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It’s about to get easier to access to affordable naloxone
Vials of naloxone at Andy’s Utah Naloxone Wellness Center in Salt Lake City in 2020. (Kim Raff for The Washington Post)
Delayed by shipping wait times and packaged in nondescript cardboard, 100,000 doses of Pfizer’s injectable drug were delivered Wednesday by a driver, who steered two massive pallets into an unassuming warehouse that’s home to the newly created nonprofit Remedy Alliance, which is expected to distribute mass amounts of cheap naloxone to smaller community groups. Co-founder Eliza Wheeler took in the scene of the shoulder-high stacks.
“It’s going to save many lives,” she said to the delivery man, explaining there was an opioid overdose antidote within the boxes. Already, 43,000 of those doses were preordered by more than 100 harm reduction groups across the country. In total, just the first shipment alone could save thousands of lives, according to the nonprofit.
“Oh, s**t,” the driver said. “Right on.”
Researchers found that there is no state with enough naloxone to meet demand, even as drug overdoses have surged to a record high. But Remedy Alliance organizers, Wheeler, Maya Doe-Simkins and Nabarun Dasgupta, say they’ve found a novel solution, declaring that “the affordable naloxone shortage is officially over.” Their success, according to drug policy experts, underscores how far behind governments are, compared with unofficial efforts at amassing a satisfactory and affordable supply.
The organizers, who previously operated an informal buyer’s club for naloxone, say they will be able to get more of the antidote into the hands of people who use drugs. They credit two major developments: agreements with drugmakers to buy the drug at a discounted rate; and a restructured system that allows grass-roots groups to order naloxone directly through an online store, circumventing a complicated web of federal regulations that has restricted the flow of naloxone in the past.
“We think this will totally change the landscape of naloxone in the United States,” said Dasgupta, the nonprofit’s board president and a scientist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Affordable naloxone is running out, creating a perfect storm for more overdose deaths, activists say
These doses are more likely to reach those who need naloxone, as people who use drugs rely on groups that practice harm reduction, a method of addressing the consequences of drug use by providing clean needles and other lifesaving paraphernalia, according to Remedy Alliance and Kendall LaSane, a UNC-CH doctoral student conducting independent research on the nonprofit’s efforts.
Remedy Alliance accounts for “a substantial portion” of the naloxone that’s distributed across the country, Reagan-Udall Foundation chief executive Susan Winckler said, especially to community groups that are more trusted by people who use drugs, rather than pharmacies or law enforcement, which users avoid due to fears of stigmatization or arrest.
“I think Remedy Alliance has found an elegant solution,” said Winckler, whose foundation is compiling data on how much naloxone is produced.
Current Food and Drug Administration rules say that only licensed wholesale distributors can distribute prescription drugs, unless the drugs are for “emergency medical reasons.” Naloxone manufacturers said they don’t know whether harm reduction groups qualified for the exception and have turned away groups that tried to buy naloxone directly, including the few operating in rural, hard-to-reach communities hardest hit by overdoses and addiction.
Last month, Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked the FDA in a letter to clarify its “ambiguous regulations” and “minimize barriers that still impede its purchase, distribution, or use” of naloxone.
But Remedy Alliance isn’t waiting for that to happen.
After The Washington Post published an article in August 2021 about the buyer’s club struggling to meet the demand for naloxone, Hikma Pharmaceuticals approached the organizers.
“There was all this scurrying and hustling and trying to figure out one solution and running it up a flagpole and getting a ‘that won’t work’ or getting a ‘that sounds interesting, but I can’t say yes’ and ‘you should talk to so and so,’ ” Doe-Simkins said. “This was all happening with the backdrop of a naloxone shortage.”
“We have to decide as a community and as a society, is it okay to just let people that use drugs die,” Evans said. “Is that what we’re comfortable with?” | 2022-08-07T12:33:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Affordable naloxone will be easier to access, reversing opioid overdoses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/07/its-about-get-easier-access-affordable-naloxone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/07/its-about-get-easier-access-affordable-naloxone/ |
Distinguished persons of the week: Justice, Justice, shall you pursue
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
At a time when the right-wing Supreme Court majority is eviscerating voting rights, rescinding women’s fundamental rights and refusing to allow victims of discrimination to recover emotional-distress damages, it is easy to despair about the state of civil rights. But this week, the Justice Department flexed its muscles and reaffirmed its core mission to zealously defend all Americans’ constitutional rights.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced he was bringing charges against four current and former Louisville police officers, alleging that they had “falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. [Breonna] Taylor’s home; that this act violated federal civil rights laws; and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death.”
One officer was also indicted on a charge of using excessive force. These are criminal charges, and they come in addition to the Justice Department’s “pattern and practice” investigation into the Louisville police department and after Kentucky’s refusal to indict any police officer for murder.
Declaring that Taylor should be alive, Garland said at a news conference: “The Justice Department is committed to defending and protecting the civil rights of every person in this country. That was this Department’s founding purpose, and it remains our urgent mission.”
In January speech honoring Martin Luther King Jr., Garland reminded Americans that “protecting civil rights was one of the founding purposes of the Justice Department over 150 years ago.” He added, “Founded in the wake of the Civil War and in the midst of Reconstruction, the department’s first principal task was to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.” These new Louisville cases reaffirm the department’s mission.
The charges result from a painstaking investigation into the affidavits the officers supplied to obtain a no-knock warrant. Garland explained, “Among other things, the affidavit falsely claimed that officers had verified that the target of the alleged drug trafficking operation had received packages at Ms. Taylor’s address.”
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, reiterated the fundamental right under the Fourth Amendment for all Americans to be secure in their homes, free from falsely obtained warrants. Of Taylor, she said, “We ... recognize her dignity and recommit ourselves to the pursuit of justice.”
The Justice Department has a core function to protect substantial federal interests when they have not been vindicated. It did so when the department obtained guilty pleas from former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin related to his murder of George Floyd.
The newly filed criminal case, as well as the revival of pattern-and-practice cases in Louisville (and elsewhere) and voting-rights cases filed in states including Georgia, Arizona and Texas, are reviving civil-rights enforcement after four years of an administration indifferent to or hostile to civil rights.
Former head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Sherrilyn Ifill tweeted, “I honestly cannot express how powerful & important this is. People must understand this work was the core mission at the founding of the @TheJusticeDept. To protect the rights of Black people when state processes fail or refuse to do so. Grateful to AG Garland & @CivilRights”
She also recognized the tireless work of civil rights groups to keep the case alive. (“Activists, organizers, protesters, civil rights attys have taken the laboring oar in fighting for justice & accountability in this country. . . . [They] lifted this case to the attention of the nation.”) Ifill and the fund are certainly among the strongest voices demanding accountability for Taylor’s killers.
For keeping this case alive and doing the hard work to investigate the facts and pursue justice, we can say to Attorney General Garland, the Justice Department lawyers and investigators, and all of the outside attorneys and advocates, well done. | 2022-08-07T12:33:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Distinguished persons of the week: DOJ underscores its core mission - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/distinguished-persons-justice-department/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/distinguished-persons-justice-department/ |
While most of progressive Washington has celebrated the announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act, at least one left-wing gadfly isn’t having it. “A pipeline?” asked Nina Turner on Twitter last week. “In a climate bill? It’s not a climate bill.”
Turner, a former state senator from Ohio and co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, is referring to provisions of the IRA that would all but guarantee the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline between Virginia and West Virginia. (The proposal also includes some broader reforms that would generally make it harder to block pipeline construction.) And while Turner’s view that this provision invalidates the entire bill is very eccentric — essentially every mainstream environmental group has said that the legislation is, on balance, very good — her specific opposition to the construction of new pipelines is very mainstream.
It’s also very wrong.
The fundamental issue is that, at current margins, natural gas is a better option than many environmentalists would care to admit. That’s not because the gas itself is clean (though it is cleaner than coal and oil), but because it nicely complements renewable wind and solar power. Technological progress has made these sources of power cheap on a per-kilowatt-hour basis — when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and when the panels or turbines are optimally placed for sunshine or wind.
Gas plants have the convenient property of being easy to turn on and off. So a grid with plenty of gas attached to it can run mostly from wind and sunshine, with gas being provided on calm or cloudy days to ensure reliability. This mix of cheaper-than-ever renewables with cheap gas helped bring about large reductions in American CO2 emissions over the past 15 years, helping to drive many coal plants out of business and making the air much cleaner.
But the world is still not done with coal and oil. The US still has more than 200 coal-fired power plants. Oil is widely used to keep houses warm in the Northeast. And beyond US borders, Europeans are actually re-opening coal plants as Russia shuts off supplies of natural gas. Increasing the flow of supplies from the Marcellus shale to the Northeast, as well as using the Atlantic coast LNG terminals to ship gas to Europe, will make the energy mix cleaner, not dirtier.
That’s mostly a second-order effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the geopolitical angle is exactly what makes trying to address climate change through restrictions on the supply side so misguided.
Given that pollution is genuinely very bad — both in terms of its global climate impact and the localized impact of air particulates — it’s often the case that restraining fossil-fuel consumption is worth the cost. That’s true whether it’s done through a formal pricing mechanism such as a carbon tax, or through something like the EPA’s Clean Air Act authority, under which new rules are subject to cost-benefit analysis.
Under normal circumstances, however, blocking one cubic meter of gas production does not reduce consumption by one cubic meter, because much of the lost gas is simply obtained from some other slightly-higher-cost source. So the domestic economy ends up paying a large price in foregone production in exchange for a tiny reduction in pollution. Meanwhile, bad actors such as Russia gain revenue and leverage.
What there is, mercifully, is technology that can generate very large reductions in emissions. That means replacing virtually all current use of liquid fossil fuels with electricity while simultaneously eliminating all use of coal and oil to generate electricity. Replacing coal-fired power plants and gasoline-fueled cars with renewable energy — supported by gas — is both economically feasible and environmentally advantageous. Some places even have enough hydroelectrical resources that they can do without gas entirely and build a genuinely zero-carbon grid.
For most of the world, though, getting to zero emissions will require a technological breakthrough. That could mean advanced nuclear (which I am enthusiastic about, as it is compact and can go anywhere), or it could mean better batteries and long-term electrical storage (which many environmentalists are enthusiastic about). Advanced geothermal power could do the job. It’s also possible that the fossil fuel industry’s bet on carbon capture and sequestration will pan out, and the world will be able to keep burning gas.
Partisans of these rival technologies like to get into arguments about which of them is genuinely promising and which is vaporware. That’s why it’s smart of the Inflation Reduction Act to provide financial support for all of them. It also explains why some people have chosen this moment to criticize a pipeline.
Investing in the development of technologies that might make gas obsolete is great. So is regulating the consumption of gas to account for its pollution externalities. But removing Russian gas from world markets has made it harder for the world to meet its climate goals — and shown that the practical environmental impact of gas is less than many feared: With today’s technology, in today’s global economy, more gas means lower emissions, not higher. That’s why a pipeline absolutely does belong in a climate bill.
• The New Thing in Energy Is Old Pipes: Liam Denning
• When Energy Pipelines Are Political, Everyone Suffers: Julian Lee
• Europe’s Natural-Gas Crisis Is Worse Than It Looks: Javier Blas
• Make Natural Gas a (Shorter) Bridge to the Future: The Editors | 2022-08-07T14:04:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Natural Gas Is Better Than Many Environmentalists Admit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/natural-gas-is-better-than-many-environmentalists-admit/2022/08/07/b0f72c8e-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/natural-gas-is-better-than-many-environmentalists-admit/2022/08/07/b0f72c8e-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
There’s a Lot of Harvard and Yale on the Supreme Court. And That’s OK.
Eight out of nine Supreme Court justices went to Harvard or Yale law schools. So did nearly a fifth of the federal judiciary. This rankles some politicians, watchdog groups and others who see it as an outrageous manifestation of elitism that needs to be changed, given how much power this small group has over the lives of 329 million Americans.
Or does it reflect a more benign aspect of current elite higher education, namely the broad range of students accepted? Above all, does it matter for the functioning of the federal judiciary?
Seen in historical context, the presence of so many justices from just two law schools is striking. Consider the great justices appointed by Franklin Roosevelt.
Justice Hugo Black attended a two-year program at the University of Alabama School of Law, where 40 students were taught by a grand total of two professors. Justice Robert Jackson spent a single year at Albany Law School, and became a member of the bar by apprenticing in a law office.
Justice Felix Frankfurter made it to Harvard Law School as an immigrant (the last immigrant to serve on the court) who started at City College of New York. Justice William O. Douglas went to Columbia Law School after attending Whitman College in Washington State, paying his way across the country by feeding sheep on the train.
Today’s justices are mostly products of elite undergraduate colleges as well as Harvard and Yale law schools. (Disclosure: I got my law degree at Yale and teach law at Harvard.) Only Clarence Thomas, who went to Holy Cross as an undergraduate, and Amy Coney Barrett, who went to Rhodes College, were not Ivy Leaguers. Barrett went Notre Dame Law School, where she finished first in her class — the only justice without a Harvard or Yale degree.
Yet the justices’ college experiences do not fully reflect their social backgrounds. To illustrate this, take the stories of the two justices who are arguably the most conservative and most liberal on the court.
Samuel Alito, author of Dobbs v. Mississippi, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and Sonia Sotomayor share almost nothing in the way of jurisprudence or ideology. But they share an identical educational resumé: Both graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, then went to Yale Law School, where they served on the law journal.
Alito and Sotomayor were academic standouts in a system designed, in part at least, to identify intellectual distinction – measured by being good at school. But neither came from anything close to elite backgrounds.
Alito, who started at Princeton in 1968, was the son of an Italian-American immigrant from Calabria and grew up outside of Trenton, New Jersey. He had little in common with the boarding school-educated Protestants who were socially dominant at the university at the time. As his Princeton classmate and law school roommate Mark Dwyer later memorably put it,
We Catholic guys were different — we were cultural Catholics, repressed, a bit shy, aware of being in a non-Catholic universe … At Princeton, it was never that we had intellectual limitations. But it was obvious that the preppies from Andover and Exeter had been invited there and fit in with the traditional culture of the Ivies.
Sotomayor stood out even more from her college peers. Her parents had moved from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, where she lived in public housing. Upon arrival at Princeton, she said felt like “a visitor landing in an alien country.”
Sotomayor started at the school in 1972, the year Alito graduated, only a few years after it started admitting women. She has said that she struggled academically in her first year. When she figured it out, she began to shine, and ended up winning Princeton’s Pyne Prize, given to the student “who has most clearly manifested excellent scholarship, strength of character and effective leadership.”
Alito and Sotomayor became members of the elite by virtue of their education. Seen this way, the two have a good deal in common with Frankfurter and Douglas.
The same could also be said of most of the current justices. Thomas grew up in poverty. Most of the others came from fairly ordinary middle-class circumstances — including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, both of whom went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
None of the nine justices had parents who themselves attended elite colleges or graduate schools. Only Neil Gorsuch (whose mother was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan) and Brett Kavanaugh (whose grandfather went to Yale) belonged to recognizably exclusive circles before attending college.
When you hear the word “elite” from conservative US politicians, it also conveys “liberal” (leaving aside that many of those same politicians went to these schools themselves). It is true that the great majority of the faculty and most students at Harvard and Yale Law lean left. Yet the six conservatives on the Supreme Court today were all clearly able to form and hold their own views, even when those beliefs were countercultural.
Indeed, demonstrating conservative views through their elite legal educations has functioned as a marker of ideological commitment that Republican presidents find appealing when they are deciding whom to nominate to the court. Ever since the early 1990s, Republicans have wanted to avoid appointing justices like Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, all of whom turned out to be moderate despite conservative expectations that they would move the court to the right. The ability to stick to one’s beliefs in a majority liberal environment early on is probably a pretty good indicator that someone is unlikely to take a centrist turn later.
As for career experience, it is true that justices today come from a much more limited number of professions than they used to. None ran federal agencies, unlike Douglas, for example, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. None served in a legislature, unlike O’Connor, who was majority leader of the Arizona Senate. None was even a state attorney general, as O’Connor and Souter were. Most were lawyers in some combination of government service and private practice. Two, Kagan and Barrett, were law professors.
Yet the narrowness of their careers isn’t a function of their elite educations. Plenty of graduates of top colleges and law schools are involved in politics or activism or nonprofits or corporations. One reason they aren’t considered for the Supreme Court is that those undertakings invite controversy; the confirmation process in recent years has favored nominees with more restrictive experiences.
The pool of possible nominees is further limited by the specialized knowledge required on the modern court. Being school smart isn’t sufficient to be a good justice. But it may well be necessary, since today’s Supreme Court doctrine is highly complex.
