aisles.
Cain, of suburban Chicago, said that in years past, she didn’t always have to be as purposeful about shopping deals — she works part time as an office administrator and her husband has a well-paying job in marketing. But higher gas and grocery prices have put a strain on her family.
“If it’s a problem for us, I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who aren’t in the financial situation that we are and don’t have access to the stores we do,” she said. | 2022-08-04T16:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Back-to-school shopping: How families are surviving despite soaring costs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/04/back-to-school-shopping-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/04/back-to-school-shopping-inflation/ |
News broadcasters set up broadcast positions outside the Bank of England (BOE) ahead of the Monetary Policy Report news conference at the bank’s headquarters in the City of London, UK, on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Unlike what has been happening repeatedly in the US for the Federal Reserve, no one I know rushed to dismiss the central bank’s messages and forecasts as “wishful thinking,” “laughable,” “inexplicable” or “analytically indefensible” — actual phrases that have been used by serious economists and former Fed officials in reaction to commentary from the Fed. Instead, the Bank of England’s announcements are being seen so far as refreshingly direct and honest. They are also acting as a catalyst for serious discussions and analysis and, as important, deeper consideration of what is being proposed by the two candidates for prime minister.
The Bank of England is reminding the world what a politically independent central bank can and should do: act as a “trusted adviser,” willing to share analytically honest views that other more politically sensitive institutions are either unable or unwilling to do.
Of course, this is not a risk-free approach. Such honesty — rather than catalyzing appropriate responses from policy-making agencies that lead to better economic and social outcomes — can provoke household and corporate behaviors that accelerate the bad outcomes. Yet the risks involved are worth taking, especially when the alternative is a central bank that loses institutional credibility, sees the effectiveness of its forward policy guidance erode and becomes even more vulnerable to political interference.
It should also be noted that the UK’s situation differs in some important way from those of other countries. The country’s economic challenges are complicated not only by the energy price catch-up but also by the political transition and the changing nature of the country’s relations with its trading partners.
This is not to say that the implications for other countries do not go beyond the importance of analytical directness and intellectual honesty. They do. Indeed, I can think of four others:
• Illustrating the elusiveness of “first best” policy responses in a world in which central banks fell behind in responding to inflation.
• Acting as a reminder that, in such a world, the prospects of high inflation and recession can coexist.
• Highlighting the need for central banks to act relatively aggressively despite the likelihood of inflation destroying demand.
• Stressing the need for governments and multilateral institutions to assist in efforts to contain inflation, promote productivity and growth, and protect the most vulnerable segments of the population.
I suspect that, in the next few days, the Bank of England will again discover that it is not easy to be the messenger of unpleasant news, no matter how honest and well-intended the approach is. Yet the example it sets for other central banks is an inspiring one, as is the possibility of acting as a catalyst for a more holistic response to the UK’s economic and social challenges. | 2022-08-04T16:00:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bank of England Gives a Lesson in Honest Central Banking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bank-of-england-gives-a-lesson-in-honest-central-banking/2022/08/04/1ffed616-140b-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bank-of-england-gives-a-lesson-in-honest-central-banking/2022/08/04/1ffed616-140b-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
AlphaFold, DeepMind’s protein structure program, is impressive because it reveals so much fundamental information about living organisms.
Proteins are the building blocks of life, after all, and as such they are essential to life and to the development of medicines. Proteins can be drug targets, and they can themselves be drugs. In either case, it is important to know the intricate ways in which they fold into various shapes. Their coils, floppy bits, hidden pockets and sticky patches can control, for example, when a signal is sent between cells or if a process is turned on or off.
Until now, capturing an image of a protein has required painstaking work lasting anywhere from days to months to years — work that has sometimes never come to fruition.
Since the early 1990s, scientists have been trying to train computers to predict a protein’s structure based on its genetic sequence. AlphaFold had the first taste of success in 2020, when it correctly predicted the structures of a handful of proteins. The next year, DeepMind put on its server about 365,000 proteins.
Now, it’s put the entire universe of proteins up for grabs — in animals, plants, bacteria, fungi and other living things. All 200 million of them.
Much as the gene-editing tool Crispr revolutionized the study of human disease and the design of drugs to target genetic errors, AlphaFold’s feat is fundamentally changing the way new medicines can be invented.
“Anybody who could have thought that machine learning was not yet relevant for drug hunting surely must feel different,” said Jay Bradner, president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, the pharma company’s research arm. “I’m on it more than Spotify.”
Count me as one of the former skeptics. I hadn’t discounted the possibility that AI might have an impact on the drug industry, but I was weary of the many biotech firms hyping often ill-defined machine-learning capabilities. Companies often claimed that they could use AI to invent a new drug without acknowledging that the starting point — a protein structure — still needed to be worked out by a human. And so far, people have had to first invent drugs for the computer to improve upon them.
Producing the full compendium of proteins is something entirely different — and outside the usual hype cycle. It’s little wonder that executives at biotech and pharma companies are widely adopting AlphaFold’s revelations.
Rosana Kapeller, the chief executive officer of Rome Therapeutics, offers an example from her company’s labs. Rome is probing the “dark genome,” the repetitive portion of the human genetic code that is believed to be largely a relic of ancient viruses. Rome’s team spent more than six months refining its first image of one protein embedded in that dark genome. Just one day after they captured an initial snapshot of a second protein, DeepMind dropped its complete load of images. Within 24 hours, Rome’s scientists had perfected their picture. “So you see,” she said, “that’s amazing.”
None of this is to say that AlphaFold will solve every problem in drug discovery, or even that its 200 million protein images are perfect. They’re not. Some need more work, and others are more akin to a child’s scribbles than the fleshed out images researchers hope for.
Scientists in industry and academic labs tell me that even when the snapshots are imperfect, they contain enough information to provide a rough sense of where the important bits are. David Liu, a professor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and founder of multiple biotech companies, said the technology still allows researchers in his lab to “achieve that Zen-like understanding state” to decide where to tinker with a protein to change its properties.
But proteins also don’t exist as still snapshots. Depending on the job they’re performing at a given moment, they yawn and jiggle and twist inside the swamp of a cell. In other words, AlphaFold gives us protein Instagram; scientists would love to have protein TikTok or, eventually, protein YouTube.
Even if that becomes possible one day, this addresses just one step in the process of creating new drugs. The most expensive part is testing that new medicine in humans.
Nevertheless, AlphaFold’s pictures can help drugmakers get to the testing stage faster. DeepMind’s feat may have taken several years of scientific exploration, but it produced something with truly monumental consequences. And it made that work freely available. (Of course, it has also launched its own biotech company, Isomorphic Labs, to take a stab at capitalizing on the advances.)
Finally, we are getting a glimpse of AI’s potential to transform the drug industry. And now it’s possible to consider which problems machine-learning might solve next for science and medicine.
• AI’s Next Big Thing Is Fake Data: Parmy Olson
• Maybe AI Technology Isn’t as Scary as We Thought: Tyler Cowen | 2022-08-04T16:00:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drug Discovery Is About to Get Faster. Thank AI. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/drug-discovery-is-about-to-get-faster-thank-ai/2022/08/04/edbe6562-1406-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/drug-discovery-is-about-to-get-faster-thank-ai/2022/08/04/edbe6562-1406-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
What You Need to Know About Recessions — Including Whether We’re in One
Analysis by Reade Pickert | Bloomberg
US inflation is at a four-decade high, borrowing costs are surging and stocks have taken a beating. With the Federal Reserve going full steam ahead on an aggressive campaign to temper demand and tame prices, concerns are growing that its moves will tip the US into recession. There’s no shortage of opinions about whether a downturn is inevitable, when it might start and how bad it might be.
1. What is a recession?
It’s often understood as a period when economic output contracts for two straight quarters. But the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, a group of academics whose determination is regarded as official in the US, defines a recession differently: as a “significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.” It looks at three criteria -- depth, diffusion and duration -- and considers factors such as employment, inflation-adjusted spending, industrial production and income. NBER says extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may offset weaker signals from another. For instance, the pandemic-driven recession of 2020 was broad-based and characterized by a sharp drop in economic activity, but it was extremely short, lasting just two months.
2. Could the US already be in a recession?
For Americans facing decades-high inflation, near-record gas prices and ballooning grocery bills, it certainly may feel like it, but most economists say the US economy is not currently in a recession. Fed Chair Jerome Powell agreed when asked that same question on July 27. That said, a slew of recent data has intensified the debate.
3. What do the figures show?
The government’s hallmark measure of economic activity -- gross domestic product -- posted back-to-back quarterly declines in the first half of the year. The pullback in the first quarter largely reflected a surge in imports; GDP is meant to capture domestic production, so surging imports dragged down the headline figure. The second quarter, however, indicated a more concerning decline. The government’s initial assessment of the second quarter, released on July 28, showed a slowdown in consumer spending as well as declines in business investment, government outlays and housing. Inventories also weighed on GDP. While the numbers so far in 2022 fit the recession rule of thumb of two straight quarters of shrinking GDP, that doesn’t mean the US is officially in recession as determined by the NBER.
4. Are economists expecting a recession soon?
Bloomberg Economics’ model says there’s a 100% probability of a recession by the start of 2024. Economists at Deutsche Bank AG, one of the first major banks to forecast a recession, expect it to begin in mid-2023; Wells Fargo & Co. sees the US entering a recession in early 2023, and Nomura Holdings Inc. expects one even sooner—starting at the end of 2022.
5. Does that mean a recession is unavoidable?
President Joe Biden’s administration insists a recession is not a foregone conclusion. The Fed’s Powell has held out hope for a so-called soft landing -- a cooling in economic activity that doesn’t lead to a recession -- but he acknowledged on June 22 that achieving one will be “very challenging.” So far, the labor market remains a bright spot in an otherwise darkening economic picture, with employers adding more jobs than expected in June.
6. How bad might things get?
For the most part, economists are generally describing any potential upcoming recession as mild or moderate. Even so, all recessions are painful and even a mild recession would likely still mean hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their jobs. Estimates vary, but the unemployment rate is expected to rise from a near five-decade low to somewhere around 4% to 6%, well below the 10% seen in the wake of the Great Recession and the nearly 15% seen at the start of the pandemic. In terms of duration, economists differ. One reason this recession could prove longer lasting is that high inflation may hold the Fed back from stepping in to support the economy. It’s worth noting that as hard as it is to forecast when a recession will occur, it’s harder still to envision what one would look like.
7. Is the global economy heading for a recession?
The global economy is facing a similar picture: high inflation and aggressive steps by central banks to curb it. “The world may soon be teetering on the edge of a global recession, only two years after the last one,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, said in July. World Bank President David Malpass, in a report released in June, said that even if a global recession is averted, the combination of high inflation and slow growth -- something known as stagflation -- could persist for several years. In Europe, much of the fate of the economy hinges on access to Russian gas, though recession risks differ by country. In August, the Bank of England warned the UK is heading for more than a year of recession under the weight of soaring inflation. Meantime, in China -- the world’s second-largest economy -- the outlook remains uncertain. The economy is showing mixed signs of recovery, strained by stringent Covid-19 measures and associated lockdowns, but the government is seeking ways to step in. | 2022-08-04T16:00:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What You Need to Know About Recessions — Including Whether We’re in One - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-you-need-to-know-about-recessions-including-whether-were-inone/2022/08/04/e2c987ea-1406-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-you-need-to-know-about-recessions-including-whether-were-inone/2022/08/04/e2c987ea-1406-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Heat triggers alerts for more than 80 million in central, eastern U.S.
Temperatures over 95 degrees will span from Texas to Montana and from the Mid-Atlantic to Maine on Thursday.
Forecast highs on Thursday from the National Weather Service. (PivotalWeather)
More than 80 million Americans in the central and eastern United States are under heat alerts Thursday because of a punishing combination of temperatures from 95 to 105 degrees and oppressive humidity levels.
“Dangerously hot summer conditions persist in several spots across the U.S.,” the National Weather Service wrote early Thursday.
The most intense heat is situated over two sprawling zones: 1) From the Mid-Atlantic to eastern Maine — which is forecast to reach 95 to 100 degrees. 2) From interior Texas to northern Montana and North Dakota — which is forecast to reach 95 to 105 degrees.
While the highest temperatures will concentrate in the central United States, the most oppressive humidity levels will be found along the East Coast. Heat indexes, a measure of how hot it feels factoring in the humidity, will be comparable in both zones — ranging from 100 to 105 degrees, although a few spots in South Texas may exceed that.
The Weather Service has placed much of the eastern Mid-Atlantic and large areas of the Northeast under heat advisories, including Norfolk, Washington, Philadelphia, Albany, New York City and Boston.
“We encourage everyone to practice appropriate heat-related precautions such as staying hydrated, taking frequent breaks in air-conditioned rooms, and making sure pets and children are not left alone in cars for any length of time,” wrote the Weather Service office serving Boston in a forecast discussion.
Parts of the southern Plains, including San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Wichita — which have endured a historically hot summer — are also under advisories.
San Antonio, which has seen a record 54 days reach at least 100 this year, will add another to that tally. The historical average through Aug. 3 is just five such days.
Hot weather even extends into the northern Plains and northern Rockies, prompting heat advisories and excessive-heat warnings for portions of western Nebraska, western South Dakota and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana.
Over central and eastern Montana, the combination of hot and dry weather is escalating the fire danger, prompting red flag warnings.
Records could fall
The Weather Service predicts more than a dozen record highs for Aug. 4 could be challenged across the Lower 48 on Thursday.
A few could be in jeopardy in the Central United States, where high temperatures will generally be 5 to 15 degrees above normal. San Antonio is predicted to hit 102 — near the record of 103 set in 2011. Houston, which is forecast to reach 101, would be just 1 degree shy of the record high from 1951.
The Weather Service is predicting two records in the Northern Rockies. It’s calling for Sheridan, Wyo., to hit 100, matching the record from 1964, and Glasgow, Mont., to reach 104, surpassing the previous high mark of 102 from 1964.
In the Northeast, numerous records are expected to be threatened:
Philadelphia is forecast to be 1 degree shy of the record 98 from 1995.
New York John F. Kennedy Airport is forecast to hit 94, breaking the 2006 record of 93.
Albany is forecast to be 1 degree shy of the record 98 from 1955.
Boston is forecast to tie the 1928 record of 96.
Concord, N.H., is forecast to tie the 1944 record of 97.
How long will the heat last?
In the Northeast, this is a short-lived blast of heat, with substantially above-average temperatures persisting only into Friday. A slow-moving cold front, which will set off heavy thunderstorms Friday, will drop temperatures somewhat over the weekend.
The duration of the heat will also be cut short in the north central United States by another cold front. Temperatures will drop in the northern Rockies on Friday and then into the northern Plains by Saturday.
However, the heat will not relent over much of the southern and central Plains, including Texas. This zone will swelter through the weekend, with highs continuing to hover near 100 degrees.
Monday through Wednesday next week, highs in Oklahoma and Texas are forecast to range from 90 to 100 degrees, only a slight improvement.
Through the end of next week, the Weather Service projects high chances of above-normal temperatures for much of the central United States in its 8- to 14-day outlook, while the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic catch a break.
This outlook reflects the persistence of a zone of high pressure, or a heat dome, over the middle of the country which has held in place much of the summer.
Human-caused climate change is making these heat domes larger and more intense. | 2022-08-04T16:00:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Heat triggers alerts for more than 80 million in central, eastern U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/northeast-midatlantic-heat-wave/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/northeast-midatlantic-heat-wave/ |
Tamika Palmer, right, Breonna Taylor's mother, sings during an unveiling of a painting of Breonna Taylor on March 12 in Louisville (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Four current and former Louisville officers are facing federal charges in connection with the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor — including excessive force, falsifying information on the search warrant and staging a cover-up, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday.
Kelly Goodlett and Joshua Jaynes are accused of falsifying information on a search warrant before and after Taylor, 26, was killed in March 2020, sparking a wave of racial justice protests across the country. Garland said that the officers not only violated Taylor’s Fourth Amendment rights but also knew the falsification would lead to a dangerous situation — one that “resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death.” The attorney general said Goodlett and Jaynes allegedly met in a garage after the killing and conspired to lie to investigators about the circumstances that led to it.
Former police officer Brett Hankison is charged with willfully using unconstitutional force for firing 10 shots through Taylor’s patio door during the raid. Hankison faced three state charges of wanton endangerment for firing those shots without a clear target, but was acquitted at trial in March.
Louisville police Sgt.Kyle Meany is also facing federal charges, Garland said Thursday.
Jaynes was previously fired by Louisville police for allegedly violating department policies in preparing the warrant for Taylor’s home. Yvette Gentry, then the interim chief, wrote in a pre-termination letter that Janes had “lied” when he wrote in the warrant application that he had verified through a U.S. postal inspector that Taylor was getting packages related to alleged drug activity of her ex-boyfriend.
Jaynes is suing to get his job back.
The Justice Department and the FBI has long been probing the Taylor case for potential civil rights violations. In April 2021, Garland announced a “pattern or practice” probe of the Louisville police department to determine whether the agency had engaged in abuse of power and unlawful tactics. That investigation is ongoing.
On Thursday, the attorney general said his agency was committed to fighting for justice on Taylor’s behalf, more than two years after her death.
“We share, but cannot fully imagine, the grief felt by Breonna Taylor’s loved ones,” Garland said. | 2022-08-04T16:00:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 Louisville officers face federal charges in Breonna Taylor probe, Merrick Garland says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/breonna-taylor-federal-charges-fbi-garland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/breonna-taylor-federal-charges-fbi-garland/ |
Comedian and activist Jon Stewart hugs Rosie Torres, wife of veteran Le Roy Torres, who suffers from illnesses related to his exposure to burn pits in Iraq, after the Senate passed the Pact Act at the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 2. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
On Tuesday evening, after the Senate passed a bill to aid veterans exposed to hazardous toxins by 86 votes to 11, brief cheers broke out in the gallery — along with tears of exhaustion and relief. That the Pact Act passed with broad bipartisan support is a testament to the relentless work of veterans, military families and advocacy groups. That it was delayed at the last minute, and used to score political points, is an outrage.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military would often dispose of waste by combusting products in open-air “burn pits.” The materials burned included chemicals, plastics, medical waste and other substances that can be harmful when torched. Many veterans who served near these sites now face long-term, sometimes life-threatening conditions. An estimated 3.5 million U.S. veterans — about 1 in 5 — have been exposed to contaminants and hazardous pollutants.
Yet more than 70 percent of disability claims related to burn pits are denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs, because it is difficult to prove a direct link between exposure and individual conditions. The Pact Act reduces that burden of proof, offering presumptive benefits status to 23 illnesses believed to be connected with exposure. It would also extend VA medical care to veterans who served in recent wars for five additional years.
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The bill initially passed the Senate in June with 84 votes and similarly breezed through the House. It was sent back to the Senate for what was expected to be routine approval, after a single line related to taxing was removed for procedural reasons. But — on the same day Democrats announced an ambitious new reconciliation deal — 25 GOP senators reversed course on a procedural vote, blocking the bill from moving forward.
The objections hinged on a technicality: Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) had raised concerns about reclassifying existing toxic exposure benefits from discretionary spending to mandatory. He argued this move could free up space in the discretionary budget for legislators to spend on other programs. Officials, including Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, warned that keeping those benefits in the discretionary budget could force the agency to “ration” care, and pointed out that the measure had bipartisan support in June. That did not stop Republican lawmakers from characterizing the bill as an insidious attempt by Democrats to spend hundreds of billions on unrelated causes.
Amid the political brinkmanship, veterans were left reeling. For nearly a week, those who had flown to D.C. to celebrate the act’s passage instead campaigned day and night on the steps of the Capitol. Their work mobilizing support no doubt played a role in persuading Republican senators to vote for the bill once again — but it is shameful such efforts were necessary.
Some who fought to raise the profile of this issue are no longer with us — including retired Staff Sgt. Wesley Black, who died in November from colon cancer. In an interview with comedian Jon Stewart last year, Black said: “It’s too late for me. But it’s not too late for the next veteran who walks down the hall of the VA.” | 2022-08-04T16:01:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pact Act is worth celebrating despite political brinkmanship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/pact-act-veterans-burn-pits-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/pact-act-veterans-burn-pits-politics/ |
Osama bin Laden, left, sits with Ayman al-Zawahiri during an interview on Nov. 10, 2001. (Hamid Mir/Daily Dawn via Reuters)
The first time I met Ayman al- Zawahiri, back in 1998, he was acting as Osama bin Laden’s interpreter — but it was clear he was much more than that.
It was my second interview with bin Laden, and Zawahiri impressed me right away. He translated bin Laden’s responses from Arabic into perfect English. Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor by training, was able to pose my critical questions with a mild smile on his face, and then conveyed bin Laden’s responses to me in a very aggressive tone.
When I learned that Zawahiri had been killed by a U.S. drone strike in downtown Kabul, I thought about his deep ties to jihadism in the country. The fact that he was living openly in the capital was also a clear reminder that the Taliban has not changed its old ways — it’s evident Zawahiri was still a figure to be treated with respect, despite pledges to the West to shun international terrorists. And even if Zawahiri wasn’t the al-Qaeda operational mastermind he once was, he was clearly important for the Taliban: an Arab jihadist who openly opposed the Islamic State and saw the Taliban as a partner.
If bin Laden was once the public face of al-Qaeda, Zawahiri was its brains.
During the lunch break, I asked Zawahiri, “Where were you last year?” “I was in a Russian jail,” he answered. Bin Laden noticed my curiosity and added that it was not the first time his friend was arrested; he also spent many years in Egyptian jails. Now I wanted to know more about this man.
“Who are you?” I asked. “I am an eye surgeon, but it is no more a profession — it is just a hobby now,” Zawahiri replied. I laughed and asked about his real profession. He said he was in the business of medicines and chemicals. “Why did the Russians arrest you?” I asked. “Because I met some Chechens,” he said cryptically.
Zawahiri translated my question — then handed a book to bin Laden. Bin Laden dutifully quoted from the book. It was clear Zawahiri played a key role in justifying and amplifying al-Qaeda’s actions and objectives.
I spent two days with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1998. I came to know from other al-Qaeda sources that Zawahiri traveled to Chechnya in search of some sort of portable nuclear weapon on the black market. When angered members of the Chechen mafia failed to secure a deal, they leaked the information about the presence of a mysterious Arab businessman in Grozny to the Russian security forces. Zawahiri was soon arrested with a fake Sudanese passport, but was released after six months because the Russians failed to learn his real identity.
Within a few weeks of my second interview with bin Laden, I started receiving handwritten letters and booklets from Zawahiri through a Pakistani cleric. I met with Zawahiri again in Kabul seven weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Again, he was acting as interpreter during my third interview with bin Laden.
The United States had already launched Operation Enduring Freedom, and our interview took place in the midst of explosions and gunshots. Zawahiri seemed calm and even casually asked me about my China Xinjiang Airlines travel bag. He said he had also used the airline to travel to China. I tried to hide my worry. “You may be a James Bond of al-Qaeda, that’s why you are not looking worried, but I am not a James Bond; I am definitely worried,” I joked. “Let’s start the interview because I need to run away.”
Bin Laden claimed to have nuclear weapons in that interview. I doubted his claims, but Zawahiri said that anyone can buy nuclear weapons on the Russian black market “if you have $30 million.” His obsession with acquiring nuclear weapons made him very important for al-Qaeda.
These days, Zawahiri was seen more like a father figure for different militant groups hiding in Afghanistan. The Taliban made a mistake by allowing him to be there. In the end, his presence will be another factor hurting the people of Afghanistan, forcing countries that want to recognize the Taliban and establish diplomatic relations to continue to isolate the group. | 2022-08-04T16:56:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The time I met the brains of al-Qaeda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/the-time-i-met-zawahiri-al-qaeda-brains/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/the-time-i-met-zawahiri-al-qaeda-brains/ |
The Guatemala government arrested José Rubén Zamora because it fears the truth
José Rubén Zamora, president of the newspaper El Periódico, speaks with the media after a court hearing in Guatemala City late last month. (Johan Ordonez/AFP)
“This is not a case against my father, it is a systematic attack against freedom of expression and democracy. They started with the activists, continued on to the prosecutors and now they are starting to pursue journalists.”
That’s the truth about the recent arrest of renowned Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, articulated eloquently by his son, Ramón Zamora. In Guatemala, a country rife with corruption and government impunity, truth is hard to find. José Rubén Zamora, president and founder of the Guatemalan newspaper El Periódico, is one of the most important tellers of it. “Since I started as a journalist in 1989, I’ve denounced that we live in a narco-klepto-dictatorship that has us kidnapped and cowered,” Mr. Zamora told the crowd that gathered late last week to watch security forces escort him to the tribunal building. There, Mr. Zamora was spuriously charged with money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling. Guatemalan authorities also raided El Periódico’s offices, a move the Association of Guatemalan Journalists said was meant to censor Saturday’s print edition.
Rafael Curruchiche, head of the Guatemalan anti-impunity office, claimed Mr. Zamora’s arrest “has no relation in his capacity as a journalist” but rather “his capacity as a businessman.” Mr. Curruchiche offered no evidence to support this dubious assertion. Guatemala’s justice system has conveniently not yet provided any either: Mr. Zamora’s appearance before a judge was canceled Monday, apparently because his case file was unavailable.
It’s exactly this kind of nontransparency that Mr. Zamora has spent his career trying to fight and for which he has been brutally targeted before. Since its founding in 1996, El Periódico has become well-known for publishing investigations into the Guatemalan government, including into corruption allegations in President Alejandro Giammattei’s administration. Mr. Zamora has won numerous international awards for combating censorship and advocating for press freedom. It’s work he does at great personal risk: In 2003, gang members held Mr. Zamora hostage in his own home and beat his sons. In 2008, Mr. Zamora was drugged, abducted, robbed, beaten and left for dead.
Mr. Zamora’s arrest is only the latest and most brazen example of the Guatemalan government’s assaults on press freedom. Mr. Giammattei’s administration has “targeted the media through bellicose rhetoric and false accusations,” according to Human Rights Watch, while government investigations into threats against, harassment of and murders of journalists go nowhere. Several top Guatemalan officials, including Mr. Curruchiche, are on the State Department’s list of “corrupt and undemocratic actors” in Central America for obstructing investigations into government corruption. The Guatemalan government has arrested numerous anti-corruption prosecutors and judges. With Mr. Zamora’s arrest, it sends the unacceptable message that journalists are next.
“Let me die if necessary, but let there be justice,” Mr. Zamora said in a video from jail tweeted on Saturday. He is in the middle of a hunger strike to protest his persecution, once again demonstrating his courage. If Guatemala wants to retain any semblance of democratic legitimacy, Mr. Zamora must be released and his charges dropped. He has for so long, on so many occasions, spoken up against the Guatemalan government. Now, the world must speak up on Mr. Zamora’s behalf.
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With the world distracted, Cuba cracks down on dissident artists | 2022-08-04T17:00:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Guatemala government arrested José Rubén Zamora because it fears the truth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/guatemala-arrest-jose-ruben-zamora/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/guatemala-arrest-jose-ruben-zamora/ |
His debut single, ‘Took the Children Away,’ became an anthem for the ‘Stolen Generations,’ the tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians who were removed from their homes under racist government policies
Australian singer-songwriter Archie Roach and his partner, Ruby Hunter, perform at the Sydney Festival in 2010. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
Mr. Roach was part of the “Stolen Generations,” the tens of thousands of Indigenous Australian children who were forcibly removed from their homes under government assimilation policies that lasted into the 1970s. As an adult, he struggled with alcoholism and homelessness, sleeping on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne while trying to reconnect with members of his family. He spent time in prison and in hospitals, suffering seizures that doctors linked to his alcohol abuse, and attempted suicide while trying to dry out.
Music helped ease his pain. “It gave me something to fill the gap left by drinking,” he told People magazine. With his husky baritone, gentle guitar playing and poignant lyrics about family, love and politics, he became one of Australia’s most renowned singer-songwriters, raising awareness of the Stolen Generations through his debut single, the 1990 ballad “Took the Children Away.”
“This story’s right, this story’s true; I would not tell lies to you,” he sang. “Like the promises they did not keep, and how they fenced us in like sheep. They said to us, ‘Come take our hand,’ set us up on mission land. They taught us to read, to write and pray.
“Then they took the children away.”
Mr. Roach was 66 when he died July 30 at a hospital in Warrnambool, Victoria, on Australia’s southeastern coast. His death was announced in a statement by his sons, Amos and Eban, who gave permission to use his name and image. (For cultural reasons, many Australian Indigenous people do not use a person’s name and image after death.) They said Mr. Roach had a “long illness” — he acknowledged struggling with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — but did not cite a specific cause.
“Our country has lost a brilliant talent, a powerful and prolific national truth teller,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Twitter. “Archie’s music drew from a well of trauma and pain, but it flowed with a beauty and a resonance that moved us all.”
“We still need to own the whole history of this country and be honest and courageous,” he said. “It’s the only way we’re going to move on.”
Mr. Roach drew on American country, soul and gospel in his music, releasing 10 studio albums and opening for artists including Billy Bragg, Tracy Chapman, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Paul Simon. But he remained best-known for “Took the Children Away,” which he wrote in the late 1980s, a few years after historian Peter Read started using the term “Stolen Generations” to describe the forced removal of Indigenous children from their homes.
“It is a landmark,” the Melbourne Age wrote in 1990, shortly before the release of Mr. Roach’s debut album, “Charcoal Lane.” “Quite apart from its place in Aboriginal history, it is a great Australian folk song, perhaps the greatest since ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.’ ”
“Archie thought he’d bombed, that everybody hated it, so he just turned and started to walk offstage. And as he walked off, this applause started to build and build and build. … I’d never seen it before — people were so stunned at the end of the song that it took them a while just to gather themselves to applaud.”
Five years after Mr. Roach recorded the song, the Australian government launched a national inquiry into the Stolen Generations. It found that from 1910 to 1970, as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children — many of mixed White and Aboriginal descent — were removed from their communities and taken to churches and foster homes, under the premise that a Western upbringing was more humane. Many of the children faced physical and sexual abuse, according to the inquiry, which likened the forced-removal policies to genocide.
“For years I’d walked around with this burden, not just of being removed, but of who I was removed from: my mother and father,” Mr. Roach told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 2018. “It was like I was carrying them around with me for years, on my back. When the apology came it was like the weight shifted and I felt light. To me it was like they were set free — dad to return as a red-bellied black snake, and mum to fly away as the wedge-tailed eagle,” a central figure in Aboriginal mythology.
His later records included “Jamu Dreaming” (1993), “Looking for Butter Boy” (1997) and “Tell Me Why” (2019), which accompanied his memoir of the same name. When the coronavirus pandemic forced him to cancel what was supposed to be his last concert tour, he sat down at his kitchen table and rerecorded the songs from his first album, releasing the new version as “The Songs of Charcoal Lane” (2020).
Mr. Roach was appointed a member of the Order of Australia in 2015 and inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2020. Information on survivors was not immediately available.
Hunter died of a heart attack in 2010 at age 54, and Mr. Roach was still grieving her loss when he suffered a stroke that left him temporarily paralyzed on his right side. The next year, he was diagnosed with cancer, which caused him to lose half a lung. Still, he continued to perform, aided by supplemental oxygen.
He often said that each time he played “Took the Children Away,” he let go of a little pain. “I still feel the pain, every day,” he told Time magazine. “Sometimes it threatens to engulf me. But I’m not going to let it destroy me.” Eventually, he said, that pain would be gone for good. | 2022-08-04T17:01:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Archie Roach, renowned Aboriginal singer, dies at 66 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/04/australian-singer-archie-roach-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/04/australian-singer-archie-roach-dead/ |
By Kate Bernot
“If I’m going to drop down $12 for a six-pack, I want to make sure the alcohol content is 6 percent [alcohol by volume] or higher. That way I can just drink one or two and be satisfied, and still have a couple of beers left for later,” says Tejada, a college counselor who lives in New York’s Brooklyn borough. “My brain says ‘6 percent or up.’ Below that, I’m not interested.”
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This is particularly true within craft beer, where beers with an ABV percentage higher than 8 — mostly double and even triple India pale ales, but also Belgian-style tripels and imperial stouts — have gained 5 percent market share versus four years ago, according to chain retail sales data from the Beer Institute and NielsenIQ National Beer Wholesalers Association. During that same period, nonalcoholic beers have also gained 1 percent share in those same grocery stores, pharmacies and big box stores.
Growth at the low and high end of beer has come at the expense of beer’s historic sweet spot: The only ABV range in overall beer to lose share in the past four years has been 4 to 6 percent.
Knospe has had a front-row seat for this polarization in consumer taste. For decades, New Belgium’s flagship beer was Fat Tire, an easy-drinking, 5.2 percent amber ale squarely in beer’s “middle.” But in summer 2019, something remarkable happened: A relatively new beer, Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, caught fire. New Belgium doubled down, redesigning the beer’s package to more prominently display its 9 percent alcohol content. (That’s more than double the ABV of a standard light lager such as Coors Light or Miller Lite.) By the end of the following year, Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA was the brewery’s No. 1 beer, raking in $25 million more in chain retail sales than Fat Tire. According to Nielsen data, it’s now America’s best-selling IPA — a title it earned beginning in March 2021 when it surpassed Lagunitas IPA (6.2 percent ABV) and Founders All Day IPA (4.7 percent) — and one of the most successful new craft beer brands of the past decade.
But for all the drinkers choosing high-intensity, high-flavor beers, many are also running to the opposite pole. Nonalcoholic beer makes up less than 1 percent of the overall beer market in the United States, but within craft beer especially, its recent growth has raised eyebrows. Since 2019, nonalcoholic beer has increased its chain retail sales by 27 percent. Athletic Brewing Co. in Stratford, Conn., exclusively makes nonalcoholic beer, and last year, it was the 27th largest craft brewery in the country. This boom is driven by new, better-tasting nonalcoholic beer options from craft brands like Athletic and Brooklyn Brewery, as well as from larger brands such as Heineken and Budweiser.
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Danelle Kosmal, vice president of research for the Beer Institute, a D.C.-based trade group, says that the growth of nonalcoholic craft beer appears to be at the expense of beers in the 1 to 4 percent ABV range.
Amid recent trends in both high and low ABV, perhaps no style has been left in the dust more than the venerable American pale ale. Pioneered by Chico, Calif.-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in 1980, pale ale was for decades a staple of craft breweries and beer bars. With a balance between malt and hops and an ABV generally around 5.5 percent, pale ale was about as broadly appealing as craft beer could be. Until it wasn’t.
Schalow estimates that at any given time, Craft Beer Cellar carries 250 different versions of IPA, pale ale’s bigger, boozier sibling, including its best-selling beer of 2021: 8 percent Sip of Sunshine IPA from Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield, Vt. In contrast, the store carries just a half-dozen pale ales.
“People don’t seem to like the words ‘pale ale.’ To them, that’s inferior to the term IPA,” Schalow says, adding that many of her customers are what she calls “bang for the buck” shoppers who will always choose a 13 percent triple IPA over a 6 percent IPA if they’re equally priced.
“The trends of no alcohol and high-end ABV, there are ebbs and flows to that,” Kosmal says. “If we look over the past two decades across the total beer category, the average ABV doesn’t deviate a lot from 4.5 percent.”
After all, the status quo is quite powerful. The best-selling beer in America has been the same for 21 years: Bud Light, a distinctly middle-of-the-road lager clocking in at 4.2 percent. Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA may rule craft at the moment, but it’s unlikely to dethrone that king any time soon. | 2022-08-04T17:14:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High ABV and nonalcoholic beers are dominating the craft beer industry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/04/craft-beer-abv-ipas-nonalcoholic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/04/craft-beer-abv-ipas-nonalcoholic/ |
Wanda Vázquez Garced allegedly took bribes from a banker and a former FBI agent to fund her failed election bid
Gov. Wanda Vazquez gives a news conference to announce the extension of the covid curfew, while detailing the new sectors of the country that may resume operations, as part of a new executive order in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in May 2020. An official who was not authorized to talk about the federal case said Vazquez was arrested on Aug. 3, 2022, in the U.S. territory on federal corruption charges. (Carlos Giusti/AP)
Federal law enforcement agents on Thursday arrested former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, charging her in a bribery scheme that was allegedly aimed at financing her failed 2020 gubernatorial campaign, the Justice Department said.
Vázquez Garced was scheduled to appear in federal court in Puerto Rico later Thursday.
Officials said that said that while Vázquez Garced was governor in 2019 and 2020, she allegedly took campaign donations from a banker, Julio Martin Herrera Velutini, and a former FBI agent, Mark Rossini, who was consulting for the bank.
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Herrera Velutini’s bank was under investigation by the regulatory agency that oversees Puerto Rico’s financial institutions. He and Rossini allegedly paid more than $300,000 to consultants who supported Vázquez Garced’s campaign.
In exchange for the campaign donations, the governor allegedly said she would appoint a new commissioner to the regulatory agency of Herrera Velutini’s choosing. In February 2020, Vázquez Garced demanded the resignation of agency head. She appointed a new director a few months later, according to the federal indictment.
Vazquez Garced, Herrera Velutini and Rossini are each charged with conspiracy, federal programs bribery and wire fraud. If convicted on all counts, they face a maximum of 20 years in prison. The names of their defense attorneys could not immediately be learned.
“The alleged bribery scheme rose to the highest levels of the Puerto Rican government, threatening public trust in our electoral processes and institutions of governance,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr., who heads the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement Thursday. “No one is above the rule of law.”
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Vázquez Garced, a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, had a tumultuous entry into Puerto Rico’s top political office.
In 2019, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned amid a scandal triggered by a leaked chat that contained offensive messages about his opponents and Hurricane Maria victims.
Puerto Rico’s secretary of state, Pedro Pierluisi, was then sworn in to the top job. But the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ultimately ruled that he was sworn in on unconstitutional grounds, paving the way for Vázquez Garced to take office.
At the time, she was Puerto Rico’s justice secretary, the territory’s top legal official. She faced widespread mistrust among residents over accusations that she mishandled prosecution of members of her own party. She denied those accusations.
Vázquez Garced failed to receive her party’s nomination for governor in 2020, losing to Pierluisi. | 2022-08-04T17:18:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wanda Vázquez Garced charged in Puerto Rico bribery case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/vzquez-garced-puerto-rico-bribery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/04/vzquez-garced-puerto-rico-bribery/ |
Ana Navarro, left, and Alyssa Farah Griffin are the two new co-hosts on “The View.” (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images; Lou Rocco/ABC)
“The View” announced Thursday morning that Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro will be joining the ABC talk show’s panel as co-hosts, adding two conservative perspectives to the mix.
In a news release describing Farah Griffin as “in the conservative seat,” executive producer Brian Teta said she “is willing to share her unique political experience and brings a strong conservative perspective while holding her own in tough debates with her co-hosts and guests on both sides of the aisle.”
While introducing Farah Griffin’s permanent role on the show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg referenced program creator Barbara Walters’s original intention for “different views [to be] represented at this table.” Farah Griffin “understands what it’s like to be in the hot seat,” Goldberg continued.
Farah Griffin, who once wrote for a far-right conspiracy website and worked for congressmen including Mark Meadows, is best known for having worked in the Trump administration — first as press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence and later as the White House director of strategic communications. She resigned soon after the 2020 election, has testified with the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and, during one of her nearly 30 visits to “The View,” said she does not want Trump to be president again.
“The last couple of years have been quite turbulent for me,” Farah Griffin said on Thursday’s episode, adding that she is “proud to have found my voice” after serving as a spokesperson for so long.
Navarro, who became a fan favorite while serving on “The View” as a regular guest host, noted on-air that “we’re finally putting a ring on it and making it official.” Though she was made a permanent co-host, she will not appear in every episode. She cited “other work commitments” as the reason for this, likely referencing her role as a political commentator on CNN and Telemundo programming.
While a vocal Trump critic, Navarro still identifies as a Republican and confirmed as much on a November episode: “I’m not going to let a guy who was a Democrat, an Independent — who became a Republican just a few years ago — kick me out. I’m not going to be kicked out by a person that has no ideology, no principles and no convictions,” she said after insisting Trump be held accountable for his actions on Jan. 6.
Farah Griffin and Navarro will bring conservative commentary back to “The View” after polarizing co-host Meghan McCain’s high-profile, tense exit last year. McCain, the daughter of the late Republican senator John McCain, often sparred with the others over politics and alleged in her recent memoir, “Bad Republican,” that the atmosphere of the show “breeds drama.”
“It felt like the co-hosts and staff only knew one Republican — me — and took out all their anger on me, even though I didn’t even vote for Trump,” McCain wrote. “It was hard for me to understand.”
In the news release, Teta acknowledged that producers “promised to take a little time to fill the seat” before landing on Farah Griffin. She and Navarro will join Goldberg and co-hosts Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines beginning with Season 26, which kicks off in September. | 2022-08-04T17:31:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘The View’ adds Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro as new co-hosts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/04/view-ana-navarro-alyssa-farah-griffin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/04/view-ana-navarro-alyssa-farah-griffin/ |
‘Easter Sunday’: Comedy about Filipino American culture rings true-ish
Jo Koy stars in a movie about family tensions, loosely based on Koy’s stand-up comedy
Brandon Wardell, left, and Jo Koy in “Easter Sunday.” (Ed Araquel/Universal Pictures)
But it does help. (Full disclosure: My parents moved from the Philippines to Washington, where I was born, in the 1950s.)
Koy plays Joe Valencia, a Los Angeles comedian trying to land a part on a sitcom. (ABC recently rejected the pilot of a sitcom starring Koy but is reportedly interested in redeveloping the show.) Joe auditions well — producers especially love his impersonation of his mother’s thick accent — but they want Joe to up his own accent. “You’re at 30,” he is told. “Bring it up to 50.”
Joe doesn’t want to exploit his heritage by playing up an accent he doesn’t have, but his smarmy agent Nick (Chandrasekhar) tells him to go ahead with it.
Ironically, the cast of “Easter Sunday” features actors who are indeed putting on an accent they don’t have — like Tia Carrere, whose role as Joe’s aunt marks the first time in her long career that she’s been asked to play a Filipino. (Carrere is of Spanish, Filipino and Chinese descent.) So there’s a meta-conflict at play here, and one wonders if Nick’s frequent goading of Joe resonates with Chandrasekhar’s own experience in the industry. (Born in Chicago, Chandrasekhar is of Tamil descent.)
Identity isn’t the only conflict. Joe is a divorced father who’s more concerned about his career than about his teenage son, known as Junior (Brandon Wardell). Joe plans make it up to him: He’ll take him on a road trip for Easter Sunday dinner, but that just gives Dad more chances to let Junior down.
I said this wasn’t a religious picture, but this turning away from Jesus seems to be a lot of what “Easter Sunday” is about. Part of Joe’s shtick is that Mom (a terrific Lydia Gaston) is always complaining that her son didn’t become a nurse (as so many Filipinos follow that vocation) and that he never comes home. For all the frantic humor — including a crowd-pleasing cameo by Tiffany Haddish as a police officer — the movie is about one man’s fall from grace, his struggle with failure and fatherhood, and his strained relationships with his family.
While the adults are busy with their careers and petty squabbles, it’s encouraging that the younger generation seems more levelheaded. It’s young Ruth (Eva Noblezada of “Luck”), Junior’s love interest, who’s the movie’s moral center, especially when she scolds her prospective beau after he gives Dad an earful. “Bro, that’s not how we talk to our parents here,” she tells him. Ruthie also offers the movie’s richest ethnic metaphor: that the popular dessert drink halo-halo, which includes crushed ice, evaporated milk and various colorful fruits, is as messy as their heritage — as messy as family and, perhaps, as life itself. “But you keep coming back for more.”
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains some violence, some strong language and suggestive references. In English and some Tagalog with subtitles. 96 minutes. | 2022-08-04T17:31:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | "Easter Sunday" looks at the meaning of family through a Filipino lens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/04/easter-sunday-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/04/easter-sunday-movie-review/ |
When it comes to the economy, so-called soft landings are as rare as sightings of Halley’s comet. That’s because the Federal Reserve doesn’t have a great track record in raising interest rates to tame inflation without causing a deep and painful recession, otherwise known as a hard landing. But it’s starting to look like the central bank may just pull off the impossible.
It’s a very perplexing time in the field of economics. Activity has contracted, as measured by the official gross domestic product calculations put out by the Commerce Department, but it doesn’t feel like a recession. The economy has added 2.74 million jobs this year through June. This earnings season has shown that many consumer-facing companies such as Starbucks Corp. and Uber Technologies Inc. are enjoying pricing power, and travel companies are experiencing booming demand, with Marriott International Inc. saying hotel occupancy has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels. If you have taken a flight within the US recently, you have probably noticed that the plane is completely full and the airports are mobbed. Overall, members of the benchmark S&P 500 Index are on track to post record profits for the second quarter.
If this is a recession, it’s a strange one. But recessions come in all shapes and sizes. The one in 1990 and 1991 was primarily confined to the commercial real estate and the banking sectors, though it took until 1995 for the unemployment rate to fall back to where it was before the recession. In GDP terms, the dot-com bust in 2001 could hardly be considered a recession, but it felt extremely painful due to the massive drop in the stock market. Then there was the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, which was referred to as the Great Recession because of its depth and duration, with unemployment rising to 10%, the housing market collapsing and personal bankruptcies surging. The Covid-19 recession of 2020 saw the economy contract by the most since the Great Depression and the unemployment rate shoot up to near 15%, but then quickly rebound on the back of unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus.
Perhaps the reason why there is so much talk these days about whether the economy is in a recession is because of recency bias, with people remembering how damaging the last two were and thinking the next one will be of the same magnitude. There’s been a great deal of debate on social media about the definition of a recession and when it officially starts. The technical definition is that a recession is marked by two straight quarters of declining GDP, which we just had. But the official arbiter, the National Bureau of Economic Research, takes a wider view, looking for what it considers a substantial decline in activity over a sustained period.
The labor market is the biggest source of cognitive dissonance, with the unemployment rate anchored at 3.6%, just a tenth of a percentage point above the half-century low of 3.5% set in 2019. Although job openings have fallen to 10.7 million from the peak 11.9 million in March, they remain double the long-term average going back to 1999. The Institute for Supply Management’s index measuring growth in the services sector unexpectedly strengthened to a three-month high in July on firmer business activity and orders.
Financial markets are starting to buy into the idea of a soft landing. The S&P 500 has risen more than 13% from the low this year on June 16, yields on US Treasuries have eased back from their highs, the new issue corporate bond market is booming, and the dollar’s rally has taken a breather, for the time being. What all this means is that financial conditions are materially easier than they were just a few weeks ago, much to the chagrin of the macro doom crowd. The Fed’s received a lot of criticism by not anticipating the sharp acceleration in inflation, but if the central bank is able tame inflation without too much economic pain, it would certainly go a long way toward restoring its credibility.
If we’ve learned anything the past couple of years, it’s that the old economic playbooks are no help for what is happening now. Nobody has any experience with the aftermath of an economy that stops on a dime, jettisons some 17 million from the workforce over two weeks and contracts 31% only to rebound just as quickly on the back of free-money government programs that injected trillions of dollars directly into the pockets of consumers to go along with ultra-easy monetary policy. As such, anyone who expects the economy to follow the usual boom-bust patterns is going to be disappointed. It’s plausible that the old economic models are irrelevant, and we need to find something entirely new to guide us through what is happening. | 2022-08-04T17:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Team Soft Landing Is Starting to Pull Ahead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/team-soft-landing-is-starting-to-pull-ahead/2022/08/04/b765d368-1417-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/team-soft-landing-is-starting-to-pull-ahead/2022/08/04/b765d368-1417-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
The Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development was founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now these community leaders are changing the way the Lower 9th Ward can become resilient to natural disaster — and inspiring the next generation along the way.
Story by Dayana Sarkisova
Photos by Bryan Tarnowski
Aug. 4 at 12:58 p.m.
NEW ORLEANS — Arriving at Bayou Bienvenue, Arthur Johnson swings closed the door of his pickup truck and wipes the sweat across his brow.
“Says it feels like 108 today,” he murmurs.
The blistering heat doesn’t stand in the way of today’s lesson. As daily afternoon storm clouds roll in, Johnson begins hiking up to a platform on the levee that protects the Lower 9th Ward, trailed by nine interns hoping to learn how they can help address the environmental challenges that have decimated — and continue to threaten — this community.
Johnson is the chief executive of the Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development (CSED), also known as Sustain the Nine, a nonprofit that was formed after Hurricane Katrina to revitalize the badly damaged Lower 9th Ward. The group embraces community as a climate solution, working to teach residents about their environment and how to use science, conservation and sustainable practices to enrich and protect it.
“It’s wetlands, so it’s supposed to be natural,” Johnson says, pointing out various plants the group has planted to prevent soil erosion. “It’s not supposed to be manicured and look so pretty. It’s a natural habitat. The birds and everything you see here — it’s a haven right in your own backyard.”
While the levee was rebuilt by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after Katrina, CSED built the platform atop it in 2009 as a community classroom and gathering place. Johnson says that on any given day, he’ll see photographers, fishermen or university students on the platform, taking in a view of the bayou. Johnson and his interns — local teens — test the temperature of the water and the soil.
Arthur Johnson, chief executive of the Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, at Bayou Bienvenue in southeastern Louisiana.
“This wasn’t built because it was nice to do; it was built for education and experiments,” Johnson says, leaning over one of the platform’s railings. One of the interns points a radar gun, used to measure the temperature of the soil, toward his feet on the deck. It reads 150 degrees.
New Orleans is on the front lines of climate change’s wrath, vulnerable in a number of ways, including hotter temperatures and an eroding coastline. More than 90 percent Black, the Lower 9th Ward is a microcosm of a larger truth: Communities of color across the globe often suffer the most from climate change, while doing the least to contribute to it.
But this group of community activists is changing the way its most vulnerable inhabitants can recover and become resilient to natural disaster — aiming to train its young people in ways that can be recreated in other cities, too.
“It’s not a million-dollar program. It’s not a $100,000 program. Hell, it’s not even a $50,000 program,” Johnson says. “But we do a lot with what we have.”
The 300-year-old house on Chartres Street that serves as the group’s headquarters belonged to an elderly couple who didn’t return after Katrina. It sat empty for eight years until the group petitioned the city to fix it up and allow them to move in, leaving behind the small church office where the group started.
Johnson takes a seat in his office chair on a sweltering Wednesday afternoon, everything from artwork to solar panels piled ceiling-high around him. Born in Washington, he explains that he relocated to New Orleans 12 years ago to rehabilitate the Ninth Ward, where his mother is from and where he visited his grandmother “every year since I can remember.”
CSED interns take a lunch break in the backyard of the group's headquarters.
Johnson was brought onboard by Charles Allen, who co-founded CSED in 2006 along with Pam Dashiell, a resident of the Holy Cross neighborhood and a legendary local climate justice leader. (Dashiell died in 2009.) Dashiell and Allen, who is now the community engagement director at the National Audubon Society, first formed the group to address the immediate aftermath of Katrina, breathing life back into the city and ensuring what was rebuilt was done with sustainability and resilience in mind.
It’s difficult to now find any environmental initiative in the Lower 9th Ward that the group isn’t involved in, often partnering with other nonprofits, environmental organizations or universities to secure grants and funding.
In May, the group partnered with Glass Half Full, another nonprofit, to bring glass recycling to the neighborhood for the first time. With $6,000, CSED built seven public drop-off locations and paid for a year’s service. The glass is converted into sand that’s used for disaster relief and coastal restoration in New Orleans.
It is also working to bring trees from a local Christmas tree drop program to the bayou. The old, dried trees collected with another local group, Common Ground Relief, are bundled up and then arranged in a pattern to capture sediment. As they degrade, they’ll become a fish hatchery before decomposing into organic matter that will provide nutrients to the ecosystem.
And in January, CSED established an official space in Metairie, in Jefferson Parish, for a cypress tree nursery, now home to more than 3,000 bald cypresses. Once the trees reach a certain level of maturity — typically around 3½ feet tall — CSED plants them in the wetlands to reinforce coastal resilience and chip away at the massive loss of trees caused by hurricanes over the years.
Last year, Allen launched the group’s first internship program with the help of Bernard Singleton, a biology professor at nearby Dillard University, an HBCU. Now in its second summer, the program brings in teens for a month, five days a week, to run scientific experiments, study the environment of the Lower 9th Ward and learn from local mentors.
“The nursery, the internship, they — no pun intended — bear fruit. But I think the other win is the commitment and level of confidence that the community has in CSED,” Johnson says over the purr of a stationary fan pointed at his face.
“That’s built over time. There’s a level of trust. That’s something you can’t buy.”
Christina Lehew, a CSED project coordinator, shows an intern eggs from an apple snail — an invasive species that has overwhelmed Southern Louisiana.
In New Orleans, time can be organized into two eras: before Katrina, and after Katrina — the latter a phrase used so frequently that it begins to sound like one word.
After Katrina, the water remained for almost five weeks, destroying everything below its surface — the result of years of environmental mismanagement that saw levees fail on an epic scale.
After Katrina, the population of the Lower 9th Ward plunged from just over 14,000 in 2000 to about 4,000 by 2019, according to The Data Center. The average household income dropped from about $40,000 to $34,000.
Allen returned to Holy Cross, his neighborhood in the Lower Ninth, on Oct. 9, 2005 — six weeks since Katrina struck and he’d evacuated to Birmingham, Ala. After cleaning out his father’s house on Douglass Street, he began attending meetings around town focused on connecting neighborhoods with outside groups, academic institutions and governments willing to help develop small-scale recovery programs.
Today, Allen speaks passionately about finding solutions for those that did return, jumping from ideas about architecture to solar farms to microgrids.
“After Katrina, it’s more of what you call a ‘risk reduction system,’ because you never really eliminate the risk,” says Allen, settling his tall frame into a chair at the CSED headquarters. “It’s all about how we reduce the risk over time.”
In early 2006, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled the Bring Back New Orleans Commission, whose proposals included not repopulating certain areas of the city. “Their effort kind of fell flat on its face,” Allen says.
“That was kind of disrespectful to a lot of folks that weren’t back yet, that were not able to be on the ground and in those conversations. To be told, ‘Oh, your neighborhood ought to just be a green space,’ ” Allen says. “Well, I’m not back yet. How can you tell me that?”
Once the city shifted toward neighborhoods and residents leading their own recovery efforts, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources contacted Allen — who was working at Tulane University at the time as assistant director for external affairs — along with Dashiell. The department asked them to put together a strategy to rebuild the community with sustainability and resiliency in mind.
Charles Allen, center, co-founded CSED after Hurricane Katrina. Johnson and Bernard Singleton, right, launched the group's first internship program in 2021.
Allen says his relationship with Dashiell was a “remarkable one,” with them “serving as sidekicks to one another, trying to cover as much of this work as we possibly could” in the aftermath of Katrina.
“The work back then — going back to 2005, 2006, 2007 — was all about how we pull together resources, money, you name it, to build and rebuild while learning critical lessons from the disaster,” Allen says. “That was the immediate thing, you know? We got to rebuild the levees. We got to rebuild the flood walls.”
In the years following Katrina, CSED took on an additional role in trying to protect the needs of the community as countless outside interests — from tourism companies to book authors to celebrities looking to help out — moved in.
“What we saw was the community was browbeat, because of Katrina, and the loss, and the slowness of recovery. And then they were feeling like they were being used, you know,” Johnson says. “Dissertations, theses, books were all written with people’s comments — people made money on the people here.”
The interns gather soil samples and test the air quality near Bayou Bienvenue.
In 2010, Allen asked Johnson, a good friend, to help with a grant that required matching funding. With a background in management and fundraising from his time working in medium and large nonprofits, such as the American Heart Association, Johnson agreed.
“I figured that I would come here, I anticipated at most, for three weeks. After the first week, the board asked me whether I would consider staying on permanently.”
With a laugh, Johnson adds, “long story short, I’m still here.”
Johnson has a calm demeanor and a husky voice. People file in and out of the house all day, each one popping their head into his office to say hello. Kids, adults, mentors, interns, volunteers, individuals dropping off lunch, neighbors and politicians stop by, each drawn to his orbit.
“We've always been about education. That's one of our pillars as a community-based nonprofit, the whole idea of being able to share knowledge and expand knowledge to make sure that the community is able to converse and understand.”
When Johnson first came on board, he immediately noticed a lack of engagement with residents at local environmental meetings. Experts brought in were speaking at people, not with them, he says. “You had these educator types, scientists, environmentalists — and residents were somewhat intimidated.”
From topics like sea level rise and storm drain restoration, the center prioritizes keeping their neighbors scientifically informed. Johnson says that over time, they began to feel comfortable engaging with decision-makers and expressing their concerns at the local, state and federal levels. And government leaders began to hear them.
“We said, ‘Look, if you have these big meetings in school auditoriums, that’s not a good way to get our community — meaning the underserved community and community of color — to hear from them,’ ” he continues. “You really have to go into their environment, and that allows them to feel more comfortable. You’d be more comfortable in your house than you’d be in mine, you know?”
Actor Brad Pitt with Lower 9th Ward climate leader Pam Dashiell during a news conference in New Orleans on Aug. 31, 2006. The late Dashiell co-founded CSED with Allen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (Alex Brandon/AP)
In April, members of the Biden administration visited New Orleans, and Johnson and his staff gave White House environmental officials an “up close and personal look into how issues of environmental justice play out in the New Orleans area,” said Christine Harada, executive director of the White House Permitting Council, which coordinates federal environmental reviews and infrastructure projects, in an email. The administration specified “early and meaningful public input — particularly from disadvantaged communities” as part of their process in the Biden-Harris Permitting Action Plan, released after the passage of Biden’s infrastructure bill.
“They took us on a tour of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle where we saw firsthand the effects of infrastructure planning that did not prioritize the needs of the surrounding community, leading to devastation in the Lower 9th Ward during Hurricane Katrina,” Harada said. “We are incorporating the lessons learned from our discussions into our permitting work, as we strive to ensure all communities are factored into the federal permitting process at the start of any project.”
After the visit, the Permitting Council invited CSED to its next Environmental Justice Listening Session for Federal Agencies, which takes place this fall.
Johnson says that in the past, the “mistake of the bureaucratic process” has been inaccurate assumptions of what would benefit communities. He says he hopes to convey to the administration the importance of including local perspectives as decisions on climate policies and new developments get the green light. “We’ll be able to be a resource, particularly where the rubber meets the road,” Johnson says. “And particularly as it relates to underserved, overburdened communities of color that don’t always get a voice out there.”
Lehew, Singleton and the interns gather information around a plot of land outside CSED's outdoor learning center.
On the day Johnson visits the Bayou with his interns, Christina Lehew, a project coordinator, treks down the other side of the platform to the wetlands. She began pointing to parts of the coast — to birds, to marshland — speaking excitedly about the biodiversity and ideas the group has to preserve it, such as the Christmas tree and glass recycling projects.
“That’s the thing about doing environmental science and restoration work — you have to be creative in how you do it, so you end up finding really inspiring solutions,” says Lehew, who began working with CSED last year as a graduate fellow.
After an hour of exploring the bayou, Singleton, the Dillard biology professor, leads the group toward CSED’s outdoor learning center, a couple of football fields away. Built in 2016 in partnership with Tulane University, the center is on land that was destroyed during Katrina.
“The intent was to keep things as natural as possible. We didn’t want to do anything to block off the view [of the bayou] for these homeowners,” says Johnson, referring to a yellow house and a brick house that were renovated after Katrina. “But the homeowners like having us, because of the activity. After Katrina, there was no activity for a while, for years, which brought safety concerns.”
At the center, Singleton watches as one of the interns collects a soil sample and puts it in a small zip-top bag.
“What do you think, is there lead and arsenic in the soil?” he asks.
“If there used to be a house here, then yeah,” replies the intern, matter-of-factly.
Singleton, a military veteran, returned to New Orleans once he completed his studies and his service. While teaching at Dillard University, his alma mater, he consulted for the city on some of the biggest environmental disasters New Orleans had faced before Katrina. After Katrina hit, Singleton evacuated and was offered a new position in Georgia, but he opted to return instead.
“I decided I wanted to be a part of bringing New Orleans back,” he says, adjusting the brim of his baseball cap, “U.S. Army veteran” written in faded yellow letters across it.
Johnson and Singleton dreamed up the center’s internship program years ago, which grew from seven students at its launch to nine interns this summer. They listen to lecturers from across the city, including leaders from universities, businesses, law firms, environmental groups and even the New Orleans government.
CSED built the platform on Bayou Bienvenue to serve as an outdoor classroom and community gathering place.
“That’s what we’re trying to do with them: Get them out there. Get them comfortable with meeting people and networking. Sharpen their skills of presenting and being able to put together and design a project in their own right,” Singleton says.
In 2016, Singleton notes, only 2.8 percent of all environmental science degrees went to Black Americans.
“The individuals who live in these communities are the ones most affected when there’s a disaster or environmental issue, but they are also the least represented,” he says. “So we’re hopefully influencing them to decide to go into the field of environmental science. But we also emphasize the fact that you can be in any career path and then make a difference in the environment.”
“You see them change. You know, he plays basketball," Johnson says, referring to a 14-year-old intern. "When he first came to the program, that was basically the one thing he wanted to focus on. Now, he wants to be a scientist and a basketball player. And he can do that.”
The last of the experiments are completed — or at least, as many as could be done before the heat became too much to bear.
As the group migrates back toward the cars, the student Arthur mentioned begins to describe his ambitious athletic and scientific aspirations, echoing Johnson’s words.
“Yeah, I can do it,” he says, looking down at the bag of soil in his hands. “I can do anything.”
Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Illustration animation by Emma Kumer. Design and development by Hailey Haymond. Copy editing by Allison Cho.
Dayana Sarkisova is the editor of The Washington Post's Climate Solutions section, which covers the people and organizations tackling our biggest environmental challenges. Twitter Twitter | 2022-08-04T17:31:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In New Orleans' Lower 9th ward, climate leaders inspire the next generation - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/new-orleans-lower-ninth-ward-climate-csed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/new-orleans-lower-ninth-ward-climate-csed/ |
Biden officials plan to declare monkeypox a public health emergency
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is expected to declare monkeypox a public health emergency on Thursday. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
The administration’s announcement follows similar decisions by health officials in New York, California and Illinois and global health leaders. The World Health Organization on July 23 declared that monkeypox was a public health emergency of international concern, its highest-level warning, after confirmed outbreaks in about 70 countries where the virus has not historically spread.
Federal leaders have spent weeks debating whether to declare monkeypox a public health emergency, and officials said that Thursday’s planned announcement is part of a broader push to contain the virus. The announcement follows the White House’s decision this week to name Robert J. Fenton Jr., Jr., a longtime official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as the coordinator of the national response to the virus.
HHS and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. officials have scrambled for strategies to boost access to monkeypox treatments and vaccines, with limited supply of Jynennos, the only vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against the virus. Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as highest risk for monkeypox, but the U.S. has only received enough Jyennos doses to fully cover about 550,000 people.
While health officials have stressed that monkeypox poses far fewer risks than coronavirus — with just a handful of deaths globally and none to date in the United States — the virus can lead to fever, swollen lymph nodes, rash and often painful lesions that can last for weeks and result in scarring. The virus also is linked to more severe complications in children, pregnant women and people with immune conditions.
The infectious-disease, which comes from the same family of viruses as smallpox, spreads primarily through close contact, and experts say they believe skin-to-skin exposure during sexual activity is a major source of transmission in the current outbreak. But they caution that the virus spreads through other forms of touch and can circulate outside the gay community, noting a handful of cases in women and children.
Some Biden officials have previously argued that declaring an emergency for monkeypox would call attention to the growing outbreak and strengthen the nation’s overall response. For instance, the emergency declaration can be used to compel hospitals to report more data about their monkeypox patients, and enable the Food and Drug Administration to expedite medical countermeasures that might otherwise take months or years to undergo traditional regulatory reviews.
Federal officials on Thursday also circulated an “options memo” for how a public health emergency would improve the nation’s monkeypox response, according to two officials who were not authorized to comment. POLITICO first reported the existence of the memo.
Many public health experts also have affirmed the WHO’s decision to declare a public health emergency, saying that a coordinated global response is “essential” to beating back the growing outbreak. House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) last week called on HHS to declare a public health emergency, calling the move “a crucial next step” to fight the virus’ spread.
But Becerra’s decision to declare monkeypox an emergency could raise political complications for the White House, which has faced calls from advocates to declare gun violence a public health emergency and climate change a national emergency. Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and reproductive health rights groups have also lobbied the administration to declare access to abortion a public health emergency in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and led to new abortion restrictions around the nation.
The Biden administration has also continued to renew public health emergency declarations, which expire every 90 days, for opioids and the coronavirus. | 2022-08-04T17:31:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden officials plan to declare monkeypox a public health emergency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/04/monkeypox-public-health-emergency-united-states-becerra/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/04/monkeypox-public-health-emergency-united-states-becerra/ |
OPEC’s tiny oil increase shows Biden’s fist-bump diplomacy failed
President Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16. (Mandel Ngan/Bloomberg News)
It has been a little more than two weeks since President Biden greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia with a fist bump while visiting Jiddah. A key purpose of Mr. Biden’s trip, which constituted a face-losing reversal of his previous efforts to isolate the brutal Saudi regime, was to get more oil production from the kingdom — and gas price relief for U.S. motorists. MBS, as the Saudi leader is known, has just responded with his own gesture: an upraised middle finger. The flip-off wasn’t literal, to be sure; figuratively, though, the description fits Wednesday’s announcement that the global oil cartel Saudi Arabia leads will boost monthly production by a mere 100,000 barrels, or 0.1 percent of global demand for crude.
As a diplomatic exercise, Mr. Biden’s elaborate, legitimacy-conferring, photo op with MBS was an especially regrettable example of political expediency, which could only have been redeemed, in part, if the president had accomplished offsetting U.S. goals. Progress on human rights, even in the limited form of political prisoner releases, would have counted; none materialized. Now, it’s clear that the president will have little more than a rounding error’s worth of additional crude oil supply to show for his efforts economically. Global oil prices will remain correspondingly elevated, which has the added disadvantage, albeit at the margins, of helping Russia, which works with Saudi Arabia to coordinate exports.
The message from Riyadh could not be clearer: MBS is in no mood to do Mr. Biden any favors in his hour of political need before the November elections. No surprise there: MBS got along well with Republican Donald Trump and might be trying to do his part for the GOP’s prospects. And even though ordinary people in the United States and Europe are suffering from energy disruptions brought on in part by Russian aggression against Ukraine, MBS is not inclined to help them. To be sure, this constitutes a snub not only of Mr. Biden, but also of Britain’s Conservative government, whose erstwhile leader, Boris Johnson, preceded the president in Riyadh, and of French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted MBS in Paris at the end of July. All the more reason for the West to reflect deeply about the possibilities for constructive relations with his regime.
As it happens, gas prices in the United States have been easing. The average price of a gallon of regular has fallen seven straight weeks since peaking in mid-June. Yet a major reason is slower U.S. economic growth, due to the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting interest rate increases. In short, welcome as they are, lower prices are a mixed blessing both for Mr. Biden and the voters whom his party will soon face.