The justices write highly technical opinions, aided by law clerks who mostly also went to elite schools. You could acquire those skills outside the Ivy League, as Barrett did. Yet it’s hard to argue that justices can be chosen without any attention to the abilities that make people successful students.
Probably the best argument against appointing so many justices and judges from Harvard and Yale is that equally smart, accomplished people who were also good in school should not be slighted in the selection process. Yet this is not an argument against elite-educated justices per se.
It’s a reminder that academic excellence transcends social class — a lesson that Harvard and Yale and other top institutions have learned is the key to staying on top.
More on the Supreme Court From Bloomberg Opinion:
• The Supreme Credentials of Ketanji Brown Jackson: Noah Feldman
• US Justices Are Looking More Like Politicians: Noah Feldman | 2022-08-07T14:05:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | There’s a Lot of Harvard and Yale on the Supreme Court. And That’s OK. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/theres-a-lot-of-harvard-and-yale-on-the-supreme-court-and-thats-ok/2022/08/07/b088b0b0-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/theres-a-lot-of-harvard-and-yale-on-the-supreme-court-and-thats-ok/2022/08/07/b088b0b0-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Kansans delivered a surprising victory for abortion rights. (Photographer: Kyle Rivas/Getty Images)
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Green Carmichael: To the surprise of many on both sides of the abortion debate, voters in Kansas resoundingly rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed the state to impose a total abortion ban. You’re a law professor and historian and the author of “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present.” As policy makers, political organizers and businesses try to chart their strategies in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, are there lessons to be drawn from what happened in Kansas?
Mary Ziegler, professor of law, University of California at Davis and author, “Abortion and the Law in America”: It should be a warning to the anti-abortion movement that conservative states are not necessarily in favor of criminalizing abortion. At a minimum, it suggests that partisanship isn’t a good proxy for voters’ views on abortion across large swaths of the country. It may also be a signal that the anti-abortion movement has overreached — it used to try to key its positions to popular opinion, but now it’s essentially asking for bans with no rape or incest exceptions, or no exceptions at all, and we’re seeing that how that plays out.
SGC: What do you see as the current state of play in the red states?
MZ: There’s a lot of a lot of uncertainty. There’s uncertainty about how far to go; there’s also uncertainty about which strategy even makes sense. There are some anti-abortion groups pushing laws that would punish women; groups pushing for the punishment of corporations that reimburse travel; groups pushing for expansive definitions of accomplice liability that would potentially sweep in internet service providers like Google. There’s a lot of uncertainty in state legislatures about what to do about any of this, and a lot of jockeying for position in the anti-abortion movement. That adds another layer of uncertainty.
SGC: What about in the blue states?
MZ: Progressive states have been focusing on the possibility that conservative states will try to prevent [interstate] travel, or apply their laws extra-territorially. That’s been the biggest theme so far. There’s been a kind of anticipation of laws that would make it hard for people in progressive states to perform abortions [for out-of-state residents] or support people having abortions. California really upped its budget for supporting abortion clinics and birth control programs on the theory that those programs are going to be serving a much larger group of people. There’s been some talk of directly funding the travel of people from out-of-state for abortions, but to my knowledge that hasn’t gone anywhere yet.
SGC: Some large employers say they’ll pay employees’ travel costs for abortion. Is there anything employers should be especially mindful of right now about managing these issues around interstate health care coverage?
MZ: It’s not surprising that businesses have settled on reimbursing for travel because there’s so much bipartisan support for protecting the right to travel. Even a lot of Republicans are not excited about the idea of states telling people they can’t cross state lines for medical care.
There are a few things to keep in mind. One, we’ve seen a lot of efforts from states to intimidate employers — like threatening criminal consequences for individual CEOs or directors. None of those are in the law yet, and it’s probably fair to read them as intimidation tactics designed to make business leaders [stand down], rather than a signal that lawmakers are going to follow through. Legislators know that business has a lot of influence. If businesses were to be aggressive about [abortion] as they were about the transgender bathroom bill in North Carolina, it would make it harder for legislators to hold their ground on some of these really harsh abortion laws.
The other issue that businesses will have to think about if they’re paying for travel is how they protect the data of employees. [Some] states have really broad aiding and abetting laws, and a lot of companies have pretty ambitious data collection policies. And so it’s important for employers to be mindful of the fact that [in those states], data can and will be mined by law enforcement to facilitate prosecutions — and not just at tech companies like Google, but non-tech employers that are monitoring work emails or cell phones or whatever. Data privacy is going to be an issue for businesses that don’t normally focus on it.
SGC: If you were designing a state-by-state strategy for keeping abortion legal, what would that look like?
MZ: It can’t be one-size-fits-all. And that’s true whether you’re thinking about what arguments should be made, or what bills should be promoted. So in red and purple states, ballot initiatives may make more sense because you’d be separating people’s partisan preferences from their preferences on abortion.
SGC: Under a state-by-state approach, would there be more appetite for compromise — a ban at 12 or 15 weeks rather than at fertilization, something no one on either side seems to be proposing right now?
MZ: The pro-choice movement and the pro-life movement are not where most voters are. A lot of voters would be fine with a ban at 12 weeks or 15 weeks. The issue is that that’s not what anyone on the right wants.
If voters were given the ability to disaggregate abortion from partisan politics, you would have more of a spectrum than two poles. You would have places like California and New York where abortion would be funded and treated as a fundamental right. You’d have places like Florida and Michigan where it would be available, but maybe more regulated. You’d have places like Louisiana and Mississippi that might criminalize it.
Both of these movements see their cause as a struggle for fundamental human rights and see it as something you cannot really compromise on. But obviously, you know, realism is a powerful force. And if you’re not getting anywhere asking for the whole world, that can convince you to change your tune. The Kansas lesson for the abortion rights movement is that the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good.
SGC: In the weeks since Roe fell, we’ve heard horror stories of a 10-year old rape victim struggling to get an abortion, women with ectopic pregnancies or uterine infections having to wait until their life is threatened to get abortions. Some have argued that those will happen less often as the law becomes more clear — in other words, that right now we’re living in a confusing time of transition, but that as the dust settles and doctors (and hospital lawyers) better understand the post-Roe reality, we’ll stop seeing those horror stories. Do you buy that?
MZ: My skepticism comes from a few different places. One is other countries. I mean, the most famous story of a woman dying due to an incomplete miscarriage was in Ireland. That happened in 2012. Ireland banned abortion in 1983. The law did not become more clear.
Some of the [US] laws are ambiguously written, but the law isn’t going to become more clear unless somebody clarifies it — and the reality is that it can be very hard to write a law to address every single relevant medical situation. That’s especially true when you’re talking about unprecedented penalties for getting the answer wrong if you’re a doctor. In the pre-Roe era, abortion was a crime and you could go to prison for up to five years. With a lot of these new laws, it’s like 10 years, 99 years, life in prison. So the incentive structure is for doctors not to treat. If you don’t treat, maybe there’s a lawsuit, but there’s an easy defense, which is essentially “I didn’t want to go to prison.” That incentive structure makes it unlikely that these situations will stop.
When other countries have banned abortion, what we see is that doctors will withhold care because they’re rational actors who are self-interested — like anybody else would be.
SGC: Speaking of other countries, how does the US actually compare to Europe on abortion? Many people have pointed out that even some progressive European countries ban abortion at 12 weeks. Is that comparable?
MZ: One big distinction is that those countries also fund abortion for 12 weeks. In the United States, one of the reasons people tend to have abortions later in pregnancy is because they can’t afford to have abortions earlier in pregnancy. The legal hurdles make it expensive and people take longer to save that money.
The other big distinction is that European countries make exceptions later in pregnancy, often for things like the health of the mother. So it’s just not true to say that you can’t get an abortion after 12 weeks in most European countries.
SGC: If there were someone out there saying “Yes, let’s ban abortion at 12 or 15 weeks, but also spend taxpayer money making it free and have lots of exceptions,” I think that’s a deal a lot of pro-choice people would take.
MZ: Totally. But no one who is pro-life wants to stop at 15 weeks. For them, this is a fundamental human rights cause.
SGC: The other thing that you mentioned was that European countries have “health of the mother” exceptions and those are pretty broad. How did health exceptions become an unacceptable loophole for the anti-abortion side in the US?
MZ: Historically, the first wave of exceptions were for the life of the mother. When abortion started to expand, it was essentially because patients were saying they were suicidal. And then doctors began to say we really should have a health exception, not just a life exception. But in particular, there was a lot of skepticism of the mental-health justification, whether under “life” or “health” rubrics. I think there was always a distrust of women seeking abortions, that they would just lie to get what they wanted.
SGC: Could putting health exceptions back in be something that succeeds on ballot referenda in states where abortion is now banned?
MZ: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s also something that if the anti-abortion movement were smart it would do. The [national discussion] right now is focused on rape [victims] being unable to get an abortion and people dying of incomplete miscarriages, and if I’m the anti-abortion movement, I’m not feeling good about that.
SGC: Looking ahead, is there anything that you’re hoping for? Where do you think the common ground might be?
MZ: I’m hopeful that going directly to voters could be a way of breaking this partisan logjam and doing something productive. There’s lots of common ground for regular Americans.
I wish we lived in a world where the common ground was maternal mortality. It is a scandal that we have the maternal mortality rates that we have, especially in states that also don’t have access to abortion. For people of color, maternal mortality rates are not only the worst in the developed world, they’re not even particularly great for the developing world. I’m not sure I’m optimistic about this, but I would hope that we would find common ground on making life better for mothers and kids and people who are pregnant. I think voters would be okay with that.
• Can Companies Still Cover Abortion Travel Costs?: Stephen L. Carter
• Ireland’s Abortion Battle Can Help Post-Roe America: Clara Ferreira Marques | 2022-08-07T14:05:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voters Welcome an Abortion Compromise. Will the Parties Listen? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/voters-welcome-an-abortion-compromise-will-the-parties-listen/2022/08/07/b0be121e-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/voters-welcome-an-abortion-compromise-will-the-parties-listen/2022/08/07/b0be121e-1651-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Assistant State Attorney Mike Satz handles the gun used by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz during the penalty phase of Cruz’s trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Tuesday, July 26, 2022. Cruz previously plead guilty to all 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool) | 2022-08-07T14:05:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parkland shooter's prosecutor had bloody facts on his side - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/parkland-shooters-prosecutor-had-bloody-facts-on-his-side/2022/08/07/a0be6128-164e-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/parkland-shooters-prosecutor-had-bloody-facts-on-his-side/2022/08/07/a0be6128-164e-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
The digital asset industry is racking up friendly bills on Capitol Hill even as it struggles through a market downturn
FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in December. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
It’s been an ugly summer for the cryptocurrency industry everywhere but on Capitol Hill.
In just the last two weeks, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a proposal to hand oversight of cryptocurrency spot markets to the Commodity Futures Trading Association, the third bipartisan bill since April that would codify a leading role for the industry’s preferred regulator.
Sens. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) teamed up to pitch exempting crypto used for everyday purchases, like buying a sandwich, from capital gains taxes.
And that pair, along with Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.), proposed limiting the reach of a provision signed into law last year that tightened tax reporting requirements on crypto transactions. In announcing the bill, the senators included praise from eight industry representatives.
“The mounting stack of legislative proposals is a signal that Washington is taking crypto seriously, and that is a good thing for all sides,” said Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, an industry trade group.
Last August, the provision imposing stricter tax enforcement caught crypto interests flat-footed when it popped up as a revenue source in a trillion-dollar infrastructure package. The industry, which had spent $2 million on lobbying in 2020 even as the digital asset market roughly quadrupled to more than $750 billion, mobilized what Washington forces it had to soften the requirement.
Crypto lobbyists temporarily halted progress on the package, arguing the language that applied to the industry was overly broad and would stifle innovation. They lost anyway.
The defeat proved galvanizing. In the year since, crypto interests have unleashed a flood of spending to assemble a political influence machine in a hurry.
“The industry woke up a year ago after that fight and decided they really needed to get engaged and educate policymakers, and now we’re seeing the results of those broad efforts,” said Aaron Cutler, partner at law firm Hogan Lovells and a former House Republican leadership aide.
The industry shelled out $8.9 million on lobbying through the first half of this year, surpassing the $7.7 million it spent all of last year, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. The sector now counts 191 lobbyists among its ranks, up from 50 two years ago, the analysis shows.
Crypto executives are splashing out even bigger sums on campaign contributions.
So far this election cycle, they have given federal candidates more than $61 million, the center’s analysis found. Of that sum, 97 percent has come from the leaders of a single company, the Bahamas-headquartered crypto exchange FTX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s 30-year-old chief executive, has donated $38.9 million, making him the fourth largest donor in the country. Ryan Salame, co-CEO of the subsidiary FTX Digital Markets, and his wife have given another $15 million, making them the 10th largest donors nationally. FTX did not respond to a request for comment.
“There are a handful of people in this industry currently exerting an incredible amount of influence via nearly unlimited contributions,” said Daniel Auble, a senior researcher with the Center for Responsive Politics.
Crypto industry dives into the midterms, raising millions to court Democrats
FTX, like much of the industry, has focused its lobbying efforts on ensuring the CFTC takes a leading role overseeing digital asset markets, as opposed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The latest bill enshrining the CFTC’s role, offered last week by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. John Boozman (Ark.), would hand the agency authority over bitcoin and ethereum, which together make up roughly two-thirds of the cryptocurrency market.
And online exchanges for trading digital tokens, such as Coinbase, would have to register with the agency. The platforms
Stabenow said the debate over which agency, the CFTC or the SEC, takes the lead on crypto oversight is “really not the question, because we need both.”
The bill drew wide approval from crypto interests, a fact Boozman noted on a call with reporters, saying it would give the measure momentum in the Senate. “It makes it a lot easier on members when you don’t have friends who are all over the place,” he said.
Tyler Gellasch, executive director of the investor trade group Healthy Markets Association, said there is urgency for the sector to establish the CFTC as its top watchdog. “Pulling as much as they can away from the SEC has to be the industry’s number one priority, because the SEC has dozens of rules constructed over decades to protect investors,” he said. “If the SEC’s rules applied to crypto, a lot of the industry’s practices become illegal, and a lot of the profits disappear.”
But crypto insiders and observers alike agree lawmakers have only just begun what will likely be a drawn-out process to write an industry rule book.
“Right now, it does feel like the SEC is falling behind on this, and their view on this is not getting heard in legislation,” said Ian Katz, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington policy analysis firm. “But there’s a lot of this game that needs to be played, and it’s not over.”
Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, said a new Congress will need to hammer out the details. For now, she said her group is excited that the industry can point to three bipartisan bills, each of which favors the CFTC, and crypto interests are shaping the debate. “This is definitely progress,” she said, “and I don’t think it’s going to let up.” | 2022-08-07T14:09:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congress looks favorably on crypto as FTX fuels huge increase in donations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/07/crypto-lobbying-surges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/07/crypto-lobbying-surges/ |
Columnist John Kelly's rescue dog Archie. After nearly two years, the yellow Lab still doesn't like being left alone. That makes it hard for the humans in his life. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
As I type this — alone in an upstairs room — a piteous sound is issuing from the floor below. It is a sorrowful cry, a warbling moan, a keening wail, a mournful lamentation.
It is my dog, Archie.
He is alone, locked behind a baby gate in the kitchen while I work in a spare bedroom and my wife works in the study. He has a rug to rest on. He has water. He has food. He has his toys: a plush fox and a bouncy ball.
What he does not have is us and so, like some tragic figure in a Greek myth, he rails at the cruel, uncaring gods. Aaaaand now he’s barking.
I am resisting the urge to comfort Archie. I am resisting the urge to yell at him. I am trying to acclimate him to a sobering reality: Sometimes he will be alone and he needs to be okay with that.
Archie is a rescue. To be honest, I used to think “rescue” meant “free dog.” Now I realize another definition is “mentally unbalanced dog.” He’s almost 9 years old. In September, we will have had him for two years. He is no longer a skeletal, heartworm-positive refugee from North Carolina. But he still bears some sort of psychological trauma.
It’s not the kind of trauma that makes him mean. He doesn’t chew table legs. He knows not to go to the bathroom in the house. But leave Archie alone and he is bereft. He pants. He howls. He barks.
The neighbors swear they can’t hear him barking, but we don’t like knowing that Archie is upset. So for most of the time we’ve had him, we just didn’t go anywhere. When we did, we hired a dog sitter to stay with him, round-the-clock. It makes any spur-of-the-moment decision — Hey, let’s go see a movie! — pretty much impossible.
Not long ago, we finally connected with a trainer.
“You’ve had him for almost two years and you’re only calling me now?” she said.
Well, yes. At first we thought Archie would get acclimated to his new living situation. He would realize what a great deal he had and settle in.