Meanwhile, the administration continues to bestow favors on MBS and his allies. On Tuesday, the State Department announced a new sale of missiles to resupply U.S.-made defense systems in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Congress can veto the deal, which provides an opportunity for a correction of Mr. Biden’s failed policy. The White House’s concessions to one of the world’s most vicious dictators have yielded next to nothing; it’s time to adopt a tougher approach. | 2022-08-04T17:32:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | OPEC’s tiny oil increase shows Biden’s fist-bump diplomacy failed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/biden-saudi-opec-diplomacy-failure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/biden-saudi-opec-diplomacy-failure/ |
TEHRAN, Iran — Mourners poured out onto the streets of Tehran on Thursday to pay their respects to several Iranian officers killed in Syria, a testament to the human cost of Iran’s involvement in the civil war and a public display of nationalist fervor as nuclear talks resume in Vienna. | 2022-08-04T17:33:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran holds mass funeral for Guard officers killed in Syria - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-holds-mass-funeral-for-guard-officers-killed-in-syria/2022/08/04/9105f3c2-1419-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-holds-mass-funeral-for-guard-officers-killed-in-syria/2022/08/04/9105f3c2-1419-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
Sisters from Potomac die in Long Island house fire
Jillian Wiener, 21, and Lindsay Wiener, 19, sisters from Potomac and graduates of the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, died in a house fire while on vacation with their family in Long Island. (Southampton Town Police Department)
Two sisters from Potomac died in a house fire in New York early Wednesday morning while vacationing with their family.
The sisters, identified by police as Jillian, 21, and Lindsay, 19, were asleep on the second floor of a Long Island rental home as the blaze spread. Their parents, Lewis Wiener, 60, and Alisa Wiener, 52, and brother, Zachary, 23, were able to escape the home and were transported with non-life-threatening injuries to a hospital, said Southampton town police department Lt. Susan C. Ralph.
There were smoke alarms in the house, but no one has reported hearing them, Ralph said.
In the Washington region, their community mourned their deaths.
“The world has lost two beautiful lights today, and we are heartbroken,” clergy and leadership at Washington Hebrew Congregation, where their father, attorney Lewis Wiener, known as “Lew” is president, wrote in a statement Wednesday.
Jillian and Lindsay were both graduates of the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, where they were “warm, engaged members of the Holton community who positively impacted both their classes and the larger school community,” Susanna A. Jones, the head of school, wrote in a message to the community.
The sisters were in college: Jillian was going into her senior year at the University of Michigan, and Lindsay would be returning to Tulane University for her sophomore year.
At the Holton-Arms School, Jillian was involved in athletics, playing soccer and ice hockey, but she found her passion in yoga and community service, Jones wrote. She was a certified yoga instructor and for her senior project, she taught classes to younger students. She also fundraised for families whose children have cancer.
Lindsay was president of the school’s Community Service Club during the coronavirus pandemic and was president of the Jewish Culture Club, Jones wrote.
“Lindsay was a bright spirit and a leader, who was also dedicated to service, particularly getting young people involved in politics and generally promoting volunteerism,” Jones said.
Officers and firefighters responded to a call received at about 3:35 a.m. reporting that an occupied home was on fire. Once they arrived at the scene, they found the home “fully engulfed with three people who had escaped the blaze,” police said.
Lewis Wiener woke “to the sound of glass breaking and alerted the family to get out,” police said. He and his wife, Alisa, escaped from the room where they were sleeping on the first floor. Their son, Zachary, jumped out of a second-story window, Ralph said.
When Lewis Wiener realized his daughters were still inside, Ralph said he tried to rush back to save them, but the flames stood in his way.
“He burned his feet pretty bad. He couldn’t get back in,” Ralph said.
Fire personnel found the sisters in separate locations on the home’s second floor, and first responders performed CPR at the scene, en route to the hospital and upon arrival, Ralph said.
Police are investigating the circumstances of the fire, including the cause and why no one reported hearing a fire alarm. | 2022-08-04T17:44:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sisters from Potomac die in Long Island house fire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/jillian-lindsay-wiener-potomac-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/jillian-lindsay-wiener-potomac-fire/ |
Rick Pluta is senior capitol correspondent for the Michigan Public Radio Network.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) will face Republican political novice Tudor Dixon in the three-month sprint to the November election. Dixon won the GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday night in a victory boosted by support from the influential DeVos family, the state’s biggest antiabortion organization and a late-in-the-game endorsement by former president Donald Trump.
“This is going to be an epic battle between a conservative businesswoman and mother and a far-left birthing parent and career politician” was the pull quote from Dixon’s primary night speech.
Dixon and Republicans are taking aim at pandemic-related school closings and shutdown orders (which are all lifted), as well as the state of the economy (even though it’s improving), and doing their best to create a buddy tale co-starring Whitmer and President Biden (who is struggling in Michigan).
Having never held or run for office, Dixon has a thin record to attack. Not much for opposition research to work with there (although clips of her turn as a performer in a vampire TV series have been circulating on the internet). She has also held jobs in her family’s manufacturing business and as a commentator on a conservative TV channel.
A Michigan governor hasn’t lost a reelection bid since 1990, but victory is not assured in a purple state where elections can take unexpected turns.
To her advantage, Whitmer and her super PACs are also sitting on substantial sums. In an ironic twist, she got an assist from multiple sputtered-out recall petition campaigns that allowed her to blow past donation guardrails.
So Dixon needs to move quickly to the next challenge: getting her general-election campaign ramped up and taken seriously by large and small donors.
“She has just over a month to unify the Republican Party, to get through a convention and pick a lieutenant governor candidate, to raise a lot of money,” Michigan pollster Richard Czuba tells me. “More importantly, show that the race can be, I’d say, a mid-single-digit competitive race.”
That’s critical because Dixon isn’t competing just with Whitmer. She’s also competing with other Republican campaigns to capture donations and institutional support in the state.
Redistricting has created a few pickup opportunities for Michigan Democrats. For example, a Trump-backed challenger picked off Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, who was one of the few GOP yes votes on Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That puts an otherwise safe Republican seat into the competitive column.
Michigan Republicans’ “red wall” could be in play in this environment. Every seat in the state legislature is on the ballot this year. For about 40 years, the Michigan Senate has been firmly in the GOP’s grip even as control of the governor’s office and the state House has changed hands. Keeping that firewall will be a top priority for Republican funders, especially if they see their gubernatorial nominee struggling for traction.
And none of the above takes into account the unpredictable impact of the abortion issue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June.
A petition campaign in Michigan has turned in roughly 750,000 signatures seeking to amend the state’s constitution with a ballot question to protect abortion rights. Those names and addresses of registered voters are public records that can be compiled into databases to be used for organizing, fundraising and network-building. It’s potentially a formidable Democratic resource regardless of the fate of the ballot question.
Also, there are multiple legal battles in Michigan over the status of abortion rights, and developments are keeping the controversy in the public eye. A dormant 1931 state law would threaten abortion providers with felony charges, including in cases of rape or incest.
A judge recently put a hold on enforcing the law, which has been challenged by some prosecutors who say decisions on whether to file charges in these cases should be up to them.
Dixon supports the law as written — with no rape or incest exceptions. Whitmer is a fervent supporter of abortion rights and has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to fast-track the case and make a determination that abortion rights are protected under a privacy clause in the state constitution.
The abortion issue is likely to remain front and center up to Election Day.
The biggest challenge any governor faces is the one that’s unexpected. Just ask former Michigan governor Rick Snyder (R), who probably thought he would be remembered for balanced budgets and the financial rescue of Detroit. Instead, he has spent the past couple of years fending off charges related to the Flint water crisis.
As with governors, gubernatorial campaigns can face similar challenges: What you expect might not be what you get. | 2022-08-04T18:36:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It’s Whitmer vs. Dixon for Michigan governor, with wild cards galore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/whitmer-dixon-unpredictable-michigan-gubernatorial-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/whitmer-dixon-unpredictable-michigan-gubernatorial-race/ |
Despite slow start, NOAA still predicts above-average hurricane season
The agency hasn’t wavered on its prediction of a busy season in the Atlantic, including three to five major hurricanes
Hurricane Laura approaches landfall on Aug. 27, 2020, with considerable lightning in and around the eyewall. (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies)
When it comes to the tropics, the Atlantic usually starts heating up quickly as the calendar flips to August. This year, however, there’s nothing on the immediate horizon. There are no strong disturbances and no reliably modeled storms or hurricanes as a stubborn lid of Saharan dust helps keep tropical activity at bay over much of the Atlantic.
Despite the meager prospects in the short term, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that it is still expecting an above-average season, with three to five major hurricanes likely and a dozen or more named storms probable.
NOAA’s confidence levels have hardly changed, either, since its previous assessment in late May, during which the agency called for a 65 percent chance of an above-average season. Now it is saying there is a 60 percent likelihood that the season winds up above-average.
All told, NOAA’s expectation is for 14 to 20 named storms reaching tropical storm strength or better, compared with an average of 14 in a season. Of those storms, the agency thinks six to 10 will become hurricanes, and three to five will reach Category 3 strength or better with winds surpassing 110 mph.
Those odds are not indicative of whether a storm will make landfall, never mind on U.S. soil. There have been active or even hyperactive Atlantic seasons with minimal U.S. impact, as well as comparatively quiet seasons that brought calamitous effects stateside. At a broad glance, the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season, during which seven named storm formed, looks like a dud — until closer inspection reveals that the first storm was Category 5 Hurricane Andrew, which razed much of South Florida at the end of August.
What shaped the forecast
NOAA cited an ongoing La Niña as a principal driver in its prognosis, since this atmosphere-ocean pattern tends to weaken high-altitude winds over the tropical Atlantic. The slackening of those winds, which are ordinarily hostile to tropical development, makes it easier for fledgling tropical waves to grow tall and organize. La Niña is the opposite of El Niño, both of which first begin as anomalies in water temperatures measured across the eastern tropical Pacific.
In early July, the National Weather Service stated that there was a 62 percent chance that La Niña would continue during August, September and October — peak hurricane season. The odds of an El Niño cropping up are a negligible 2 or 3 percent.
NOAA’s continued aggressive predictions for hurricane season in 2022 are echoed by the sentiments of other prominent forecasters, including Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University with a strong track record. In the short term, meaning the next two weeks, his team is expecting near-normal activity. But it hinted that things could get busier after that.
“There are indications that a [tropical cyclone] could potentially form in the central tropical Atlantic in about 10 to 14 days,” read his biweekly report. “There is also potential for [tropical cyclone] development off of the US East Coast in week two.”
Over the next two weeks, weather models are highlighting above-average wind shear, or a change of wind speed and/or direction with height, over the tropics. Wind shear is highly disruptive to tropical systems, pulling them apart in a tug-of-war fashion or knocking mature hurricanes off-kilter. That should change by mid-August.
“We do anticipate that there could be a reduction in vertical wind shear near the end of the two-week forecast period,” he wrote.
Thereafter, his team is still anticipating a busy season, and experts across the board have noted that the seemingly slow start is more on par with what is typical.
“It’s not as weird as it feels,” wrote Bryan Norcross, meteorologist for Fox Weather and former hurricane specialist at the Weather Channel, in a recent Facebook post. “On average, the third tropical storm is not named until August 3, so we’re still slightly ahead of the game for the moment.”
The season thus far has featured three storms — Alex, Bonnie and Colin — but has been silent since Independence Day. Bonnie formed at the start of July and became a rare “crossover” storm, transiting Central America and reaching hurricane status in the Pacific.
The peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic is usually anchored around mid-September, lagging a few months behind the summer solstice since it takes a while to heat up the ocean waters — the elixir of life for tropical systems. Because of that “thermal inertia,” or slow-to-change nature of sea surface temperatures, the oceans often remain warm well into the autumn, the reason the “official” end to hurricane season isn’t until Nov. 30.
Sea surface temperatures over large areas of the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are several degrees above average, indicating that there will be plenty of energy to support some dangerous storms. And in an era in which hurricanes are demonstrably becoming wetter, more intense and more prone to bouts of rapid intensification because of human-induced climate change, the lull we’re experiencing may very well simply be the calm before the storm. | 2022-08-04T19:03:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NOAA still predicts above-average Atlantic hurricane season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/noaa-hurricane-outlook-update-atlantic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/noaa-hurricane-outlook-update-atlantic/ |
Hungary’s leader addresses CPAC amid blowback to ‘mixed race’ speech
American conservatives have praised Viktor Orban’s hard-right stances on migration and homosexuality as he veers toward authoritarianism
Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister, has found a close ally in former president Donald Trump and many in his conservative movement. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
DALLAS — Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has consolidated autocratic power with hard-right opposition to immigration and liberal democracy, will address an adoring crowd of thousands of Americans in Dallas on Thursday.
His speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has gone ahead despite Orban’s latest controversy: a speech in which he railed against Europe becoming “mixed race,” saying that Europeans did not want to live with people from outside the continent. One of his own close advisers resigned in protest, calling the speech “pure Nazi.”
But Orban has found defenders among prominent American conservatives, including former president Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. On his way to Dallas, Orban stopped to visit Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. In a statement, Trump called Orban his “friend” and said he valued his perspective. “Few people know as much about what is going on in the world today,” Trump said.
On Wednesday, Carlson defended Orban from the negative media coverage of the speech.
“So Viktor Orban is now a Nazi because he wants national borders?” Carlson said. Carlson helped raise Orban’s U.S. profile with a special broadcast from Budapest last year, during which he praised Orban’s Hungary as a role model for Americans.
“It’s a disgrace,” said Al Cardenas, a Republican operative who previously ran the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, and has been critical of the group since then. “In the midst of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, to invite a pro-Putin leader is inexcusable.”
Matt Schlapp, who leads the American Conservative Union, has defended Orban’s invitation in the name of free speech.
“Let’s listen to the man speak,” Schlapp told Bloomberg News. “We’ll see what he says. And if people have a disagreement with something he says, they should raise it.”
Some at the convention Thursday said they were eager to hear Orban clarify his remarks on race.
“As a person who, I am mixed race, I’m in a mixed-race relationship, I would like to see what he is going to say to that, put something positive to that,” said Raven Harrison, an unsuccessful primary candidate for Congress from outside Dallas. “I’m not willing to villainize him for that at this point.”
Orban’s appearance in Dallas comes after a CPAC spinoff hosted in Hungary in May, featuring a videotaped address from Trump in which he said he was “honored” to endorse Orban’s recent reelection.
In power since 2010, Orban has come to dominate and reshape Hungary’s political system not through a Soviet-style police state but rather through constitutional changes and the weakening of civil society. He has alienated NATO allies with opposition to punishing Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. Orban’s increasing isolation in Europe has added urgency to his long-running overtures to bolster relations with the United States through the Republican Party.
CPAC Hungary was a celebration of Orban’s policies, including its sidelining of mainstream media. Several of the outlets that applied to cover the conference were denied credentials. Schlapp said that didn’t do much to change the coverage.
“I went out and gave a press conference and they still called me a white nationalist,” Schlapp recalled. “I was like, I don’t know if it does any good, if that’s what their editors are intent on them writing.”
In his own speech at CPAC Hungary, Orban did not discuss race, and focused more on the celebration of national identity and traditional values that excite American conservatives. The Hungarian leader called his country “the laboratory in which we tested the antidote to dominance by progressives,” listing twelve points for conservative success — from prioritizing economic growth to “expos[ing] your enemies’ intentions.”
That approach has clicked with American conservatives. Under Schlapp’s leadership, the American Conservative Union has organized more CPACs around the world and also invited right-wing populists to address the crowds in the United States.
A year before voters in Britain voted to leave the European Union, Brexit Party founder Nigel Farage got a high-profile CPAC speaking slot. Three years later, the crowd got to hear from Marion Maréchal-Le Pen’s, a politician and niece of Marine Le Pen, standard-bearer of France’s far-right party. After the 2018 election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Schlapp’s group began holding conferences in Brazil, where politicians from the leading right-wing party discussed how to defeat a left that “denies family values.”
Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, said at a conservative academic conference last year that the “childless left” was undermining America, and he pointed to Orban’s policy of generous tax breaks for parents who have three or more children.
“Why can’t we do that here?” Vance asked. “Why can’t we actually promote family formation?”
After Orban’s party won this year’s election, One America News anchor Jack Posobiec celebrated on a podcast hosted by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. “He stands for nationalism. He stands for borders,” Posobiec told Kirk. “He stands for sovereign national identity for his people, and standing up for a new type of conservatism where it’s not about tax cuts to corporations; [it’s] about taking the family unit and centering it.”
Both Vance and Posobiec will speak to the conference Friday. | 2022-08-04T19:03:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hungary leader Viktor Orban addresses CPAC Dallas amid 'mixed race' blowback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/viktor-orban-cpac-dallas-speech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/viktor-orban-cpac-dallas-speech/ |
Rep. Peter Meijer, right, congratulates his opponent, John Gibbs, after Gibbs won the Republican nomination for Meijer's Michigan congressional seeat on Aug 2. (Joel Bissell/The Grand Rapids Press/AP)
When moderate Republican Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan was defeated in Tuesday’s primary, condemnation came swiftly. Not for John Gibbs, the far-right election conspiracist who narrowly beat Meijer, but for Democratic Party officials who boosted Gibbs’s campaign in an attempt to face a general election opponent who would be easier to beat in a district that leans slightly Democratic.
Gibbs is one of a number of such candidates Democrats have tried to help, and the response has been widespread outrage. Outside of the Democratic officials who made the decision to deploy this tactic, there seems to be a nearly universal consensus that what they have done is reckless and hypocritical.
This is a minority opinion, to say the least. When Meijer was defeated, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, said the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee should “be ashamed” for airing ads that somewhat gently called Gibbs “too conservative for west Michigan” and highlighted his ties to former president Donald Trump.
Many Democrats agree. “No race is worth compromising your values in that way,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (Fla.). Rep. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) called it “embarrassingly hypocritical.” The tactic has been widely condemned in the media, including by the editorial boards of The Post and the New York Times.
But it’s worth making some distinctions here. Some extremist Republicans have been boosted by Democrats in governors’ races, including in Maryland, Illinois and, more importantly, Pennsylvania. That’s where Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro aired ads criticizing eventual nominee Doug Mastriano during the primary campaign that many saw as an attempt to lift Mastriano over his opponents. You can argue the risk is too great: As governor, Mastriano could put his extremist views into practice and potentially attempt to throw the 2024 election for Trump.
But when it comes to the House of Representatives and a member such as Meijer, the calculation is very different.
All of which is why GOP extremism is rapidly becoming the central issue of the 2022 midterm campaign, which is very good for Democrats. It motivates their own base to turn out, and pushes moderate Republicans away from GOP candidates. If Democrats win in November, it won’t be because they talked about “kitchen table issues.” It will be because voters recoiled at what Republicans want to do, not only about elections but also on issues such as abortion.
What’s more, Democrats have only meddled in a few House races. So what are the possible outcomes? The best-case scenario is that they snag a couple of seats they otherwise wouldn’t have, enabling them to hold the House majority. Were that to happen, and were they to hold on to the Senate as well (which looks much more likely than keeping the House), the effects would be extraordinary.
It would mean they could continue passing legislation for the next two years, with a profound impact on Americans’ lives. None of it will be easy, but there could be bills fighting climate change, expanding access to health care, raising the minimum wage, securing abortion rights, and much more.
The worst-case scenario is that Democrats lose a few seats they would probably have lost anyway, but instead of being occupied by Republicans who stand with the GOP against that entire progressive agenda, they’d be occupied by Republicans who stand with the GOP against the entire progressive agenda and are also election conspiracists.
In other words, a few more members like Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), buffoons who spend their time spouting lunacy on far-right podcasts and trolling the libs on Twitter.
A few more members like them would be disturbing, but it’s not the thing we need to fear most. What we need to fear right now is Republican power. The attack on democracy isn’t just coming from the looniest corners, it’s from the party’s leadership and its supposed moderates who have been unwilling and unable to reverse its embrace of authoritarianism.
In the end, Democrats’ attempts to choose their opponents will probably make only the tiniest difference one way or the other. But it almost certainly won’t make the Republican Party any more of a threat to our system than it already is. And if it gives Democrats a better chance of holding the House, they’ll be able to make a pretty good case that it was worth it. | 2022-08-04T19:03:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why the condemnation of Democrats meddling in GOP primaries is wrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/democrats-meddling-republican-primaries-meijer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/democrats-meddling-republican-primaries-meijer/ |
Voters don’t like changing constitutions — and often aren’t as conservative as state legislators tend to assume
Analysis by Zoe Nemerever
Calley Malloy, left, of Shawnee, Kan., Cassie Woolworth of Olathe, Kan., and Dawn Rattan of Shawnee applaud during a primary watch party Aug. 2 in Overland Park, Kan. (Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/AP)
This week, Kansas voters shocked political observers when they overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion rights from the Kansas state Constitution. Nearly 60 percent of Kansans voted against the “Value Them Both Amendment,” which would have given the state legislature the authority to ban abortion. Kansas would have been the fifth state to amend its Constitution to explicitly declare that its residents had no right to an abortion.
How Kansas got to this point
In 2015, the Kansas legislature passed a law severely restricting second-trimester abortions by banning a procedure called “dilation and evacuation.” The law never went into effect because three state courts overturned it.
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, because the Kansas Constitution protected a woman’s right to personal autonomy. The only way for Kansans to further limit abortion rights would be to amend the Constitution.
How state constitutions change
Voters have changed the Kansas Constitution nearly 100 times since it was adopted in 1859, most recently in 2019. That’s actually below average; most state constitutions have been amended more than 100 times. Some states have changed their constitutions far more than that: Alabama’s, for example, is nearing 1,000 edits. Of course, that’s quite different than the stable U.S. Constitution. States have ratified only 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution over the past two-and-a-half centuries since the nation’s inception.
Nevertheless, in all states, amending constitutions is harder than enacting legislation. This is by design. Understanding that constitutional amendments have more permanent and sweeping policy consequences, the framers generally agreed that they should require greater consensus among legislators and voters.
There are various paths for changing a state Constitution. This time, Kansas voters used a legislatively-referred ballot referendum. That’s when the legislature creates and approves an amendment, via roll call vote in both chambers, which is then placed on the ballot during the next election. Amending the Kansas Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the upper and lower state legislative chambers and then the support of a simple majority of voters.
All states except Delaware require voters to ratify any constitutional changes approved by the state legislature. This safeguards voters against legislators amending the Constitution in a self-serving way, such as doing so to increase lawmakers’ pay to an absurdly high amount.
Why did abortion opponents lose?
Kansas state legislators and many observers clearly underestimated voters’ support for abortion rights. Pundits were startled that deep red Kansas — which gave Donald Trump 56 percent of its presidential vote in 2020 — affirmed a woman’s right to abortion with a double-digit margin. Less surprising was the geographic divide. The amendment divided the state in half, east versus west. More-moderate-leaning metropolitan areas of Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City overwhelmingly shot down the amendment. Exurban and rural areas of the state, including every county west of Wichita, voted in favor.
Putting the abortion amendment on the August primary ballot instead of the November general ballot should have helped antiabortion proponents of the amendment. Among the Democratic races, only the U.S. Senate primary was seriously contested. Meanwhile, there were a handful of competitive statewide Republican primaries, including secretary of state, attorney general and treasurer.
However, many voters apparently were motivated to go to the polls specifically for the amendment referendum. Nearly three times as many voters showed up for these 2022 primary elections as turned out for the most recent primary election in 2018. Moreover, newly registered voters did not reflect the gender balance of the voting eligible population. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, nearly 70 percent of newly registered Kansan voters were female — helping to explain the high levels of support in Kansas for reproductive rights.
But considerable numbers of Republicans also opposed the amendment. Many counties experienced precipitous gaps between Trump support in 2020 and support for the constitutional amendment in this week’s primary. For example, in 2020, Trump won Morton County with 86 percent of the vote, but only 68 percent supported the antiabortion constitutional amendment.
Why did the legislature approve something that voters opposed? Ballot initiatives frequently get far less support than the legislature expects. Political science research finds that state legislators often overestimate the conservatism of their constituents. This could be why Kansas legislators missed the mark and expected Kansans to want an abortion ban, when in reality most wanted to preserve abortion rights.
Other research suggests that in general, voters oppose change and prefer to maintain the status quo. That’s certainly what happened here: Kansans rejected changing the Constitution.
Democrats are losing White women. Will overturning Roe bring them back?
The implications of overturning of Roe v. Wade
Many states reacted quickly to the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Some states had already enacted trigger laws that banned abortion as soon as the court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Kansas was different. Before the decision, abortion opponents had no reason to amend the Kansas Constitution; the federal and Kansas constitutions similarly restrained how much the legislature could restrict abortion.
The defeated amendment would have allowed the legislature to pass more stringent restrictions on abortion, including a full ban. But now the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision to protect a woman’s right to abortion will stand. With many of its neighboring states adopting near or total bans on abortion, Kansas may become a destination for Midwestern women unable to receive reproductive care in their home state.
Zoe Nemerever (@ZoeNemerever) is an assistant professor of political science at Utah Valley University, specializing in state politics and representation.
On our radar: Hungary’s Orban speaks to conservative conference in Dallas | 2022-08-04T19:03:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kansans voted to protect abortion rights. Why? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/kansas-abortion-amendment-rejected/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/kansas-abortion-amendment-rejected/ |
Brittney Griner sentence brings outraged cries of ‘Free BG’ in the WNBA
Brittney Griner held a team photo as she spoke in Russian court. (Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)
The nine-year sentence given to WNBA star Brittney Griner on Thursday was not a shock to legal observers who followed the case and know the Russian criminal justice system, but it still unnerved many Americans, with Griner’s colleagues and others in the sports world reacting with shock and outrage.
Griner made a tearful plea just before she was sentenced, saying she “made an honest mistake and I hope that in your ruling that it doesn’t end my life here.” But it made no difference: The judge handed down a nine-year sentence and fined the 31-year-old basketball star 1 million rubles (about $16,000). She had pleaded guilty last month to carrying vape cartridges with cannabis oil into the country. While the most likely resolution of her case continues to rest with diplomatic bargaining, Griner’s lawyers began the appeals process.
After the sentencing, messages of “Free BG” echoed on Twitter and among sports stars.
Erica Wheeler of the Atlanta Dream tweeted: “My heart goes out to BG’s family and her wife! Today hit a little different man like that’s our sister! I can’t even imagine how her family feels! I pray God is protecting her mental but more importantly keep fighting BG. … gotta bring you home!”
Lexie Brown, who plays for the Los Angeles Sparks, tweeted, “Anyone that goes back to Russia to play is insane.” She added, “this is breaking my heart seeing her right now.”
The commissioners of the NBA and WNBA shared a joint statement. “Today’s verdict and sentencing is unjustified and unfortunate but not unexpected and Brittney Griner remains wrongly detained,” Adam Silver and Cathy Engelbert said. “The WNBA and NBA’s commitment to her safe return has not wavered and it is our hope that we are near the end of this process of finally bringing BG home to the United States.”
Terri Carmichael Jackson, executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, called the decision “unjust. It is a terrible blow. Whatever conversations [Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken] and his Russian counterpart need to have, we trust that they are having them with all deliberate speed. Because it’s time. It’s just time.”
The Phoenix Mercury, Griner’s WNBA team, tweeted a message that called Thursday’s sentencing “a sobering milestone in the 168-day nightmare being endured by our sister, BG. We remain heartbroken for her. … We will not allow her to be forgotten. We are BG.”
Kendrick Perkins, a former NBA player who now works for ESPN, tweeted: “Jesus Christ! This ain’t right man … bring BG home.” Isaiah Thomas, a former NBA standout, echoed that. “No way they did that to BG!!!! No way!!!! God be with her please,” he tweeted.
“#FreeBrittneyGriner we will not stop advocating for your release,” tweeted Dawn Staley, the Hall of Fame women’s coach at the University of South Carolina. “Hold on to God’s unchanging hand. We love you, BG!”
Elizabeth Rood, the U.S. Embassy’s deputy chief of mission in Moscow, called Griner’s conviction and sentencing “a miscarriage of justice.” She spoke briefly, saying, “Secretary of State Blinken, President Biden’s national security team and the entire American government remain committed to bringing Ms. Griner home safely to her family and friends.”
Biden called for her immediate release, saying: “Today, American citizen Brittney Griner received a prison sentence that is one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney. It’s unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates.”
Lindsay Kagawa Colas, Griner’s agent, called for a deal to be “done swiftly” to free her and noted that American Paul Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia. He and Griner have been mentioned as part of a prisoner exchange.
“Today’s sentencing of Brittney Griner was severe by Russian legal standards and goes to prove what we have known all along, that Brittney is being used as a political pawn,” Colas said. “We appreciate and continue to support the efforts of [Biden and Blinken] to get a deal done swiftly to bring Brittney, Paul and all Americans home. Bringing Brittney and Paul home is the sole objective, and as such, we should use all available tools. We must remain focused and unified. This is a time for compassion and a shared understanding that getting a deal done to bring Americans home will be hard, but it is urgent and it is the right thing to do.”
“BG is an American. BG is an Olympian. BG is an ALL-STAR. BG is a daughter, a wife, a friend,” tweeted Cari Champion, the former ESPN host. “BG is an American. BG IS IN A CAGE. BG is ours. Bring her home.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, called Griner a “political pawn” and continued to ask for permission to take a delegation of clergy to visit Griner to assess her health.
“The sentencing of Brittney Griner to nine years in prison is a moral outrage and a legal atrocity in any court in the world. In most places, including the United States, what she pled guilty to and was charged with would not even have merited a misdemeanor. It is shameful and a dark day when global athletics is subjected to politics and not due process,” Sharpton said.
“Let’s not forget Brittney Griner not only entertained and won the hearts of many Americans but for seven years entertained and won the hearts of many Russians as she played basketball there. Which is why her basketball coach and fellow players came and testified for her. She and Paul Whelan are clearly pawns in some global political chess game that has nothing to do with them. They should be immediately released.”
Initially, negotiations for Griner’s release were conducted quietly, but the passage of time led to more public calls for her release. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, has been increasingly outspoken in calling for Biden to take action, and the State Department reclassified Griner as “wrongfully detained” in May.
A two-time Olympic gold medalist and perennial all-star with the Mercury, Griner had played for UMMC Ekaterinburg during WNBA offseasons and called Yekaterinburg her “second home” Thursday. Moved by her relationship with her teammates and the growing popularity of the sport among young girls, she explained as she wept, “That’s why I kept coming back.”
Now, the focus turns to negotiations to get Griner released, which are complicated by a frosty relationship between the United States and Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine. Last week, Blinken spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and urged him to accept a deal involving Griner and Whelan.
Whelan, who was arrested in 2018 and convicted of spying in 2020, has said he was framed. The United States has not indicated whether it would offer Russian Viktor Bout, an arms trafficker who was arrested in a U.S. sting operation in Thailand in 2008, in exchange for their release. | 2022-08-04T19:04:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brittney Griner sentence in Russian court outrages supporters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/brittney-griner-sentence-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/brittney-griner-sentence-reaction/ |
Finding solace — and splashes aplenty — on Colorado’s Yampa River
By Rachel Walker
After successfully navigating a choppy rapid with her daughter in an inflatable kayak, Jessie Bliss raises her paddle in celebration. (Photos by Rachel Walker for The Washington Post)
It is almost silent as our flotilla meanders westward to the Yampa River’s confluence with the Green River. Save for the sounds of oars slicing through water and songbirds chirping from the lush vegetation on the river’s banks, we — 21 guests and six river guides — are perfectly still as we float past enormous sandstone canyon walls. Even the kids appear to be transfixed, their eyes pinned to the glassy river surface or the rock walls that have come alive with the sun’s light as it climbs into the sky.
We’ve spent the previous five days rafting the last undammed tributary in the Colorado River Basin. Until now, our trip has been far from silent. There has been the crash of Class III and IV white-water rapids, and gleeful shrieks when those rapids sent bracing river water into the boats. The kids, seven in all, have peppered the guides with questions, laughed until they fell out of their camp chairs, played loud games of tag and hide-and-seek, and asked for seconds of dessert. They have not been silent. Ranging in age from 10 to 16, they bonded quickly on the first of our five days on the trip. Since then, they’ve become a tightknit cohort, and their energetic bond has spread to the rest of us, seven middle-aged parents and seven older folk. We started the river trip as strangers, but within 24 hours of setting out on the Yampa, we have become a team of like-minded adventurers.
Granted, the river guides carry the responsibility for our adventure. Not only are they tasked with getting us safely through the myriad rapids and hauling us into the boat should one of us fall out, but they’re also in charge of keeping us fed and hydrated while teaching the history of this remote, stunning, prehistoric place.
A river guide lays out the dos and don’ts of rafting etiquette
I wanted to bring my family onto the Yampa, because it’s free-flowing. The river’s location within the monument protects it, but one of the guides explains that it continues to be threatened by diversion projects upstream. I’m a novice boater and am captivated by the prospect of an undammed river in the West. I’ve read enough by environmental activists such as Ed Abbey and Marc Reisner to know that rivers have inspired enormous controversy. As Mark Twain is famously believed to have said, “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting over.” That the Yampa has resisted efforts to build dams along its scenic stretches seems to represent a small victory for nature.
I also chose the Yampa for its beauty and history. On this trip, we’re voyaging through time as we travel west through the Yampa’s magnificent sandstone canyons. The rock dates to the Jurassic Period, which ended roughly 145 million years ago, and is part of the Morrison Formation, a unit that extends throughout the Western United States and, according to the National Park Service, often contains the fossils of dinosaurs, among other creatures.