When it became clear that Archie’s idea of settling in was different from ours, we reached out to trainers. It turned out, everyone else was doing the same thing. All those pandemic pups had started going psycho at the same time and all the trainers were busy.
This trainer has told us some interesting things. She doesn’t think Archie has separation anxiety. Sometimes when he’s alone, he knocks over the trash can in the kitchen and dines upon its contents. With true separation anxiety, a dog is so upset, it can’t even eat.
And Archie is fine when we’re gone, as long as there’s some human with him. Archie just gets bored and irritated when he’s alone. He doesn’t have a rich inner life. He doesn’t want to spend his retirement doing what I plan to do: napping.
The fact is, my wife, Ruth, and I are his entertainment and as the trainer told us: “You’ve got to stop being the party.”
First step: changing the way he eats. Put Archie’s food in a bowl and he scarfs it down in about 30 seconds, then glues himself to us. Now we have something that resembles a big plastic Fabergé egg. There’s a hole at either end and little rubber baffles. Unscrew it, put in a cup of kibble, rest it on the floor, walk away, and the dog will push the egg around with his nose and paws to get the food to dribble out.
Sure, it sounds like someone’s rolling a sandstone boulder on the floor, and, sure, despite lacking opposable thumbs, Archie has figured out a way to open this magic ovoid, but it does distract him for a while. It’s a start.
The trainer also told us we can’t give Archie all the hugs and pats and squeezes we used to. We can’t pet him unless he’s successfully performed some task, lest he think we’re the party. And we have to leave him on his own for a while, behind the baby gate in the kitchen.
This is hard for us, too. There is something lovely about a dog at your feet as you work. But not if that dog has to be at your feet, will freak out if he’s not.
We’re hoping the freak outs will diminish, but the truth is, they probably won’t. And so, when we know we’re going to be out, we settle Archie down with some veterinarian-prescribed tranquilizers.
The trainer tells us it’s unlikely Archie will ever be “normal.” He’ll never be like our previous rescue, the sainted Charlie, who was content to be by himself for hours. Whatever Archie experienced during the first half of his life has inexorably affected the second half.
We’re all doing the best we can, which I guess is all anyone can do these days. | 2022-08-07T16:06:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Our rescue dog will probably never be normal. But we're trying. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/rescue-dog-anxiety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/rescue-dog-anxiety/ |
Charli XCX returns to pop-rave roots with extravaganza at the Anthem
The singer-songwriter entered her own realm during the final date of the U.S. tour in support of this year’s ‘Crash’
Charli XCX, seen here performing at England's Glastonbury Festival in June, wrapped up the U.S. portion of her “Crash” tour on Aug. 6 at the Anthem in Washington. (Kate Green/Getty Images)
As the mythology goes, Charli XCX began her career at just 14 years old, performing at East London raves on the strength of songs she released on MySpace. On Saturday night at a sold-out Anthem, she returned to her roots and served as master of ceremonies and house mother for a pop-rave extravaganza.
The singer-songwriter, who just turned 30 a few days ago, has seen her career take its fair share of twists and turns over the past decade. Across albums and mixtapes, she’s worked to evolve and expand the sound of modern pop, from icy, synthy balladry to hip-hop-inflected bangers to the extreme, avant hyperpop style that she helped crystallize.
A prolific writer, she has penned hits for the likes of Selena Gomez and Camila Cabello, but her own output has often been too outré for charts and mainstream audiences. She may never be a household name, but Charli has steadily built a rabid fan base, including a generation of musicians that see her as a guiding light. To paraphrase that old quote about the Velvet Underground, her albums may only sell a few thousand copies, but everyone who downloaded them launched a SoundCloud.
In the same way she has resisted contorting her music to fit sanded-down streaming algorithms, Charli has entered her own poptastic realm in concert, which she showcased during the final date of her U.S. tour in support of this year’s “Crash.”
Accompanied by two sashaying, vogueing background dancers, Charli dazzled with skin-baring costumes and body-rolling choreography that competed for attention with a digital screen saver video screen and ear-ringing audio attack: sensory overload for the attention-deficit generation.
Not content to reproduce numbers from her album and fan-favorites from her back catalogue, Charli tweaked tracks to make dance songs even dancier and freak-outs even freakier. The breakbeats on “Move Me” were more intense; the bass line on “Baby” was dragged out into a sinister intro. And apart from the downtempo duo of “Every Rule,” which plays like a Britney B-side, and the deconstructed trance anthem “Party 4 U,” the entire set was a supercharged dance party that kept climaxing: The adrenalized nostalgia of “Show Me Love”-sampling “Used to Know Me” and “TRL” tribute “1999” were followed by soundtrack hit “Boom Clap” and Nintendo-core “Boys.” (She dedicated that last one to “all the gay boys in the crowd” and the audience roared in recognition.)
Charli kicked off a five-song encore with “Vroom Vroom,” the most revved-up hyperpop in her arsenal. She let the background track do the work, running back and forth across the stage to the lyrics, “Those slugs know they can’t catch me,” seemingly fully aware that her haters and imitators in pop can’t catch up. | 2022-08-07T17:07:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Charli XCX returns to pop-rave roots with show at D.C.'s Anthem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/07/charli-xcx-concert-review-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/07/charli-xcx-concert-review-dc/ |
FILE - Philadelphia Phillies’ Pete Rose bats during a 1980 baseball game. Rose will make an appearance on the field in Philadelphia next month. Baseball’s career hits leader will be part of Phillies alumni weekend, and will be introduced on the field alongside many former teammates from the 1980 World Series championship team on Aug. 7. (AP Photo, File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-08-07T17:08:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rose dismisses sexual misconduct questions at Phillies bash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/rose-dismisses-sexual-misconduct-questions-at-phillies-bash/2022/08/07/2499494c-1670-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/rose-dismisses-sexual-misconduct-questions-at-phillies-bash/2022/08/07/2499494c-1670-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Why the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is no such thing
Perspective by Steven Pearlstein
The U.S. Capitol on Aug. 6. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
One of the more enduring fallacies informing discussions of the economy is that there are a couple of dials located in a vault somewhere in Washington that officials can turn this way or that to control employment, output, inflation — even the price of gasoline.
Anytime something good happens, some politician inevitably steps forward to claim credit for having got the dials just right. And anytime something bad happens, you can be sure the media and political opponents will blame officials for tuning the dials to the wrong settings.
That’s what happened earlier this year when inflation began to take off and the president, Congress and Federal Reserve were criticized for overstimulating the economy in response to the pandemic. We heard it again late last month when the government reported a second quarterly decline in gross domestic product, triggering dire and exaggerated predictions of recession from Republicans. And now Democrats in Congress are embracing the same fallacy as they ram through a package of climate, tax and health-care initiatives fancifully marketed as the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”
Though kernels of truth stud all of these critiques, they derive from a faulty mental model of the economy and how it works. So let’s step back and see what is really going on.
In the spring of 2020, as a global pandemic was about to plunge the global economy into what would have been a nasty depression, central banks and governments around the world effectively printed trillions of dollars out of thin air to keep businesses from closing and laying off workers while providing households with income to live on. It worked: After a scary few months of plunging stock prices and rising unemployment, financial markets recovered, most businesses continued to operate and most people who wanted jobs could find them.
Unfortunately, as a few of us warned, the governments would go on to provide too much of this fiscal and monetary stimulus for too long.
The charitable explanation, at least in the United States, was that officials were determined not to repeat what they believed — wrongly — was the mistake of excess timidity during the financial crisis and recession of 2008, and that any big jump in the inflation rate would be short-lived. An equally plausible explanation is that President Biden and a Democratic Congress were eager “not to let a good crisis go to waste,” and so used it to justify big increases in public spending and investment to achieve economic, social and environmental justice.
What’s in the Inflation Reduction Act — and how it might affect you
At the same time, the Federal Reserve (whose chair, not coincidentally, just happened to be up for reappointment) was unwilling to begin winding down its extraordinary money-printing out of fear that it would burst the bubble it had created in stock and real estate markets or weaken a labor market that was tight enough finally to deliver wage increases to low-skilled workers.
What is often forgotten is that even before the pandemic and before all this economic stimulus, the U.S. economy was already significantly out of balance. For decades, the country had been living well beyond its means, running large and persistent trade and budget deficits made possible by an overvalued dollar, artificially low interest rates and the willingness of trading partners to recycle their surpluses back into the American economy. Indeed, those imbalances had persisted for so long that just about everyone had come to think they were the new normal and that they could continue in perpetuity.
Given that pre-pandemic prosperity was already dependent on large doses of fiscal and monetary stimulus, it should have come as no surprise that pumping in trillions of dollars in additional stimulus over the next two years would lead to rising prices and wages. Indeed, that was the point of these rescue efforts — to prevent a deflationary spiral, set a floor under household income, stimulate investment and prop up prices of stocks, bank loans and real estate.
In hindsight, it is clear that policymakers ignored warnings and overdid it. But it is equally true that economic policy is not a science, and that the global economy is not a system that can be controlled by a couple of dials in Washington.
Equally silly is the Republican critique that the same officials who mistakenly triggered inflation with too much stimulus have now lit the fuse on a long and deep recession by withdrawing it.
First off, most of us do not have sensitive enough economic antenna that we can tell the difference between a national economy that is producing 1 percent more goods and services than the previous year and an economy that is producing 1 percent less. The measurement of GDP, the gross domestic product, is too imprecise, the difference too small. The partisan hyperventilating about whether we are or aren’t in a recession is more about politics than economics.
More significantly, given that the economy and the financial markets are coming off an intentionally induced sugar high, the fact that output, employment, home sales and stock prices might be coming down a bit is both healthy and necessary. Over the last year, the economy “created” more than 6 million jobs, an increase of 4 percent. At a time of restrained immigration and lots of baby boomer retirements, there just aren’t enough workers to keep up that pace or even fill the open jobs already out there. And with government and household spending and borrowing coming off record levels created by all that stimulus, we should hardly be surprised if unemployment ticks up from its current historic — and unsustainable — low of 3.5 percent.
Yes, some workers may lose a job as the economy adjusts to a more sustainable level of spending and output, but the evidence from employers is that in most places most should be able to find another. And to the degree people are unable to find jobs, it is not because some officials set the macroeconomic dials wrong in Washington — it is because workers are unwilling or unable to move to where the jobs are. Or because educational and labor market institutions are not producing the trained workers that businesses need.
The adjustment to a more stable and sustainable economic balance cannot be and will not be painless.
Relative to other things, the value of stocks and real estate will have to fall and some of the loans used to buy them written down.
Some workers will have to acquire new skills and move to find jobs, while employers may have to move to find workers and spend more to train them.
The wages paid for lower-skilled jobs will have to rise to attract and retain workers, while the inflated incomes of those at the top will have to fall.
Government spending will have to be brought more in line with government revenue. Households will have to borrow less and save more. Interest rates will have to rise closer to historic levels while the value of the dollar will have to fall, raising the relative price of what we import while reducing the apparent price of what we produce for the rest of the world.
The alternative to bringing things back into balance is to continue living with the boom-and-bust cycle of the past 30 years. Such an economy will require ever larger doses of fiscal and monetary stimulus to prevent falling into recession. It will also remain an economy in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It will remain an economy that becomes increasingly and dangerously indebted to the rest of the world.
In short, a healthy, sustainable economy is not one that requires government officials to be constantly and dramatically adjusting macroeconomic dials in Washington to keep things in balance. Rather, it is one that relies more on the natural self-correcting mechanisms of open, competitive and well-regulated markets.
Steven Pearlstein was a longtime business and economics columnist for The Washington Post and is the author of “Moral Capitalism,” published by St. Martin’s Press. He is Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. | 2022-08-07T17:08:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the "Inflation Reduction Act" is no such thing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/inflation-reduction-act-false/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/inflation-reduction-act-false/ |
Ukraine Live Briefing: Fresh shelling at nuclear plant as U.N. warns of pos...
A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant outside the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar, Ukraine, on Aug. 4. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
For days, experts have warned that intensive fighting around the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine posed a grave threat, but purported strikes on Saturday near the plant’s spent-fuel storage facility prompted even more alarm.
The Russian-installed local government of Enerhodar, where the plant is located, accused Ukraine of hitting the facility using a 220mm Uragan multiple rocket launcher system.
On Sunday, he demanded that he be allowed to visit the site with a team of nuclear experts. “We can put together a safety, security and safeguards mission and deliver the indispensable assistance and impartial assessment that is needed,” he said in a statement.
At least 174 containers of spent nuclear fuel are stored at the site, which is Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant. According to Energoatom, Russian troops “aimed specifically” at the containers.
The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under Russian control since March, but is run by Ukrainian workers.
According to the company, damage to technology at the facility meant that “timely detection and response in the event of a deterioration in the radiation situation or leakage of radiation from containers of spent nuclear fuel are not yet possible,” it said.
“This is the first time in the history of the nuclear age that a major nuclear power facility for a sustained period of time is in the middle of an active war zone,” Kimball said.
Zelensky on Friday cited the attack on Zaporizhzhia as another reason Moscow should be recognized as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which he has repeatedly called for since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
Hassan reported from London. Praveena Somasundaram in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-08-07T17:08:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine blames Russia for fresh attack at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-shelling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-shelling/ |
Good guys with guns isn’t the answer
A memorial on July 26 to the victims of a racially motivated mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo. (Lauren Petracca/The Washington Post)
When I was growing up, there were no gun shops within 500 miles. That’s because I did not grow up in the United States. Putting assault rifles in the hands of teenagers not even old enough to drink alcohol is unimaginable in the rest of the world. So articles such as the July 31 front-page article “Young guns” make me so sick I want to throw up.
Less than 3 percent of mass shootings are stopped by ordinary citizen “good guys.” What about the other 97 percent?
If personal responsibility is now the answer to the issue of unwanted pregnancies, we need to make it the answer to gun shootings as well. Sure, like having sex, U.S. citizens have the right to bear arms. But if a woman gets pregnant when her or her partner’s contraceptive fails, in the eyes of the antiabortion crowd she holds full responsibility. So the same should apply to gun purchasers. If the gun they purchased ends up killing or wounding someone else, they should be held personally responsible. Have them pay the funeral costs and medical bills and a lifetime worth of income for the family of the dead — or go and rot in jail.
The majority of the world manages to be safe without “good guys” with assault rifles. It’s time we tried the same. There are not enough “good guys” in this country to save all the innocent victims.
K. Thomas, Windham County, Vt. | 2022-08-07T18:08:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Good guys with guns isn’t the answer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/good-guys-with-guns-isnt-answer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/good-guys-with-guns-isnt-answer/ |
The GWU students were right about Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks on Nov. 15, 2007, to the Federalist Society at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Kathleen Parker’s latest attempt to reinvent and bill Justice Clarence Thomas an American hero, “Clarence Thomas and the GWU cancel mob” [op-ed, July 31], conveniently skirted many key fundamental rights issues raised in the principled petition of thousands of George Washington University students under the banner of free speech.
Indeed, she should have also shouted that a student’s right to free speech and protest is another equally important First Amendment right. This includes the right to object to a professor’s employment because his or her past and future judicial rulings endanger many of their own freedoms. The students who were exercising their rights to petition are the real heroes — not Justice Thomas, who voluntarily backed down from his law school lectures because he could now see that they would only serve to make him appear less of a constitutional jurist and more of a crusading fundamentalist moralist with one eye on an 18th-century society and the other on the Bible. Justice Thomas knew, and Ms. Parker should know, that he had little choice but to back down from the ever-growing campus and public outcry.
The issues raised in Justice Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings are many of the same issues raised by the GWU students in their petition. A simple reading of the 1991 testimony opposing his confirmation explains why so many students are concerned.
Hopefully, the student’s petition might finally convince Ms. Parker that Justice Thomas is dangerous to even her own rights and that he is certainly no hero. All Americans should think about what they are going to do if they lose these hard-won American rights.
Keith Henderson, Washington
Kathleen Parker wrote that “America has much more to fear from the tyranny of the mob than it does from a Supreme Court justice talking about the U.S. Constitution to, hello, law students.” This tyranny of the “close-minded” certainly continues to threaten free speech and mutual respect in academia.
At the same time, mob rule is growing across the nation in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which imposed abortion on the nation. Pro-choice activists are assaulting, vandalizing and even fire-bombing churches, pregnancy centers and other pro-life offices across the country, including local parishes in Maryland and Virginia. The relative silence of the Biden administration further inflames the situation.
Unless we restore civility in our discourse, respect one another and seek what truly serves the common good, rejecting those dangerous and unfounded ideologies underlying the principal issues that divide us, the United States will face increasing lawlessness and the inevitable erosion of our cherished democratic freedoms.