There are also an abundance of cultural relics left by the nomadic, Indigenous people who used the Yampa’s canyons for about 1,000 years. Our guides promise early on that we will see petroglyphs, pictographs and a massive natural dome that inspires as much awe as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Then there’s the actual act of floating. The Yampa is known to be a playful river with several big rapids that lead up to a massive one: Warm Springs. Formed by an immense landslide in 1965, this rapid ranges from Class III to Class IV, depending on the water height. Before plunging through the ferocious, roaring section, we walk alongside the riverbank, up and over rocks, to scout Warm Springs from the safety of firm ground.
I admire the power of the water, so ferocious that it looks alive. I don’t have the knowledge to know exactly what line we’re scouting, and this makes me especially grateful for our guides, die-hard river rats whose maneuvering of the oars and navigation through tricky sections of the river appear effortless, even when the situation is difficult. This becomes clear about 45 minutes after scouting Warm Springs, when one of the guides gets caught in a hole toward the end of the rapid. Her boat tips upward in a move known as “high siding.” She’s the last boat to run the rapid, and those of us on the downriver side watch wide-eyed as she manages to right her raft and liberate it from the rapid’s hold. It’s an act of strength and expertise, and her equanimity is remarkable, even as she later acknowledges the difficulty.
Afloat on a tranquil river, paddlers dip into a different kind of current events
Then again, most river lovers are pretty chill, even as they nurture a passion bordering on fanaticism when it comes to white water. They are unlike any other enthusiasts I know. River people rave about trips from decades past and each winter dutifully apply for coveted permits awarded by federal agencies on a limited lottery basis to float the country’s wildest rivers. If they’re lucky enough to get one of these permits (and few are), they plan expeditions that require navigational expertise and massive amounts of gear. They wax rhapsodically about the freedom of the river and how time changes on the water. They call it “river time,” and they speak of the sublime beauty of leaving everyday life behind and becoming one with the weather, the water, the natural world. Their friendship circles revolve around other equally avid boaters, and many pass on their love of the river to their kids through multigenerational trips.
I think about this on our last day, during the silent part of our float. I’m not the kind of person who typically thinks it would be fun to camp with 17 strangers for the duration of a workweek. And yet here I am on our final day, feeling sad about the prospect of saying goodbye. This trip — and the camaraderie between all of us — has helped to chip away at the anxiety I’ve accumulated over recent years. Pandemic anxiety. Sadness over the death of a loved relative. My own fears of aging and complicated emotions as my children grow older and more independent. Each day on the river, under the sun and in sync with the water’s motion, I have relaxed in a way I didn’t even know I needed.
And it’s not just me. In conversations with others on this trip, I sense that we’re all processing big things — at least the adults. The kids are painting their nails, wrestling in the sand and skipping rocks. But the grown-ups are grateful for being disconnected from cell service and the news, from the pressures of home and society and family. Being on the river is an exercise in being present, and with each passing day, being in the moment becomes easier.
As we round a bend, I look back toward Echo Park and call out. But we’ve passed through the sweet spot. No echo answers me. I see only the sandstone walls and calm water. Above is the hot sun and a tall blue sky. The river’s momentum propels us forward. Ready or not, it will soon be time to go. And when the time comes, and I reluctantly step out of the raft and onto the boat ramp, I understand more intimately why some people upend their lives for river trips. Because one trip on a beautiful, wild river is simply not enough.
Walker is a writer based in Boulder, Colo. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @racheljowalker.
Oars Whitewater Rafting
bit.ly/oars-yampa
Oars has operated commercial river trips since 1969 and has a range of trips in the United States and elsewhere. Yampa River trips run in May, June and early July, after which the water levels drop too low for a viable raft trip. Yampa trips can be four or five days, and prices start at $1,349 per adult. | 2022-08-04T19:05:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On Colorado’s Yampa River, a family white-water rafting adventure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/04/white-water-rafting-yampa-colorado/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/04/white-water-rafting-yampa-colorado/ |
Supply chain issues were also widely cited in recent video game company earnings calls.
The company skipped out on an earnings call, citing its pending nearly $69 billion acquisition by Microsoft. It confirmed in a press release that the deal is still slated to close on June 30 next year, if regulators approve.
You probably know someone who just got into Formula One That’s a good problem for the F1 video games.
Nintendo reported an operating profit of 101.7 billion yen ($764 million), falling short of analyst expectations by about 13.5 billion yen ($101.4 million.) Nintendo Switch sales declined from 4.45 million units in the same period last year to 3.43 million now; software sales also dropped to 41.4 million units compared with 45.3 million last year. The company attributed its console sales woes to supply chain issues and predicted it would catch up with production over the summer. Nintendo still anticipated it would sell a total of 21 million console units in the financial year ending next April.
From 2020: As the world weathers a pandemic, Nintendo may just be recession-proof
Similar to its Japanese competitor, Sony’s game software sales dropped about 25%, selling 47.1 million PlayStation 4 and 5 titles between April and June, compared to selling 63.6 million the year before. When asked about inflation and recession in the Western market on an earnings call translated from Japanese, chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki responded that the main issue was meeting demand for consoles when faced with supply chain issues. He also pointed to how Sony had released fewer large games this financial year, compared to the same period last year.
“There are two big constraints that we are imposed with. One is the parts and components availability. The other one is supply chain,” Totoki said after repeated questions about the PS5′s supply issues. “We want to produce as many units as possible.”
Totoki declined to say if Sony would raise the price of the PlayStation 5. He attributed the drop in game software sales to people having more chances to leave their homes as the rate of covid-19 infections decreases in some key markets. He said the company was still on track to sell a total of 18 million PS5 units in the financial year ending in May 2023. He said that supply was recovering from a lockdown in Shanghai and from scarce semiconductor parts.
Sony completed its acquisition of Bungie and Haven Studios earlier this summer. Totoki cited the earlier-than-expected closing of the Bungie deal, plus a weaker yen, as reasons for cutting its forecast operating profit from 305 billion yen (roughly $2.3 million) to 255 billion yen (roughly $1.9 million).
Microsoft reported a $259 million decline in gaming revenue as well, citing decreased demand for Xbox content and hardware, partially offset by growth in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.
“Microsoft’s decision to push into subscriptions is proving timely as its newfound revenue stream is offsetting its broader declines across software and hardware sales,” Van Dreunen, the games business lecturer, said. “Subscriptions tend to provide more value to consumers during periods when the economy is proving softer and inflation high. It remains to be seen, however, how Game Pass will stack up as rival Sony ramps up its offering, and a broader array of entertainment services in adjacent categories like video and music compete for wallet share.” | 2022-08-04T19:05:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video game companies underperform in quarterly earnings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/04/sony-nintendo-microsoft-ea-earnings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/04/sony-nintendo-microsoft-ea-earnings/ |
Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Juju Chang
MS. LEE: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Michelle Ye Hee Lee, the Washington Post Tokyo/Seoul bureau chief covering Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
Today we continue our Race in America series with veteran journalist and a journalist I admire so much, Juju Chang of ABC News. Thank you for joining us.
MS. CHANG: Well, you're so welcome, Michelle, and you know that the feelings are mutual.
MS. LEE: Well, a reminder to our audience, we want you to join in on our conversation. So please tweet your questions and comments to the handle @PostLive.
And welcome, Juju. It's great to see you again. I just saw you at the Asian American Journalists Association convention last week. Good to see you.
MS. CHANG: And now that you're president emeritus, we can have more time to chat.
MS. LEE: Yes. I'm going into retirement.
MS. CHANG: Exactly.
MS. LEE: So I want to start from the beginning of your personal story. Your family emigrated from South Korea to the United States when you were just four years old. So tell us what brought them here, and what was it like growing up as an Asian American in Northern California coping with the challenges of feeling different?
MS. CHANG: I think, you know, my parents were drawn here for the same reason this country is made up of immigrants, for the promise of hope and prosperity and equality and liberty.
I also think that I didn't realize it at the time, but we were part of the first wave of immigration under the 1965 Immigration Act. So we came in 1969. I was not, you know, in a plurality of Asian American faces. Obviously, I was a definite minority, and I felt very different and othered.
You know, I grew up in Silicon Valley, which ironically is now 25 percent Asian American, lots of engineers in the workforce, et cetera, but back then, I was the only Asian kid in many of my classrooms. And I always felt that, like, my family's food smelled funny and that my parents talked funny, and that I was reminded on the playground often that I looked funny. You know, I remember going to bed with Scotch tape on my nose, wanting to grow a bigger nose so I could look more Western. I wanted to grow up with blond hair and blue eyes. I didn't want to be different, and only later in life did I realize, you know, so much of what I experienced was the othering that happens.
You know, I watched my dad being treated poorly, and I didn't have words to sort of describe what I was witnessing. But what it was was the stuff that we're talking about now, the microaggressions, the out‑and‑out racism that is felt by immigrants. So that has very much informed, you know, my journalism throughout my career.
MS. LEE: Yeah. I think a lot of people can resonate with that, that othering, which is very much an undercurrent of the Asian American experience from the very beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I mean, when you talk about Scotch tape on your nose, I wore tape on my eyes to make my eyes bigger when I was in middle school, but, you know, that theme of othering definitely is an undercurrent.
I want to fast‑forward to your career now as a journalist. You know, you went from taking engineering courses in college with that expectation of being, you know, a lucrative engineer to now pursuing your passion, your career in journalism. What attracted you to journalism and specifically the medium of TV news?
MS. CHANG: Well, basically, you know, in the historical context, Apple was just taking off when I was a freshman at Stanford. I went from typing my papers on a typewriter to an Apple PC.
But the bottom line to me was that I did not do well in my engineering classes, and I aced a political science class literally, an A+, and thus, you know, breaking the stereotype that Asians are good at math. And I decided that I wanted to, for the first time in my life, do what I wanted to do, because my well‑meaning parents wanted me to be an engineer, and‑‑but my mom was the one who said, "You know, that Connie Chung, she basically gets paid to talk for a living. You could do that. You talk a lot, basically." And that was really the North Star for me because there weren't a lot of Asians in broadcasting and arguably still aren't enough.
And so, over the years, I've become friends with Connie, and, you know, I tell her the story, and she's like, "Oh, Juju, if I had a nickel for every young woman like you who said that to me." She's just a real role model, truly.
MS. LEE: So what's it like for you to see the increase of Asian Americans? In newsrooms, in general, I mean, there are a lot of us now, still not enough, I think, but certainly in broadcast news, a lot of people coming up through the local ranks. What do you make of that progress and also room for greater opportunities in the future to increase representation?
MS. CHANG: Sure. I graduated from college in '87, right? And so I have seen a lot of progress made. We've been talking about the pipeline for 30 years.
But what I see is an absolute example of transparency because what you see on air is very transparent, and so you have a diverse and inclusive and reflective set of reporters, right? You often see Hispanic reporters, Black reporters, Asian American reporters, but behind the scenes in management, I think so many news organizations are being forthcoming with the fact that they have fallen short in those diversity and inclusion goals. And so what we're pushing for in many ways is full inclusion, even behind the scenes, in upper ranks of management.
And, also, I think there is a dearth of Asian American men in broadcasting, especially, and that speaks to a lot of the sort of social, societal, perhaps even self‑imposed cultural norms, but many of which should be addressed and at least examined.
MS. LEE: Yeah. Can you address that core that has shaped, I guess, our‑‑the mainstream public's sort of view of Asian American men? What has been the perception, and how should we be changing that?
MS. CHANG: Well, I think that it speaks to the larger‑‑it's the flip side of the fetishizing of Asian women, right, and Asian American women, because, you know‑‑and don't‑‑let's be clear that this is a very dehumanizing thing. I have had friends say to me, "Oh, you know, that guy just finds you attractive. What's wrong with that?" and I'll say, "Because he's not seeing me. He's seeing a stereotypical view of me." It's dehumanizing in that sense.
And the flip side of the fetishizing and hypersexualization of Asian women is the emasculation of Asian men in many ways. We see it in movies. We see it in stereotypes, and I think that, in many ways, informs sort of the way local news anchor teams have been shaped, right? And AAJA helped look at a story of it, and there is a‑‑this isn't just our opinion, right? This is based on data that was collected on the number of Asian American men in broadcasting.
MS. LEE: Yeah. The issue of emasculation, I think juxtaposing that to the other side of fetishization of women is‑‑that's really fascinating, and it's really this portrayal of Asian American men as like the IT guy or the nerdy guy or the weak guy who's, you know, not really strong or, you know, buff or anything like that. And that's really, I think, over a really long time become ingrained in ways that perhaps we don't articulate enough, that‑‑you know, I see this changing now in the mainstream with new actors and new roles for Asian American men, but I do think there's a long way to go, specifically in broadcast news.
MS. CHANG: I think it's apt title, "Race in America: Giving Voice," because we have to give voice to these kinds of issues so that people become aware and can start doing things to counteract it.
MS. LEE: So we have a Twitter question from John Chen @bigkid: From your seat, Juju, what do you think needs to happen to get more AAPIs into executive positions, both from AAPIs and allies? This, like, really gets to something that I know you feel very passionate about.
MS. CHANG: Very much so. I mean, again, we've been talking, John, about pipeline issues for 30 years, right? And at this point, it's wonderful to seed scholarships and internships and things like that, but those kinds of mentoring activities just don't bear fruit in enough time that, frankly, I think we want to see. And so what I think is incredibly important is to work to enhance midcareer journalists and to work to enhance the networking and the career talent development that is happening in nonprofit organizations like Pointer or in nonprofit groups like the Asian American Journalists Association and the programs that Michelle has overseen like the Executive Leadership program or even just, you know, mentoring programs that will allow people to be sponsors to people who don't necessarily look like them.
MS. LEE: Right. I think the pathway up, once you hit a certain point in your midcareer, becomes a little less clear. You know, early career, you get the reels and you get the job and you work your way up, but then at a certain point, it becomes soft skills and trying to develop that pathway into the highest levels of leadership. And with not enough diverse talent up there, it's sometimes hard to know what the path is for everyone else. So that's definitely a big issue.
MS. CHANG: Absolutely. And I think breaking down those unconscious biases are so important. So we talk about the bamboo ceiling, right, and I made mention of the fact that 25 percent of Silicon Valley engineers are Asian American. But if you look into the management ranks, the C‑suite, the leadership ranks, it's often low single digits, and the invisibility of Asian Americans is very strong in the upper levels.
And when people say, "Oh, I don't know. These are‑‑these are‑‑I don't know that there's an unconscious bias," all I would do is point to, you know, the studies in Silicon Valley that show when you do a pitch deck and it's the exact same script read by a man versus by a woman, it gets green‑lit far more for the man than for the woman. It's that kind of glass ceiling, unconscious bias, that I think Asian Americans and others are subjected to.
When you say those soft skills, like, oh, on paper, you know, Juju looks great, but maybe she doesn't have the star quality that we're looking for or the leadership skills. And those are all very subjective, right? Those are all, you know, qualities that can be subject to unconscious bias.
MS. LEE: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to pivot into your work and some of your coverage. You know, you're a real leading voice in the AAPI community, and what I have always admired about you is that you take such great care to make sure that stories, even‑‑well, maybe especially the noes that are‑‑can be uncomfortable or that are sensitive are done with empathy and full context, which I can imagine is not always easy when you have limited time to air on television.
But I want to ask you about some of those stories. So I want to start with the shootings last year at the three Atlanta area spas, which killed eight people, including six Asian women. You and I both landed in Atlanta, I think, right around the same time, and you‑‑I remember you had like barely 48 hours to put together your segment, and you were like gunning and, you know, really running for that prime‑time segment you were preparing. Let's watch a clip of you talking to Randall Park who just had lost his mother.
MS. LEE: So, a year after that, you actually went back for the story, which few correspondents do. Often we just leave these communities and don't check back in. How did you approach this Atlanta story and the news‑gathering process, and what guided you as you reported on what you undoubtedly must have known was a momentous story for the AAPI community?
MS. CHANG: Yeah. It was‑‑there are so many thoughts that go through my mind, Michelle, when I think of those two broadcasts and the reporting that we did leading up to it. This came at the tail end of a summary of anti‑AAPI hate, the spike which was very dramatic and we had been reporting on throughout the summer.
And so, when the shootings happened, I think people in the broader community, it was a wakeup call, and it was absolutely a galvanizing event in the AA and NHPI community. And I think we ended up‑‑this is, you know, another example of why representation in the newsroom matters. It was me and Eva Pilgrim who spoke up on a network‑wide editorial call, and we're‑‑we voiced our very strong feelings around the Atlanta shooting. And within four or five hours, a prime‑time network hour was commissioned.
So I stayed up all night booking, you know, helping book people like Randall Park and others because, in many ways, the victims were invisible, like often happens in the Asian American community for a variety of reasons. Some, there's, you know, the cultural, you know, "We don't want to talk about bad things," you know, aspect of Asian American culture that happens, also the fact that there is a language barrier often. There's a cultural barrier or mistrust of media. So it was very difficult to get these stories out in the mainstream media.
I flew in, and I remember flying in that morning of Friday and the prime‑time, you know, show was airing that night, and I was getting ready to go to Randy's house. And I thought to myself, "I can't believe we have to crash this prime‑time hour in 48 hours." And then I realized, you know, actually, no, this is the culmination of 30 years of reporting that I've done, right? How many mass shootings have I been to and covered and talked to family members who are in severe shock and grief? Right? I've been to Vegas and Newtown and Pulse nightclub in Orlando, right? I had done stories about human trafficking, so I understood the complexities of, you know, sex work and what that means and obviously lived and experienced the immigrant suffering and sacrifices in my own family. And that lived experience and all of that reporting‑‑I helped found an organization for Korean Americans in New York, which helped me understand, you know, how wrong the model minority myth is about Asian Americans when one in four Korean Americans in Northern Jersey are uninsured. So many are undocumented. Many are invisible because they're, you know, delivering Chinese food dinners or painting nails in salons or working six days a week in a liquor store, and they're invisible to the broad stream, because instead what you see are "Crazy Rich Asian," right, or this perception that we're model minority.
All of that went into reporting the Asian American shooting, spa shootings in Atlanta. So, when I sat down with Randy Park, I brought all of that with me, right? And so, you know, we interviewed two victims' children. One was a Chinese American whose mother had emigrated and had, like, a rice cooker in the back and scrimped and saved and went to school at night to become a licensed massage therapist, and she had signs on the wall. I saw them. They said "No sex," you know, and she was absolutely adamant that that was not going to take place in her establishment.
Randy's mom, you know, was a different story. Randy's mom told him that he worked‑‑she worked in a beauty salon, but he said when he became a teenager, he felt that there was something shady going on. And so he confronted her. So we talked about this confrontation on national television where he said, basically‑‑I said, "What did you say to your mother?" and, you know, he looked at me. I mean, you know, you have to understand I have a son about his age, and he looked me in the eye and he said, "Would you tell your son if you worked in a place like this?" And I just sort of sat there for a second. I knew what my answer was, but I'm a journalist. I said, you know, "That's a really good question, Randy," and he said, "I talked to her and I said I don't like that you lied to me about what you were doing." He said, "I also don't like the fact that you might be unsafe. I don't like that." But in the same conversation, this incredibly young, poised man said, "But I won't shame you about your decisions," because of what you saw in that little clip, because of all the sacrifices he knew that his mother made for him.
So, when he put up a little GoFundMe request, by the time I got there, you know, he had‑‑there was this one headline in The Daily Beast that says, you know, "Randall Park calls B.S. on the Sheriff of Cherokee County," who said, you know, the shooter‑‑you know, in his initial interview said, you know, he was addicted to sex. He was trying to get rid of his addiction, and therefore, this was not about race. This was about sex.
And so Randy says, you know, B.S., and by the time‑‑you know, you could look at it now, but by the time the end of the week happened, he had raised $1.7 million on GoFundMe. If you google it now, Randy Park and GoFundMe, it's over $3 million.
And I was like, what is going on? And so I'm like scrolling through all of the donations, $50, $75. These are all small‑dollar donations. There was no big like let me give you a million‑dollar check, right? And they were all written by either immigrants or people who had compassion for immigrants, and they said things like, "I see you, Randy. I see your mother's sacrifice. I'm so sorry for your loss. My mother worked in a, you know, nail salon. My mother worked in a"‑‑you know, fill in the blank‑‑"and I understand the sacrifice that your mother made, and I'm so sorry."
And so, you know, three‑plus million dollars later, I think it's a stunning example of why that event was a wakeup call for Asian Americans and a unifying event because, as you well know, Michelle, in the Asian American community, we come from a very diverse diaspora with dozens of countries, even more cultures and dialects, faith traditions, linguistic, you know, dialects. And so, when we come to the United States, we are then separated geographically. We're separated linguistically. We're separated politically on different parts of the spectrum, but this mass shooting was a moment where Asian Americans stood up and said, "Wait. We know what this feeling is like. We know what it feels like to be othered," and so, in that way, it was, I think, a watershed moment.
MS. LEE: Yeah. I think you were really able to pull that out of Randall and also the other families even under that tight deadline because you had that perspective and the historical context, and it's really‑‑I mean, it's hard for me to overstate how big of a feat that was for you, for journalism, journalistically, to be able to draw that out, given all of the complexities that were surfacing right around that time of, you know, the really internalized, you know, perceptions of Asian American women that were surfacing.
But I also want to turn to a different story and then take a Twitter question. I want to ask you about Vilma Kari, the Filipino American woman who was brutally attacked while she was on her way to church in Manhattan, and she was shouted out with racial expletive as well. And this was one of the many stories that you had covered relating to anti‑Asian violence.
And Vilma turned the assault into something that is empowering for the AAPI community, and I know that this interview was not the easiest for you to secure. But it also ended up being very memorable for you. So tell us about that story and then what you took away from that experience about how the AAPI community should be responding to this ongoing anti‑Asian hate and violence.
MS. CHANG: Vilma Kari is such a heroine to me. She's Filipina American, and she‑‑you know, the hallmark of her attack, sadly, was that it was captured on surveillance camera. And there were scenes of lobby personnel closing the doors as the attack was going on and on the sidewalk in front, and, you know, we spoke to the building, and they said, oh, that tape was taken out of context, you know, et cetera, et cetera, there's more to the story. So we left it at that.
But what her attack showed was the intersectionality of so many issues that happen in so many of these attacks, right? She was attacked by a man who had just been released from prison for killing his own mother, who had a long history of mental illness, and was having a psychotic break. He punched her, shoved her, kicked her. She broke a hip. Her pelvis was broken. She had head injuries. And he said something to her at the time, something like, you know, you Asian blank‑blank, you don't belong here.
And her daughter is an accomplished professional, and her daughter decided to‑‑her name is Liz‑‑decided to take that expletive and take some of the GoFundMe money that they received in the wake of the attack and empower what happened and turn victimhood into something powerful. So she collected stories of belonging from the Asian American community, and they had a popup museum in the Museum of China‑‑Chinese in America. And they put up beautiful art and turned it into an organization called AAP(I belong), you know, taking the attacker's words and turning it on its head.
But when I spoke to Vilma finally after, you know, months of rehab and she was walking gingerly and she said down, and I said, you know, "Vilma, you know, I know you were headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral when you were attacked. Did you make it?" and she said, "Yes, I went." And I said, "What did you pray for?" and she said, "I prayed for the‑‑with gratitude. I prayed for so many people who prayed for healing, sent me notes of encouragement and healing and the food and the money and the this and the that. I was so grateful for the outpouring." And then she paused, and she looked at her daughter who was sitting next to me. She looked at me and she goes, "And then I prayed for my attacker," and I was telling you this last night, Michelle. But, I mean, there are multiple cameras on this interview, and I'm sure the camera on me captured this‑‑[indicating jaw dropping]‑‑because I said, "Why did you do that, Vilma?" And she said, "Because whatever was going on in his mind at the moment, I wanted to give him peace," and I thought what an incredible gesture, right, so beautiful in literally fighting hate with love.
But, also, in that moment, you know, talking about what is it in our culture that sends these unconscious messages to disordered minds, when somebody walks into a grocery store in Buffalo and kills a dozen African American people with hate in their disordered mind, what‑‑where are those messages coming from, and what can we do to combat that?
In addition to that, you know, I said to her in real time, in the moment, when I finally was able to close my jaw, I said, you know, "Vilma, I've been doing this for 30 years, and I know enough to know that whether you look at it from a faith perspective or a philosophical perspective or even a psychological perspective, that what you did in that moment was more empowering to you as much as it was for the person who you were giving essentially grace and redemption." And I thought, you know, it was such a powerful example, both with her daughter and her to turning this into something broader.
The second part of that piece was about the NYPD task force, because they sent a Tagalog‑speaking police officer, which is really difficult in so many of these attacks to either prove or even get a hate crimes charge, right, because sometimes either the victims or the witnesses don't speak English enough to be able to file a police report, or they're afraid of authorities based on cultural, you know, norms from the old country, or there's a real sense that like in the Asian community like keep your head down, don't complain, you know, and also this idea that there's no, like, trigger word, right? There's no word that says, "Aha. That's an anti‑Asian hate crime." Is it enough to say go back to your country? Is it enough to say, you know, "kung flu"? Is it enough to say‑‑like what is it? There's no trigger symbol. There's no swastika. There's no, you know, news that immediately turns it into a hate crime.
MS. LEE: Right.
MS. CHANG: And so it's elusive, and there are so many different challenges, you know, beyond a policing issue that needs to go into fighting this kind of hate.
MS. LEE: Yeah. I think the story of the forgiveness and empowerment is really powerful.
We're already nearing the end. It's gone so fast. But I want to end on a personal story for you. So you recently reunited at the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation with Captain Dick Halferty who fought in the Korean War. So tell us why this story is so personal to you.
[Photo displays]
MS. LEE: Well, that's Dick Halferty. He's all of 91 years young, and we met for the first time in Seoul 12 years ago, and he‑‑that's his brother, Van Halferty, who he lost in the Korean War, who fought alongside him. And I have to say the sacrifice of one-and-a-half million Americans who went to Korea to fight in the name of democracy and freedom is just a stirring example to me of the human spirit.
At the time, he met my uncle, my great‑uncle, actually, who was a fighter pilot in the Korean War, and they met as old war veterans do and told war stories but also talked about common values. And so he called me recently, you know. Twelve years it's been since we've seen each other, but we've kept in touch over those years, and he said, "Juju, they're rededicating the Korean War Memorial. They're putting up huge marble slabs. You should go see it for sure, 37,000 names of the dead who died in the Korean War," and he said, "And they're putting my brother's name on that wall, and would you come as my guest?" you know. And I was like, "There's only one answer to that question, Captain Halferty, and the answer is yes."
And so I went with my cousin whose uncle was the fighter pilot, were both great‑uncle and uncle, and she went on to become the highest‑ranking Korean American in the Air Force. Her name is Major General Sharon Dunbar, and she's the one who was in that photo earlier. So she got to meet Captain Halferty too, who had met her uncle in Seoul. So it was a very full‑circle, personal moment, and I would encourage everyone to go out and see the beautiful memorial. It's just steps from the Lincoln Memorial. It's fantastic.
MS. LEE: Well, thank you so much. I want to ask one super, final, quick question, which is looking forward for the future generations of journalists who are coming up really owning their identity and hoping to inform their journalism and make the newsroom and coverage more diverse, what's your advice to these upcoming journalists, especially those who want to be working alongside other communities of color, other marginalized communities, since you have been a long‑time advocate of allyship and solidarity?
MS. CHANG: Absolutely. I believe in allyship, you know, in the world, and I certainly believe in allyship in the newsroom. So I would say don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to be in solidarity with others in the newsroom, but mostly, you know, be unafraid to embrace your identity, because for many years early on, I wanted to fit in and be one of the guys. And now I realize the virtue of my lived experience is actually a super power, you know, whether it's my experience of being a mom or a working mom or my experience of being an immigrant in this country. They all helped inform and give context to the stories that I do.
MS. LEE: Well, Juju, you are truly an inspiration. I call you my "sunbae," which is in Korean the word for a predecessor or the person who comes before you in your industry, and you are truly one of my role models. I mean, you came to this country as a little girl from Korea, and now you are the most recognizable Korean woman on air in this country. So I, you know, really thank you for the example you have set for all of us, and thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your insight.
MS. CHANG: Oh, thanks for having me, Michelle, and you know, absolutely, this is a mutual admiration society that goes on. I adore you.
And thank you to all of you who have joined us and also sent in your Twitter questions. Thanks for watching today. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com.
I'm Michelle Ye Hee Lee. Thank you so much for watching. | 2022-08-04T19:05:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Juju Chang - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/04/transcript-race-america-giving-voice-with-juju-chang/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/04/transcript-race-america-giving-voice-with-juju-chang/ |
Ten miners trapped in flooded coal mine in Mexico
The location of 10 trapped miners in Sabinas, Mexico, on Aug. 4. (Antonio Ojeda/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Emergency rescue teams and anxious families are gathered at a site in northern Mexico where 10 miners remain trapped in a flooded coal mine.
The miners were trapped at 1:35 p.m. Wednesday, when they breached an adjoining area filled with water. An inner wall collapsed, flooding the mine with the group of miners inside.
They are stuck between two 200-foot-deep mine shafts flooded more than halfway with water, according to a presidential press briefing.
A team of over 92 military personnel is working with specialists and four rescue dogs at the site, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a statement. The emergency team is trying to reduce the water in the mine, so that search-and-rescue teams can enter. They pumped water out of the site’s flooded tunnel, releasing it through a hose.
Six scuba divers from the National Guard Special Forces will also be dispatched, the presidential office said.
Relatives of the trapped miners are anxiously waiting outside the site for more information.
Five miners have been able to get out and receive medical attention, the president’s office said.
The mine is located in Coahuila, Mexico’s primary coal region, which is the location of 98 percent of the nation’s production, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Extracting coal from mines is dangerous, with risks including rockfalls, collapses, fires and explosions resulting from flammable gases being ignited. Inhaling coal dust long-term can also be hazardous, causing the irreversible black lung disease, which includes lung scarring and inflammation, and respiratory issues. Exposure to methane is hazardous, too.
In February 2006, the Coahuila region had one of its deadliest incidents when a gas explosion caused an avalanche of rocks to trap dozens of miners underground in the Pasta de Conchos mine. In total, 65 miners were killed. Only two bodies were ever recovered, in part because of the government’s choice not to attempt a full rescue, citing risks associated with the trapped methane gas.
In the years since, families of the killed miners have fought to recover the bodies of their loved ones and find closure. In 2019, Mexico’s government committed to creating an action plan to recover and return the remains of their families, according to rights group Peace Brigades International Mexico.
In the summer of 2021, nine miners were killed in cave-ins at two mines in the region. | 2022-08-04T19:37:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ten miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in Coahuila region of Mexico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/mexico-coal-miners-trapped/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/mexico-coal-miners-trapped/ |
D.C. reports monkeypox cases among homeless, expands vaccine program
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser responds to questions during a news conference addressing the monkeypox outbreak on July 18, 2022 in Washington. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Monkeypox has spread to the homeless population in D.C., with two confirmed cases, as the District launches weekly walk-up vaccination clinics in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.
D.C., which has more cases per capita than any state, as of Thursday reported 269 positive cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has recorded more than 6,600 infections nationwide since the first U.S. case was identified mid-May.
Public health workers have struggled to distribute limited supplies of the vaccine to at-risk populations. In D.C. more than 16,500 eligible residents had registered for shots as of Tuesday. The virus, which spreads through close personal contact, has overwhelmingly infected men who have sex with men, but public health officials stress that monkeypox can infect anyone.
In D.C., the two homeless people who tested positive for monkeypox are isolating in hotel rooms through a program established due to the coronavirus, city officials said. The cases were first reported by NBC4.
As of Wednesday, 25 people were isolating through the program, including the two monkeypox cases, according to a spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Human Services.
D.C. shifts monkeypox vaccine policy to focus on first dose
Monkeypox spreads through personal, often skin-to-skin contact, including contact with rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox and touching clothing, bedding, or towels used by someone with monkeypox, the CDC says. A pregnant person can spread the virus to their fetus through the placenta.
For weeks, D.C. officials have encouraged residents at risk for monkeypox to preregister for vaccine appointments at preventmonkeypox.dc.gov, but access and privacy concerns have been an issue.
The new walk-up vaccination clinics are intended to serve D.C. residents who may not have the ability or the technology to preregister online, and those who may not feel comfortable sharing personal details. City officials said personal information, including eligibility criteria, is kept confidential. As of Tuesday, DC Health had administered more than 10,500 doses and another 1,300 appointments were scheduled.
Every Friday, while supplies last, D.C. Health will make a limited number of monkeypox vaccinations available on a first come, first served basis. Vaccines will be available on Fridays from noon to 8 p.m., pending availability, and each DC Monkeypox Vaccination Clinic will have 300 doses each Friday.
The first walk-up clinics will be held Friday at three locations; 3640 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE in Ward 8, 7530 Georgia Ave NW in Ward 4 and 1900 I St NW in Ward 2.
The vaccine is available for District residents who are 18 or older and are men who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners in the past 14 days; transgender women or nonbinary people assigned male at birth who have sex with men; sex workers, or staff at bathhouses, saunas and sex clubs.
Proof residency is required and can include an identification card with a D.C. address, a utility bill or other mail showing your name and a D.C. address or a current D.C. lease or mortgage showing your name.
Public health officials throughout the region are closely monitoring monkeypox cases.
Among the 122 cases reported by the Virginia Department of Health as of Friday, 88 stemmed from Northern Virginia. Most cases occurred in men who are in their 20s and 30s; about a third occurred in White men and a third in Black men, according to state data updated daily.