Philip C. Wehle Jr., McLean | 2022-08-07T18:08:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The GWU students were right about Clarence Thomas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/gwu-students-were-right-about-clarence-thomas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/gwu-students-were-right-about-clarence-thomas/ |
What are friends for? Climbing the income ladder, for one.
The Princeton University campus in Princeton, N.J., in 2018. (Seth Wenig/AP)
It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
That bitter aphorism has been part of American parlance for at least a century. Now it has gotten a powerful empirical boost. A team of researchers led by Harvard’s Raj Chetty used data from 72.2 million Facebook accounts to analyze how likely people at the bottom of the ladder are to have friendships with people near the top. What they discovered wasn’t entirely surprising:
People with higher incomes have a lot of higher-income friends, while those with lower incomes mostly socialize with each other. And that effect seems to be particularly strong at the top.
If you are in the top 10 percent by socioeconomic status (which social scientists abbreviate as “SES”), then on average a third of your Facebook friends will also be in the top 10 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the distribution will provide maybe 1 in 6 of your friends.
Some of this is obviously an artifact of our educational sorting system: If you went to Harvard Law School, you probably know a lot of rich lawyers. But that’s clearly not all that is going on here. Chetty, et al., looked at neighborhoods as well as individuals and found that growing up in an area with a high degree of “economic connectedness” has a significant impact on adult outcomes.
“Children who grow up in counties where low-SES individuals have more high-SES friends tend to have much higher rates of upward mobility,” the authors write. In fact, these effects are so strong that it predicts mobility better than almost anything else about a neighborhood: better than race or residential segregation, much better than mean household income or income inequality. Those other variables seem to lose much of their predictive power once economic connectedness is taken into account.
Now, of course, we should note that low-income folks living in neighborhoods with a high connectedness quotient aren’t necessarily the same as those living in less connected neighborhoods. A sociologist of my acquaintance likes to point out that he spent years living in a subsidized housing project populated entirely by people living below the poverty line — only it was Princeton’s graduate student housing. It’s telling that on the project’s associated website, the top two Zip codes for economic connectedness seem to be Stanford, Calif. (home to the eponymous university), and Cambridge, Mass., where Harvard is located.
But the places at the top aren’t all college towns, and the effect this research has demonstrated is so strong that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t identified something real. And also something troubling, because knowing what’s hampering social mobility doesn’t necessarily get you much further toward fixing it.
When we talk about social mobility as a problem that we need to “fix,” we are implicitly assuming a policy solution, such as legislation or institutional affirmative action. But usually we’re not talking about a problem as private and personal as whom we choose for our friends.
Chetty’s team suggests there are two key forces driving differences in economic connectedness between low-SES and high-SES people: exposure and “friending bias.” Disadvantaged people don’t frequent the same places as the privileged — on average, they go to different schools and colleges (if they go to college at all), attend different churches, join different sporting leagues. But even if you could somehow equalize those things, the researchers suggest that would close only about half the gap, because of friending bias — the propensity of people to mostly befriend others like them.
One can imagine policies that could tackle both of these factors, but they are impracticably draconian, such as forcing every young person to do national service in socioeconomically diverse groups that are too small to allow for much sorting by background. (And come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the World War II draft — which might help explain why mid-century America was so relentlessly middle-class.)
Short of that, one can sketch out institutional policies that would help on the margins, such as eliminating tracking in schools or reorganizing colleges into small cohorts deliberately designed for socioeconomic diversity.
But it’s harder to see how change happens in the real world, where millions of families make billions of private decisions about what’s right for them.
It is not, after all, an accident that so many high-SES young people grow up mostly around other high-SES young people. It’s a choice by parents who already know what this research is telling us: Peer effects matter.
They can be all in favor of diversity, but in practice, that diversity will often be highly managed — affirmative action for affluent children of color, or curated programs to bring a controlled number of carefully selected poorer kids into affluent schools. And if they conclude those controls have failed in some way, many of them will move their children before they will allow them to end up with a critical mass of friends from markedly lower socioeconomic strata.
Which is why as we search for fixes, we’ll probably keep opting for less-than-half-measures such as those above, even though they don’t seem to be fixing the problem — or rather, because they aren’t fixing the problem. | 2022-08-07T18:08:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | New research: Your Facebook friends reveal a lot about your economic status - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/harvard-chetty-research-facebook-friends-income/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/harvard-chetty-research-facebook-friends-income/ |
A Hungarian history lesson
Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Aug. 4. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Regarding the July 31 editorial “Mr. Orban’s U.S. supporters”:
The U.S. far right’s admiration for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is based on the notion that the situation of the United States’ immigration and culture overlaps that of Hungary. It is a false notion, but one that Mr. Orban is hellbent on promoting for his political gain at home.
The major historical factor marking Hungary’s situation is that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the losing side in World War I. As a result, two-thirds of Hungary’s multiethnic territory was broken off in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon and awarded to new countries. This impelled Hungary to join the Axis in World War II to regain its losses. The dismemberment of the country remains an open wound in the Hungarian psyche. Mr. Orban uses it as a fulcrum because of the cultural ramifications. The loss of millions of Hungarians to the newly created states was felt as a threat to the survival of the Hungarian language — the only non-Indo-European language in Central Europe. Mr. Orban does not need to specify this existential threat when he talks to Hungarians about keeping “unassimilable” aliens out of Hungarian life.
None of this background is paralleled in the United States, and no Americans should look to Mr. Orban as a voice in confronting our own domestic situation. | 2022-08-07T18:09:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A Hungarian history lesson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/hungarian-history-lesson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/hungarian-history-lesson/ |
This is not like Stalinist Russia
Russian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza on Capitol Hill on March 29, 2017. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
In the Aug. 1 editorial “Dark days in Russia,” The Post likened today’s repression in Russia with the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. To be sure, repression today is real, punishments for calling a war by its real name are harsh even by Russian standards, and the Russian government unjustly imprisons citizens for expressing their views.
But the editorial contradicts its own premise. A lawyer speaks on behalf of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a contributing columnist of The Post. Joseph Stalin’s victims did not have lawyers, let alone write columns for U.S. newspapers. The Russian government labels a nongovernmental organization “undesirable.” Nongovernmental organizations did not exist under Stalin, when private property and civil society had been destroyed. We learn that an opposition leader is in prison for statements on his YouTube channel. None of Stalin’s victims had anything remotely the equivalent of a YouTube channel. Finally, we learn that an estimated 16,000 Russians have been detained since February. During the Great Purge, between 1936 and 1938, an estimated 750,000 Soviet citizens perished.
A facile equation of today’s repression with the terror of Stalin does not help us to understand either the past or the present.
Joseph Bradley, Alexandria | 2022-08-07T18:09:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This is not like Stalinist Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/this-is-not-like-stalinist-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/07/this-is-not-like-stalinist-russia/ |
Manchester United’s season starts with an unsettling loss to Brighton
Erik ten Hag lost his first game as manager of Manchester United. Being down 2-0 at halftime was a “nightmare,” according to one player. (Peter Powell/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Much has changed for Manchester United this season, including having a new manager in place. But a 2-1 loss to Brighton, which had never won at Old Trafford until Sunday, shows that last season’s struggles continue.
United fell 2-1 in Erik ten Hag’s first English Premier League game with defense still an issue and the offense beyond the help of Cristiano Ronaldo, who entered the game in the second half.
Ten Hag had chosen to leave Ronaldo, who reportedly is eager to transfer to a European side that has qualified for the Champions League, out of the starting lineup after he played only 45 minutes during preseason matches. Ronaldo had fueled questions about his thinking after he and a group of players left Old Trafford without permission before a friendly last Sunday against Rayo Vallecano had ended.
Ten Hag called that “unacceptable for everyone,” then said Friday that it was unfair to criticize Ronaldo above the others.
“There were many players who left, but the spotlight is on Cristiano and that is not right,” ten Hag said Friday (via the Associated Press). “So I think then do your research and make out many players left, that was what was said. … He was part of it. Again, there were a lot of players.”
Ronaldo played for United 2003-2009 and returned to the team last year, but the season was a disappointing one as United finished sixth in the Premier League, 35 points behind the champion Manchester City.
During Sunday’s opener, Manchester United fought back in the second half after Brighton took a 2-0 lead on first-half goals by Pascal Gross and the home team was booed as it left the pitch. United threatened in the second half and Alexis Mac Allister scored on an own goal.
There was unrest even before the match as supporters protested the ownership of the Glazer family, which was voted the worst owner in the Premier League in the spring. Avram Glazer, the team’s co-chairman, was present for the opener and fans sang and chanted for his family to sell the team.
With the loss, ten Hag became the first manager of the club to lose his first Premier League game since Louis Van Gaal, who lost his opening game to Swansea in August 2014.
“We went into the game positive, we had a good preseason and it was the worst possible start to be 2-0 down at half-time at Old Trafford. Not good enough. We got a goal back but we huffed and puffed a bit and it’s a bad start for us,” Harry Maguire said (via ESPN).
“We started pretty the game well and on the front foot and as a team we had control of the game. Then we conceded the first goal and that knocked us badly. We stopped playing from then. We need to look at not letting that first goal set us back as much as it did. But we have to be better on the ball, we gave them encouragement to come forward and attack us. It was a nightmare start to be 2-0 down at halftime.”
It’s a rocky start for ten Hag, who won 158 games over four-plus seasons with the Dutch dynamo Ajax and twice led the team to the Champions League knockout round. Manchester United has not won the Premier League title since 2013 and hasn’t advanced past the Champions League quarterfinals since a runner-up finish in 2011. | 2022-08-07T18:35:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Manchester United, Erik ten Hag lose Premier League opener to Brighton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/manchester-united-loses-brighton/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/manchester-united-loses-brighton/ |
Almost 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion, the country is ill-prepared to cope as temperatures soar
Supporters of Iraqi populist leader Moqtada al-Sadr cool off on Aug. 7 as they take part in a sit-in at parliament amid the political crisis in Baghdad. (Ahmed Saad/Reuters)
Iraq ranks fifth on the list of countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and it is heating faster than much of the globe. Almost 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the country is ill-equipped to cope with the strain.
In the southern provinces of Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan, authorities said Saturday that the electricity grid had lost power for a second night in a row, plunging millions of homes into darkness through the sweltering night. Food spoiled in fridges. Parents put their children in the car and drove for hours — the air conditioning in their vehicles was the only way to stay cool.
Ten months after populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections here, politicians from the country’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs are fighting bitterly over the shape of a new government. As a result, no budget has been passed and major spending decisions are on hold.
Farming and fishing, two crucial pillars in the state’s attempts to move away from reliance on oil revenue, are being pummeled by drought. Overstretched hospitals are treating cases of heatstroke or breathing difficulties that have probably been worsened by toxic fumes trapped in the air, doctors say.
On Baghdad’s streets Sunday, young boys hawked water from ice boxes, sparing their faces from the sun with sweat-soaked scarves. Veteran traffic police said their job was getting harder and harder. “I’ve done this for 16 years,” said Falah Nouri, 37, as he rested on a battered sidewalk by the Tigris River. “It’s not just the sun. It’s the fumes and how the concrete heats beneath our feet.”
He said that his soles had been burned and that he was wearing shoes recommended by his doctor as a result. “He wants me to take time off, but how do I get time off? We need to work,” the policeman said, exasperated.
At midday in many neighborhoods, one noise was missing from the usual din: the sound of construction. Although day laborers often continue Baghdad’s building boom throughout the summer, this time it was just too hot. On the usually verdant Abu Nawas Street, one construction worker looked delirious from the heat as he slumped against a desiccated tree. There was no shade in sight.
In Baghdad’s southeastern Zafraniya district, Habib Abdul Khadim, 49, could barely make his voice heard above his generator’s shuddering roar. “We’re melting here!” he shouted. “Me and 40 million other Iraqis, we’re melting.”
“Every year we think it can’t get worse, but then the summer surprises us,” Abdul Khadim said. He looked exhausted.
In the summer months, Baghdad’s heat ebbs only when a dust storm rolls in, blanketing the city with particles of sand and earth loosened by the wind as Baghdad’s green belt dries up. This summer, thousands of people have been hospitalized with breathing problems as a result. There isn’t much the doctors can do.
“We just give them hydrocortisone and some time away from the storm,” said Saif Ali on a recent day, the beds in his emergency room still sandy from the feet of his patients. “It’s getting worse every year, though.”
Iraq’s combination of rising heat and water shortages caused by climate change, mismanagement and diminished upstream flows has caused unrest in the past. In the south, the conditions are forcing families from their farmlands and into cities, where tensions with longtime residents are growing amid dwindling resources.
Across Iraq, small demonstrations decrying poor services in the face of extreme heat take place weekly. In Iraq’s marshlands — some of them now cracked beds of earth in place of the silvery pools where the Garden of Eden is said to have stood — a protester’s sign last month expressed the misery. | 2022-08-07T19:27:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Heat wave in Baghdad sends temperature to 122, cripples power grid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/baghdad-heat-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/baghdad-heat-record/ |
Five hurt after police chase ends in crash involving D.C. Circulator bus
Police said they were pursuing a vehicle that had been carjacked
Five people were injured — four of them juveniles — after a car being pursued by police crashed with a Circulator Bus in Southeast D.C. on Sunday, authorities said.
The incident began around 8 a.m., when Prince George’s police spotted a carjacked vehicle in a shopping center parking lot in the 6200 block of Oxon Hill Road, according to police.
Officers initiated a pursuit, which ended in a crash in the District at Alabama Avenue and Stanton Road about 15 minutes later, according to a D.C. police spokesperson.
The bus driver and four juveniles in the car were taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries not thought to be life threatening, according to D.C. police.
Multiple firearms were recovered at the scene, and the juveniles will be arrested and charged in D.C., police said. | 2022-08-07T20:01:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Five hurt after police chase ends in crash involving Circulator Bus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/police-chase-circulator-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/police-chase-circulator-crash/ |
PM Update: Oppressive heat and humidity with us again on Monday
A strong area of high pressure parked off the East Coast continues to pump in the heat and humidity today and for the next few days. The focus of daily storm activity has shifted away from our region for the moment, which also takes with it the chance of brief relief from the heat in the form of a heavy downpour. That’s not to say that some of you won’t get a bit wet this evening, but most of us will just have to “enjoy” the oppressive conditions tonight and again tomorrow.
Through tonight: Isolated showers and storms will continue to pop up through the evening hours. Most of the action is likely to stay north and west of the DMV. Any storms that do develop will be slow-moving and feature heavy downpours. Storm chances will end after sunset. Very warm and muggy overnight, with temperatures and dew point values in the low to mid-70s and a light south wind.
Tomorrow (Monday): Yet another hot and humid day with the risk of afternoon storms. Partly sunny skies won’t stop temperatures from rising into the mid-90s, with a heat index near or above 100 degrees at times. Isolated storms will develop in the afternoon, but most of the storm activity should once again stay to the north and west of D.C. Warm and muggy conditions persist tomorrow night, with low temperatures in the mid-70s and near 100 percent humidity.
U.K. drought: Much of Britain is in the midst of a prolonged drought this summer. From the source of the Thames river drying up to Scotland issuing its first-ever water restrictions, the extreme lack of meaningful precipitation is starting to take its toll. Just one look at the most recent satellite view of the London area today shows just how little greenness the island has at the moment. | 2022-08-07T20:02:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PM Update: Oppressive heat and humidity with us again on Monday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/08/07/pm-update-oppressive-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/08/07/pm-update-oppressive-heat/ |
Teenager in critical condition after fire in Southeast D.C.
A teenage boy is in critical condition after a fire Sunday afternoon at a three-story duplex in Congress Heights, the D.C. fire department said.
Firefighters responded to a blaze in the 700 block of Mississippi Avenue SE at 1:46 p.m. The fire was extinguished and a juvenile male, believed to be a teenager, was taken to the hospital in critical condition, fire department spokesperson Daryl Levine said. | 2022-08-07T20:36:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teenager in critical condition after fire in Southeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/teenager-critically-hurt-dc-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/teenager-critically-hurt-dc-fire/ |
London museum will return looted artifacts
The Horniman Museum and Gardens in southeast London said it would transfer a collection of 72 items to the Nigerian government. The decision comes after Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments formally asked for the artifacts to be returned earlier this year and follows a consultation with community members, artists and schoolchildren in Nigeria and Britain, the museum said.
The Horniman’s collection is a small part of the 3,000 to 5,000 artifacts taken from the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 when British soldiers attacked and occupied Benin City as Britain expanded its political and commercial influence in West Africa.
The British museum alone holds more than 900 objects from Benin, and National Museums Scotland has 74. Others were distributed to museums around the world.
Nigeria, Egypt, Greece and other countries, as well Indigenous peoples from North America to Australia, are increasingly demanding the return of artifacts and human remains amid a global reassessment of colonialism and the exploitation of local populations.
Suspected Islamists kill about 20 in Congo attacks: Suspected Islamist militants killed about 20 people in attacks on two villages in eastern Congo over the weekend, the army and a local human rights group said. Fighters believed to be from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed residents and burned down houses in the villages in Ituri province, said a coordinator for the local group Convention for the Respect of Human Rights. A spokesman for the army confirmed about 20 deaths and said Congolese forces were in pursuit of the assailants. The ADF is a Ugandan militia that moved to eastern Congo in the 1990s.
Dozens detained as police break up Shiite gathering in Kashmir: Police detained dozens of people in Indian-controlled Kashmir as they dispersed Shiite Muslims attempting to participate in processions marking the Muslim month of Muharram. Scores of Muslims defied security restrictions in parts of the main city of Srinagar and took to the streets. Muharram is among the holiest months for Shiites and includes processions of mourners beating their chests while reciting elegies and chanting slogans to mourn the death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussein. Sunday's procession marked the eighth day of Muharram, two days before its peak on the day of Ashura.
Gunmen kill 4 in attack on lawmaker in Pakistan: Gunmen fatally shot four people, including two police officers, in northwestern Pakistan in an attack targeting a provincial lawmaker from former prime minister Imran Khan's political party, police said. Lawmaker Malik Liaqat Khan, no relation to Imran Khan, of the Movement for Justice party and three others were wounded in the attack, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the assault, which occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which is governed by Imran Khan's party. | 2022-08-07T21:42:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Aug. 7, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-7-2022/2022/08/07/7ea5130c-1653-11ed-8c9b-37f55528c617_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-7-2022/2022/08/07/7ea5130c-1653-11ed-8c9b-37f55528c617_story.html |
‘It was 55 years ago, babe’: Pete Rose dismisses talk of alleged sex with minor
Pete Rose tips his cap after being introduced to fans at a Phillies alumni event Sunday in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader long banned by MLB for betting on games, returned to the field Sunday in Philadelphia as part of the Phillies’ celebration of their 1980 World Series win and quickly found himself at the epicenter of controversy.
Rose, 81, was on the field in Philadelphia for the first time since the team called off plans to honor him with induction to its Wall of Fame in 2017 because of a woman’s claim that she had a sexual relationship with him when she was a minor in the 1970s.
Rose briefly told reporters (via the Associated Press): “I’m here for the Philly fans, I’m here for my teammates, I’m here for the Philly organization. And who cares what happened 50 years ago? You weren’t even born. So you shouldn’t be talking about it, because you weren’t born. If you don’t know a damn thing about it, don’t talk about it.”
In testimony in federal court in 2017, a woman alleged she had a sexual relationship with Rose that began when she was below the age of consent. The woman, identified as Jane Doe, said in a sworn statement in court filings that the relationship started in 1973 and continued for a few years.
From 2017: Woman says she had sexual relationship with Pete Rose as an underage teen
In court filings, Rose admitted to having sex with the woman but said he believed she was 16, the age of consent in Ohio, and that their relationship began “sometime in 1975,” when he was 34. The statute of limitations had expired, so he could not be charged with statutory rape.
The testimony emerged during Rose’s 2017 defamation lawsuit against attorney John Dowd, who led the MLB investigation that resulted in Rose’s lifetime ban for gambling on the Cincinnati Reds as a player and manager. The lawsuit was filed after a 2015 radio interview in which Dowd said Rose had committed statutory rape by routinely having sex with underage girls. Rose denied the accusation.
On Sunday, Rose was greeted warmly by Phillies fans when he walked onto the field at Citizens Bank Park before a 13-1 win over the Washington Nationals.
Rose “was made available after the ceremony,” Coffey tweeted. “Someone, maybe an agent, said he had something to say to me, but he didn’t seem to know he was expected to say anything. He asked if he’d offended me, and said, ‘will you forgive me if I sign 1,000 baseballs for you’ before saying, ‘sorry.’ ” | 2022-08-07T21:51:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pete Rose dismisses sexual misconduct questions at Phillies celebration - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/pete-rose-phillies-comments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/pete-rose-phillies-comments/ |
Slowing growth and a rise in corporate spending have spurred global technology companies to boost revenue from non-consumer offerings. Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are among those who’ve built solid business models around the rise in cloud services. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has failed to follow the trend, and looks unlikely to do so anytime soon.
Despite billions of dollars and years of investment into cloud, logistics, and digital media and entertainment, the Chinese tech giant remains entirely reliant on its 20-year-old business model of e-commerce marketing and sales. While management is adept at extracting money from selling goods, it’s yet to work out how to reproduce that success in online services.
Ever since listing in New York in 2014, Alibaba has consistently posted operating losses from its collection of non-commerce businesses. The only bright spot was a 598 million yuan ($89 million) profit from the cloud unit in the March quarter of this year. But that quickly evaporated in the June quarter when it slumped back to a 1.3 billion yuan loss.
Alibaba, which was founded in 1999, has always leaned heavily on two pillars of its e-commerce model. The largest contributor has traditionally been marketing services — which it also calls customer management — where the company charges merchants on its platform a fee to elevate their products higher in search results, or to deliver ads to prospective shoppers. The company also takes a commission on sales, and more recently has entered into physical retail including groceries and hypermarkets.
Collectively, this sector has delivered more than 800 billion yuan in profit over the past seven years, according to Bloomberg Opinion calculations. But the non-ecommerce business has been a drag, losing over $51 billion in the same period, with its local consumer services division — which includes online groceries and food deliveries — being the biggest contributor to that shortfall.
The cloud division, which allows customers and consumers to store data on Alibaba’s servers, ought to be a money-maker. Instead, it posted an average operating loss margin of 15% since starting to report data from the 2016 fiscal year. Amazon, by contrast, made $18.5 billion in operating profit from its Amazon Web Services business last year alone, with a margin of 30%. Microsoft has also made a successful transition away from reliance on Windows and Offices products to garner $32 billion, or 39% of total income last year, from its intelligent cloud business with a margin of 43%.
Even Apple, better known for selling iPhones, gets 23% of revenue from services including Apple Music, App Store and iCloud. That division posted the company’s strongest growth last quarter. It doesn’t provide a profit breakdown by unit. Even semiconductor giant TSMC last month told investors that it expects customers who provide cloud and other services to be the major driver of chip demand, showing that hardware makers are also finding ways to profit from non-consumer products.
Cloud isn’t the only drag. Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics business helps deliver products to consumers and gives the company an advantage over competitors, but continues to lose money. Management may feel that such a loss is acceptable if it ensures the core business stays ahead of rivals JD.com and Pinduoduo Inc. If that’s the case, then investors will need to adjust their expectations accordingly.
Shareholders will also have to get used to the notion that Alibaba’s move into entertainment may fail to be a money-maker, too. Unlike Netflix Inc., which has been profitable for at least 15 years, Alibaba’s content business, which includes streaming service Youku and production company Alibaba Pictures Group, continues to drag down earnings and shows no signs of being able to deliver consistent income.
With China’s consumer economy heaving peaked, Alibaba is going to need to find new sources of earnings growth. History shows it hasn’t found one yet.
• Alibaba Has a Bigger Problem Than the Tech Crackdown: Tim Culpan
• If You Think China Cares About Investors, Think Again: Shuli Ren
• Whatever Happened to Common Prosperity?: Matthew Brooker | 2022-08-07T23:13:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alibaba Shows How Tough It Is to Kick a Habit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/alibaba-shows-how-tough-it-is-to-kick-a-habit/2022/08/07/7a3512e8-16a5-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/alibaba-shows-how-tough-it-is-to-kick-a-habit/2022/08/07/7a3512e8-16a5-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Nats take one more pounding from the Phillies to cap a four-game sweep
A day after Patrick Corbin couldn't escape the first inning, Cory Abbott managed just 11 outs during Sunday's loss in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP)
PHILADELPHIA — At the start of this season, a game within the game was to see if Cincinnati had lost again, using the Reds to show how rebuilding, stripped-down teams hurt baseball’s competitive integrity.
The Reds were 2-13, then 3-22, then 23-46 in late June, surely bound to affect the playoff race in one way or another. Would 19 meetings with the Reds give the St. Louis Cardinals or Milwaukee Brewers the inside track on a National League wild-card spot? It was fair to ask. But after Sunday, the Reds have eight more wins than the Washington Nationals, who lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 13-1, to get swept out of a four-game series just days after they traded their two best players.
The Nationals (36-74) are what everyone thought the Reds had become when they spent the offseason shedding payroll. Washington is 7-25 since the start of July, has the worst record in the majors and has no left-handed relievers and arguably four position players who are best suited as designated hitters.
Point being, a dismal summer could get sadder still.
“The last three games were just not fun,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “We got to pitch better. I thought we swung the bats okay until today. But we just got to pitch better. We got to get some better starting pitching. We’re always behind, and it’s tough for morale.”
The Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs are grouped together as also-rans in the NL Central. Otherwise, the Nationals are joined at the bottom of the majors by the Oakland Athletics, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals. But none of those clubs employed Juan Soto and Josh Bell until this past Tuesday. And no other club has allowed 567 earned runs, more than 30 more than the next-closest team in pitching futility. The Los Angeles Dodgers, by extremely sharp contrast, had yielded an MLB-low 307 before hosting Soto, Bell and the San Diego Padres on Sunday night.
Washington’s staff also ranks 30th out of 30 with 169 homers allowed. The Reds, 29th in that category, are at 145. The latest homers off the Nationals were Darick Hall’s solo shot against starter Cory Abbott in the second inning Sunday, then Nick Maton’s two-run blast in the fourth — and Rhys Hoskins’s two-run shot and Hall’s second solo homer later in that same inning, all against Abbott.
After Patrick Corbin lasted just two-thirds of an inning Saturday night, Washington badly needed length from Abbott, who was making only his second major league start of the season. The righty responded by recording his first three outs on six pitches. But the seventh pitch, an outside fastball, was smacked into the left field seats by Hall. From there, Abbott never regained his rhythm. In the third, he plunked one batter and walked two, the second free pass bringing in a run. In the fourth, he walked the leadoff batter before Maton, Hoskins and Hall took him deep. Abbott, 26, logged 11 outs, walked five batters, threw 79 pitches and was tagged for seven earned runs.
“They are just really good at bat-to-ball skills, being able to lift the ball out of the park,” Abbott said of the Phillies. “They are sticking to their game plan, not getting out of it. ... They weren’t swinging at the ones that I thought were competitive down. I really had to stay in the zone.”
Aaron Nola held the Nationals to a run on five hits in six innings. Washington was outscored 36-12 in the series. The Phillies (60-48) tacked on five runs off Victor Arano in the eighth. That rally began when shortstop Luis García fielded a grounder on the run and threw several feet wide of first.
Philadelphia is now 10-2 against Washington, filling the four games of this series with 14 homers. The Nationals have seven homers in their 12 matchups. They are on pace for 109 losses, which would be their most since moving to Washington.
To patch an overworked bullpen, the Nationals recalled reliever Mason Thompson on Sunday morning and optioned Jordan Weems — the first pitcher to wear it in Corbin’s dud Saturday — to Class AAA Rochester. To pad its outfield depth, Washington claimed 27-year-old Alex Call from the Cleveland Guardians, sending him to the Red Wings, too.
Thompson yielded a run in the seventh after Erasmo Ramírez handled seven outs behind Abbott. Call joins a Red Wings team that carried a 17-game losing streak into Sunday. For the rest of the season, there is likely to be a ton of movement between the Nationals and their upper-level minor league teams. If you squint hard enough, to the point your eyes are almost shut, one benefit of this finish will be testing players who could be around in the future.
Or, if you’re more into self-preservation, you may just close those lids until next spring.
“These guys got an opportunity to come up and play and show what they can do the last two months,” Martinez said. “I want these guys to go out there and play good, competitive baseball. If they can do that, we’re going to be in some games, we’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some tough games. But we need to be more competitive from the first pitch on.”
How did Call end up on waivers? Call made his major league debut in July and played in 12 games for the Guardians. But needing 40-man roster space for pitcher Hunter Gaddis on Friday, Cleveland designated Call for assignment. He was having a strong season with Class AAA Columbus, posting a .280 batting average, .418 on-base percentage and .494 slugging percentage with 11 homers and near-identical strikeout and walk rates. Call, who plays all three outfield spots, also provides a good bit of roster flexibility, arriving with three minor league options and almost six full years of team control. | 2022-08-07T23:13:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phillies crush Nationals to complete four-game sweep - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nationals-phillies-sweep/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nationals-phillies-sweep/ |
Last-minute changes to the Inflation Reduction Act pushed by the Democrat from Arizona would protect the industry from a new minimum tax aimed at large corporations
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), seen Aug. 2 on Capitol Hill, had pressured her party to make changes to tax-related provisions of its sprawling spending bill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The decision came as Democrats tried to hold their caucus together through nearly 19 hours of debate over the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which the 50-50 Senate approved Sunday with the help of a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris.
The senator’s objections came days after she persuaded Democrats to abandon a different effort to raise taxes on private equity managers by closing the so-called “carried interest loophole,” which permits investment managers to pay lower rates on certain portions of their income.
In a statement, Sinema’s office said her goal is to “target tax avoidance, make the tax code more efficient, and support Arizona’s economic growth and competitiveness.”
“At a time of record inflation, rising interest rates, and slowing economic growth, Senator Sinema knows that disincentivizing investments in Arizona businesses would hurt Arizona’s economy’s ability to create jobs, and she ensured the Inflation Reduction Act helps Arizona’s economy grow,” the statement said.
From the start, the unusual way private equity businesses are structured posed a challenge for Democrats crafting the new minimum tax. Typically, large conglomerates are formed as “C corporations” under the tax code and pay corporate taxes. The new minimum tax would clearly apply to them. But private equity firms are legally formed as partnerships, which typically pay taxes on the individual returns of their owners. Senate Democrats say they crafted the legislation to ensure that wealthy investment managers who own numerous C corporations and other business entities collectively worth more than $1 billion would be subject to the tax.
But the tax was never intended to hit the smaller subsidiaries that make up private equity portfolios, said Ashley Schapitl, a spokeswoman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who called industry claims to that effect “nonsense.”
Independent analysts largely agreed with that reading of the provision. “The language in the bill was intended to make sure they are treated the same way,” said Steve Wamhoff, a tax expert at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank. “The idea that billion-dollar private equity funds must be protected to save small businesses is absolutely absurd.”
Steve Rosenthal, a tax policy analyst at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, said his take is that “smaller firms would not be hit” by the original provision. “But it could be clarified,” he added.
Still, confusion over the provision touched off a late scramble to strip it from the bill. In recent days, private equity advocates circulated a document to lawmakers claiming the tax could hit 18,000 firms that employ 12 million people, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. The document called the measure a “new stealth tax” that would put small firms owned by private equity at a “competitive disadvantage by subjecting them to the book minimum tax when their similarly sized competitors would not be subject.”
How the Inflation Reduction Act might impact you and change the U.S.
Republicans seized on the issue, and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) worked with Sinema to craft an amendment to clarify that profits from subsidiaries would not have to be tallied to determine whether a firm is subject to the new minimum tax. On Sunday, the Senate voted 57-43 to adopt the change. In addition to Sinema, six Democrats voted yes: Sinema’s fellow senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly; Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada; Jon Ossoff and Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia; and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.
The Senate later voted 51-50 to make up the lost revenue by limiting “pass-through” companies — which can include private-equity firms — from claiming more than $250,000 in annual tax deductions. | 2022-08-07T23:14:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Private-equity lobby wins relief from tax hikes in Inflation Reduction Act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/inflation-reduction-act-sinema-private-equity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/07/inflation-reduction-act-sinema-private-equity/ |
Liudmila Samsonova won her second career title after a weeks-long gap between match play because of Wimbledon's decision to ban Russian players at last month's tournament. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
Liudmila Samsonova bobbled the Citi Open trophy for just a moment Sunday before hoisting it triumphantly with a big smile — perhaps due to nerves or the fact that she had just won a three-set match in merciless heat.
Or maybe Samsonova was simply out of practice. The 23-year-old Russian’s last match before arriving in Washington was June 19 in Germany because of Wimbledon’s decision to ban Russian players from its tournament this summer. Samsonova had one month of only practice, with no match play, to prepare for the North American hard-court swing that leads into the U.S. Open.
A tip of the hat to the practice court, then. Samsonova defeated the 37-year-old veteran Kaia Kanepi, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, on Stadium Court at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center with a strong display of her power hitting and steely focus in a match that featured plenty of crowd-pleasing line-clippers.