The CDC is reporting 157 cases in Maryland. Montgomery County public health officials on Thursday opened an online preregistration survey for monkeypox vaccination appointments to prioritize limited supplies as they become available.
James Bridgers, the acting county health officer, said in a statement, “As with the early days of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, there is more demand for vaccination than there is supply.” | 2022-08-04T19:46:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monkeypox spreads to D.C. homeless - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/homeless-monkeypox-dc-vaccines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/homeless-monkeypox-dc-vaccines/ |
A grain silo is on fire on the two-year mark of the blast that destroyed the port of Beirut. (Manu Ferneini for The Washington Post)
Lebanon’s port is ablaze on anniversary of blast that killed more than 200
BEIRUT — On a nationwide day of mourning, Beirut’s port was quiet. The calm of chirping birds and splashing waters was broken by the occasional distant snap: the sounds of a fire burning inside and around silos on Lebanon’s waterfront, the site of an explosion that ravaged the city exactly two years ago, killing more than 200.
On Aug. 4, 2020, a fire at a hangar in Beirut’s port triggered one of the world’s biggest nonnuclear explosions, destroying large chunks of the capital. On the two-year anniversary of the blast, another fire is burning at the port, an image that has triggered anger and fear among Beirut residents, especially the families of the victims and those living near the port, for whom the fire is reminiscent of one of the worst days of their lives.
In the afternoon, parts of the silos began falling just as families of victims, activists and others marched to a location overlooking the port for an event to mark the day, and to repeat demands for justice and accountability from Lebanon’s leaders.
Remnants of silos at Beirut's sea port collapsed on Aug. 4, on the second anniversary of the deadly explosion that destroyed large parts of the city. (Video: Reuters)
The fire erupted after grains stored in the silos had been baking under a broiling sun and intense humidity, fermenting and toasting. Over time, the oils from the grains sparked a fire, which has been growing and licking the gutted sides of some of the 157-foot-tall structures.
The flames have been burning for three weeks. On Sunday, four of 16 silos in the northern bloc began collapsing. On Thursday, the fire continued to weaken the structures, with four more silos leaning to the side and then collapsing, throwing up a cloud of sand-colored dust a few hundred feet away from those marching.
Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer who has volunteered his services and technical knowledge and was working alongside rescuers to monitor the structure, said the southern bloc is structurally sound. Those silos were built later, are in better condition, have stronger foundations and were mostly empty at the time of the 2020 blast, he said. There is no fire burning there, he added.
“The measurements by both laser scanning and inclinometers show that it is stable,” he said.
In April, the government, fearing the grain silos would all eventually collapse, announced that it had ordered their demolition. But activists and some families of victims have adamantly argued against the move, instead calling for their preservation as a memorial site for those killed.
The protest against the demolition is also symbolic of the protest against a disrupted pursuit of justice: Activists, members of parliament and civilians are calling for the silos to be left untouched until an independent investigation into the causes of the blast is carried out.
A judicial probe that began in 2020 has come to a slow halt: The first judge leading the investigation charged four officials with negligence for ignoring 2,750 tons of highly combustible ammonium nitrate for six years, during which time the material was stored on the waterfront in a warehouse alongside fireworks and paint thinners, on the edge of a very crowded city.
The judge was dismissed from the case after two of the former ministers he charged filed a complaint, alleging that he had demonstrated a lack of neutrality in choosing prominent figures to appease an angry public.
The judge that followed him, Judge Tarek Bitar, faced resistance from officials whom he tried to question, arguing that they have immunity or that he lacks authority. They flooded the courts with legal cases seeking his removal. His work has been suspended as a result: The courts that are set to rule on complaints against him are on hiatus because of the retirement of judges.
“Our demands are clear,” said Najat Saliba, an atmospheric chemist and newly elected member of parliament. “And the top demand is the independence of the judiciary so that people at least feel that the victims and their souls didn’t go to waste.”
Saliba won a seat in parliament in May as part of a group of new independent candidates dubbed “the forces of change,” who have demanded new blood in a parliament largely ruled for decades by aging men from the same families.
Saliba said the silos must stand as witness to what happened in Beirut, and that the stable ones should not be touched until justice is achieved.
“The government is saying there is an economic loss over the lost basin area,” she told The Washington Post. The priority is delivering justice to the families, Saliba insists.
“We are telling [ministers], no matter what happens, the silos will have to remain straight and up,” she said. “They remain so that they are a testimony of our collective memory.”
On Thursday, thousands gathered on a bridge overlooking the port, and at 6:07 p.m., the time of the explosion, the din quieted for a moment of silence. Then, as helicopters in the background tipped containers of water over the smoldering remains of the newly-fallen silos, the mother of one of the victims addressed the crowd.
“We want to know the truth. It’s our right to know those who are responsible for this horrendous crime are held accountable!” Mireille Khoury, who lost her son Elias, 15, yelled into a microphone. “It was the right of my son and all the victims to live, and to be safe,” she continued, her voice breaking at the word “safe.”
Men and women wept silently, standing underneath a large Lebanese flag marked with red splotches to represent the blood of those lost in the blast. Arms were raised in a collective oath, united voices repeating the words “I swear” after each promise.
“I swear by their pure blood, by the tears of mothers and siblings and fathers and children and elders,” a woman read out from a statement, “that we will not despair, we will not acquiesce, we will not comply, we will not retreat, we will not indulge, we will not underestimate. We are here, and here we will stay until the end of time.”
Earlier in the day, some family members of victims visited the port to pay their respects to the dead. Port security officers seemed unruffled by the weight of the day, even expressing annoyance at the attention the silos and port are still receiving. But those working deeper inside felt differently.
One soldier stood guard behind the silos amid mounds of dented metal crates, thick tangled rope and wrecked cars peppered with signs of old lives, from rusted aerosol cans to curtain rods still in their packaging. Three ships that had been in the port when the blast occurred are still there, their hulks lying on their sides. One vessel that had been thrown clear out of the water sits slowly rusting on the poured concrete.
When asked whether the mountains of wreckage towering over him is all from the explosion, he nodded. “And it will stay,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “Look at it, it’s a mountain of garbage. Who’s gonna remove it?” When asked whether the government has plans to, he shook his head with a sad smile. “Who can afford it?” he said.
The soldier had lost a friend in the blast, another soldier who was stationed with a superior close to the silos. “When we found his vehicle, it was this big,” he said, holding his hands about 20 inches apart. When asked whether he feels any particular way about the southern bloc of silos being kept as a memorial or demolished, he shrugged.
It doesn’t feel weird to work so close to a place where he lost a friend, he said.
“You get used to it. It’s life,” he said. “Those who can’t are the families. For example, I knew him for one year: They lost their son.” | 2022-08-04T19:50:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lebanon’s port is ablaze on anniversary of blast that killed more than 200 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/lebanon-beirut-port/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/lebanon-beirut-port/ |
Paulina Villegas
A 62-year-old French sailor was rescued off the coast of Spain on Aug. 2 after surviving for 16 hours in an air bubble underneath his capsized boat. (Video: Salvamento Maritimo via Storyful)
A French sailor trapped beneath a capsized sailboat in the Atlantic Ocean used an air bubble to stay alive until his rescue 16 hours later, according to Spanish coast guard officials.
The sailor, who has been identified by Spanish news media as Laurent Camprubi, sent out a distress signal on Monday when his sailboat, the Jeanne SOLO Sailor, capsized about 14 miles from the coast of Spain’s Sisargas Islands.
A dramatic video of the recovery shows a Spanish search-and-rescue diver banging on the boat’s bottom, listening for signs of life. After he was rescued Tuesday, Camprubi, 62, said he was able to survive thanks to an air bubble, according to the Spanish coast guard and media reports.
The sailor said he was shocked when he realized the extent of the damage to his boat — a shattered mast, destroyed boom, keel and most equipment gone.
“I couldn’t understand how was I able to survive,” Camprubi, of Marseille, told the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia. “The conditions were very adverse.”
Va. couple who went missing during sailing trip found safe, Coast Guard says
Camprubi set sail in his 40-foot vessel on Sunday from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, according to Reuters. He was participating in a qualifying race for the upcoming transatlantic solo sailing contest Route du Rhum, which takes place every four years.
He had arrived Monday in Fisterra in western Spain, where he encountered strong winds and three-meter waves, and soon realized his boat had lost its keel, a beam that runs down the middle of the boat, he said in the interview with La Voz de Galicia.
“I was trying to pull the main sail when the boat started to tilt,” he told the newspaper. “So without giving it much thought, I went inside, and in 15 seconds, the boat had capsized.”
In a rescue mission that has been described as “on the edge of the impossible,” rescue crews battled the rough seas. Vicente Cobelo, a member of the coast guard’s special operations team, told the laSexta TV station that when the rescuer banged on the boat Monday night to see whether there were any survivors, he got a response.
“We knew then there was someone underneath,” he said.
But the waters were too rough to attempt a rescue. So the team had to wait until next morning to try again.
While Camprubi waited for help, he said he used the air bubble to breathe and tried to not panic. He told La Voz de Galicia it was the thought of not seeing his wife and children again that helped him survive the ordeal.
He added that the air bubble was about 27 inches long on Monday but shrank drastically overnight. By Tuesday, water was filling up, and he knew he was running out of time. But he kept calm, he said.
“I never panicked,” he told La Voz de Galicia. “I tried to see the reality and find solutions. I was afraid of not seeing my kids again.”
On Tuesday, two divers swam under the boat to free the sailor, who was wearing a survival suit and submerged in water up to his knees, coast guard officials said.
Cobelo, the coast guard member, told reporters when the divers approached the boat, the sailor jumped into the freezing water and swam under the boat to reach the surface.
“Of his own initiative, he got into the water and free-dived out, helped by the divers who had to pull him through because it was difficult for him to get out in his survival suit,” Cobelo told the laSexta TV station.
Just after noon on Tuesday, rescue crews could be seen on video pulling him to safety.
Camprubi, who is an experienced sailor and has participated in many local and international competitions, told La Voz de Galicia that the experience has made him decide he will no longer compete professionally. | 2022-08-04T20:03:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | French sailor Laurent Camprubi survives 16 hours under capsized boat in the Atlantic Ocean - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/man-survives-capsized-boat-atlantic-camprubi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/man-survives-capsized-boat-atlantic-camprubi/ |
Investigation continues into Amtrak-tractor trailer collision in Md.
An investigation continued Thursday into a collision involving an Amtrak train at a crossing in Brunswick, Md., that sent a man to a hospital a day earlier.
A Chicago-bound train struck a tractor-trailer that was on the tracks about 5:16 p.m. Wednesday, leading to a chain-reaction crash involving a passenger truck that was pushed into a building. Investigators were at the railroad crossing Thursday to inspect the infrastructure.
According to Brunswick police, a traffic backup led to the tractor-trailer being on railroad tracks along Maple Avenue as the Amtrak train was passing through. The train, which was carrying 142 people, struck the trailer, which was transporting lumber. The trailer then struck a passenger truck with two occupants. The passenger truck was pushed into the Brunswick train station building, police said.
All of the passengers on the train, the driver of the tractor-trailer and the passenger in the truck were evaluated at the scene, police said. The driver of the passenger truck was taken to a hospital with minor injuries and was released, Brunswick Police Chief Kevin Grunwell said.
He said the railroad crossing is complicated, particularly during heavy traffic.
“We have a stoplight about 100 yards up the street. The tractor-trailer started to cross the tracks, and traffic backed up because of the red-light signal, so he didn’t have anywhere to go,” Grunwell said. “We got really lucky, honestly, that the trailer wasn’t further on the tracks, which could have caused the train to derail.”
A similar crossing collision turned deadly in rural Missouri in June. Four people were killed and more than 100 were injured when an Amtrak train struck a dump truck at a crossing near Mendon, Mo., on June 27. The crash, which is under investigation, caused the train to derail.
Train derailments like the Montana incident are rare, but other railroad-related deaths are on the rise
In Maryland, Amtrak said Capitol Limited Train 29 resumed service about an hour after the collision. The passenger railroad said it is working with local police to investigate the incident. Brunswick authorities said crews worked six hours to clear the area and remove the tractor-trailer.
Railroad crossing incidents, including those involving trespassing, are the top cause of deaths on the nation’s rail network.
“These incidents can affect everyone involved — those who are injured or die and their families, our train crews, and our passengers,” Amtrak said in statement. “They also serve as critical reminders about the importance of obeying the law and of exercising extreme caution around railroad tracks and crossings.” | 2022-08-04T20:25:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amtrak collision in Brunswick, Maryland, under investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/04/amtrak-train-truck-collision-brunswick/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/04/amtrak-train-truck-collision-brunswick/ |
WeWork reports office occupancy back to pre-pandemic leel
WeWork occupancy back to pre-covid level
WeWork said offices were 72 percent full at the end of the second quarter, matching the occupancy rate from before the coronavirus pandemic in late 2019 for the first time.
WeWork’s occupancy rate — the percentage of its total desks that were rented out — dropped dramatically during the first year of the pandemic, when many tenants canceled their rental contracts and decided to work from home. That metric hit its low point of 46 percent a year later.
Occupancy aside, the second-quarter performance was less rosy. The co-working company had $815 million in sales, missing an average of analysts’ estimates of $821 million.
Equifax faces possible class action on errors
A Florida woman has sued Equifax, claiming she was denied a car loan because of a 130-point mistake in her credit report that she says was part of a larger group of credit score errors the ratings agency made this spring due to a coding problem.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Atlanta on behalf of Nydia Jenkins and potentially millions of others who applied for credit during a three-week period earlier this year. The Jacksonville, Fla., woman was forced to accept another, less favorable loan that was $150 per month more than the one she was turned down for because of the error, according to the lawsuit.
The errors occurred over three weeks from mid-March to early April. An analysis Equifax conducted shows that there was no shift in a majority of credit scores, and for those who did experience a change, only a small number would have received a different credit decision, Equifax said Thursday.
The U.S. trade deficit narrowed sharply in June as exports surged to a record high, a trend that could see trade continuing to contribute to gross domestic product in the third quarter. The Commerce Department said on Thursday that the trade deficit decreased 6.2 percent to $79.6 billion. Exports of goods and services shot up 1.7 percent to an all-time high of $260.8 billion, while imports slipped 0.3 percent to $340.4 billion.
Electric-vehicle makers Lordstown Motors and Nikola on Thursday shrugged off supply chain snarls that weighed on peers to reaffirm annual production targets after reporting upbeat quarterly performance. Lordstown Motors maintained that it would start making vehicles in the third quarter and deliver in the fourth. Nikola said would start its pilot for the Tre fuel-cell electric vehicle with Walmart on Aug. 22 and battery electric truck in September.
8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases employment data for July. | 2022-08-04T20:34:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WeWork reports office occupancy back to pre-pandemic leel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wework-reports-office-occupancy-back-to-pre-pandemic-leel/2022/08/04/3b134252-13e3-11ed-a642-b9be12ce0b34_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wework-reports-office-occupancy-back-to-pre-pandemic-leel/2022/08/04/3b134252-13e3-11ed-a642-b9be12ce0b34_story.html |
Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in court on Aug. 3. (Briana Sanchez/AP)
“You know what perjury is, right?” When asked that question under withering cross-examination this week, loudmouth Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones mumbled and stumbled like a meek little mouse.
The far-right radio host’s trial in an Austin courtroom has been almost enough to restore my faith in truth, justice and the American way. Jurors are determining how much of his likely nine-figure fortune he must pay to the parents of a victim of the Sandy Hook school massacre for defaming them and their late son. Jones’s wildly successful business model has been based on concocting outrageous lies and shouting them at the top of his lungs to millions of listeners. But that does not work so well, it turns out, in a court of law.
“You are already under oath to tell the truth,” Judge Maya Guerra Gamble admonished him. “You’ve already violated that oath twice today. ... Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true. It does not protect you. It is not allowed. You’re under oath. That means things must actually be true when you say them.”
What Jones did was unspeakably vile: He claimed repeatedly — and falsely, with absolutely no factual basis, since none exists — that the 2012 Sandy Hook killings never happened at all, that they were some kind of “false flag” operation that was “a giant hoax,” and that the 20 dead children ripped to pieces by rounds from an assault rifle were nothing but “crisis actors.”
The lawsuit at issue this week was brought by parents Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, who lost their son Jesse in the massacre. Heslin testified that he has been repeatedly confronted in a hostile manner by people who believed Jones’s lies and that his life has been threatened. Such encounters continue “right up to this day,” he said.
Lewis took the opportunity to address Jones directly. “Jesse was real. I’m a real mom,” she said, telling Jones she thought he never really believed the lies he was pushing. “That’s the problem, I know you know that,” she said to her tormentor. “But you keep saying it. Why? Why? For money?”
Jones has already lost this and several other defamation lawsuits by default, since he failed repeatedly to turn over documents and other information he had been ordered to produce. The only question for the jury this week is how much Jones must pay Lewis and Heslin in damages. They are asking for $150 million and, in my opinion, deserve every penny.
Alex Jones must pay damages to Sandy Hook families in another defamation case, judge rules
The whole week has been bad for Jones, who started out full of bluster but found that Gamble had no patience with his prophet-of-doom act. “This is not your show,” she told him.
But that moment Wednesday when he was asked whether he knew the definition of “perjury” could be very bad for a much wider circle of grifters who amassed wealth and power by using lies to stoke MAGA-style paranoia and rage. And, yes, I include Donald Trump among those who should be worried.
The Post's View: Alex Jones is facing a reckoning. Let it be a warning to other conspiracy theorists.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark Bankston, had just said that Jones’s lawyers had mistakenly sent him copies of “every text message you’ve sent for the past two years.” Jones had claimed repeatedly under oath that there were no texts about Sandy Hook; Bankston said the texts prove that claim to be a lie.
Perhaps more important, however, is that the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, wants to know more about any role Jones might have played in the Capitol insurrection. Presumably the Justice Department is curious as well. Jones reportedly helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump’s rally that day on the Ellipse. He spoke at a separate Jan. 6 rally in D.C., and he posted on Infowars a video in which he says, “We need to understand we’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war-footing.”
What contacts, if any, might Jones have had around the time of the insurrection with those close to Trump, or perhaps with Trump himself? Jones has said that he pleaded the Fifth Amendment in an interview with the House select committee. I don’t know what light Jones’s text messages might shed on actions by Jones or others, but I’m eager to find out.
“We fully intend on cooperating with law enforcement and U.S. government officials interested in seeing these materials,” said Bankston. Uh-oh.
In other head-scratching moves, Jones, through Infowars, has attacked the judge (falsely linking Gamble to pedophilia) and the jurors (questioning their intelligence) who will decide how much he must pay to Lewis and Heslin.
He appears genuinely bewildered in a context where the difference between truth and falsehood actually matters. Relieving him of all that money might help him understand. | 2022-08-04T20:35:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Alex Jones is shocked that lies have consequences - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/alex-jones-lawsuit-perjury-consequences/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/alex-jones-lawsuit-perjury-consequences/ |
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Shanghai on May 21, 2014. (MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
This week, the United States proved it could handle China and Russia at the same time, without starting any new wars or losing any ongoing battles. This should put to rest two trendy but wrong ideas: the notion on the right that we must back off Russia to confront China, and the notion on the left that we must back off China to confront Russia. It’s a false choice — because it’s all one confrontation.
Congress came together this week to assert U.S. leadership and push back against the aggression of two autocratic regimes. The Senate voted 95-1 on Wednesday to ratify the addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO, a strong rebuke of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine. Both parties (and eventually the Biden administration) also affirmed their support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, despite the Chinese government’s attempts to bully her into abandoning the trip.
Despite deep skepticism of U.S. intervention abroad among the American people, leaders in both parties seem to understand that the United States has a duty and an interest in exerting active leadership and pushing back against America’s adversaries in both Europe and Asia.
“We don’t beat China by retreating from the rest of the world. We beat China by standing with our allies against our enemies,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) before voting to expand NATO.
Cruz was responding to arguments made by fellow Republican Josh Hawley (Mo.), the only senator to vote no on NATO’s expansion. In an op-ed in the National Interest, Hawley wrote, “We must do less in Europe (and elsewhere) in order to prioritize China and Asia.” He said the United States must make “tough choices” because we “cannot defeat China and Russia in two major wars at the same time.”
Hawley is playing into a growing foreign policy trend on the right that seeks to justify taking the pressure off Moscow. The Conservative Political Action Conference welcomed Russia-friendly Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to its event this week. The Heritage Foundation, once a bastion of traditionally hawkish GOP foreign policy, opposed U.S. funding for Ukraine in May, ostensibly over accountability concerns.
But the NATO vote shows that most GOP leaders understand a softer position on Russia is neither good policy nor good politics. Six in 10 Americans support providing weapons and aid to Ukraine, and 7 in 10 Republicans support NATO.
Contrary to what Hawley argues, strengthening NATO actually lessens America’s burdens in Europe. More importantly, the idea that increasing deterrence against Russia will lead to war is a straw man. NATO is a defensive alliance, designed to prevent a larger war.
Meanwhile, on the left, several prominent voices warned this week that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan could spark a major war with China at the worst possible time, another straw-man argument. Thomas L. Friedman argued in the New York Times that Pelosi’s visit was “reckless” because Ukraine demands our full attention.
“It is Geopolitics 101 that you don’t court a two-front war with the other two superpowers at the same time,” Friedman wrote.
First of all, Friedman misapplies the “reckless” label. It belongs squarely on the Chinese Communist Party, which decided to threaten Pelosi’s safety. China is shooting missiles in Taiwan’s direction and conducting military drills all around the island. That’s reckless. Visiting Taiwan for meetings is not.
More importantly, this analysis completely misreads the situation in China — President Xi Jinping’s impending coronation for a third term means he can’t afford to look weak, but he also can’t afford a major conflict right now. To the limited extent China is withholding assistance to Russia, it is because of China’s desire to avoid U.S. sanctions, and that hasn’t changed.
After significant hand-wringing, the Biden administration supported Pelosi’s visit, using reasonable steps and diplomacy to manage the fallout with Beijing. The sky did not fall. World War III did not commence. Pelosi’s trip did not change the fact that China, not the United States, is the aggressive party disrupting the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
The idea that the United States can choose between confronting Russian aggression or Chinese aggression is attractive, until it meets reality. In truth, these two expansionist dictatorships are working together to undermine our security, prosperity and freedom. Moscow and Beijing view their struggles against the West as intertwined, so we must acknowledge that connection as well.
The good news is that the United States has many strong partners that also understand this is a dual threat, not a choice between two separate challenges. Leaders on both sides of the U.S. political spectrum should stop deluding the American people into the false comfort that we have the luxury to choose to confront one evil and not the other. | 2022-08-04T20:35:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The skeptics are wrong: The U.S. can confront both China and Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/america-confronts-russia-china-pelosi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/america-confronts-russia-china-pelosi/ |
Protesters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The events that unfolded in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, sit along a spectrum. At one end is someone who supported President Donald Trump and drove in from Maryland to attend his rally on the Ellipse that day. At the other end are the people dressed in combat attire who slipped through broken windows to scour the U.S. Capitol for members of Congress.
Those familiar with the city’s geography will recognize that this spectrum has a real, physical corollary. Attendees of Trump’s rally were at the White House. The rioters that entered the Capitol did so 1.5 miles east on Capitol Hill. On that day, Trump supporters were arrayed between those poles just as they were between the levels of fervency those poles represent.
In the abstract, it’s interesting to consider how place serves as a proxy for involvement and for culpability. But it isn’t simply abstract. Proximity to the Capitol that day has legal ramifications: Break into the building and you are likely to face federal criminal charges. Stay at the Ellipse and you’re clear. Where the feds draw the line, though, can be shadowy, as Ray Epps can attest.
Less examined is whether proximity has any political ramifications. We know it does to some extent. Had Trump been successful in his feverish push to show up at the Capitol after his speech, his defenders’ efforts to distance him from culpability would have been seriously (though not necessarily fatally) diminished. But what about the cadre of other political candidates who popped up along that spectrum?
On Tuesday, voters in Michigan’s Republican primary chose Tudor Dixon to be the party’s nominee for governor. The race had been upended after several candidates were disqualified for filing fraudulent signatures, providing Dixon an unexpected opportunity. In the immediate aftermath of those disqualifications, one poll had Dixon at only 5 percent. Leading the newly overhauled field instead was a guy named Ryan Kelley.
Kelley was in Washington on Jan. 6. In fact, he was at the Capitol, caught in multiple videos filmed by rioters and by media on the scene. One can use that video to track his approach to the building and his using a temporary staircase built for the inauguration of Joe Biden to reach different parts of the complex — as the Justice Department did before indicting Kelley on multiple federal charges.
Below is an example of the evidence the department arrayed in bringing a case against Kelley, indicating him with a red box in the photo at left that corresponds to the location shown with the red circle on the map at right.
Kelley got close enough to the Capitol — and allegedly committed other criminal acts — to warrant an indictment. Yet in that poll, conducted after his arrest, he led the Republican field. Perhaps there was no proximity that might yield a political cost in a Republican primary?
Eventually, in part thanks to both establishment stalwarts and Trump coalescing around her, Dixon pulled ahead. Betsy DeVos, a powerful voice in Republican politics in Michigan, endorsed Dixon. That DeVos had resigned from Trump’s Cabinet in the aftermath of the riot made it unlikely she would back Kelley, had she even been inclined to. That is important to elevate: Even if voters weren’t worried about where Kelley was that day, his involvement may have gone too far for the people who influence voters.
(Kelley finished fourth. He has refused to concede.)
The question of proximity on Jan. 6 has been particularly potent for the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano. He, too, was in Washington that day and on Capitol Hill. Where, exactly, has been a repeated point of question.
Mastriano was a state senator at the time of the riot, and his presence near the Capitol spurred questions about his involvement. “At no point did we enter the Capitol building, walk on the Capitol steps or go beyond police lines,” Mastriano said shortly afterward, referring to himself and his wife. But that was soon shown to be misleading. Video revealed that he had in fact entered an area that had been cordoned off. His explanation? The police lines had moved over the course of the day, which is certainly true if not entirely exculpatory.
Mastriano isn’t believed to have crossed the nonphysical line that’s also guiding federal prosecutors. There’s no evidence he assaulted police or committed any acts of vandalism. Kelley is accused of pulling a cover off scaffolding at the Capitol. But, then, Mastriano didn’t get as close to the building as Kelley did.
Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania were unfazed by Mastriano’s proximity to the Capitol that day; he won his election easily. But that was the primary. In the general, he faces Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has already made clear that he thinks the proximity is a political liability for his opponent.
On January 6, Doug Mastriano bussed rioters to the Capitol, crossed police barriers, and defied law enforcement.
— Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) June 23, 2022
That tweet is obviously not solely about how close Mastriano came to the Capitol building. Instead it suggests that any proximity to the riot is politically toxic, even just putting people on buses to Washington for Trump’s speech.
For many Democrats, that is, in fact, the line. Showing up in Washington, even just to attend Trump’s rally, is a mark of allegiance to the polarizing president and an indicator, to some extent, that one accepted his false claims about the election. After all, the predicate for the rally was very much Trump’s effort to retain power, which was dependent on claiming that Biden’s election was illegitimate. For Democrats and other Trump critics, even showing up to peacefully support Trump at the Ellipse itself is politically unacceptable. Had Shapiro done so, for example, it’s safe to assume he wouldn’t be Pennsylvania’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee.
Even less partisan voters might view Mastriano’s actions as politically inappropriate. After all, consider what it meant to move from the Ellipse to the Capitol, if even only partway. That movement turned attendance at a rally into participation in a march or a demonstration, turned passive support into active. It was a shift that Trump’s lawyers reportedly warned against his advocating, given the ramifications. Does it make a difference to Pennsylvania voters that Mastriano made that transition?
What we’re doing here is articulating a question that each of us has considered indirectly or tacitly since the riot occurred: How much was too much? It’s complicated by who was taking the action; what Trump did was more important than what Sally Stealstopper did that morning. It’s also complicated by the context in which we consider it.
Everyone agrees that some people went too far, both metaphorically and literally. What we don’t agree on is where the line should be drawn. | 2022-08-04T20:35:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How close to the Capitol riot was too close? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/how-close-capitol-riot-was-too-close/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/04/how-close-capitol-riot-was-too-close/ |
Shobitha Nandi of Rockville, Md., has enjoyed the intimate setting of the Citi Open, where players are accessible to fans. (Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post)
Shobitha Nandi is a “stalker tennis fan,” she said through laughter.
Seven years ago, Nandi, 59, moved to Rockville from New York City, where she was a regular attendee of the U.S. Open in Queens. One year, she waited outside the gates until 2 a.m., just to get a glimpse — and hopefully, an autograph — from Rafael Nadal. But once she moved to Maryland, she realized the Citi Open’s unparalleled access to players made it the tournament for her.
She loved it so much that this year she chose to spend her 59th birthday at the Citi Open.
“[The players] are so chill walking from the player lounge to the courts, and then you can catch them back and forth and see them on the practice courts,” Nandi said. “It is so involved with the players, with going to their games and you can chat with them and take a picture with them. But that’s not the same in the bigger tournaments.”
Despite its lower-level status, one of the Citi Open’s main selling points is its high level of player-fan interaction. Part of that comes down to the small footprint of the Rock Creek Tennis Center. As the venue’s various match courts and practice courts are scattered across the site, players need to walk through fan areas to get virtually anywhere, even into the player lounge itself when they arrive in the morning. For fans, this means brushing elbows with everyone from Nick Kyrgios to Emma Raducanu.
But the Citi Open, led by chairman Mark Ein, chooses to lean into that tightness.
The tournament publishes daily practice schedules so fans can peer into the fenced-in practice courts and watch their favorite stars train and work on their games. The tournament has also begun hosting daily “Tennis Talks” in front of the Market Square food court, where former tennis player Prakash Amritraj conducts a silly simulacrum of a news conference with a competing player. There are also daily autograph sessions in the same spot — all of which, Ein said, are part of the tournament’s mission.
“It’s a big part of what makes this tournament so special,” Ein said on Thursday. “The tournament is big enough that you have a lot of the best players in the world, but it’s intimate enough that fans can get close when they’re playing. They can see them when they’re walking around the grounds. And we get a ton of positive feedback from both players and fans that the accessibility is a big part of why they love the tournament so much.”
For their part, players in D.C. have shown their willingness to interact with fans. Ajla Tomljanovic had back-and-forth banter with the crowd and took pictures with fans after her “Tennis Talk” on Wednesday. On match point of his first-round win over Marcos Giron, Kyrgios turned to a fan in the crowd and asked her where he should serve, both shocking and delighting someone who may have been expecting a trademark emotional outburst from the Australian.
Ein also pointed out the myriad local tennis stars who enjoyed the Washington Open as kids — Frances Tiafoe, Denis Kudla and Hailey Baptiste among them. After defeating Christopher Eubanks on Wednesday, Tiafoe recalled how much he enjoyed the experience as a young tennis player, brushing elbows with greats like Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt.
In the same breath, though, the Hyattsville, Md., native, ranked No. 27 in the world, also pointed out the challenges on players’ ends that come with increased fan interaction: “It’s good and bad.”
“Tonight, me trying to come here was quite a lot from the locker room area over here,” Tiafoe said in the interview room after having walked through fans following his win on Wednesday. “For me, it’s different. I’m a hometown guy … but maybe soon, they are probably going to have to make it a little easier for the players, because having better and better player names coming here, and they want to feel like they can come and go as they like.”
When asked about player safety, Ein scoffed, lauding the quality of the event’s security team before saying that, if a player didn’t already bring their own security team, they could request a security detail at any time.
Thursday marked the 20th-consecutive sold-out session of the Citi Open, dating back to 2019, according to Ein, and the high level of fan-player interaction has brought people like Nandi back out to Rock Creek.
“It’s a really, really nice tournament, a small tournament, but you have big, big name players coming here,” she said. “... I love this tournament.” | 2022-08-04T20:36:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cozy confines of Citi Open bring fans and players together - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/citi-open-fans-players/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/citi-open-fans-players/ |
Receiver Jahan Dotson kneels on the sideline during the Commanders' Aug. 4 walk-through, which was part of a recovery day for the team. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The Commanders announced Thursday that former cornerback Mike Bass will be added to their Ring of Fame. Bass, whom Washington named one of its 70 greatest players, will be inducted on Sept. 11, during the season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and will have his name added to the stadium bowl at FedEx Field.
The Green Bay Packers drafted Bass in 1967 and sold his contract to Detroit. Bass spent the majority of his first two seasons on the Lions practice squad and then signed with Washington as a free agent in 1969, quickly becoming one of the franchise’s top defensive backs. In his seven seasons with the team, he started 104 consecutive games, including the playoffs, and recorded 30 interceptions, the fourth-most in team history.
“I am very appreciative and humbled by this induction. It is the crowning moment of my career to date,” Bass told Washington’s website. “It is an extreme honor to be recognized as one of the greatest players in Washington’s history. I am forever indebted to my coaches, Coach Vince Lombardi and Coach George Allen, for giving me the opportunity and preparing me to contribute to the success of my team. I was part of a great defensive backfield, including Ken Houston, Brig Owens, and Pat Fischer, all of whom I admire greatly.”
Bass suffered a neck injury in 1975 and aggravated it in July 1976. He announced his retirement that month after the team physician told him he could suffer permanent disability if he continued to play.
“I reinsured my neck this week, and X-rays showed a change in the vertebra,” Bass said at the time. “Under these circumstances, I didn’t feel it necessary to take a chance.”
Bass will be honored in a ceremony on the main concourse at FedEx Field and recognized at halftime.
Sports betting at FedEx Field?