With long limbs operating like a bullwhip and an impressive vertical reach, she also served 10 cracking aces that topped out at 117 mph.
Nick Kyrgios serves up second Citi Open title since 2019
The title in Washington is the second of Samsonova’s career; she won her first at the German Open in June 2021. It made for a fruitful week for Russians emerging from the Wimbledon ban: World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev won the singles title at an ATP tournament in Los Cabos, Mexico, on Saturday and Daria Kasatkina plays for the title at a WTA tournament in San Jose on Sunday night.
“I think we are all very angry about the situation,” Samsonova said. “I mean, it was a really tough month what was going. I think we have a lot of time to work, so I think we use it very well.”
Samsonova called her victory a “dream” after a turbulent few months. She started working with a new coaching team in April and had trouble obtaining a visa into the United States because her old one expired in July.
She found out she’d be allowed to travel to Washington just two weeks ago.
“No, it’s amazing. I didn’t expect it at all. … I was practicing one month,” she said. “It was very tough for me. So, yeah, I’m so happy about this week. It’s unbelievable.”
Even without the circumstances surrounding her win, capturing the trophy would have been another promising benchmark on what’s been a steady climb for Samsonova, the world’s No. 60 player, over the past few years.
Although born in Russia, Samsonova moved to Italy as a baby and spent most of her life there, choosing to represent the country until 2018. Switching to play for Russia, a nation rich in successful tennis players, gave her a sense of small-fish, big-pond freedom. Only four Italians were ranked in the top 100 entering Sunday’s final while eight Russians populated the list, with many, many more striving for entry.
Samsonova appreciated the relief of pressure, though her tennis truly took off in Germany last year after she switched coaches. She won her first trophy in the first finals appearance of her career and made her top-100 debut shortly thereafter.
“It was the first time that I had, like, four people working for me, and this helped me a lot,” she said earlier this week. “It improved my game, my physical [fitness], everything. And then, of course, the hard work and believing more in me. That was the key.”
She owned one win over No. 37 Kanepi entering Sunday’s final, at Wimbledon last year, and wanted to start strong against the veteran. When those hopes flew out the window, Samsonova refocused and dialed her attention on solving Kanepi’s serve.
Break points were not easy to come by for the first hour of the afternoon. Both players pummeled the ball throughout the first set in search of an edge. Samsonova had a hair more success moving Kanepi around the court to gain minimal footholds within games — never pushing so far as to get a break point — but each time the Estonian was in a vulnerable position, she erased mistakes with line-clipping groundstrokes or an ace.
It was Kanepi who finally converted the first break point of the match in the 10th game to steal the first set.
Samsonova showed no dip in focus nor physical play, and with the second set knotted at three, Kanepi started to get tight. She sent a forehand into the net at 30-30 to give Samsonova her first break point of the match, and on a nine-stroke rally during the next point, put a backhand long.
The Russian needed to do little but hold on and stay consistent after that. She rattled off five games in a row to win the second set and start the third with a solid hold.
Kanepi, a journeyman playing for her first trophy since 2013, entered the match leading the tournament with 30 aces. While her serve held strong — she had five to Samsonova’s 10 — she tensed as the match wore on, calling for a medical timeout early in the third set, and the rest of her game broke down.
Samsonova broke her to take a 4-3 lead, then finished the match out with ease. All that was left was to lift the trophy. | 2022-08-08T00:14:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liudmila Samsonova rebounds from Wimbledon ban to win Citi Open title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/liudmila-samsonova-citi-open-kaia-kanepi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/liudmila-samsonova-citi-open-kaia-kanepi/ |
Mystics guard Natasha Cloud disputed the lack of a foul call on the game’s final play. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Sitting at her locker in Entertainment and Sports Arena, Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud sighed and then contemplated how to word her next comment.
“I’ve already racked up about $400 worth of fines today,” she said after a 79-76 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on Sunday afternoon. “So let’s just get going.”
Cloud said she was struck on her shooting arm when she heaved a shot at the buzzer — a potential foul call that would’ve awarded her three free throws and a chance to tie the score. After saying the officials made too large of an impact on the game, Cloud stopped herself.
On Twitter, though, she didn’t hold back: “Fine me. Our officials are trash.”
The Mystics entered the weekend with momentum. Now, Washington (20-14) enters its final two regular season games on a two-game skid.
“We lost an opportunity to … put ourselves in an interesting position,” Coach Mike Thibault said. “Now it’s going to be tough. Normally [if] you hold a team to around 70 points, we’re going to win. We just didn’t score enough points tonight.”
A win against the Sparks (13-20) would’ve moved the Mystics into the No. 4 playoff seed after the Seattle Storm lost to the Las Vegas Aces. The Storm (20-13) holds the tiebreaker over the Mystics, who close with games against the last-place Indiana Fever (5-29) on Friday and next Sunday.
Against the Sparks, the Mystics struggled to find offensive rhythm. Their leading scorer and rebounder, forward Elena Delle Donne, returned after resting during Washington’s 93-83 loss Friday at the Chicago Sky. The two-time MVP had one of her worst offensive games Sunday, notching eight points on 2-for-12 shooting. She missed three jump shots in the final 2:05, including an attempt that would’ve given the Mystics a one-point lead with 7.2 seconds to go.
“Everybody has one of those sometimes,” Thibault said. “I don’t know if I’ve seen one like that. But get it out of her system now, I guess. It was just one of those days.”
The Mystics fell behind by 13 points late in the second quarter but drew within six early in the third. Guard Ariel Atkins and forward Myisha Hines-Allen finished with 20 points apiece; Hines-Allen has scored 20 or more in back-to-back games for the first time this season. Rookie center Shakira Austin added 16 points and 10 rebounds. The Mystics shot 38.5 percent overall and 3 for 15 (20 percent) from beyond the arc.
“We got good looks at the basket,” Thibault said. “If I had to draw plays again and get … some of those same open shots, I’d feel good about drawing up those same plays. The ball just didn’t go in.”
Los Angeles snapped a six-game skid and notched its first win since parting ways with four-time WNBA all-star Liz Cambage on July 26. Brittney Sykes scored a game-high 21 points; fellow guard Jordin Canada had 11 points and 12 assists.
The teams combined for 41 fouls, and Cloud, who had eight points and nine assists, was assessed a technical in the third quarter when she disagreed with a call against forward Alysha Clark.
The Sparks had a 77-76 lead with 17.6 seconds remaining when Delle Donne blocked Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike and gathered the rebound. After Delle Donne missed her shot, Los Angeles center Olivia Nelson-Ododa made a pair of free throws to make it a three-point game with 4.4 seconds left.
Last time out: Defending WNBA champ Sky is too much for Mystics
Cloud received the inbound pass and dribbled past half court before unleashing a shot. She believed Canada hit her right arm. After watching a replay, Cloud pumped her fist and trotted to the sideline before returning to midcourt to plead with the officials.
“I don’t know what people want from us, but we can’t make those calls,” Cloud said. “I’m having to get technicals in games simply because we’re not getting calls. So I want the ‘W’ to pay my $400.”
Draft pick drama
Sunday’s game had implications well beyond this postseason. The Sparks’ 2023 first-round draft pick is owned by the Atlanta Dream, which offered that selection in a trade with the Mystics that gave the Dream the No. 1 pick this year. The Mystics have the option to swap their 2023 first-round pick for the Sparks’ selection. Los Angeles’ playoff hopes remained alive with Sunday’s win, but if it misses the postseason, that draft pick will be a lottery selection. | 2022-08-08T00:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics lose to Sparks after late no-call - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/mystics-sparks-natsha-cloud/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/mystics-sparks-natsha-cloud/ |
Nick Kyrgios completed a nearly flawless run at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center with another Citi Open title Sunday. (Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post)
The face was familiar, but it was an entirely new Nick Kyrgios who won Washington’s Citi Open on Sunday.
With a dominant display of tennis and admirable on-court comportment, Kyrgios defeated fellow unseeded player Yoshihito Nishioka, 6-4, 6-3, to win the seventh tour-level title of his career and his second Citi Open championship in just over three years. He had edged Daniil Medvedev for the trophy in 2019 at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center.
With Sunday’s win, the notoriously combustible but supremely gifted Australian completed a nearly flawless run in which he conceded just one set in five matches, never had his serve broken and blasted a tournament-high 96 aces, including 12 against Nishioka.
Moreover, he was not fined once.
“It’s emotional for me to be back here again and claim another title,” Kyrgios, 27, said during the on-court trophy presentation after thanking his girlfriend, trainer and agent for their support and acknowledging tournament officials, fans and volunteers.
The Citi Open is part of a series of North American hard-court tournaments billed as the “Road to the U.S. Open.” While players compete for a trophy, prize money and points, they’re also honing their games and confidence heading into the season’s final major.
This year, Kyrgios has his eye on something else: climbing high enough in the rankings to ensure he’ll get one of the 32 seeds at the U.S. Open. His success at the Citi Open has carried him a long way there. By reaching Sunday’s final, Kyrgios was assured of vaulting from 63rd to 42nd. By winning the tournament, he will climb to 37th on Monday.
A top-32 ranking will assure him of a U.S. Open seed, which would protect him from the likelihood of having to face a top opponent in the first round. Depending on how many top pros opt out — whether because they are rehabilitating from injury or have chosen not to get vaccinated for the coronavirus — a slightly higher ranking could guarantee a seed.
For Kyrgios, who has spent much of his 10-year pro career not caring about rankings (or professing not to care, at least), it represents a turnaround. If it also represents a newfound commitment to getting the most out of his talent in the years ahead, so much the better.
A former world No. 1 junior, Kyrgios reached a career-high ranking of No. 13 in 2016. But he bristled at expectations over the years that followed, competed intermittently and at times undermined his hopes by throwing profane tantrums on the court and turning in halfhearted efforts while sulking.
Reaching last month’s Wimbledon final, where he outplayed defending champion Novak Djokovic in the early going, appears to have given Kyrgios new reason to believe — in himself and his game. Washington was the first singles event Kyrgios contested since his four-set loss to Djokovic, who claimed his seventh Wimbledon title and his 21st major.
After accepting the trophy, Kyrgios was scheduled to return to Stadium Court after a short break to contest the doubles final with American Jack Sock against the fourth-seeded duo of Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek.
The Kyrgios-Nishioka final wasn’t the championship pairing fans expected when the draw was unveiled. But upsets were a daily occurrence as Washington’s late-summer heat and humidity got the best of some — including American Taylor Fritz, who retired from his third-round match while trailing in the third set. He later confessed embarrassment on social media that his vision “was going fuzzy” and he felt as if he were going to pass out.
All 16 seeds, as well as former No. 1 Andy Murray, were ousted in the early rounds, with the 96th-ranked Nishioka single-handedly ushering out four: top seed Andrey Rublev, No. 7 Karen Khachanov, No. 11 Alex de Minaur and No. 16 Dan Evans.
All told, Nishioka beat five higher-ranked players in five consecutive days, putting together the most impressive run of his pro career. As a result, the 26-year-old from Japan will vault from 96th to 54th when the ATP rankings are retabulated.
Nishioka is not physically imposing. Just 5-foot-7 and 141 pounds, he nonetheless is a tricky left-handed opponent who is at his best when he plays with abandon and doesn’t think about the stakes. That was his winning formula, he explained, behind his straight-sets upset of Rublev in a semifinal Saturday.
That was difficult to do Sunday against Kyrgios, against whom he was 0-3 in their previous meetings, with the prospect of his first ATP 500 level title at stake.
It was just past 5 p.m. when they stepped onto Stadium Court, but the 89-degree heat felt like 97 degrees when factoring in the humidity.
Kyrgios broke serve to open the proceedings. As the match unfolded, it was clear that Kyrgios had the more varied game, able to generate pace, play wicked angles and flick deft drop shots. With his big serve working well, Kyrgios faced only one break point in the first set, fending it off with little trouble, and closed the set with relative ease.
Kyrgios opened the second set as he did the first, breaking Nishioka to build on his lead. By then, shadows had crept across the court, and Kyrgios would soon hold the Citi Open trophy again. | 2022-08-08T00:14:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nick Kyrgios wins Citi Open title again, beating Yoshihito Nishioka - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nick-kyrgios-citi-open-yoshihito-nishioka/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nick-kyrgios-citi-open-yoshihito-nishioka/ |
The blast killed a retired couple from Wisconsin and a bank official from California. A woman raising money for refugees was badly wounded but survived.
By William Wan
Vanessa G. Sánchez
A uniformed Secret Service officer picks up a wreath that had blown off a makeshift shrine at the site of a lightning strike in Lafayette Square that killed three people and wounded another last week. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
All day long, the tall, leafy tree had been a source of shade and comfort for Amber Escudero-Kontostathis.
Amid 90-some degree heat, she’d spent hours canvassing tourists in front of the White House for donations to help refugees in Ukraine, her family said. As she finished her shift on Thursday last week, a storm gathered overhead, thickening with clouds, rain and thunder.
That Thursday happened to be her 28th birthday, her family said. So while Amber waited for her husband to pick her up for a celebratory dinner, she sought shelter once again from the same tree, huddling with three others under its outstretched branches, according to her family and authorities.
Three people dead after lightning strike Thursday near White House
One was Brooks Lambertson, a young and rising bank vice president from Los Angeles. There was Donna Mueller, 75, a retired teacher, and her husband James Mueller, 76, who came from Wisconsin to Washington to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary. And there was Amber, a young woman from California whose travels in the Middle East teaching English had kindled a desire to help those stricken by war and poverty in that region.
They were strangers brought to that precise spot on the east side of the Lafayette Square, at that precise moment for different reasons — business, vacation, a passion to help.
Just before 7 p.m., it was at that spot — under a leafy tree about 100 feet from a statue of President Andrew Jackson — that lightning struck.
Experts recorded a lightning flash in the area as six individual surges of electricity that hit the same point in the space of half a second. If the electricity struck the tree first, experts said, it would have sent hundreds of millions of volts coursing through it before passing into and over the bodies of those gathered beneath it.
“It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness later recounted. “Literally like a bomb went off, that’s how it sounded.”
The strike left all four grievously wounded. Secret Service and U.S. Park Police — who keep the park in front of the White House under constant patrol — ran to help.
On Friday morning, police announced the elderly couple from Wisconsin had died. Later that night, the banker from Los Angeles also passed away, police said.
Amber would be the sole survivor.
The lightning strike stopped Amber’s heart, said her brother Robert F. Escudero. Two nurses, who happened to be visiting the White House on vacation and saw the Secret Service running to help, immediately started giving her CPR and managed to restore her pulse, he said.
The lightning caused severe burns along the left side of her body and arm, her family said. That’s the side her bag was on, carrying the iPad she used to sign people up for refugee donations.
Her parents rushed to Washington from California, and her mother has documented her fight to recover on Facebook. The lightning strike left Amber struggling at first to breathe, her mother, Julie Escudero, wrote. But by Friday, nurses were able to take her off the ventilator.
The lightning also damaged her short-term memory. She was scared and confused about what happened to her. “We definitely don’t want her to remember the incident right now,” her mother wrote on Facebook. But every time she wakes up, her mother wrote, she asks what happened to her, is she going to die and will she be able to walk? Her family said one thing she has been particularly worried about is her work fundraising for refugees.
She had majored in international studies in college and traveled to Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, according to her brother and her work profile. She spent a year teaching English in Jordan and soon after began fundraising for nonprofits. She started working in Washington last year for a group called Threshold Giving and focused especially on fundraising for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief agency.
“The first thing she told me when we FaceTimed is, ‘I need to get back to work on Saturday,’” Robert Escudero said. “She’s worried about raising money for the refugee kids. She asked me ‘Who’s going to get the money for them if I’m not out there?’”
A friend started a GoFundMe page to raise money for her medical bills. So her brother said he promised Amber he’d work with Threshold Giving in the coming days to also create a way for people who learn about her survival story to donate to refugees.
The one thing her family has not yet broached with her is the fate of the others who were with her that night under the tree.
“She is starting to realize there were others and she wants to know how they are doing and what she did wrong,” her mother said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “She cares so much for others, it will be hard for her.”
On Sunday, many signs of the fatal lightning strike were still visible at Lafayette Square.
A tree bore streaks of charred bark, cracks and a large gash in the main trunk where the wood remained warped like a bruise. Folks passing through Lafayette Square paused at the tree to stare at the scars.
One of them was Cal Vargas, a childhood friend of Lambertson, who died. He brought a wreath and bouquet of white flowers to lay at the base of the tree. Vargas and Lambertson had been friends since kindergarten and grew up together in Folsom, Calif., where they shared a passion for sports and the Sacramento Kings.