The Commanders applied for a sportsbook license at FedEx Field. The Maryland State Lottery & Gaming Control Agency will hear their request Aug. 10.
The team applied under the entity Maryland Stadium Sub, LLC, which was registered with the address of FedEx Field in September last year.
When the Virginia General Assembly approved sports betting in 2020, the Commanders and FanDuel beat out other competitors to gain approval.
The new law stipulated that pro sports teams in Virginia were given “substantial and preferred consideration” to open a sportsbook and were allowed to partner with an operator to move up in priority.
The Commanders had been looking for a new location for a stadium and headquarters, and the deal appeared to be an enticement by the state of Virginia. In June, however, the Virginia General Assembly tabled any legislation that would determine the amount it would provide in support of a new stadium and entertainment complex. The decision to nix it was based in part on the team’s myriad off-field issues involving owner Daniel Snyder.
Despite the team’s desire to drum up a competition between the jurisdictions, Virginia isn’t an option until at least 2023, and D.C. is still squabbling over the fate of the land where RFK Stadium sits. The application for a sportsbook license in Maryland indicates staying at FedEx Field is a realistic move. Snyder owns the Landover, Md., stadium and its surrounding property in full. A covenant requires the team to stay there until at least 2027, after which it can leave or stick around.
Refs join recovery day
Commanders practice on Thursday was a recovery day for players, so instead of a padded workout, the team had a one-hour walk-through in its indoor facility, and players spent time with a massage therapist, a chiropractor and trainers.
Players and coaches also got a chance to learn from NFL official Roy Ellison and a contingent of referees.
“We’re going to have the referees in our different position groups,” Coach Ron Rivera said. “We’ll have the umpire and back judge, hopefully, explain what they’re looking for in holding. We’ll have the side judges explain to them what they’re looking for in coverage for offensive pass interference and defensive pass interference, and all those little types of things. So it’s a good chance for us to learn from the referees.”
A new defensive back
Washington worked out four defensive backs after practice Wednesday and signed De’Vante Bausby, a journeyman cornerback who has player for seven different NFL teams (including two stints each with the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos), the San Antonio Commanders of the Alliance of American Football and the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League.
The team also waived linebacker Drew White with an injury designation. White tore his ACL in Tuesday’s practice in what appeared to be a noncontact move. The transaction is merely a formality; White will convert to injured reserve Thursday afternoon after clearing waivers.
“It’s very unfortunate,” Rivera said. “He’ll go through the process with the doctors, and the team will take care of all of his medical needs.”
Weekend in Canton for Mills
Defensive line coach Sam Mills III left for Canton, Ohio, after practice Thursday to attend the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2022 enshrinement. His father, Sam Mills, will be posthumously inducted Saturday.
Mills was a 5-foot-9 linebacker who played for Montclair State as a walk-on and became the school’s all-time leader in tackles. He went undrafted in 1981, but after helping the Philadelphia Stars to a USFL title, Mills latched on with the New Orleans Saints and became a part of their famed “Dome Patrol.”
Mills played 12 seasons in the NFL — nine with the Saints and three with the Carolina Panthers — and totaled 1,265 tackles, 20.5 sacks and 11 interceptions. He earned three all-pro selections, and after retiring in 1997, he went on to coach as an assistant with the Panthers, who retired his No. 51 jersey. In 2005, he died of intestinal cancer.
Commanders’ Percy Butler has a confidant in Washington great Brian Mitchell | 2022-08-04T20:36:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders get a recovery day; team seeking to bring sports betting to FedEx Field - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/commanders-sportsbook-fedex-field/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/commanders-sportsbook-fedex-field/ |
Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas
MR. CAPEHART: Good afternoon, and welcome to the ‘Capehart’ podcast and Washington Post Live. I am Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of The Washington Post.
If you look at a map, Kansas City, Missouri, is pretty much smack‑dab in the middle of the United States, while the big Midwest city is smack in the middle of two huge issues, gun safety and abortion.
Joining me now is Mayor Quinton Lucas, the 55th mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. Mayor Lucas, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MAYOR LUCAS: It is great to be with you.
MR. CAPEHART: So let's start with abortion. Kansas voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to change that state's constitution in order to ban abortion or access to abortion. Ahead of Tuesday's primary, you crossed the state line to urge Kansas residents to protect abortion rights. Why?
MAYOR LUCAS: Well, a few different reasons. First of all, I do think that access to productive justice is a core human rights issue. This is something where anyone who has an opportunity to make a difference, I think, should. For some people, that's donating money from New York City to Washington. For others of us, we have a chance to go knock doors, and as you saw from the outcome in Kansas, the doors were pretty receptive, even when I was there and when many of the volunteers and advocates were there. So that's one key reason. It's an issue that I've known about and cared about for some time, learned that from my mother years ago.
But then there's a second truly impactful point, which is that in Kansas City, because we are on the state line and because we have dealt with draconian laws that I think have led reproductive care to be in question for women in the state of Missouri, for some years now, most abortion services that are provided in this region are provided in the Kansas City suburbs on the Kansas side of the line. Indeed, I think roughly almost half the abortions in the state of Kansas are from Missourian patients, and so a lot of that is in our area. So it mattered from a pragmatic health care standard. It also mattered, of course, from a human rights standard, and I think more importantly, it will, long term, matter for what we are showing to other states.
I know Michigan has a referendum coming up. I hope my home state of Missouri does, and I think that we will see abortion policy changing in a lot of red and purple states over the months and years ahead because folks are activated. They don't want state control of their bodies and their choices, and I'm proud of Kansans for doing that and was happy to play even a very small role in knocking on some doors to make sure that message was shared.
MR. CAPEHART: I want to talk a little bit more about Kansas, but as you're talking about‑‑because you are the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri and Missouri's abortion ban went into effect the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned, but there's something odd about Missouri law. So abortions are‑‑abortions are banned, but if you're a pregnant‑‑if you're a pregnant woman, if you're a pregnant person and you're trying to get a divorce, because you're‑‑because you're pregnant, you can't get the divorce until‑‑until the baby is born. On one hand, in the pregnancy case, the fetus is not considered a person, but when in matters of abortion, the fetus is considered a person.
MAYOR LUCAS: Right.
MR. CAPEHART: Is there any way or is there any effort underway to get that glaring dissonance in Missouri law evened out or settled?
MAYOR LUCAS: Yes. Yeah. And right now, there are certainly folks, and I want to give a shout‑out to my Democratic friends in the state legislature who I think have tried to change that type of policy year after year. But the problem of this legislature and many others is that they have become the laboratories of bad ideas and represent the extreme edges of political viewpoints in our state.
Look no further than the Kansas example where it seems as if the legislature would have tried to do, frankly, what Missouri has done, banning abortions in any number of cases and making it a question of what's legal or not for doctors who find themselves in emergency situations rather than actually having a real robust discussion on abortion.
And I think you see that same thing in purely punitive legislation like the type you just described. In legislation like that, the Missouri legislature in previous years‑‑and I know they would do it again‑‑are playing with people's lives and playing with people's lives' choices, and what you see in a number of red states‑‑and that's how we saw these trigger laws in states like Missouri and so many others‑‑was the fact that for years and years, they were passing all these bills, knowing that they were unconstitutional until the Supreme Court in I think a terrible decision early this year‑‑and I think you see that in polls from the American people‑‑decided what the heck, we'll send it all back to them. And there's where you have this great confusion.
Right now, frankly, if you were somebody in the middle of Missouri who doesn't have access to getting to Kansas City or doesn't have access to get to St. Louis which gets you close to Illinois and Kansas and you find yourself in a married situation, this is a very tough time. This is a tough time to exist, to know what your rights are, and more importantly to hear from anyone what your rights are because you have bills in a number of states where they're trying to propose what types of information can be shared, whether people can travel. All of these items will end up in the courts once more, but I'm glad at least we're taking democratic steps in all of these states to try to make some, some modicum of change.
But I won't pretend that this is not a challenge. There are 6.5 million people in Missouri, and a lot of them who don't find themselves on the edges are finding themselves in a very tough position if they're looking for regular reproductive care.
And one other point to that. This isn't just the provision of abortion services. There's been a debate as to whether Plan B can be prescribed in the state of Missouri‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: Right.
MAYOR LUCAS: ‑‑and debates about what people can do. I mean, it is insanity right now, and it's insanity in a big swath of our country.
MR. CAPEHART: So then, Mayor Lucas, well, one, were you as surprised as most people were by the overwhelming rejection of that ballot initiative in Kansas? And two, do those results really have national implications? Will they have implications for your state of Missouri, or are the results specific to Kansas, do you think?
MAYOR LUCAS: They will have huge repercussions in the rest of the country. So not only have I lived next to Kansas most of my life, I went to school on the state line of Kansas in Missouri. I have lived some of my life in a smaller town in Kansas by the name of Hutchinson in the center of the state. It is a conservative state, certainly has a libertarian streak, but this is not Vermont on the plains. It is instead a state where a number of Republicans, people who voted, right, people who voted, by the way, for Republicans in other‑‑in other positions for an attorney general candidate like Kris Kobach, who is a pure extreme person. I don't need to build his name ID on this call, but nonetheless, people who voted for someone like that were also people who voted no on the abortion question. What that tells you is that conservatives, lots of conservatives are even saying they've gone too far. State legislatures have gone too far. The Supreme Court viewpoint, Sam Alito joking about the abortion decision in Rome a few weeks ago, they've gone too far. And I think this is something that needs to be shared and needs to be part of every November campaign.
I think that any candidate, a Democrat mainly, although there may be a few Republicans who are still reasonable on this issue, should make this a centerpiece of what their discussion will be because to me it is a very clear, very core human rights issue. Do you stand for the rights of women and families to make their own decisions? And I think Kansas showed that most people‑‑conservatives, liberals, what have you‑‑do.
MR. CAPEHART: Let me get your reaction to something, because the Johnson County Republican Party in Kansas criticized you saying‑‑you know where I'm going‑‑criticized you saying that your time, quote, "would be better spent canvassing the streets of Kansas City to help find the violent criminals that are preying on the people of Kansas City." Your response to that?
MAYOR LUCAS: Well, you know, I mean, they just got their butts kicked in an election. They are not really a credible force, and what they have presided over is actually seeing an ongoing loss of influence in the suburbs for the Republican Party. And so, you know, maybe they should actually spend time trying to get back to winning elections, which is something they are not showing a great ability to do so when you've looked at recent presidential elections in their country and certainly in the last gubernatorial and congressional elections.
So, I mean, here's what I would say. First of all, we do a lot of things every day as mayors, and you can care about crime and care about rights to health care and care about actually taking care of our children and any number of things. It's called actually doing your job, right, instead of just being demagogues who are paid talking points from Breitbart or Fox News, and so I look forward to engaging on important issues of any type in this region. I look forward to making sure that we're making a difference for access to health care, for women in Kansas City, anywhere around here, and I'm proud that I have the chance to and I'm proud that a lot of people did. And I'm proud that in their state of‑‑what was it?‑‑about 75, 70 percent margin of voters agreed with the position that I shared and the position of most reasonable people, while the county Republican Party was busy, I think, still wondering if the January 6th issue was a challenge and if Joe Biden is the valid president. I mean, they've just become totally extreme, totally divorced from issues, and I think this will be a true turning point in American politics.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, let's keep talking about guns. Your city saw 157 deaths in 2021, the second deadliest year for Kansas City.
MAYOR LUCAS: Yep.
MR. CAPEHART: The deadliest year was the year before in 2020 when 182 people were killed, and I bring those numbers up because your goal had been to get the number of homicides under 100.
MR. CAPEHART: Instead, the murder rate is climbing. Why is that, and how much of it has‑‑how much of the gun violence in Kansas City has to do with Missouri's gun laws?
MAYOR LUCAS: Well, you know, here's the deal, and here's what I always ask for from people, because I will chat with conservatives, the types of which I was just discussing, who will sometimes say, "Well, what gun laws are you even looking for? What extreme things are you trying to do?" I'm not looking for extremes, actually.
So I lived in Missouri in the 1990s when we actually required people who were carrying concealed weapons‑‑first of all, we didn't allow people for some time to have concealed weapons, but then when they could, they had to get a permit, right? They had to do something as simple as getting basic permitting, so they knew how to use the firearm, so that they knew how to lock up the firearm, so that we could actually make sure that folks were just walking around the streets with guns actually have some reason or qualification to have it.
But in this state and so many others, you've seen this expansion of what they like to call "constitutional carry," which to me is just absolutely reckless Wild Wild West style living, where we have gun battles in the streets, gun battles against police officers.
I mean, I have said this any number of times. If you actually back the blue, if you support police, then you support responsible gun control, responsible gun legislation. That's the sort of thing that we need, but in terms of the criminal results, anyone can just look at the data, right? Most of the offenses that are occurring are occurring largely because of people who are getting in fights and disputes. This isn't the drug wars of the 1980s. This isn't even, in many cases, gangland violence that we might remember from the 1990s. These are beefs, beefs that can be easily resolved because people have guns, people have high‑capacity firearms, and there is no way to stop them from carrying them when you have laws like the types you have in Missouri and throughout much of the Midwest and the American South.
MR. CAPEHART: So then it is because of Missouri's lax gun laws, just the availability and ability for anybody to get a gun that is‑‑
MAYOR LUCAS: Yep
MR. CAPEHART: ‑‑fueling the violence on Kansas City streets.
MAYOR LUCAS: Yes. I mean, yes, I absolutely believe that. I mean, I think, Jonathan, if you flew into Kansas City today, spent a little time, you could probably figure out in less than an hour where you can get a gun, right, and where you can get a gun avoiding any type of federal regulation, where you can get a gun of any type that your heart may desire. It can be a high‑capacity firearm, an assault weapon, a handgun, anything of the sort. That to me is a huge problem, right?
We have fluctuated over the years in terms of how many police officers we have. Economies have fluctuated over the years, but there has been a consistency as we have seen this loosening of gun laws in this state, which is that our murders have increased again and again.
So for those who try to say, oh, on, it's just because 2020 was tough and everybody is mad, right, then why did we have almost this many murders actually in the years before? Why did we have a lot of murders in the 1990s? It's because we have continued to have and prioritize access to firearms over prioritizing the safety of our communities, safety of our children, and the safety of our families.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, according to an analysis by the Kansas City Police Department, more than 70 percent of guns connected to violent crime in the city in 2021 were produced by 15 gun manufacturers, and Kansas City became the first city in more than a decade to sue a gun manufacturer. Why is it important to try to hold them accountable?
MAYOR LUCAS: I think it's just fundamentally important that we do this because we need to make a difference. I'm not one who is comfortable just saying, oh, well, the legislature won't do anything and maybe a lot of smart people may move out of this area, so let's do nothing. Instead, I have a true concern for the people getting killed in our city each and every day, right? A city of our size having about 165, 170 murders a year means that the impact each year is on thousands of people and their families who have known them and their schools.
We recently had a superintendent who left Kansas City. He talked to me about how during his tenure, 75 kids, 75 of the students in his district were murdered. I mean, that's abhorrent, and that is awful for us.
So, for me, I think it is important that we take every step we can. We saw that the courts give us a path, and for anybody who remembers the litigation against tobacco companies of the 1990s and the 2000s, where we saw that through false advertising, through marketing, through a lack of any control as to whom they were giving the product to, including a number of young people who started smoking in their teenage years and then their youth, right, we saw that ultimately courts said and juries were saying this was wrong. This was bad. You were hiding material information. And I believe that is the exact same situation we're seeing both with gun manufacturers and gun distributors.
In a case that we filed against a Nevada firearms manufacturer, they were not checking registration. They weren't checking where the guns were going, and they were getting those guns to an illegal gun trafficker in Kansas City. And those guns were used in murders on the streets of my city. I am proud of the fact that we led in that. I enjoyed spending time with the mayor of New York, mayor of Baltimore, and others a few weeks ago. Both of those cities are pursuing litigation as well, and we will continue to.
And you may ask what's my ultimately goal. My ultimate goal is that we have transparency, that we have truth, and that we make sure the gun manufacturers actually follow the laws. That's the biggest issue, right? You can't just produce a whole bunch of defective equipment or working equipment, candidly, and then not see that it's actually going to be regulated thereafter. You can't just flood the market and not check to make sure that they're going to responsible gun sellers, that they're going to people that are following federal law. In the event that you're avoiding that, then I think you should be held liable for it. So we will continue to try to push those steps and make sure that we're suing there, that we're working with social media companies to make sure that where there are beefs or where people are selling guns on Facebook Marketplace or any other types of items that we curtail those types of activities, because this is the sort of thing that is killing so many in our communities.
And I think that all of us as mayors, Democratic mayors, Republican ones, big city, small ones, right, we don't want to have a continuation of this. We don't want to have gun massacres and just say, oh, well, you know, the cost of doing business nowadays in America. And I think this is an important thing that mayors can do, and I've been proud to lead on it.
MR. CAPEHART: So I'm listening to you, and I'm reminding myself that you‑‑you're a Democrat.
MAYOR LUCAS: Yes.
MR. CAPEHART: And you're a big‑city mayor, which is a big‑city mayor‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: ‑‑of a blue city in a red state. So how are state authorities from the governor, the legislature, attorney general‑‑how are they reacting to your efforts that you were just talking about in terms of suing gun manufacturers but also your efforts to curb gun violence in your city?
MAYOR LUCAS: Well, you know, I wish I could say that usually the reactions are productive. I mean, I think we try to find common ground where we can, but there are some who are not interested in common ground. We have an attorney general in this state who is now our Republican candidate for the United States Senate, who I think likes to speak more often in tweets and press releases, threats of litigation against myself and the mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, rather than actually trying to do what is his actual job, which is to make the people of Missouri safer.
Missouri leads the country‑‑and not by a close measure‑‑in the number of gun‑related‑‑actually just homicides writ large of Blacks. It is incredibly unsafe if you are a Black person to be in this state. That's astonishing, and that's something where you would hope somebody would say, "What's wrong with us?" We have these great American cities. We're competing with places like Minneapolis and Denver for businesses to come here, but we can't keep people safe. And you would think that that would mean people would work across the aisle in connection with, but typically, the response we get is you're a bunch of city liberals, you don't understand gun cultures or gun rights. And I say I do. I don't care if anybody watching this today has a gun. Good for them, you know? That's great. What I want to make sure you do is that you lock it up, right, and that you actually have a permit if you're going to carry it around at the shopping mall or at the sporting event or anything of that sort.
And I'll say one other thing, right? As a father, I don't want to show up to a school one day, my kid's school one day, and say, oh, my God, it's just a gun massacre, but thank God that we kept Jonathan's gun rights so he can keep an AR‑15 unsecured in his truck, and it's not even a crime. I mean, this makes no sense, and I think much like we just talked about with the abortion issue, there is reasonableness here. Nobody wants kids slaughtered. Nobody wants to continue to see the types of things we have on the streets of Kansas City and throughout America each and every day, and that's why we'll keep talking reasonably, particularly to my peers who in suburban communities, just like the ones that in Kansas just voted no on the abortion question, right? I think we can continue to do that with gun legislation, and I think, eventually, it will be a winning position.
MR. CAPEHART: Tell me about the Safer Communities Act that you've been working on.
MAYOR LUCAS: Yeah. So, you know, in terms of the Safer Communities Act, that's the Biden administration, I think, actually trying to come to solutions rather than actually just being demagogues on the issue like some of our friends on the right. Under the Safer Communities Act, you're seeing more investment in police departments making sure that there's funding to actually help recruit them because the biggest challenge right now in recruiting police is not rhetoric from one or two Congress people. It's actually the fact that, A, it's a tough job, and B, it doesn't pay enough in most places, not unlike teaching, not unlike nursing, not unlike many others. So the Safer Communities Act allows us to have more funding to help support, first of all, retention of law enforcement. It helps us invest in community violence interruption, and in case you don't know what that means, it's just very simply this. Often in violence, there is a cycle of violence, right? Somebody shot at me. So, once I get bandaged up, I'm going to go out and settle the score.
What if we had somebody who said, look, we know you're angry, we know you might be at risk, but if the issue is you need to make sure that you stay safe, let us help you find a way? If the issue is you need money to help take care of your family, instead of selling dope in the streets, we can help you find a way. That's the sort of responsible policy that you're seeing both in the Biden administration‑‑and by the way, no matter what the national polls say anything like that, the president has been probably the best president for mayors, and this White House has been the best White House for mayors of cities of any number or sizes that I can even remember.
And so I think the Safer Communities Act is really looking at the multipronged challenges that we face in violent crime. We do need law enforcement. We do need to fund the police, and this is helping us do that. But we also need to make sure we're funding violence interruption and mental health in every American city, and this is a proposal that helps us do it.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. So, since you invoke the president's name, let's talk some national‑‑some national politics of a sort. Let's talk about the future of the Democratic Party. You will be 38 years old in 15 days. I know when your birthday is.
MR. CAPEHART: President Biden will be 80 this November. By one count, the median age for Democrats in the House is 71.
MAYOR LUCAS: Yeah.
MR. CAPEHART: When will the next generation of leaders step up in the Democratic Party? When will Mayor Lucas become Congressman Lucas, Senator Lucas, Governor Lucas, or Secretary Lucas? In short, should the older generation and the generation that's prevalent in the Democratic Party now give way to younger Democrats?
MAYOR LUCAS: I think that the administration has already done a strong job. First of all, we have Cabinet officials that are actually pretty close in age to me, which makes me feel like a bum, but you certainly have some who are making, I think, great strides in changing transportation policy, for example, in our country with Secretary Buttigieg and a number of folks whom I respect who work in the White House who each day are speaking to young people, are listening to young people, are making sure that those voices are incorporated in everything that they do.
In terms of, you know, making way for new leaders, I think you are seeing that organically in any number of Democratic primaries, and I think not unlike the Republican side, you have a bit of it, right? It's‑‑institutional knowledge is a good thing still. I think President Biden's decades of knowledge are very helpful, making him a very good president. Whereas, if I were president today, I would not be so good. I think life experience is actually a good thing.
And so, for me, the answer really is you need a mix of both, right? I followed a mayor who's probably about 30 years my senior, also a Democrat. I was happy to follow him and happy to still talk to him sometimes. I have a congressperson who is several years my senior. I think that there is a good balance here, and importantly, what you see on the Democratic side is diversity not just in age, which is very important. As we go through Congress, yes, the average age is 71. Part of it is how you get there, but you have staffers and so many others that represent age diversity, ethnic diversity, sexual orientation, any number of things. Whereas, on the right, I don't think you see in any way, any interest in representing America writ large. And so it's not so much that there's a problem with Democrats. I think there's a problem with the other side in terms of why can't they actually start to look more like America and allow us to have real conversations about policies rather than just culture‑war fights, which is largely what I've seen the Republican Party do for the last few years.
MR. CAPEHART: But, Mayor Lucas, you and I both know that those culture‑war fights, those are fights based on emotion, based on raw emotion, and they're successful. So how do‑‑how do‑‑how does the Democratic Party, especially with these midterm elections coming up, fight evenly with folks on the right who are going for the jugular, who are going for‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: ‑‑and messing with the most base emotions of the American electorate?
MAYOR LUCAS: You know, I think, first, you have to speak with some level of emotion, and I hope I've done some of that today, right? We need to make sure that we're sharing what our passions are.
I think that the Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade was one of the biggest legal calamities that we have seen in probably the last 50 years in this country, and so we need to actually make sure that we're making clear that we are fighting for reproductive justice in every part of this country. It doesn't matter if you are watching from New York City or wherever else in the country. I mean, that to me is a big step one.
I think the other thing that you need to do, though, is make sure that we are clearly communicating what we are about. Too often, right, you can get bogged down by a lot of issues because there are a lot of things that happen each day, but compare that to the former president, President Trump, who basically spends a lot of time talking about how the election was stolen, is now on a revenge tour trying to take out every Republican congressman who didn't vote his way on any number of issues, and can still largely lead the conversation. What we need to do is say, all right, yeah, you know, you do your distraction. I'm going to try to save kids' lives, right? We're going to try to make sure they don't get gunned down in a school. We'll make sure that we don't have college buddies, as happened for me, who sent me a message and said, "Yeah, I lived in Highland Park, and me and my four‑year‑old were hiding from bullets." That's the type of clear passion that I think we need to express, and then the next step to that is just coming up with solutions for it, right?
But we can't‑‑what we can't do is be a bit mealymouthed about it. We can't spend too much time saying, oh, okay, I respect gun rights, and we don't want to do too much, but we'll maybe compromise on this. I think that's where we've made mistakes in the past.
I am a Missouri Democrat. I am from a state where people have guns. They like them. I've got family with them, family in the military, so many others, but I don't want my kid getting killed. And you know what? I think my uncle in the Air Force, now retired, would have agreed with that. That's the sort of thing that I think you continue to push each and every day, and that's where I hope candidates find clarity, something that I'm impressed about so far.
There's a new Republican nominee for governor in Michigan who's crazy, Tudor Dixon, and there was a wonderful attack ad out that was just using her own words about how there should be no exceptions on abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. It is a crazy position, and I appreciate those who are supporting Governor Whitmer for making sure that's clear. I think you give it a good kind of black and white assessment. Who do you trust? Is it somebody who's talking reasonably about issues that impact you, or is it somebody who's actually just trying to rehash whatever Tucker Carlton said last night?
MR. CAPEHART: We just have a couple minutes left and can't have you here and not ask you the question that everybody seems to be asking elected officials, particularly elected officials in the Democratic Party, and that is back to the age issue.
MAYOR LUCAS: Sure.
MR. CAPEHART: Should President Biden run for reelection in 2024?
MAYOR LUCAS: He absolutely should. He has accomplished a lot, a lot more than I think any of us could have imagined back in 2020 when we were dealing with an absolute dumpster fire in the White House, and so I do think that he should run again. I'd support him. I visit with a lot of other young elected officials who continue to as well, and so I think he should. And I think that a lot of the successes we've seen particularly in the last several weeks are a sign of just how productive this administration is.
MR. CAPEHART: And then what would you say‑‑what would you say to those in the Democratic Party who are continuing the tradition within the Democratic Party‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: ‑‑of hand‑wringing or, if you want to be mean about it, bed‑wetting when it comes to whether the president should or shouldn't run? What's your message to them about the president and the party?
MAYOR LUCAS: I love being a Democrat. There is nothing in some ways harder in this country perhaps than being president, but certainly, being mayor is not simple because you have a lot of people who seemingly vote your way. But we have a broad assortment of viewpoints. I think that we need to try to be successful on policy. I think success breeds success, and so, no, there is not a magical candidate that hits everything that you may ever want or everything you may ever need. There's not Superman waiting at the wings.
I think what we have right now is a very competent administration, a president that's doing great work, that trusts and respects and speaks to people of a number of different ages, myself included having the chance to talk to him about gun violence just a few months ago at the White House where he talked to me and mayors of major cities. And this is the type of person we want, and so what I say to them is, all right, instead of looking at his age, instead of looking at any other issues, what do you want to get done, and who's getting it done? And I think they'll see that this president is getting it done, that this Congress is working hard to get it done, and I hope that means that we keep pushing that message through our midterm elections and through the next presidential election.
MR. CAPEHART: Quinton Lucas, literally an--I feel like I've been talking to an old soul and a soon‑to‑be 38‑year‑old 55th mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. Thank you so much for coming to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.
MAYOR LUCAS: Thank you so much, and go Chiefs.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. And thank you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, go to WashingtonPostLive.com.
Once again, I'm Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of The Washington Post. Thank you for watching 'Capehart' on Washington Post Live. | 2022-08-04T20:37:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/04/transcript-capehart-with-kansas-city-mayor-quinton-lucas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/04/transcript-capehart-with-kansas-city-mayor-quinton-lucas/ |
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Actress, Singer & Activist | 2022-08-04T20:37:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michaela Jaé Rodriguez on breaking barriers and latest role on ‘Loot’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/10/michaela-ja-rodriguez-breaking-barriers-latest-role-loot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/10/michaela-ja-rodriguez-breaking-barriers-latest-role-loot/ |
Man involved in fatal shooting of 11-year-old boy sentenced to 8 years
A group of men began indiscriminately shooting at an anti-violence barbeque on July 4, 2020, when 11-year-old Davon McNeal was struck and killed
Candles are lit during a celebration of the life of 11-year-old Davon McNeal, who was fatally shot by a stray bullet at a July 4, 2020, anti-violence cookout organized by his mother. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The last of four defendants who pleaded guilty in the July 4, 2020, fatal shooting of 11-year-old Davon McNeal was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday.
In February, Daryle Bond, 20, of Washington, along with three co-defendants, pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court to voluntary manslaughter while armed in the youth’s fatal shooting. Bond was the last of the four to be sentenced. His plea agreement called for a term between 7½ and 9½ years.
According to authorities, the four men were attending an anti-violence barbecue thrown by Davon’s mother, Crystal McNeal, on July 4, 2020 in front of an apartment building in the 1400 block of Cedar Street SE. McNeal worked as a neighborhood violence interrupter.
Davon, who had spent the day in Ocean City, Md., got out of a vehicle driven by his aunt and walked toward a basement apartment when one of the men, Carlo General, started running and firing his weapon toward a nearby alley, authorities have said. Davon was struck in the head by one of the bullets.
Prosecutors later determined General had mistakenly thought someone had fired a gun at him and his friends, so he began shooting in retaliation. Bond and another man, Marcel Gordon, also fired their weapons, authorities said.
At an emotional June hearing in which Davon’s mother tearfully spoke about her son’s death, Judge Rainey R. Brandt sentenced General, 22, to 16 years; Gordon, 27, to 10 years and Christen Wingfield, 24, to 9½ years. Brandt also presided at Bond’s sentencing. | 2022-08-04T20:56:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man sentenced in fatal shooting of 11-year-old Davon McNeal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/davon-mcneal-sentencing-daryle-bond/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/davon-mcneal-sentencing-daryle-bond/ |
Police officer for D.C. library shot during training exercise
A D.C. library police officer was shot and seriously wounded Thursday during a training exercise at a library branch in Southeast Washington, according to two officials familiar with the investigation.
Few details were immediately available and the precise circumstances were unclear. The officials said it appears a private contractor involved in the exercise may have shot a police officer for the library. They said that preliminary indications are that the shooting was accidental.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and in its early stages. | 2022-08-04T21:17:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police investigating shooting during training exercise at D.C. library - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/shooting-dc-library-police/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/shooting-dc-library-police/ |
As vote count continues, Montgomery’s Democratic council field takes shape
Canvassers for the Montgomery County Board of Elections take an oath at the start of canvassing for mail-in ballots for the gubernatorial primary last month. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The Democratic field for Montgomery County Council continues to take shape, with six more candidates — half of them women — projected to win the nominations, an outcome that could substantially change the makeup of a nine-person council that now has only one female member.
At-large incumbents Gabe Albornoz, Will Jawando and Evan Glass are projected to win the Democratic nomination for their seats, while Marilyn Balcombe, Kate Stewart and Kristin Mink are projected to win the Democratic primaries in their districts.
They join three previously called Democratic nominees: District 1 incumbent Andrew Friedson, who ran uncontested; District 3 incumbent Sidney Katz; and Natali Fani González, a council newcomer who ran in the newly created District 6.
While the winners of the Democratic nominations will go on to face the Republican nominees and any third-party candidates in November, the Democratic primary often predicts who will win the general election in this deep-blue county.
The winner of the Democratic primary for county executive, along with Democratic winners in the fourth at-large seat and the District 7 seat, will be projected later, as election officials make their way through the final rounds of outstanding provisional and mail-in ballots. Democratic incumbent County Executive Marc Elrich and challenger David Blair have been locked in a tight race for the nomination since voting ended.
Montgomery remains the only county in Maryland still counting ballots from the July 19 primary. County elections spokesman Gilberto Zelaya said he expects the count to go into Saturday and results to be certified by Aug 12.
Two women have strong leads in the Democratic council races yet to be called: at-large candidate Laurie-Anne Sayles, the first Black woman to be elected to the Gaithersburg City Council, and Dawn Luedtke, who is running for the District 7 seat.
The council is probably on track to become more than half female — a stark contrast from the current council, in which outgoing Council member Nancy Navarro (D-District 4) is the only woman.
In 2018, when a historic number of women were elected to Congress, Montgomery filled the council’s four vacant seats with men, creating the starkest gender imbalance on the legislative body in about 30 years.
“It’s all about representation,” said Balcombe, who ran for one of four at-large seats in 2018 but came in fifth. “It makes sense for leadership to be representative of the county, it just traditionally hasn’t been.”
Valerie Ervin, a former council member who became the first Black woman elected to the body in 2006, said she was looking forward to a council that better reflected the makeup of the county, and could advocate for issues that matter to women, children and families.
“It’s just thrilling that the council more reflects the people that live in the community,” Ervin said. “That is a goal that I think that many of us have been trying to reach for a long time, and I think we’re starting to see that reflected.”
The physical makeup of the council has changed since 2018 as well. Last year, Montgomery redrew its district lines and added two council seats, for a total of seven district and four at-large seats. The two new districts — 6 and 7 — were added with hopes of better representing the changing demographics of the county, which had become more racially diverse over the past four decades.
González, who served as the vice-chair of the Montgomery County Park and Planning Commission, won in District 6, which represents a population with a Hispanic plurality under the new map. And Mink’s District 5 also has new boundaries giving it a Black plurality. Mink, a first-generation Chinese American who in a viral video urged then-director of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt to resign, faced seven other Democrats who were also vying for the nomination.
Mink said she wants to elevate the voices of communities that have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented on the council.
“We have an extremely diverse district,” Mink said. “And I’m really excited to have an extremely diverse council.”
She said she was thrilled by the prospect of more women on the council as well. “It clearly was much needed,” she said. “It’s important symbolically, but it’s also important in a very real way.”