“He was an amazing individual,” Vargas said quietly. “Always had a smile on his face, always looked at the bright side of things.”
Earlier on the day the lightning struck, Lambertson, 29, had arrived in Washington on a business trip from Los Angeles. He was passing time before a dinner reservation when he got caught in the storm, Vargas said.
In a phone interview, Lambertson’s father, who The Washington Post is not identifying by name to protect his privacy, said his son was “probably the best human being that I know.” He said his son’s kindness, generosity and humility “showed up in everything he did, in all his interactions with people.”
He worked at City National Bank as a vice president managing sponsorships for the company. He had done marketing for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, and graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, according to a statement from the bank.
The elderly Wisconsin couple who also died that day were celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary, family members said.
Donna Mueller, 75, and her husband, James Mueller, 76, had been high school sweethearts before marrying. James had owned a drywall business for decades while his wife worked as a teacher, according to one of their daughters-in-law, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy.
The couple lived in Janesville, Wis., about 70 miles west of Milwaukee, and had five grown children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “Both would do anything for their family and friends,” relatives said in a statement.
The odds of someone being killed by lightning are extremely rare. In the past decade, only an average of 23 people in the United States have died each year.
Multiple fatalities are even more rare. Before last week’s strike, the last time three people died in a single incident was more than 18 years ago on June 27, 2004, when three people in Georgia were struck under trees at Bedford Dam State Park, said John Jensenius, a specialist at the National Lightning Safety Council.
Because lightning tends to strike tall objects, experts warn that taking shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm is highly dangerous. When a tree is hit by the electrical charge, moisture and sap in the tree easily conduct the electricity, carrying it to the ground around the tree, experts say.
“When lightning strikes a tree, the charge doesn’t penetrate deep into the ground, but rather spreads out along the ground surface,” Jensenius said. “That makes the entire area around a tree dangerous, and anyone standing under or near a tree is vulnerable.”
For that and other reasons, Amber’s survival has felt miraculous, her family said. If it hadn’t happened in right in front of the White House where secret service agents are stationed. If the two nurses who revived her hadn’t been on vacation and seen what happened.
Saturday night, Amber was finally able to take a few steps on her own, her family said. She was supposed to start a master’s program in international relations this fall at Johns Hopkins University — the latest step in her work trying to help refugees and those suffering abroad.
“She’s an amazing, strong-willed person. And she has such a heart for others,” her brother said. “So the goal now is to get her walking again by the time classes start in a few weeks.”
Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. | 2022-08-08T00:23:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. lightning strike survivor had been fundraising for refugees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/lightning-strike-lafayette-square-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/lightning-strike-lafayette-square-victims/ |
Gold, according to financial markets lore, is a pretty simple beast.
For all its complexities, at bottom what it likes is a weak dollar, turmoil, and lower interest rates. Falls in the greenback mathematically raise the price of dollar-denominated commodities. Turmoil makes investors head for safe-haven assets, of which gold is by far the most long-standing. Lower rates reduce the appeal of its main competitor as a haven, yield-producing government debt.
That makes the activity of money managers of late rather mystifying. Animal spirits appear to be returning to financial markets, paring back interest rates and dollar strength, while US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is threatening to spark the biggest geopolitical crisis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gold itself has risen 3.9% over the past three weeks, its best run since the eve of Moscow’s war in February — behaving much as you’d expect.
The funds aren’t buying it. In data going back to 2006, money managers have almost always had a net long position in Chicago-traded gold futures and options, with more of them betting prices will rise than fall. In just 37 weeks out of 841 has the group been counting on gold weakness — but that’s what’s been happening in recent weeks. As of July 26, their net positioning was short by 10,474 contracts, before bouncing back to a narrow long of 27,899 contracts last Tuesday. Net short positions have only cropped up on a handful of occasions toward the end of 2015 and 2018 (and, very briefly, at the start of 2016 and 2019):
One possible explanation could be that more and more of the gambling money in gold markets is headed into private hands. There’s another group of investors from whom the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission collects data, known as “other reportables.” Like money managers, they’re making macro bets on gold rather than in the physical metal business or trading the spreads between bid and ask prices.
Unlike them, they’re wagering their own money, as family offices, in-house hedge funds, or affluent private clients. They’re almost always on the long side of the trade, and in the past two years they’ve risen to take on a larger share of long positions than conventional managed money funds:
That doesn’t quite explain it, though. While “other reportables” remain long, they too have wound back their net positions close to their least bullish levels since early 2020.
Holdings by exchange-traded funds have been moving in the same direction. The mountain of gold that ETF investors piled up as a hedge against uncertainty in the wake of the Ukraine invasion has now been eroded almost to nothing:
It’s possible that the gap between investor positioning and price momentum is about the behavior of retail buyers. Jewelry typically accounts for about half of gold demand, and while prices at the moment aren’t especially cheap, with trillions of post-Covid savings sitting on the sidelines and inflation approaching double figures, they’re looking better value every day. Shares in Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd., a Hong Kong jeweler with thousands of outlets in mainland China and a decent proxy for spending on trinkets in that country, are currently closing in on their highest levels since November.
Macro hedge fund managers, despite their fat salaries, don’t have anything like a perfect record in predicting the direction of the market. If you’d bought gold and held it for 12 months in October 2018, when their positioning was the shortest on record, you’d have ended up with a 27% return.
Still, the disconnect between high levels of short interest and bullish price action suggests that something has to give. For a year now, the longstanding and robust inverse correlation between gold and US Treasury yields has been breaking down. If that relationship returns to something like normal, we’re going to either see a sharp fall in interest rates, or an equally large drop in the yellow metal. | 2022-08-08T00:44:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Funds Are Turning Sour on Gold When You’d Least Expect It - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/funds-are-turning-sour-ongold-when-youd-least-expect-it/2022/08/07/aa9a9b84-16a9-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/funds-are-turning-sour-ongold-when-youd-least-expect-it/2022/08/07/aa9a9b84-16a9-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
The disease pattern observed currently differs that which occurred in prior outbreaks. Historically, after an incubation period of usually one to two weeks, the disease starts with fever, muscle aches, fatigue, headache and other flu-like symptoms. Unlike smallpox, monkeypox also causes swelling of the lymph nodes. Within a few days of fever onset, patients develop a rash, often beginning on the face then spreading to other parts of the body. The lesions grow into fluid-containing pustules that form a scab. If a lesion forms on the eye, it can cause blindness. The illness typically lasts two to four weeks, according to the WHO. The patient is infectious from the time symptoms start until the scabs fall off and the sores heal. Mortality is higher among children and young adults, while people whose immune systems are compromised are especially at risk of severe disease. Pregnancy also carries a high risk of severe congenital infection, pregnancy loss, and maternal morbidity and mortality. Inflammation of the brain and seizures are rare neurological complications.
(Updates to add frequency of mortality in section 1, adds section 3 on atypical clinical signs.) | 2022-08-08T00:44:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding Monkeypox and How Outbreaks Spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/08/07/a2946d32-16b0-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/08/07/a2946d32-16b0-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Crash at Texas intersection kills 4 riding in golf cart
Crash at intersection kills 4 riding in golf cart
Four people riding in a golf cart were killed when an intoxicated man driving an SUV ran a stop sign at an intersection in Southeast Texas, police said.
Miguel Espinoza, 45, has been charged with four counts of intoxication manslaughter in the crash about 11:30 p.m. Saturday in Galveston, police said. He was being held in Galveston County jail Sunday on $400,000 bond, police said. Jail records did not list an attorney for him.
Galveston police Sgt. Derek Gaspard said that after the SUV failed to stop, it struck a pickup truck, which then crashed into the golf cart that had six people aboard. He said that the golf cart and the pickup were traveling in opposite directions through the intersection on a street that did not have a stop sign.
Police said the adult driver of the golf cart was pronounced dead at the scene, and a woman and two juveniles on the golf cart were taken to a hospital, where they died. The two other passengers — an adult and a juvenile — were in critical condition, police said.
Gaspard said he thinks the rented golf cart was operating legally on the city street. Galveston Mayor Craig Brown said golf carts have become a common mode of transportation in the island resort area.
Biden leaves isolation after testing negative
President Biden on Sunday left the White House for the first time since becoming infected with the coronavirus last month, settling in for a reunion with first lady Jill Biden in Delaware.
The president tested negative Saturday and Sunday, according to his doctor, clearing the way for him to emerge from an isolation that lasted longer than expected because of a rebound case.
The Bidens are scheduled to visit Kentucky on Monday to survey flood damage.
9 wounded in shooting outside Cincinnati bar: At least nine people were wounded — none critically — in a shooting outside a Cincinnati bar early Sunday, police said. The shooting took place shortly after 1:30 a.m. in the Over-the-Rhine district, a popular nightlife area. A police officer fired one round at a person who fled the scene, but it was unclear if that person was hit, said Lt. Col. Mike John of the Cincinnati police. More shots were fired after that person fled, so police believe at least two people were shooting, he said. All nine of the victims were released from the hospital.
Fourth set of human remains found at Lake Mead: More human remains have been found at drought-stricken Lake Mead National Recreation Area east of Las Vegas, authorities said Sunday. It's the fourth time since May that remains have been uncovered as drought forces the shoreline to retreat. National Park Service officials said rangers were called to the reservoir between Nevada and Arizona on Saturday after skeletal remains were discovered at Swim Beach. Rangers and a police dive team went to retrieve the remains. | 2022-08-08T00:45:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crash at Texas intersection kills 4 riding in golf cart - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/crash-at-texas-intersection-kills-4-riding-in-golf-cart/2022/08/07/6040349c-1468-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/crash-at-texas-intersection-kills-4-riding-in-golf-cart/2022/08/07/6040349c-1468-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html |
Nick Faldo had difficulty regaining his composure as he prepared to deliver his farewell remarks to CBS viewers and his colleagues. (Tony Marshall/Getty Images)
Asked by longtime broadcast partner Jim Nantz for his “final thoughts on this remarkable run,” Nick Faldo was momentarily unable to muster a cogent response.
At the end of a telecast Sunday marked by tributes and displays of emotion, Faldo broke down in tears in the CBS booth as he bid farewell to the lead golf analyst role he held for 16 years.
The six-time major winner, ever mindful of a performer’s ability to maintain composure in a high-intensity situation, then began his response with a typically blunt critique — this time, of himself.
“I blew it,” Faldo sputtered, before burying his head behind his hands. “I was all ready.”
Nick Faldo announces retirement after 16 years as lead golf analyst for CBS
With the help of some pronounced deep breaths, the 65-year-old Englishman gathered himself to offer insight into his feelings about signing off one last time. Faldo started by going back to the moment he learned he’d landed the gig that would gain him legions of new fans in the golf world, several years after his Hall of Fame playing career ended.
“I was in a boat in Ireland,” he told CBS viewers, “and they gave me a call and said, ‘How would you like to sit next to Jim Nantz?’ And I literally fell out the boat, I really did. That was 2006, and here we are 16 years later.”
CBS and Faldo had announced in June that his tenure as a full-time analyst would end with this weekend’s Wyndham Championship, the PGA Tour’s final regular season event before the field winnows down through its three-tournament FedEx Cup playoffs.
Faldo said then that he wanted to spend more time with family and friends on a farm in Montana he and his wife recently purchased. Replacing him next year as Nantz’s partner and the network’s lead analyst will be Trevor Immelman, a former Masters winner who has worked with CBS for several years.
On Sunday, Immelman was part of the Golf Channel’s early coverage of the Wyndham Championship before CBS’s crew went on the air, and the 42-year-old South African paid tribute to his “good friend” Faldo.
“I was very fortunate to meet Sir Nick when I was 15 years old,” said Immelman. “He took me under his wing, he’s been a mentor to me ever since through my playing career, starting on the European Tour and then the PGA Tour. And when I started broadcasting, he did the same.
“So, Nick, thanks so much for everything that you’ve done for me. Every time I sit in this chair, as lead analyst, I will be thinking of you.”
The man is a legend in our sport…on the course and in the booth.
I have nothing but love for @NickFaldo006…🙌🏼 https://t.co/Pb2smsuSXL
During CBS’s telecast, Nantz and others noted that whereas Faldo was known for a “stoic” demeanor during his playing career, he had revealed to CBS viewers not just a dry wit but a deeply felt connection to the sport of golf and its competitors.
“If you take a look at your broadcasting career, you were bold enough to show everybody out there, including ourselves, really what’s inside your emotions,” fellow analyst Frank Nobilo told Faldo. “You weren’t scared to do that.”
Faldo wasn’t the only member of the CBS booth to shed tears on Sunday. Ian Baker-Finch, a British Open champion and PGA Tour contemporary of Faldo’s who has been a CBS analyst and hole announcer for 15 years, gave his friend an emotional send-off.
“You’ve taught me so much, and for that I’m grateful,” Baker-Finch, 61, told Faldo. “I’m honored to have my name sandwiched between yours on the claret jug, ’90-’91-’92, I look at that all the time with great pleasure. In the last two decades, we’ve been paired together many times at various TV towers around the world, and in fact the last 16 years here at CBS. It’s been a great honor, and I’m sad to see you go, like all of us are here. So sad.”
“Thanks to all the crew,” Faldo said later in the telecast, after he collected his emotions. “As I affectionately and respectfully call you, the workers, they put the pictures out, we do the rattling, we have an easy job. Thank you all.”
“I’m a single child and I’ve found, at 65, three brothers,” Faldo continued, referring to Nantz, Baker-Finch and Nobilo. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Nick, for gracing this booth and our lives,” said Nantz. He added that Faldo and his wife would now be found at their “happy place” in Montana.
“I’m ready,” Faldo chuckled. | 2022-08-08T01:50:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nick Faldo gives emotional send-off after 16 years as CBS golf analyst - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nick-faldo-cbs-retirement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/07/nick-faldo-cbs-retirement/ |
Man is fatally shot in Prince George’s
Victim was found in a parking lot on Southern Avenue, police say.
A man was fatally shot Sunday evening in Prince George’s County, the police said.
The shooting occurred about 6:30 p.m. in the 4100 block of Southern Avenue, according to police. The victim was found in a parking lot and died at the scene.
Southern Avenue forms the border between Prince George’s and the District. The site of the shooting is north of Pennsylvania Avenue and in the Coral Hills area of the county, | 2022-08-08T02:16:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man is slain in Prince George's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/man-shot-killed-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/07/man-shot-killed-prince-georges/ |
Trump-backed candidate Matthew DePerno was allegedly ‘one of the prime instigators’ of an effort to gain unauthorized access to voting machines
Former President Donald Trump endorses Matthew DePerno (R), who is running to become Michigan's attorney general, during a rally on April 2, 2022, near Washington, Mich. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In a petition filed Friday with a Michigan agency that coordinates prosecutors and posted online Sunday by Politico, a Nessel representative wrote that her office has a conflict of interest because a preliminary investigation by state police has determined that her opponent — lawyer Matthew DePerno — was “one of the prime instigators” of a conspiracy to convince Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines.
She asked that an independent prosecutor be named to review the investigation and determine whether to file criminal charges against DePerno and eight others. They include a Michigan state representative and a county sheriff, as well as other key figures in the election denier movement.
State police have been investigating since February efforts by supporters of former president Donald Trump to convince Michigan clerks to give them access to voting software and tabulating machines, so they could examine them to prove fraud took place in 2020. According to Nessel’s petition, DePerno and two others, including a Michigan state representative, “orchestrated a coordinated plan to gain access” to equipment in four Michigan communities.
According to the petition, the tabulators were taken to hotel rooms and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County where a group of four men “broke into” the tabulators and performed “tests” on them. The petition says that DePerno was present at a hotel room during some of the testing.
In the course of that lawsuit, DePerno persuaded a judge to authorize an examination of Antrim’s Dominion voting machines in early December 2020. That examination yielded a so-called “forensic report” claiming evidence that Dominion machines had been rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden. And though the central claims of the report were immediately debunked by the Justice and Homeland Security departments, Trump held it up as evidence of fraud in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
Former Attorney General William P. Barr recalled that Trump called the report “absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged,” according to a clip of Barr’s deposition played during a hearing of the House’s Jan. 6 committee in June. Barr recalled that Trump said the report “means that I’m going to have a second term.”
Barr said the report was “amateurish” and Trump would have to be “detached from reality” to believe it.
According to the petition filed on Nessel’s behalf, the state police investigation found that DePerno was assisted in the effort by Michigan state Rep. Daire Rendon (R), who told one local clerk that the Michigan House of Representatives was conducting an investigation into election fraud. Others named in Nessel’s petition are Sheriff Dar Leaf — the sheriff in Barry County, Mich. — as well as two individuals who played key roles in a GOP-commissioned effort to review election results in Arizona last year. Rendon and Leaf did not respond to requests for comment Sunday evening.