Stewart, who is mayor of Takoma Park, said she hopes the shift in the makeup of the council can inspire more women to run for office at all levels of government, including county executive or governor. No Democratic women ran for either office during this year’s primary.
“Having six women on the county council can be a pipeline,” Stewart said. “I’m hoping this is really a turning point.”
Balcombe, who is CEO of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce, emphasized that all the projected nominees won not because they were women, but because they were capable and respected candidates.
“We won because we’re highly qualified, and we won because we ran really great campaigns,” Balcombe said. “And we all just happen to be women.”
She applauded all the other qualified women who did not win for entering the race.
“I hope that never changes,” Balcombe said. “I hope we never, ever, ever go back to a point where we say we need more women on the council, because they’re already there.” | 2022-08-04T21:57:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As vote count continues, Montgomery Democratic council field takes shape - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/montgomery-council-winners-democratic-nomination/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/montgomery-council-winners-democratic-nomination/ |
In recent years, hardly a day has gone by during the summer season without warnings of record-breaking heat, wildfire smoke, flash floods and disasters, or fast-escalating hurricanes. Air quality has declined, traditions have been suspended, and what has historically been a season of joy for millions of people has turned in a season of anxiety.
The reason, in many cases: Climate change.
“Extreme Summer,” a series of stories that are publishing this summer by The Washington Post, will explore how this season is being fundamentally changing in the United States and abroad. Although temperatures are warming faster during other seasons in many places, it’s summer when the impact is often felt most strongly.
The summer has become prone to some of the most costly annual disasters in the United States, with hurricanes, torrential rainstorms, droughts and wildfires. One battered N.C. community illustrates how summer, fueled in part by climate change, is proving an especially perilous and costly season. Read the story.
Extreme weather from climate change is putting the pressure on business owners in gateway towns around national parks that are increasingly vulnerable to wildfires, drought, rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, and more intense storms. Read the story.
The Tour de France has long been a point of pride for the French, highlighting some of their most stunning landscapes. And yet it has also showcased some of the most alarming impacts of climate change, taking cyclists through farmland parched by drought, past melting glaciers, in proximity to raging wildfires and in direct collision with a historic heat wave that saw temperatures approach 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Read the story.
Climate change is altering the summer months — turning a time of joy into stretches of extreme heat, dangerously polluted air, anxiety, and lost traditions. Read the story. | 2022-08-04T22:05:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How climate change turned summer into a season of disaster - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/extreme-summer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/04/extreme-summer/ |
Mass funeral held for officers killed in Syria
Mourners poured onto the streets of Tehran on Thursday to pay their respects to several Iranian officers killed in Syria, a testament to the human cost of Iran’s involvement in the civil war and a public display of nationalist fervor as talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers resume in Vienna.
The remains of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps members were recently recovered a few miles south of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and for years the war’s most important front line.
The Guard identified the five deceased fighters, providing few details about their deaths with the exception of Gen. Abdollah Eskandari — a decorated commander who became known as the “headless general” after his capture and beheading by Syrian rebels in May 2014. The bodies were repatriated after a lengthy process of recovery and DNA analysis.
Iran has increasingly admitted to casualties since it intervened to rescue Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, a ground presence that coincided with Russia’s air campaign and helped Assad reestablish control over most of Syria. Dozens of Iranian troops have been killed fighting the Islamic State group and other extremists in Syria.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said authorities arrested 10 people who it said had links to the Islamic State and had planned attacks across Iran during rallies next week to mark Ashura, a commemoration of the
7th-century death of prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.
Fire triggered by blasts rages in Berlin forest
A large fire triggered by explosions at an ammunition dump raged Thursday in a major Berlin urban forest on one of the German capital’s hottest days this year.
A huge cloud of gray smoke hung over the city’s western districts, and residents were asked to keep windows and doors shut. A major highway was closed and train service was interrupted, but authorities said no homes or inhabitants faced direct threat.
More than 100 firefighters, dozens of troops and police officers battled the blaze in the Grunewald forest. Army tanks cut corridors into the forest to contain the blaze and allow firefighters to get closer to the flames. The army also sent in a remote-controlled robot with four cameras and a grappler that can be used to detect and eliminate ordnance.
Massive explosions were heard in the morning from the site where ammunition from World War II, fireworks and explosive ordnance is stored and controlled detonations of old munitions are carried out.
A Berlin fire department official said it was not clear what triggered the first explosions at the site on Thursday. The ammunition dump belongs to city police.
South Sudan again delays its first election: Parties to the peace deal ending South Sudan's civil war have again delayed the country's first elections since independence by extending the transitional period by two years. The vote meant for early next year has been pushed to December 2024. In explaining the delay, President Salva Kiir said he wanted to avoid creating conditions for more bloodshed. Kiir, who has led South Sudan since its independence from Sudan in 2011, called on holdout groups to join him in implementing the peace process. Kiir and opposition groups signed the peace deal in 2018. But its provisions remain largely unimplemented.
Ex-Venezuelan opposition leader gets 8 years in prison: Former Venezuela opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens was sentenced to eight years in prison for alleged involvement in the 2018 explosion of two drones at an event attended by President Nicolás Maduro, his attorney said, one of 17 people to receive sentences over the incident. Requesens's family and opposition leader Juan Guaidó have denied his involvement. Maduro has said Requesens was named by people arrested in the case. The government says the incident was a failed assassination attempt planned by the opposition, Colombia and the United States.
Family of British comatose boy want him moved to hospice: The family of a comatose boy that has fought to prevent doctors from ending his life-support treatment has filed legal action requesting permission to move him from a London hospital to a hospice. Archie Battersbee's parents announced the move after the European Court of Human Rights rejected a request to intervene in the case following rulings by British courts that backed doctors who said further treatment was not in the 12-year-old's best interests because he is brain dead. | 2022-08-04T22:07:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Aug. 4, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-4-2022/2022/08/04/100f8310-13ff-11ed-a642-b9be12ce0b34_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-4-2022/2022/08/04/100f8310-13ff-11ed-a642-b9be12ce0b34_story.html |
Should Pelosi have canceled her Taiwan visit?
People walk past a billboard welcoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in Taipei, Taiwan, on Aug 3. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) attempt to square the circle in providing your readers with an explanation as to why she insisted on a trip to Taiwan [“Why I’m leading a delegation to Taiwan,” op-ed, Aug. 3] was as uncompelling as her trip was counterproductive and reckless. Perhaps that is why she waited until the last paragraph to make her case that “by traveling to Taiwan, we honor our commitment to democracy.”
In concise English, what does that mean? Perhaps if the speaker were truly committed to democracy, she might be interested in drafting legislation to prevent recurrences of the Jan. 6 riot to overturn the 2020 election or reaching a modus operandi for governing with House Republicans, as absurd as that sounds.
An overwhelming number of Americans fear that this country is on the wrong track. And many believe a civil war is looming. Pray tell how the Taiwan visit helped secure democracy. You cannot.
Harlan Ullman, Washington
The writer is a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council.
My thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her Aug. 3 op-ed, which articulated the reasons for, and importance of, the congressional delegation visit to Taiwan.
I was a young English girl in London during World War II. The support of the United States through the Lend-Lease program, and then by entering the war, prevented my country from being taken over by a power-hungry dictatorship. It isn’t hard to imagine the worldwide consequences if the United States had not taken a strong leadership role back then.
I have been a U.S. citizen for the past 54 years and am proud, and gratified, to see Ms. Pelosi and her delegation take a leadership role to honor commitments and defend democratic governments. There are other democracies in the world, but the United States is the oldest and is best suited to lead in its defense. Democracy is worth it.
Sylvia Lewis, Greenbelt
The Aug. 3 editorial “Limiting the damage” argued that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should have waited for an optimal time to visit Taiwan, but will that time ever come?
Those who didn’t want her to go don’t seem to know — or care. Even as the United States continues to supply fighter jets and missiles to Taiwan to help defend itself, somehow a stopover by a legislator is considered more provocative.
For those toeing the Communist Party line, knowingly or otherwise, moving the goalposts is a constant refrain. But the double standard has been astonishing in recent years. The call between then-President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen seemed somehow more serious than the ongoing warplane incursions across the Taiwan Strait median line.
A desire to maintain de facto democracy and independence somehow holds the same weight as threats of total destruction. Has it ever occurred to people that China, far from being the victim that it purports to be, has the agency to simply not invade another country?
Jerry Chen, New York | 2022-08-04T22:07:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Should Pelosi have canceled her Taiwan visit? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/about-ms-pelosis-trip/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/about-ms-pelosis-trip/ |
Alex Jones gets a made-for-TV ending
Alex Jones is called up to testify at the Travis County Courthouse during his defamation trial in Austin on Aug. 2. (Briana Sanchez/Reuters)
“This is your ‘Perry Mason’ moment,” Alex Jones complained in court this week during a trial to determine how much he must pay in damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. But isn’t this a picture-perfect ending to what has been a performance all along?
You have to hand it to the Infowars founder and infamous fabulist: His reference to the fictional lawyer, known for leaving judge, jury and TV viewers speechless by twisting the plot of countless whodunits, was fitting.
Jones had been caught in almost a cliche of red-handedness. His attorneys apparently sent a digital copy of his cellphone to the suing parents’ lawyer — revealing that, contrary to his testimony in the defamation suit against him, he did have text messages about the attack he claimed was a false-flag operation.
Similarly, contrary to his insistences that he has been deplatformed into bankruptcy, he makes almost $800,000 on some days selling diet supplements, survivalist gear and other right-wing regalia on his radio and internet shows.
“You know what perjury is, right?” the parents’ lawyer asked him.
In the end, the jury ruled that Jones must pay $4.1 million in damages — a whole lot more than the $8 his side was offering.
Eugene Robinson: Alex Jones is shocked that lies have consequences
Of course, none of the events leading to the verdict should have come as a surprise. Jones made a career out of deception — hawking hoaxes and phony cures to the credulous for decades. Pick a conspiracy theory, and he probably helped propagate it, from 9/11 trutherism to Pizzagate. Sandy Hook, however, has always been his most disgusting gambit. Children died, and he lied.
The hearings were remarkable because they caught this crook at long last. The trove of text messages, emails and other data finally stopped him from wriggling out of paying up. But something else matters more: Jones was forced, however fleetingly, to admit he doesn’t believe in his own fantasy land.
“I don’t think that you are operatives,” he conceded to jurors.
“I don’t think you’re an actor,” he said to the mother suing him, who lost her son in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“It’s 100 percent real,” he said about the shooting, after saying for so long that it was a concoction to deprive people of their weapons.
So what was he doing when he smeared those jurors as “blue-collar” people, carefully selected by his enemies, who “don’t know what planet they’re on”? What was he doing when he alleged on a broadcast that the father of that same boy, who has spoken of holding him with a bullet hole through his head, never held him at all?
That’s easy enough: He was putting on a show.
The consequences of Jones’s actions are as real as Sandy Hook — because his viewers do believe, even if he doesn’t. They’ve called up parents and confronted them in person; they’ve tried to dox them; they’ve shoved them on the street and even showed up at their houses and shot guns. But Jones himself has always been nothing more than an entertainer, sitting behind his microphone and telling his stories, because storytelling pays the bills.
And performance isn’t just Jones’s vocation. It’s his subject matter, too. The Sandy Hook conspiracy theory relies on the falsehood that the parents and children themselves are artificial — the kids never lived, so they could never have died, and the grown-ups are “crisis actors” staging a grand tragedy that never actually occurred. This accusation of fakery isn’t exclusive to Sandy Hook; Jones’s modus operandi is telling supporters that one horrific event or another was merely a play put on to hoodwink the masses.
“My son existed,” the Sandy Hook mother said to Jones. “I am not deep state. ... I know you know that. ... And yet you’re going to leave this courthouse and say it again on your show.” She’s probably right.
The events in the courthouse, and Jones’s contrition, were only another type of performance in the end. The audience just changed. This time, the judge and jury were people to be won over, rather than people to turn the world against. This time, Jones’s best financial move was saying Sandy Hook was real, rather than saying it was fake.
So it seems right that this saga crescendoed with a “Perry Mason” moment — a made-for-TV man finally undone in a made-for-TV denouement. Alex Jones ends up defeated by reality, in the form of text messages and emails that he’ll have trouble declaring never existed. But he is also defeated by a dash of the same theatricality he has relied on to delude, demean and damage. You see this a lot in TV shows, too: It’s called irony. | 2022-08-04T22:07:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Alex Jones's Sandy Hook texts get him caught in just the right way - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/alex-jones-sandy-hook-texts-irony/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/alex-jones-sandy-hook-texts-irony/ |
The presidency should be no office for old men (or women)
President Biden during a White House news conference Jan. 19. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Americans are not excited about the prospect of a 2024 presidential election rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. A CNN poll in late July found that three-quarters of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters wish the party would nominate someone other than Biden, while 55 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners” do not want Trump as their standard-bearer. A New York Times/Siena survey produced similar findings earlier that month.
Yet Trump-Biden II remains a likely scenario — possibly the likeliest. If only the Constitution had the following proviso: “No person who has attained the age of 75 years shall be eligible for election to the Office of President.” That would bar second-term bids by both Biden, 79, and Trump, 76, forcing the country to pass the torch to a new generation, or at least someone born after the 1940s.
Certainly such an amendment would be the most direct route to eliminating the danger of another Trump presidency, far simpler and more certain than trying to disqualify him via the House Jan. 6 committee’s revelations or an indictment. Precluding another four years of Biden would be a small price to pay for a never-Trump guarantee. Who knows? For that worthy objective, Biden himself might agree to sacrifice a shot at reelection.
For now, of course, this is idle speculation. There’s no prospect of such a measure being proposed in Congress, much less getting the necessary two-thirds majority of both houses, plus a majority vote in 38 of 50 state legislatures, for ratification by 2024. (Footnote: ratification of the 26th Amendment granting 18-year-olds the vote took less than four months in 1971; it was done well ahead of the 1972 election.) No doubt there would be an argument over whether Biden and Trump should be grandfathered in. (Sorry.)
Power Ranking: Will Biden run for president again? 12 of our columnists have the answer.
Sooner or later, though, there should be serious consideration of setting a maximum age at which anyone may be elected president or vice president. Public opinion appears to be moving that way, judging by a recent YouGov poll showing that 58 percent of Americans favor an upper age limit on office-holding generally — 70 years being the most popular number cited.
These data reflects public awareness that not only Biden but the speaker of the House, 31 senators and two Supreme Court justices are at least 70. Still, gerontocracy is less concerning in collective legislative and judicial bodies than it is in the one-person presidency, where the proverbial buck stops — but official duty never really does.
“Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 70. He wrote these words in defense of the constitutional plan, so they refer to the office’s institutional features, but their clear implication is that an energetic individual should lead the executive branch.
Former president Jimmy Carter would agree. In 2019, a nearly 95-year-old Carter said: “I hope there’s an age limit. … If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.”
The simple scientific fact is that, on average, human physical and mental capabilities diminish as we age. And the stubborn political fact is that, unlike prime ministers in a parliamentary system, presidents are hard to replace between general elections without a crisis, such as impeachment, or invocation of the 25th Amendment for dealing with presidential disability.
The obvious objection is that it’s both discriminatory — ageist — and undemocratic categorically to bar a group that made up just over 6 percent of the U.S. population in 2016, according to the Census Bureau. This demographic cohort will only grow as society ages; and it undoubtedly includes individuals who could handle the job. If an elderly candidate wants to run, the argument goes, let the voters judge his or her fitness.
Nevertheless, the fact that the Constitution set a minimum age — 35 — confirms that age per se is a relevant qualification. Yes, ruling out those 75 and older might exclude many capable candidates, but so does ruling out adults 34 and younger.
Setting the maximum at 74 would be actuarily sensible, not arbitrary. Given that risks — illness, injury, cognitive decline — grow with age, and that the presidency requires a full-time, fully capable occupant, the 75-year rule would “de-risk” the office and, by extension, the political system as a whole. To cite a specific advantage: It would render invocation of the 25th Amendment less probable.
When they pegged 35 as the minimum age for the presidency, and 30 and 25 for the Senate and House respectively, the framers enshrined the common wisdom of their era: that public office should be reserved for mature members of the community.
This intuition has aged pretty well. So has the Constitution itself — but only because it has been periodically amended to correct its initial flaws, adapt to new realities and help the system stay forever young. | 2022-08-04T22:07:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The presidency should be no office for old men (or women) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/amend-constitution-no-candidates-over-75/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/amend-constitution-no-candidates-over-75/ |
Consider this alternative to costly canine cancer care
Regarding the July 26 Health article “My dog needed cancer treatment. The high price tag stunned me.”:
I have had many beloved dogs. Two lived to be close to 13 and 14, but sadly, the others were hit with various forms of cancer while still quite young. After their treatments and surgeries, I was offered for them a series of radiation that might have extended their lives. In each case, I determined to have them put down, but I was there with them.
With a child, one can explain to them that treatments might make them feel bad but that as soon as they feel better they can have all the ice cream and hamburgers they want. That is impossible with a dog, and each treatment can be painful and frightening for them. As horrible as the death of a beloved dog is, we are able to give them the gift of a peaceful death that is, for the most part, denied humans. Instead of spending vast sums of money on often futile care, consider giving a substantial gift to a responsible animal shelter in your dog’s memory.
Dogs’ lives are horribly short, and as hard as that is, we must be prepared. Rudyard Kipling wrote, “Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware of giving your heart to a dog to tear.”
John Peters Irelan, Washington
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Why I will never live without a dog again | 2022-08-04T22:07:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Consider this alternative to costly canine cancer care - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/high-costs-canine-cancer-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/high-costs-canine-cancer-care/ |
‘Chinese Culture’ is not Chinese Communism. Somebody tell the New York Mets.
By Meghan Kruger
Associate opinions editor
Mr. Met performs at Citi Field in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
Come for the ball game. Stay for the Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
That’s not the marketing slogan for the New York Mets’ “Evening of Chinese Culture” — but it might as well be.
On Saturday, the Mets will take the field against the Atlanta Braves at Citi Field in what promises to be an exciting matchup between two top National League baseball teams. But this is no ordinary game. According to an event organizer, Saturday’s attendees will be treated to an “extravaganza” featuring souvenirs, calligraphy and kung fu demonstrations, handouts about “Chinese civilization” and other programming. And this year, for the first time in the annual event’s decade-plus history, fans who purchased tickets through an online promo will receive a limited edition commemorative hat.
On the surface, it all seems innocent enough. As the Mets organization points out, they honor many groups. Upcoming “celebration nights” recognize Ireland and Israel, Filipino and Hispanic heritages, and the sesquicentennial of baseball in Japan. And Aug. 28 is the franchise’s 17th annual “Taiwan Day.”
But the “Evening of Chinese Culture” is about more than community outreach. The Mets’ partner for the event is the Sino-American Friendship Association, which some China experts have identified as involved in United Front work — a global effort to propagandize on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
A term with Leninist origins, the United Front refers to a constellation of organizations that serve as bridges between the Chinese Communist Party and non-party institutions. Overseas, these take the form of “friendship” groups that exist in almost every major U.S. city. Some are explicitly connected with the CCP’s United Front Work Department, an official ministry. Others are more loosely affiliated but linked to the broader “ideological work” the CCP aims to carry out worldwide, said Isaac Stone Fish, founder and CEO of the research firm Strategy Risks, who has investigated China’s influence among U.S. elites.
The mission of organizations linked to the United Front, according to American Foreign Policy Council fellow Michael Sobolik, is twofold. The first, he explains, is “to observe and control the activity of Chinese nationals across the world.” The second is “elite capture”: cozying up to business leaders, political officials and other influential figures overseas to change foreign nations’ perception of China. In some cases, Sobolik adds, the groups are actively seeking targets to groom as intelligence assets.
The Sino-American Friendship Association is “a well-known United Front operator,” according to Mark Simon, a close associate of Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai (and a Mets fan). The group’s ties to CCP officialdom are extensive. According to SAFA’s website, its honorary chairman, XiKun Yuan, is a member of the 11th Standing Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a CCP organ. Its advisory board includes Bingde Zhou, former vice president of the state-run China News Service, and Zhongwen Qu, former consul of Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in New York. SAFA’s Chinese-language website refers to cooperation with the Chinese consulate, the China National Tourist Office, and Xinhua and other state-controlled media agencies. The group has also organized trips to meet with United Front Work Department officials in China.
In a statement, the Sino-American Friendship Association said it is “an independent, nonprofit, non-government organization.”
The perfect symbol of what’s wrong with the Mets’ gimmick is the baseball cap giveaway. The underside of the brim features images commemorating the Year of the Tiger. The outside — the most visible part — displays the Mets logo in red and yellow to coordinate with the national flag of the People’s Republic of China emblazoned on the cap’s left side.
Join us as we celebrate An Evening of Chinese Culture at @CitiField on Aug. 6, featuring festive pre-game programming!
Fans who purchase this special offer will receive a limited edition An Evening of Chinese Culture hat.
🎟👉 https://t.co/0XoUpamVCo pic.twitter.com/3IXyilhDNS
— New York Mets (@Mets) July 29, 2022
Symbols matter, and there is irony in using this one to celebrate Chinese culture. If anything, the PRC flag has, for decades, represented the systematic destruction of Chinese culture. Today, the Chinese Communist Party censors artists and writers. Religion is controlled by the state. China is the world’s largest jailer of journalists. It is seeking to destroy minority cultures by banning schools from teaching children in their native languages. Beijing is tightening its stranglehold on Tibet. It continues to crush the once-thriving metropolis of Hong Kong under its jackboot.
And the regime’s genocide against the country’s 12 million Uyghurs is well documented. Concentration camps, “reeducation,” surveillance, slave labor, forced sterilization, torture and rape — all are part of an evil campaign to wipe this Muslim minority’s culture off the face of the Earth.
It’s enough to make any decent baseball fan — or human being — choke on his peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
It’s also certainly not the image SAFA seeks to project. Nor do the Mets seem keen to promote the truth about Beijing. According to a team spokesman, the evening’s goal is local outreach: “Our home in Flushing is … home to more Asian and Pacific Islander New Yorkers than any neighborhood in New York City, which has also seen an unfortunate increase in anti-Asian violence,” he said. “Now more than ever, it is important to support these communities.” The PRC flag on the hat, he added, is consistent with the incorporation of flags into hat designs for other heritage celebrations.
The organization seems to forget that, when it comes to sheer body count, history’s greatest perpetrator of anti-Asian violence has been the People’s Republic of China. Many of Flushing’s Asian residents are there precisely because they fled the CCP and everything it stands for.
It’s tempting to dismiss the Mets’ fiasco as merely another instance of Chinese sportswashing. But the timing of this one is especially bad. It’s not great optics to be giving away PRC-flag hats the same week the regime menaced the U.S. speaker of the House and launched missiles near its democratic neighbor.
In an ideal world, the Mets would cancel Saturday’s event, sever ties with the Sino-American Friendship Association and ensure that any future “Evenings of Chinese Culture” actually celebrate Chinese culture and the Chinese people — not a regime hostile to both.
In the meantime, fans who don’t want to serve as billboards for a genocidal totalitarian state have an easy remedy. They can toss the commemorative hats where they belong, right alongside the Chinese Communist Party — on the trash heap of bad ideas.‘
China wants to ‘reduce misunderstanding’ with the U.S. It could start by talking. | 2022-08-04T22:07:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘Chinese Culture’ is not Chinese Communism. Somebody tell the New York Mets. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/mets-china-baseball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/mets-china-baseball/ |
The Navy tees up a new threat to the Chesapeake
Carr Creek and the Severn River are seen from the Poet’s Nature Trail at the Greenbury Point Conservation Area in Annapolis on July 11. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
The facilities and infrastructure at the Naval Academy in Annapolis are so vulnerable to the effects of sea-level rise and climate change that in the coming years billions of dollars of taxpayer funds will be required to ensure resilience. The Navy is facing enormous challenges that require its full attention, from a lack of capacity at our shipyards to serious threats from adversaries in the Pacific region and soon the Arctic. So, reading that the Naval Academy is planning for a new golf course at Greenbury Point is an absurdity. On any priority scale this should be rated a zero, and not a single taxpayer dollar should be spent to advance this bad idea.
Betty McCollum, Washington
The writer, a Democrat, represents Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House.
I cringed when I read the Aug. 3 Metro article, “Plan for golf course provokes backlash,” about the Naval Academy’s plans for a golf course in the middle of the already strained Chesapeake Bay. The chemicals spilled onto golf courses are killing life in many bodies of water. We should not do things to the bay that will permanently impair life there. The downward trend in the harvest of blue crabs should be indication enough that we need to lessen — not increase — the pollution load we are putting on the cherished Chesapeake Bay.
Blair Caviness, Luray
We lived next to the Naval Academy’s golf course for about 25 years and often used the Greenbury Point land to walk our dogs. We found it a wonderful place to view wild animals such as osprey, deer, rabbits, groundhogs and numerous species of wild birds. Let’s keep it that way. Naval Academy athletic director Chet Gladchuk Jr. did well for football, but in this case, he has fumbled.
Mike Brinck, Bethany Beach, Del. | 2022-08-04T22:07:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Navy tees up a new threat to the Chesapeake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/new-threat-chesapeake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/new-threat-chesapeake/ |
By Rachel Leingang
Kari Lake, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, speaks at a campaign rally in Phoenix on Aug. 1. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Rachel Leingang is co-founder of the politics and government newsletter the Arizona Agenda.
There might have been a path to victory in the Republican primary in Arizona on Tuesday for statewide candidates who vigorously defended the 2020 election results and made support for the democratic process a cornerstone of their campaigns.
But no one tried to chart it.
Instead, candidates in crowded primaries for governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general and secretary of state almost uniformly sought former president Donald Trump’s approval and support from his base by aligning themselves with the contention that the 2020 election was stolen. For those who got the endorsement, it proved critical.
In the governor’s race, former TV news anchor Kari Lake is leading wealthy self-funder Karrin Taylor Robson, despite Robson’s support from Gov. Doug Ducey and former vice president Mike Pence. The $15 million Robson invested in her own campaign took her from zero name recognition to neck-and-neck with Lake. But that likely won’t be enough to beat the sledgehammer-toting Lake, whose frequent election denialism snagged her Trump’s early and enthusiastic support.
The Trump endorsement reliably netted at least one-third of primary voters. And for crowded races, that was enough.
Mark Finchem, a fringe state lawmaker who has built a national reputation while trying to overturn the 2020 election, will be the GOP’s nominee for secretary of state, which oversees elections. Abe Hamadeh, who said he wouldn’t have signed off on the 2020 election and shared claims that it could still be overturned, won the primary for attorney general. Both were endorsed by Trump, netting them at least a third of the primary electorate in four- and six-way races, respectively.
Blake Masters, a beneficiary of billionaire Peter Thiel’s largesse, needed the Trump endorsement to break away in the five-way race for U.S. Senate. It quickly rocketed his campaign to the top, allowing him to beat self-funder Jim Lamon.
While a few of the candidates — Robson, secretary of state candidate Beau Lane, attorney general candidate Lacy Cooper — said they wouldn’t have attempted to overturn the 2020 election results, they sidestepped reporters’ questions asking whether they thought the election was free and fair.
Of those who fell short in the primaries, Republican pollster and strategist in Arizona Paul Bentz, said, “One of the mistakes that some of these candidates made is that they felt obligated to stick closer to the playbook.” Bentz said that a strong, well-funded candidate who campaigned on supporting democracy might have been able to break through the cacophony of candidates all spouting similar election-denial messages.
Still, one of most ardent defenders of the state’s 2020 presidential election results got pummeled. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, running for a seat in the state Senate, lost by a wide margin to fellow Republican David Farnsworth in their deep-red district in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
Bowers was recently censured by the Arizona Republican Party. And he faced near-daily tweets from the party’s chair, Kelli Ward, boosting his opponent, who had Trump’s endorsement and said that the 2020 election was stolen, and that “the devil” was the one who stole it.
Further down the ballot, Tom Galvin, a Republican appointee running to win his seat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, a body controlled by Republicans who have beat back 2020 conspiracies nonstop, won his race over candidates who made denying the previous election a cornerstone of their run. But he seems to be the exception to the overarching election denialism theme this year.
The state party “definitely put their finger on the scale for a lot of candidates,” Republican consultant Lisa James said. The party itself didn’t endorse, and Ward didn’t use the word endorse in her public statements, but her steady support for the MAGA slate over establishment Republicans was hard to miss.
And in helping to boost Trump-aligned candidates in a state that Trump lost in 2020 — no matter what they claim — the Arizona Republican Party may have damaged its chances of sweeping the state in what should be a banner year for Republicans nationwide.
Arizona Democrats quietly celebrated the Trump slate’s victories, believing they now have a solid shot in November.
A flood of money from outside groups will bombard Arizona voters from both sides. Democrats will paint their opponents as extremists, pointing to their election denialism and antiabortion laws. Republicans, if they’re smart, will try to tie their opponents to Biden administration policies and emphasize kitchen-table issues such as inflation.
But a GOP message centered largely around 2020 and its fallout might not bring in enough independents and moderate Democrats to win statewide.
So far, Lake and other GOP winners on Tuesday are showing no signs of moderating their positions or their tone. That could well be to their own detriment come November. | 2022-08-04T22:07:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Arizona’s GOP primaries went full MAGA. Now, Democrats think they have a shot. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/trump-candidates-arizona-success/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/trump-candidates-arizona-success/ |
Alex Jones attempts to answer questions about his emails asked by Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, during Jones's trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin on Wednesday. (Briana Sanchez/Pool via Reuters)
The decision means that Jones, America’s foremost purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories, could pay far less than the $150 million sought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, for Jones’s remarks nearly a decade ago after the massacre in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, 20 of them young children.
Jones, 48, was previously found by judges in Connecticut and Texas to be liable for damages in lawsuits stemming from his false claims that the 2012 shooting was a “false flag” operation carried out by “crisis actors.” Since then, Jones has been banned from major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Spotify, and the parent company for his Infowars website filed for bankruptcy during the trial.
Despite Jones finally conceding this week in court that the shooting was not a hoax but “100 percent real,” District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., noted the considerable damage caused by the Infowars founder’s remarks — and how his comments led to years of abuse for Sandy Hook parents.
The jury’s decision, which did not include punitive damages, comes just one day after it was revealed in court that the legal team representing Jones inadvertently sent the contents of his cellphone to a lawyer representing the parents. The apparent blunder led attorney Mark Bankston to accuse Jones of lying under oath when he testified that he did not have any text messages related to the Sandy Hook massacre.
Once described by Roger Stone as maybe “the single most important voice in the alternative conservative media,” Jones has seen his false claims and rants launched into the mainstream national dialogue in recent years, embraced by the likes of then-President Donald Trump and Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host.
How Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, got Donald Trump’s ear
Shortly after the shooting in Newtown, Jones falsely claimed that “no one died” at Sandy Hook, and that the attack was “staged” and “manufactured” by gun-control advocates. Jones eventually retracted his false claims on the school shooting in 2019, blaming his statements on “a form of psychosis.”
Jones has been previously ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to families who have sued him. Nine families have sued him over the years.
In default judgments against Jones and Infowars last October, Gamble 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 massacre. Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims.
Gamble’s 2021 rulings related to two 2018 lawsuits filed by the parents of Jesse Lewis as well as Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, who lost their 6-year-old son, Noah. Pozner and De La Rosa said they have faced emotional distress and have been harassed for years by Infowars fans who have followed Jones’s lead and falsely claimed that the shooting was staged.
During his Tuesday testimony, Heslin spoke of his grief — compounded with death threats and abuse from strangers that led the parents to fear for their lives.
“I can’t even describe the last nine-and-a-half years, the living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones,” Heslin told the jury.
Scarlett Lewis echoed Heslin in testimony directed at Jones in the courtroom.
But perhaps the most dramatic moment in the contentious trial came Wednesday when Bankston told Jones how his attorneys had “messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone” containing previously undisclosed texts about the massacre and financial information about Infowars.
“This is your ‘Perry Mason’ moment,” Jones responded to Bankston, a reference to the fictional lawyer famed for his stunning 11th-hour courtroom reveals. “I gave them my phone.”
On Aug. 3, attorney Mark Bankston accused Alex Jones of lying after cross-checking facts with the contents of Jones’s phone. (Video: KXAN News)
The trial in Austin, where Infowars is headquartered, had been delayed for months after the right-wing conspiracy website and two other of Jones’s business entities filed for bankruptcy protection in April. At the halfway point of the trial, Reynal noted in court how Free Speech Systems, Jones’s media company, had filed for bankruptcy, highlighting yet another financial blow to the Infowars founder.
Jones has also faced daily fines of $25,000 from a Connecticut judge for failing to show up for court-ordered depositions in March, and previously blamed stress and cardiovascular effects from his coronavirus infection for missing depositions in the Connecticut trial last year.
While Jones has claimed in court filings that he has a net worth of negative $20 million, attorneys for the Sandy Hook families have pointed to records showing that Jones’s Infowars store made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018. | 2022-08-04T22:10:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook parents $4.1 million in damages for calling shooting 'hoax' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/alex-jones-sandy-hook-trial-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/alex-jones-sandy-hook-trial-jury/ |
From Hungary to Texas, the ‘far-right international’ comes into focus
“The globalists can go to hell,” thundered Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “I have come to Texas.”
He was delivering what was essentially the opening keynote of the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas — the preeminent convening organization of the American right-wing movement. The conference Orban helped kick off will conclude in part with a speech from former president Donald Trump. And the message the Hungarian leader sent was one that united Republican anger at “liberal hegemony” with his own narrative of illiberal triumph.
In his remarks, Orban laid out the clearest platform yet for what some analysts have dubbed “the far-right international,” a notional alliance between far-right and ultranationalist parties on both sides of the Atlantic. He trumpeted his hard-line stances against immigration, his staunch Christian nationalism, his opposition to “gender ideology” and his indifference to those who view his quasi-autocratic rule as a threat to democracy in the heart of Europe.
Orban made no bones about his contempt for U.S. Democrats and the supposed liberal media. “They hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you,” Orban said of Democrats at CPAC. “We should unite our forces.”
“We must take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels … we must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenges,” Orban added, gesturing to the upcoming U.S. midterm and presidential elections and European parliamentary elections in 2024. “These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.”
Ahead of an opening speech at CPAC 2022 PM Orban held talks with former president Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/QuFmeDXldg
Orban chose to gloss over the outcry that followed a major speech he made last month. Just across the border in neighboring Romania, in a picturesque town home to a considerable ethnic Hungarian population where Orban delivers an annual address, he warned, among other things, that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race.”
From his perch in Transylvania, Orban summoned the spectral menace of racist ideologies that have long haunted Europe. One long-term Orban adviser, Zsuzsa Hegedus, tendered her resignation with a letter that described Orban’s speech as “a pure Nazi text worthy of Goebbels,” and the “racist” culmination of an increasingly “illiberal turn.” (She later backtracked, appearing to echo Orban’s defenders that his remarks were misconstrued. You can read an English translation of his speech here.)
Orban supporters say that he was speaking principally about simply limiting migration and preserving European “civilization.” Even then, he used hopelessly bad historical analogies to make his claim, styling Hungary as a modern-day bulwark against Muslim encroachment as it was in supposedly fending off the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna in 1683. In truth, the Ottoman army had myriad Christians in its camp, including thousands of Hungarian peasants marshaled by the Hungarian Protestant nobleman Imre Thokoly.
Whatever the case, Orban’s rhetoric now is a sign of an ideologue who is increasingly unrestrained on the world stage. “It’s one thing for Orban to drop words such as ‘replacement’ into his speeches — a dog whistle to white supremacists and their ‘Great Replacement Theory,’ but seemingly innocuous to other people,” wrote Andreas Kluth for Bloomberg Opinion. “It’s another to give speeches that sound like passages of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935.”
Was it “an accidental slip?” Kluth pondered. “Or a sign of growing confidence, signaling a clearer line in future?”
Florida shadows Hungary’s war on LGBTQ rights
No matter the geopolitical feebleness of Hungary in its own right, Orban and his allies see themselves as standard bearers for an illiberal future. “We do hope that you can learn from us the political mind-set how to be a successful conservative, as we also learn from you, and from Ronald Reagan,” Miklos Szantho, director of the Center for Fundamental Rights, a Hungarian think tank believed to be funded by Orban’s government, said at a CPAC gathering organized in Budapest in May. “As he put it so many years ago, ‘We win, they lose.’ That is what the Hungarian right has done.”
Big elections are around the corner — from the United States to Italy, where a party whose origins are rooted directly in Italy’s fascist past may soon lead a new governing coalition, to Brazil, where embattled far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is already echoing Trump’s falsehoods over the threat of a stolen election.
In February, Bolsonaro visited Orban in Hungary and celebrated the “affinities” they shared and “values that we represent, which can be summarized in four words: God, homeland, family and freedom.” That motto, noted Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, echoed the slogans of Italian fascists in the 1920s and ’30s, which were imported by their Brazilian counterparts and also given voice by the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar.
None of these observations or criticisms bother Orban and his ilk. On Thursday, he returned the favor, casting the West’s “liberal progressives” as the successors of totalitarian communism. “We have seen what kind of future the globalist ruling class has offered,” he said. “But we have a different future to offer.”
Why are US conservatives so fascinated with Hungary?
Pt. 2 of my conversation today w/ @milleridriss & @ishaantharoor: pic.twitter.com/2dnj8CttDL
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) May 22, 2022
What is that future? I explored that in a three-part series earlier this year on Orban’s political impact on U.S. Republicans, many of whom admire his dismantling of Hungary’s media establishment, his war on LGBT rights and his aggressive attempts at boosting his country’s birthrates. They are quieter about — though possibly still supportive of — his bending of the country’s judiciary and erosion of European democratic norms.
“This is the desire to build an ‘illiberal international’: a world shaped by the kind of politics that eschews the rules-based international order, liberal democratic norms, and transparency; institutions, and norms that currently make it possible for the European Commission to sanction Orban’s government and for the West to sanction Putin’s Russia,” wrote Andras Toth-Czifra, a Hungarian expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
“By hitching themselves to someone who has put himself forward as a post-liberal intellectual, I think American conservatives are starting to give themselves permission to discard liberal norms,” Lauren Stokes, a historian at Northwestern University, told the New Yorker for a lengthy piece on Orban’s American appeal published in June.
“When a Hungarian court does something Orban doesn’t like — something too pro-queer, too pro-immigrant — he can just say, ‘This court is an enemy of the people, I don’t have to listen to it,’ ” she added. “I think Republicans are setting themselves up to adopt a similar logic: if the system gives me a result I don’t like, I don’t have to abide by it.”
“In order to win, it is not enough to know what you’re fighting for,” Orban told the CPAC crowd on Thursday. “You should also know how you should fight: My answer is play by your own rules.” That’s a message the Republicans appear to be hearing loud and clear. | 2022-08-04T22:40:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hungary's Viktor Orban at CPAC: The ‘far-right international’ comes into focus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/orban-hungary-far-right-international-cpac-conservative/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/04/orban-hungary-far-right-international-cpac-conservative/ |
By Qin Gang
Smoke trails from projectiles launched by the Chinese military are seen in the sky as tourists look on from Pingtan Island, one of China's closest points from Taiwan, in Fujian province on Aug. 4. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)
Qin Gang is the Chinese ambassador to the United States.
Taiwan has been an inseparable part of China’s territory for 1,800 years. In 1943, the leaders of China, the United States and Britain issued the Cairo Declaration, which clearly states that all territories Japan stole from the Chinese, such as Taiwan, shall be restored to China. The Potsdam Declaration of 1945 affirmed that the terms of the Cairo Declaration would be carried out. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, recognized that the representatives of the government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations.
When China and the United States established diplomatic relations on Jan. 1, 1979, the United States recognized in the joint communique with China that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China. Four decades have passed since, and the United States has long been committed to not developing official relations with Taiwan.
By order of succession, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the third-highest-ranking official in the U.S. government. Traveling in a military aircraft, Pelosi paid a high-profile “official visit to Taiwan” this week, as her office described it in her arrival statement, and was given full-protocol treatment by Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party authorities, who make no secret of pursuing independence in their party platform. Such a visit has openly broken America’s commitment not to develop official relations with Taiwan.
These are extremely irresponsible, provocative and dangerous moves.
The one-China principle is part of the postwar international order and has become a general international consensus. As a country that thinks of itself as a champion of the “rules-based international order,” the United States should naturally abide by the one-China principle.
In the past, the United States has violated and undermined the principle by adopting the Taiwan Relations Act and the “Six Assurances” to Taiwan. And it is doing so again now in a broader attempt to unilaterally change the status quo on Taiwan and alter the postwar international order.
Fifty years ago, Henry Kissinger, who was personally involved in the negotiations for the normalization of China-U.S. relations, witnessed how the Taiwan question was properly handled on the basis of the one-China principle. Recently, he noted, “The United States should not by subterfuge or by a gradual process develop something of a ‘two-China’ solution.”
President Biden has said many times that the United States will not change its one-China policy and does not support “Taiwan independence.” But for the “Taiwan independence” forces, Pelosi’s visit represents an exceptionally strong signal that “the U.S. is on Taiwan’s side.” This goes against the one-China principle, the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques and America’s own commitments. Moreover, the Pelosi visit will lead “Taiwan independence” forces further down a dangerous path, with peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait hanging in the balance.
Just think: If an American state were to secede from the United States and declare independence, and then some other nation provided weapons and political support for that state, would the U.S. government — or the American people — allow this to happen?
The Taiwan question is about China’s sovereignty and unity — not democracy. But it is true that Pelosi’s visit has aroused the indignation of the 1.4 billion Chinese people. If the United States truly takes democracy to heart, it should show respect for the call of the Chinese people, who constitute about one-fifth of the world population.
With both covid--19 and the Ukraine conflict growing into protracted crises, it is high time for China and the United States to strengthen cooperation and work with other countries to find solutions. Instead, some politicians choose to damage China’s core interests, either to seek the limelight or to cement their political legacy. Their actions will only erode China-U.S. relations and subject our peoples and militaries to peril.
Taiwan is one of the very few issues that might take China and the United States to conflict. Extra caution and a sense of responsibility are indispensable when it comes to Taiwan. | 2022-08-04T22:57:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang: Pelosi's Taiwan visit was irresponsible - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/china-ambassador-op-ed-pelosi-taiwan-visit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/china-ambassador-op-ed-pelosi-taiwan-visit/ |
Judge wants more info to weigh competency of mother charged in murder of children
Catherine Hoggle has been consistently found incompetent to stand trial in the 2014 disappearance of her son and daughter
Dan Morse
Catherine Hoggle, Jacob Hoggle and Sarah Hoggle (Montgomery County Police)
A Montgomery County judge said Thursday that he needs more time and information to decide whether the woman charged with murder in the disappearance of her two children is mentally fit for trial.
Circuit Court Judge Richard Jordan indicated that he wanted to hear testimony from some of the forensic psychiatrists who examined Catherine Hoggle, rather than rely only on the many written reports assessing her competency to stand trial.
Jordan, who was recalled from retirement to oversee the case, also appeared receptive to a request by prosecutors that he conduct an interview with Hoggle in open court to help him assess whether she would be capable of understanding the legal proceedings and assist her in her defense.
Jordan set a tentative hearing date of Oct. 7 and asked both sides to submit possible questions and areas to explore if he does speak with Hoggle. He regretfully acknowledged to a courtroom that a final decision on whether Hoggle will stand trial had been put off again in a case that has been underway for nearly eight years.
“My apologies,” he said.
What makes mothers kill their own children?
The postponement came as the clock is running down on how long the state can move forward with criminal charges against Hoggle, whose two children disappeared while in her care in the fall of 2014.
Hoggle, who has a history of schizophrenia, was initially charged with misdemeanor negligence and obstruction of justice soon after the two children — Sarah, 3, and Jacob, 2 — vanished. Those charges were later elevated to murder.
Since her arrest, however, Hoggle has been determined unfit to stand trial and committed to the care of Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, where she has been undergoing treatment in the hopes of restoring her mental health.
By law, the state is required within a certain period of time to move forward or dismiss the criminal charges against a person found unfit to stand trial because they cannot be detained in the criminal system for an unspecified amount of time. During that period, defendants undergo periodic examination to determine whether they are sound of mind enough to proceed or whether it’s even possible to restore the person to competency.
The period is three years for less serious charges, such as those Hoggle was initially charged with, and within five years for more serious offenses, such as murder. Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals — following a legal battle over which deadline applied to Hoggle — ruled that the five-year period began with her indictment for murder. Prosecutors have until Dec. 1 to prosecute the charges or dismiss them if Hoggle remains mentally unfit to stand trial.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Hoggle would necessarily be released. State’s Attorney John McCarthy said Hoggle would likely be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility through civil proceedings. He also said the state could even revive the homicide charges if she were found healthy enough to be released.
Judge rejects request to drop murder charges against mother of missing Maryland children
But McCarthy argued that Hoggle already meets the legal definition of competency to stand trial. He cited her own words in some of the psychiatric reports — not to mention her role in a separate legal proceeding in which a court stripped her of her parental rights to a third surviving child — to suggest that Hoggle is highly intelligent, understands of the nature of the legal charges against her, understands the workings of the justice system and has a good grasp of her legal options and possible strategies.
“She understood entirely the process, better than a lot of lawyers,” McCarthy said.
Hoggle’s defense attorney, David Felsen, didn’t dispute that his client understands how a trial would work. But Felsen said her profound mental illness, which he described as paranoid schizophrenia, has made it impossible for her to act on that knowledge in a way that would allow her to adequately defend herself.
“This is not a close call,” Felsen said, citing all the times that courts have found her incompetent to stand trial. He said her mental illness existed before her children’s disappearance and exists now.
Larry Fitch, a former director of the Office of Forensic Services at the Maryland Department of Health and a University of Maryland Law School instructor, said that in Maryland, a person who is deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial cannot be held indefinitely.
Fitch noted that the law allows for longer stays if a court finds “an extraordinary cause to extend time,” but said such findings are extremely rare, if they’re done at all.
Report: Catherine Hoggle, mom of missing kids, mentally incompetent to stand trial
Fitch stressed that treating Hoggle like others with profound mental illness isn’t necessarily bad and is rooted in a central tenet of the U.S. justice system.
“There is a presumption of innocence,” Fitch said. “A person is not guilty unless tried and convicted. If a person cannot be tried, how can we justify this differential treatment? The Supreme Court has said that we can’t.” | 2022-08-04T23:11:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge delays deciding if Catherine Hoggle is fit for trial in disappearance of her children - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/hoggle-competancy-murder-charges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/hoggle-competancy-murder-charges/ |
Family decries police shooting of man in Va., as footage is released
The parents of Jasper Aaron Lynch said his fatal shooting by a Fairfax County officer ‘cannot be justified’
Patrick Lynch, left, with Kathy Lynch and their son Jasper Aaron Lynch in an undated family photograph. Jasper Aaron Lynch, 26, was shot and killed July 7, 2022, by Fairfax County Police in a house in the 6900 block of Arbor Lane in McLean, Va. (Family photo) (Family photo)
Video from a Fairfax County police officer’s body camera, made public Thursday, shows an officer fatally shooting a man suffering a mental health crisis in his McLean home July 7 as the man charged at three officers, wielding a wine bottle like a club. The man’s parents reacted to the video by saying the killing “cannot be justified,” and noting their son was “5′ 6, slightly built, and holding just a bottle and a decorative mask.”
“We recognize that, at times, police officers face grave and unknown dangers in the line of duty, but that was not the case for that call at our home regarding our son,” the couple said.
Police Chief Kevin Davis said the shooting is still being investigated.
“Our officers were confronted with a very chaotic and dangerous situation,” Davis said in releasing the footage at a news conference. “I want to be careful not to offer any assessments or any opinions,” given the ongoing investigation. “But I think it’s clear to see from the video that that was a very active and chaotic incident.”
Video shows a Fairfax County police officer shooting and killing Jasper Aaron Lynch, 26, on July 7. Lynch was experiencing a mental-health crisis. (Video: Fairfax County Police Department)
The deadly encounter began unfolding shortly after 8:30 p.m., when officers arrived in the 6900 block of Arbor Lane. There, in his parents’ spacious house, Jasper Aaron Lynch, 26, was behaving erratically in the throes of a mental health crisis, his sister told the officers after meeting them in front of the residence. Lynch’s parents were not home and no one else was in the house.
After discussing Lynch’s condition for several minutes with the sister, the three officers opened the front doors and stepped into a large foyer area, the video shows. One or more of them called out “Aaron,” as Lynch was commonly known. Lynch suddenly appeared at the opposite end of the foyer, holding a large decorative tribal mask made of wood in one hand and a wine bottle in the other.
In a span of about 20 seconds, officers can be heard urging him at least eight times to “put it down.”
“Aaron, are you all right?” one said.
“Bud, it’s okay, you’re not in trouble,” said another.
The video shows Lynch yelling as he hurled the wooden mask at one of the officers. Then he charged toward the doorway where the officers were standing, raising the wine bottle by its neck with two hands in what Davis called “an aggressive act.” Two of the officers fired Tasers at him but Lynch kept coming, according to the video.
“I think it’s safe to say they were several feet away,” Davis said of the officers. “And both Taser prongs have to hit in order for it to take effect. Again, our investigation will reveal if, in fact, those Tasers hit, if they took effect, and if they didn’t, why not.”
As Lynch, wielding the bottle, reached the front entrance, Officer Edward George, a 10-year member of the force, shot him four times. The video shows Lynch collapsing on the threshold and crawling a few feet before being subdued. Asked if it is possible that George mistook his gun for his Taser, the chief said, “There’s no preliminary investigative information that I’m aware of that suggests that that’s the case.”
Davis said George is on “administrative” working status, with no public contact, pending the outcome of two parallel inquiries, one to determine if the shooting was a crime, the other to ascertain if any department rules were violated. Efforts to reach George were not immediately successful.
“We believe that the three police officers … could have, and should have, handled this far differently,” Lynch’s parents, Patrick and Kathy Lynch, said in a statement after the news conference. Describing their son as “scared” by his loss of mental control, they said, “To respond to Aaron’s mental health crisis by shooting him at all, let alone three times, cannot be justified.”
The couple added, “As parents, we mourn the heartbreaking loss of our son and are left with only memories and regret.”
Davis said he sympathizes with the family and declined to comment on the parents’ statement.
Davis said the tragic outcome was rare, given the volume of calls that Fairfax police receive about people in emotional or psychiatric distress. Of the 6,700 such calls that officers have responded to so far this year — an average of about 33 per day — they have used force, lethal and nonlethal, “less than one percent of the time,” the chief said.
The department has embraced “a co-responder philosophy” in which a mental health clinician, when available, accompanies police officers on calls such as the one involving Lynch. Earlier that evening, between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., officers and a clinician went to the Lynch home for an initial report of a mental health crisis. But when they arrived, Lynch had left the house, and officers couldn’t find him, police said.
When officers were called again, shortly after 8:30, the clinician — the only one working with police so far — was unavailable.
“This clinician had moved on to another location at the conclusion of his tour of duty to complete some administrative paperwork,” Davis said. He noted that the three officers who responded to the second call had all received advanced crisis-intervention treatment.
Davis said the department will soon begin phase two of the co-responder program, with two clinicians on the payroll instead of one. Months from now, in the fourth and final phase, the department plans to have 16 clinicians working with officers in the field, the chief said. | 2022-08-04T23:28:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Body camera video shows Fairfax police fatally shooting man in McLean - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/mclean-police-shooting-video/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/04/mclean-police-shooting-video/ |
A Toyota Motor Corp. dealership in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, on Friday, Feb. 5, 2022. Revenue estimates for Toyota Motor are less bearish than key industry data that closely align with the company’s sales. The company is set to release its third-quarter earnings on February 9. (Bloomberg)
Toyota Motor Corp.’s profits fell 18% for the quarter ended June. Much of the hit came from raw material prices that knocked operating income down by 315 billion yen ($2.35 billion) and lowered sales because of constrained supplies. The Japanese company was also affected by “unexpected events,” like the Shanghai lockdown and floods in South Africa, which crimped production. Ultimately, operating income decreased by about $3.1 billion — down 42%. Japan and North America were particularly bad. With all the disappointment, the stock fell.
Announcing results for the latest quarter on Thursday, Toyota said its suppliers were having a tough time with raw material prices and parts, forcing it to amend its own plans at the last minute. That led to a decrease in its operating income. To beef up its supply chain and deal with the “current severe business environment” and other sustained challenges, the firm plans to help its suppliers on issues like purchase price agreements. The carmaker has also adjusted its production plans, giving smaller manufacturers more time to procure parts and labor.
• Toyota Broke Its Just-in-Time Rule Just in Time: Anjani Trivedi
• The Chip Shortage Excuse Is Getting Old: Anjani Trivedi
• Chaos Makes Case for Just-in-Case Management: Adrian Wooldridge | 2022-08-04T23:37:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Toyota Shows It’s (Still) Going to Be Hard to Get a Car - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/toyota-shows-its-still-going-to-be-hard-to-get-acar/2022/08/04/9a403d62-1441-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/toyota-shows-its-still-going-to-be-hard-to-get-acar/2022/08/04/9a403d62-1441-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
FILE - Rapper Mystikal performs during the Legends of Southern Hip Hop Tour at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, March 19, 2016. The attorney who represented Mystikal on rape and kidnapping charges that were dropped in late 2020 said Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022, that he is once more representing the 51-year-old rapper, and is confident that he will again be cleared. (Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-08-04T23:37:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawyer confident Mystikal will be cleared on rape charge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lawyer-confident-mystikal-will-be-cleared-on-rape-charge/2022/08/04/d4b9ef68-1443-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lawyer-confident-mystikal-will-be-cleared-on-rape-charge/2022/08/04/d4b9ef68-1443-11ed-8482-06c1c84ce8f2_story.html |
The U.S.-China crisis on Taiwan is the result of errors on both sides
Tourists watch as a Chinese military helicopter flies past China's Pingtan Island on Aug. 4. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) (Afp Contributor#afp/AFP/Getty Images)
Taiwan has been known to be the most sensitive issue for both the United States and China, one that has been carefully managed for five decades. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) recent visit to the island — which triggered the current conflict — was something she signaled she intended to do months ago.
On the American side, several errors — many of them tactical and driven by domestic politics — have resulted in a dangerous reality: There is no serious working relationship between the 21st century’s two most powerful actors.
Early in its tenure, the Biden administration adopted a policy toward China of open hostility and criticism. At the first face-to-face meeting between senior officials from both sides in March 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken decided to deliver a harangue, to which his Chinese counterpart defiantly responded. (That Blinken’s remarks were designed for a domestic audience can be seen in the fact that they were delivered in public, in front of television cameras — a format that would only harden Beijing’s position, not change it.)
As Jeffrey Bader, President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Asia, has noted of the Biden team: Despite having criticized Trump’s foreign policy bitterly, “when it comes to the greatest foreign policy challenge facing the United States — how to deal with the rise of China — [Biden officials] have continued and mimicked Trump’s destructive approach.”
Bader added, “This has prompted glee among departed Trump officials, who proudly declare themselves innovators and the Biden administration unimaginative and dutiful implementers.”
Ryan Hass, another top Obama China expert, argued that “communication channels for managing tensions have collapsed.”
But although the Biden administration’s approach has been tactically flawed and can be adjusted, Beijing’s errors are much more serious and strategic. Over the past decade, under President Xi Jinping, China has changed its Taiwan policy, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Modern China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, outlined an innovative solution to the Taiwan problem when he offered the island, in 1979, a solution that came to be known as “One Country, Two Systems.” Taiwan could eventually become a part of China formally, Deng proposed, but it could maintain its own political system, administrative laws, even its own armed forces.
Taiwan rejected the offer, but Deng urged strategic patience. He then decided to demonstrate the vitality of this policy by applying it to Hong Kong, once the British handed over the city-state to Beijing in 1997 — spelling out these promises in an agreement with Great Britain and in Hong Kong’s Basic Law (its de facto constitution).
For several years, Beijing observed “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong and held out the prospect of the same for Taiwan. Trade and travel between China and Taiwan increased dramatically. In 2015, Xi met with Taiwan’s then-president, Ma Ying-jeou, and they spoke of enhancing ties, something that is inconceivable today.
Deng’s basic strategy toward Taiwan was that, as long as China remained open, dynamic and accommodating, time was on its side. Taiwan would come to realize that there were many benefits and few costs to being formally attached to the mainland.
But over the past several years, Xi’s policies have been to make China more closed, less dynamic and significantly less accommodating. Nowhere has the latter policy been more clear than in Hong Kong, where Beijing has reneged on virtually every important guarantee it made regarding the city-state’s freedom and autonomy.
The results are plain to see in Taiwan. In the 1990s, few Taiwanese advocated for independence, and many believed reunification with China was inevitable. Today, according to National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center, support for independence is much stronger, having nearly doubled since 1997, the year of the Hong Kong handover (though most still hope for a continuation of the status quo).
People’s sense of Taiwanese identity — as distinct from Chinese identity — is also stronger, and is now closely wrapped up with Taiwan being a democracy. As Xi bullies Taiwan more, militarily and economically, these trends, especially among younger people, grow in size and intensity.
China claims its goal is peaceful reunification with Taiwan. If that is really the case, then Beijing should reverse course and return to Deng’s policies — announce that Hong Kong will be allowed all the freedoms it was guaranteed, promise Taiwan the same, end economic sanctions on Taiwan and stop threatening the island with dangerous military maneuvers. It is Xi’s policies that are making the Taiwanese people reject any prospect of cooperation with the mainland, let alone eventual reunification.
But that is not going to happen, and it leads to the central dilemma. Beijing recognizes that with Taiwan today, time is not on its side. Every year, the island becomes more likely to break free. And this has created a strategic challenge for Beijing, one that could turn into a catastrophe for the world. | 2022-08-04T23:37:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S.-China crisis on Taiwan is the result of errors on both sides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/united-states-china-taiwan-crisis-errors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/united-states-china-taiwan-crisis-errors/ |
Peter G. Harvey, the former attorney general for New Jersey, will hear the NFL's appeal of the six-game suspension given to Cleveland quarterback Deshaun Watson. (Mel Evans/AP)
The NFL appointed Peter C. Harvey, the former attorney general of New Jersey, to resolve the league’s appeal of the six-game suspension imposed on Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson by a disciplinary officer.
The league’s announcement Thursday that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had designated Harvey to hear the appeal came as the attorney for the women who have accused Watson of sexual misconduct, Anthony Buzbee, sharply criticized the league’s investigation and discipline, calling on Goodell and the NFL to toughen Watson’s punishment.
“Every victim of sexual assault is watching [Roger] Goodell and the NFL right now,” Buzbee said at a news conference in Houston. “And this idea that Mr. Goodell is going to hand it off to someone else independent, we don’t buy it. Mr. Goodell, what will you do? It’s never too late to do the right thing. That’s what these women and those watching are expecting.”
The NFL filed its written appeal Wednesday of Watson’s punishment. The league is seeking an indefinite suspension of at least one full season, a fine and required treatment, according to a person familiar with the case.
The NFL argued for such an indefinite suspension to Sue L. Robinson, the disciplinary officer jointly appointed by the league and the NFL Players Association under the revised procedures for resolving cases under the personal conduct policy established by the 2020 collective bargaining agreement. Robinson delivered her ruling Monday, calling Watson’s behavior “predatory” and “egregious” but citing disciplinary precedent for the six-game suspension.
Either side had the right to appeal to Goodell or a person designated by him. Goodell chose Harvey, now a partner at the Patterson Belknap law firm in New York.
The NFL said in a statement that its appeal “addresses whether, based on the findings made by Judge Robinson, the discipline should be modified to include a professional evaluation and treatment as determined by medical experts, an appropriate fine, and a longer suspension. Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Mr. Harvey’s written decision ‘will constitute the full, final and complete disposition of the dispute and will be binding upon the player(s), Club(s), and parties’ to the CBA.”
Harvey has worked with the NFL on other issues, including its diversity policies. The NFL cited his “deep expertise in criminal law, including domestic violence and sexual assault” for this assignment.
The NFLPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Harvey’s appointment. The union has until Friday to file its written response to the NFL’s appeal. The appeal is to be resolved on an expedited basis, under the terms of the personal conduct policy, and there will be no new evidence or testimony submitted to Harvey beyond what was available to Robinson.
“We never expected much from the NFL’s investigation,” Buzbee said earlier Thursday. “We never expected much from their flawed process. But, you know, even when you know you’re going to be slapped in the face, that slap still hurts and it still stings.”
Ashley Solis, who filed the first of more than two dozen civil lawsuits against Watson, said she had “received multiple death threats, had angry people approach me in public and have had hundreds if not thousands of people say terrible and vile things about me on the internet.”
She said she “fell into a deep depression” before receiving supportive letters and emails from across the country.
“What do the actions of the NFL say to little girls who have suffered at the hands of someone perceived to have power?” Solis said at Thursday’s news conference. “That it’s not a big deal? That they don’t care? … That’s what I’ve taken from their actions. So instead, I’ll let my actions say something different to those same little girls. … So if anyone has ever tried to abuse their status and overpower you, remind them that they picked the wrong one to try that with. That’s exactly what I am: the wrong one.”
HAPPENING NOW: The attorney for the plaintiffs in the Deshaun Watson case speaks after latest developments. https://t.co/IngveBqN2B
Buzbee said the NFL “bungled” its investigation and disciplinary process. He said that 10 of his clients were made available to the league’s investigators. More would have been available, Buzbee said, if the NFL had been interested. Buzbee said his clients were asked by the league’s representatives what they were wearing during their interactions with Watson.
The league rejected the submission of sworn statements, according to Buzbee, who added that none of his clients was asked to testify at the three-day hearing conducted by Robinson in late June.
Of the 25 lawsuits filed against Watson, one was withdrawn and one remains active. The other 23 women have agreed to settlements with Watson, Buzbee previously announced.
The NFL responded Thursday by saying in a statement that its investigators interviewed 49 people, including 12 of the women who sued Watson. The league said it attempted to interview all of the accusers but 12 others “were not made available by their attorney or did not feel comfortable being interviewed.” The NFL also cited its review of “substantial documentary evidence” as part of the process by which it produced a 215-page investigative report.
Even so, Buzbee read a list of negative reactions that he said he’d received from his clients to Watson’s six-game suspension. One woman expressed being “disgusted and heartbroken” and made to feel “invisible,” Buzbee said.
“It is a given that the NFL’s disciplinary process is a juggled mess,” Buzbee said. “It has been so inconsistent in the past that it’s hard to take it seriously. And worse yet, everyone knows that the NFL’s record on women’s issues is sketchy and sad. At best, it can be described as inconsistently dismal.” | 2022-08-04T23:37:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL names former New Jersey AG to hear Deshaun Watson appeal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/nfl-deshaun-watson-appeal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/04/nfl-deshaun-watson-appeal/ |
DeSantis suspends Democratic elected prosecutor who signed pledge on abortion cases
Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren addresses the media after learning he was suspended of his duties by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Tampa on Aug. 4. (Octavio Jones/Reuters)
Legal experts described the decision to suspend Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren (D) as alarming because it appears to be punishing an elected official exercising prosecutorial discretion on issues the governor disagrees with.
“It’s shocking and disturbing behavior,” said University of Miami law professor Tamara Lave. “[Warren is] a democratically elected official put in that office by voters. They elected him twice. If his constituents don’t like what he was doing, they have the ability to vote him out of office.”
Warren was first elected in 2016, and reelected in 2020. He signed a pledge in June with dozens of other prosecutors from around the country that said they would “refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.”
“This prosecutor, this state attorney for this judicial circuit, Andrew Warren, has put himself publicly above the law,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said Warren had a “very, very troubling record.”
Warren also created a conviction review office to examine innocence claims. During a news conference that had been scheduled Thursday before DeSantis suspended him, Warren announced the success of one of those cases. After leading an investigation that in 2020 freed a man wrongly convicted of murder, Warren’s staff continued to pursue the case, and on Thursday he announced that an examination of DNA linked two other men, currently in prison, to that murder, as well as other murders in the area in 1983.
“I keep saying thank you to him, and he keeps saying no. But it’s true, we need this. We need this here,” Sheffield said. “We also need it all over the state.”
“I was doing the work that I was elected to do as a state attorney,” Warren said. “I was focused on delivering justice to Linda and her family that they’ve been waiting 39 years to get ... and I was overseeing the office of 300 people that keeps 1.5 million people safe in Hillsborough County. So the governor wants to do his side show with his cronies, I’m the one who’s upholding the law and keeping the community safe.”
In his order suspending Warren, DeSantis said the prosecutor “demonstrated his incompetence and willful defiance of his duties” when he signed the pledge to “use our discretion and not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.”
DeSantis supporters in the GOP-led Florida legislature applauded the governor’s move. Incoming state House speaker Paul Renner tweeted that state attorneys “don’t get to choose which laws you uphold ... that’s the California way.”
Rep. Fentrice Driskell, leader of the Florida House Democrats, called the suspension “a mean-spirited political stunt.” Driskell, who is from Tampa, said Warren has done a good job as state attorney.
“Andrew Warren’s statements are well within his prosecutorial discretion,” Driskell said. “I don’t believe the governor has authority to remove him just because of decisions he doesn’t agree with. Voters put Andrew Warren in office. We have a governor who doesn’t respect representative democracy.”
Warren said at the Thursday afternoon news conference that he still considered himself to be the state attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit, and that he hadn’t read DeSantis’s order suspending him.
“And just based on the governor’s track record with unconstitutional orders, I have a feeling that this is going to be just as unconstitutional as the 15-week ban on abortion, the anti-protest law and [a] dozen other things,” Warren said. “The governor is trying to overthrow the results of a fair and free election. ... This is the governor trying to overthrow democracy here in Hillsborough County.” | 2022-08-05T00:07:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis suspends Democratic elected prosecutor who signed pledge on abortion cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/desantis-suspends-democratic-elected-prosecutor-who-signed-pledge-abortion-transgender-cases/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/04/desantis-suspends-democratic-elected-prosecutor-who-signed-pledge-abortion-transgender-cases/ |
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspends top state prosecutor
DeSantis suspends elected prosecutor
Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren (D) was first elected in 2016, and reelected in 2020. He signed a pledge in June with dozens of other prosecutors from around the country that said they would “refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.”
At his own news conference, Warren said he still considered himself to be the state attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit, and that he hadn’t read DeSantis’s order suspending him.
— Lori Rozsa
Four found dead in two burning homes
Nebraska State Patrol Col. John Bolduc said a man was seen driving away from the city of Laurel, about 100 miles northwest of Omaha, before the bodies were discovered and that investigators would like to speak to him. | 2022-08-05T00:07:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspends top state prosecutor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-gov-ron-desantis-suspends-top-state-prosecutor/2022/08/04/6d7d6560-0fb5-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-gov-ron-desantis-suspends-top-state-prosecutor/2022/08/04/6d7d6560-0fb5-11ed-ab50-5d9e73892397_story.html |
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