Mark Brewer, a Michigan elections lawyer who was formerly chair of the state Democratic Party, called the action “unprecedented and historic. I don’t recall any previous candidate for attorney general being under investigation.”
Election experts have been sounding the alarm for months about a series of efforts around the country by Trump allies to examine or copy tightly guarded voting equipment to search for evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. They fear the outsiders might have compromised the sensitive tabulators or could publish details about how voting machines and software work that would make it easier to commit fraud in the future.
In some episodes that have become public, third parties persuaded sympathetic election officials to assist. Tina Peters, a local clerk in Colorado, was indicted in March on charges stemming from her participation in a successful effort to allow outsiders to copy the hard drives of voting machines in her county. She has denied wrongdoing.
An elections supervisor embraced conspiracy theories. Officials say she has become an insider threat.
In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to help probe allegations that Trump allies working with local elections officials illicitly copied voting equipment in Coffee County in 2021, his lawyers disclosed in a document filed in court last week.
On Friday, Nessel’s chief deputy wrote a letter to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), urging that Benson remind election clerks that they have a legal obligation to carefully guard voting equipment. It is a felony under state law to have “undue possession” of a voting machine, she wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post.
In a statement, Benson said: “There must be consequences for those who broke the law to undermine our elections in order to advance their own political agendas.” She said her office would work to ensure local clerks are “equipped with a full understanding of the legal protections in place to block bad actors from pressuring them to gain access to secure election systems.”
The letter to the secretary of state included a narrative of the state police findings of a concerted effort to persuade clerks to hand over carefully guarded voting equipment to unauthorized outsiders — and slapdash efforts to return the equipment once clerks grew wary. According to the letter, the Michigan state police investigation has now determined that “a group of individuals gained unauthorized access and compromised tabulators” in four communities between March and June of last year.
In each case, clerks were contacted by a person identified in the letter only as “Person 1,” who said he was conducting an investigation of alleged fraud and asked for access to the machines. In some cases, clerks were also contacted by a state representative who is not named in the letter but, according to the petition, appears to be Rendon.
The representative told Michelle Stevenson, the clerk in Roscommon County, that state representatives were “doing an investigation into election fraud and needed her voting machine.” Stevenson then turned over a tabulator and several USB drives to “Person 1” on a Sunday in March 2021, according to the letter. She declined to turn over a computer containing the election system hard drive but allowed several individuals to make a copy.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Christina M. Grossi wrote that in Irving Township, “Person 1” told town clerk Sharon Olson that he was acting on behalf of the Barry County sheriff’s office. According to the letter, Olson gave “Person 1” a tabulator that had been used in the 2020 presidential election in March 2021. Reuters has reported that the sheriff’s office had asked Olson to give the equipment to a private investigator, as part of an election probe that Leaf, the sheriff, has claimed his law enforcement role empowered him to undertake.
According to the letter, clerks were told their equipment would be returned within days and “grew apprehensive” when it was not. Stevenson began to press the state representative over several weeks about the whereabouts of Roscommon County’s tabulator. “The Representative told her not to worry about the tabulators, as she was doing the right thing and they had her back. She further advised the clerk that her name would never come up,” Grossi wrote.
Roscommon County’s voting equipment was finally returned to Stevenson in April 2021, Grossi wrote, a handoff that took place in the carpool lot of an interstate exit. A tabulator that had been taken from another community, Lake City Township, was returned to the town clerk in September 2021 at a local shopping mall.
In her letter, Grossi noted that the tabulators in question had already been decommissioned and were not in use for Michigan’s primary election, which took place this month. Technicians employed by ES&S, the company that manufacturers the equipment, reviewed the tabulators as part of the state police investigation, she wrote. They found that one of the five tabulators had been subjected to “extensive physical tampering,” but they did not believe any software was manipulated.
“We view the actions of these individuals to be very serious, yet we do not believe these actions impair the integrity of the recent August 2nd primary election,” she wrote. | 2022-08-08T03:47:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GOP nominee for Michigan AG named in election security breach probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/07/gop-nominee-michigan-ag-named-election-security-breach-probe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/07/gop-nominee-michigan-ag-named-election-security-breach-probe/ |
Now, I find I can’t even look at her. I feel so betrayed. How do you go forward when you can’t trust your kid?
Anxious: I suggest that you toughen your spines while you also toughen the way you love your daughter.
Some of her behavior falls into the “self-harm” category, and you parents should seek the advice of her therapist and psychiatrist to determine whether she might need intensive, possibly residential, treatment. A neuropsychological evaluation might be helpful.
She might be responding or reacting to a trauma in her life that you have no knowledge of.
My overall point is that, in my opinion, this is not normal teenage tomfoolery that you will laugh about later. At this point, you are fighting to preserve her future.
I did not see that she bore any resemblance to him, so I didn’t say anything along those lines. It would have been odd to respond that she looked smart or talented.
What is an acceptable response to being shown an unsolicited photo of someone? I would have been happy to provide a little white lie if I had one in the holster, but I had nothing.
Awkward: Your tone implies that your old friend was somehow rudely putting you on the spot in showing you a photo of his daughter.
You can easily dodge commenting on a person’s looks by asking: “Now, where was this taken?” “What is she up to?” etc., etc.
She was upset because her mother (her father’s first wife) was not mentioned in her father’s obit. An ex-spouse is no longer a member of the family. They shouldn’t make it into the obit!
Ex: “Sad Daughter” objected to the fact that by omitting any mention of her father’s first marriage, the obit implied that she was her stepmother’s daughter. | 2022-08-08T04:13:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My teenage daughter stole money from our wallets again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/08/ask-amy-teenage-daughter-stealing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/08/ask-amy-teenage-daughter-stealing/ |
Carolyn Hax is away. The following is from March 7 and 14, 2008.
Dear Carolyn: I have three kids. I love them all.
But one of them is my delight. I don’t admit this to anyone, not even my husband. I try so hard not to favor her in any way. There are big age gaps between all three kids, so it’s reasonably easy to hide. Plus, I’m seriously motivated.
In all my courtside, backstage, poolside, deck-chair conversations with other moms, no one EVER talks about this, no matter how many margaritas have been swirled. Is this the dirty little secret of parenting? Or are most people really fair in their affections?
Anonymous: I’m choosing against any answer that requires purity of “most people.”
I do think it’s common to feel and highly uncommon to express. Not because I have insight into a statistically significant sampling of parents, or specific firsthand knowledge (of course!), but because it makes too much sense.
Take the feelings people do express freely: We prefer one parent to another, one sibling to others, one grandparent, aunt, colleague, neighbor, dog, barista, TV character to others. Are you friends with a couple? Then you like one half better. The Earth is round, the sky is blue and some people fit better than others.
Follow the logic, and having equal feelings for multiple children would be the affront to nature, yet the reverse seems to earn that distinction.
It’s obvious why: Children are different. There are many reasons, but it’s mainly because there’s no greater power than a parent’s over a child. A good parent knows this, knows the weight of it, and wants to use it to uplift, not to crush. And how better to crush Sammie than to reveal her own mommy likes Pammie better?
So, you summon the same enthusiasm for their different strengths. Your kids will figure it out regardless, but it will matter that they never heard it from you.
Dear Carolyn: Will you please advise on the sensitive subject of speaking with the family of a close friend who killed himself? I learned of this tragedy two months later, when the man’s fiancee answered an email sent to him. (They both lived in Chicago; the fiancee’s parents, his parents, and I are in Ohio.) I didn’t know what to do, so I left a message of condolence when I called his parents. (Thank the deities for answering machines.) I’m uncertain how to behave. This is not an area where one is prepared to make discreet and sensitively written statements.
— D.R.
D.R.: The most pain doesn’t come from well-meaning but indiscreet words; it comes from silence.
This man was ill. He died. That his death was by his own hand doesn’t change those two essential facts. Please send notes to his parents and fiancee, saying how much you’ll miss your friend, how warmly you remember him and how sorry you are for their loss.
If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. | 2022-08-08T04:13:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Are favorites ‘the dirty little secret of parenting’? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/08/carolyn-hax-favorite-child-parenting-secret/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/08/carolyn-hax-favorite-child-parenting-secret/ |
A destroyed building following Russian missile strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Russia said it would press forward with its invasion of Ukraine until its goals are met, as troops were seen moving in a large convoy toward the capital, Kyiv. (Bloomberg)
No one is quite able to pinpoint where the expression “useful idiot” comes from. Vladimir Lenin is supposed to have coined it, but it’s almost certainly older. All of us, though, have seen demonstrations of this behavior in recent months as too many adherents of both the far left and right in Europe and the US — in search of balance, or angry with Western wrongs — have provided the Kremlin propaganda machine with fuel.
So it is with the report published late last week by human rights group Amnesty International, which argues Ukrainian forces have put ordinary citizens in harm’s way by establishing bases in residential areas, including in schools emptied of their pupils. There is a pattern of putting civilians at risk, the organization says, and of violating the laws of war.
Amnesty’s concern for citizens’ lives is laudable, as is the commitment to impartiality and its effort to look at all actors on the battlefield. It has spoken out on Russian atrocities in Ukraine and on Moscow’s actions against its own citizens opposing the war. Yet Thursday’s statement on Ukraine’s actions is, at best, naive. By allowing Moscow to portray residential areas as fair game, it’s also perilous.
Where does the report go awry? First, by suggesting choice. Amnesty says it found evidence of Ukrainian forces “launching strikes from within populated residential areas”, basing themselves in civilian buildings and, in one instance, “basing armoured vehicles under trees in purely residential neighbourhoods.”
Ukraine has clear obligations with regards to its citizens, but as the defending force, it is holding back attackers where it must. Armed forces should avoid urban areas, but that is clearly not always possible given Ukrainian soldiers are defending towns and settlements, which are often seen as strategic by the Russian military. The fighting cannot always be shifted to woodlands or open fields. Amnesty experts say there are many “viable alternatives” but provide scant evidence for them in the brief report.
Then there’s the missing context. For example, the report says that, in the cases it documented, Amnesty was “not aware” of efforts by military stationed in schools, hospitals and the like to evacuate civilians in nearby buildings. But it makes no reference to Kyiv’s broader efforts to relocate civilians — or to the reality that many are reluctant to leave, understandably fearing a worse fate away from Ukraine’s soldiers. Forced displacement is itself a violation.
There’s also the basic question of how the research was carried out. Amnesty says the report followed “extensive on the ground investigations,” and that the outside experts from its Crisis Response Programme had also looked into Russian war crimes. Their findings reflect rigorous research standards, the organization says. All of that may be true, even if the current report offers only a snapshot. It’s still hard to see why their expertise should require excluding Amnesty’s local team, ignoring their objections and requests. At the very least that requires an explanation. “Although unwittingly, the organization created material that sounded like support for Russian narratives,” the head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office, Oksana Pokalchuk, said in a Facebook statement. She has resigned.
All violations of international law deserve to be investigated, but the danger of creating a false equivalence between attackers and defenders is real and requires far greater care, balance and self-awareness than Amnesty has demonstrated. Simply stating, as Amnesty does, that the violations don’t justify Russian attacks does not solve the problem that the report creates. This is a brutal war of conquest led by a regime seeking to wipe out a nation — not a skirmish in which both sides share the blame.
“To say that issuing a four-page press release compares to hundreds of pages that we’ve published since the beginning of the Russian invasion... it’s just not true,” Amnesty’s senior crisis adviser Donatella Rovera has said, defending the organization’s actions. That may be correct from the researcher’s perspective, but not for many readers. Nor, of course, for Kremlin propagandists, who have enthusiastically seized upon the report.
Which brings us to what is perhaps the most worrying aspect of all here — the response from Amnesty International’s secretary general. Agnes Callamard at first rejected allegations of bias, but in follow-up comments suggested “attacks” were coming from “social media mobs and trolls.” “This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation,” she tweets. Reasonable questions, including from Amnesty’s own team, deserve credible answers, not arrogance. Finding balance in the fog of war while retaining trust requires openness, not an effort to dig in.
No one will suggest that Ukrainian forces are always heroic. Few participants emerge unsullied from war and it’s clear to all that Ukraine has challenges that predate the conflict. But impartiality is simply not about publishing on one side, and then on the other.
Amnesty might have reflected on the danger of presenting its findings as it has — and how a report so short of context and explanation would be used. Russia has attacked a theater sheltering civilians, bombed a shopping center and prevented civilian evacuations; it hardly needed more reason to strike residential targets. Amnesty has blundered before. Last year, it referred to Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny as a prisoner of conscience after his arrest, but then revoked that because of past xenophobic comments — never mind the context, or the fact that it’s possible to object to both racism and unjustified imprisonment. It then changed its mind again. The rights group might have thought back to that instead of handing Russia another propaganda win.
Amnesty’s work matters. Its reports matter, and people’s lives depend on them, as does justice. All the more reason to do it right.
• Have Putin’s Ukraine Goals Shrunk or Grown?: Leonid Bershidsky
• Russia needs Navalny, Warts and All: Clara Ferreira Marques | 2022-08-08T05:18:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amnesty’s Impartiality Plays to Russia’s Advantage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/amnestys-impartialityplays-to-russias-advantage/2022/08/08/c83ff2be-16d7-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/amnestys-impartialityplays-to-russias-advantage/2022/08/08/c83ff2be-16d7-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed battled rebels for more than 16 months before declaring a truce in March 2022, staving off a challenge to his authority. But the conflict has pushed millions of people into hunger in the northern Tigray region and soured his once-illustrious reputation. The nation’s misery has been compounded by the worst drought in four decades and soaring prices of grain and fuel. Abiy is also having to contend with fresh political violence in the center of the country, a territorial dispute with Sudan and attacks by al-Qaeda-linked militants.
1. How did Abiy’s fortunes change?
Abiy started with a bang when he became Ethiopia’s prime minister in 2018. He scrapped bans on opposition and rebel groups, purged allegedly corrupt officials and ended two decades of acrimony with neighboring Eritrea, an initiative that won him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. He also put out the welcome mat for foreign capital to maintain momentum in one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies, and vowed to quell civil unrest. But he struggled to contain ethnic tensions and his attempts to sideline the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the nation’s pre-eminent power broker for decades, led to civil war. The conflict stalled the planned privatization of key telecommunications assets and other economic reforms, and prompted the US government to impose sanctions on Ethiopia and withdraw its duty-free market access.
2. What sparked the civil war?
Abiy set about consolidating power under his newly formed Prosperity Party after taking office. The TPLF, which had dominated the country’s ruling coalition since a Marxist regime was overthrown in 1991 and continued to govern Tigray, refused to be amalgamated. Its leaders ignored a government directive to postpone elections in Tigray because of the pandemic, and the federal parliament retaliated by halting direct budget support to the region. Abiy ordered a military incursion into Tigray in November 2020 after accusing forces loyal to the TPLF of attacking a military base to steal weapons. The TPLF said its raid was a preemptive strike because federal troops were preparing to attack its territory. After several setbacks, the government eventually gained the upper hand in the war and the rebels withdrew to within Tigray’s borders in December 2021. The government continued to stage air strikes on Tigray and fighting continued in the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions before the truce was declared. Tensions between the two sides remain elevated and, while they publicly agreed to talks, it’s unclear whether there will be lasting peace.
3. What’s been the fallout of the war?
The government hasn’t disclosed casualties and access to the conflict zones was restricted, but there are fears that tens of thousands of people have died due to fighting, hunger and a lack of medical care. In June, the United Nations estimated that the war, and a drought in eastern Ethiopia, had left more than 29 million people in need of aid. The situation was particularly dire in Tigray and the neighboring Afar region, where malnutrition and food insecurity were rife. The government has rejected allegations from civil rights groups that it obstructed efforts to dispense aid or that its forces were party to widespread human rights violations. The UN Human Rights Council has begun collecting evidence about alleged crimes committed during the conflict.
4. What are the latest tensions about?
The government has accused members of the Oromo Liberation Army, which has aligned itself to the TPLF and has been campaigning for greater regional autonomy, of killing hundreds of civilians and deployed the army to avert further violence. The group, which controls a number of towns and villages in the central Oromia region, in turn alleges that the federal police have been targeting and killing ethnic Oromos and Nuers. Abiy has also fallen out with Fano, an ethnic Amhara group that fought alongside federal forces against the Tigrayans and opposed the truce because it wanted an outright victory and uncontested rights to disputed territory. Ethiopia and Sudan are meanwhile at loggerheads over the rights to a swathe of fertile land along their common border, and there have been a series of clashes between their troops. Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based Islamist group that’s linked to al-Qaeda and is seeking to expand its influence in the Horn of Africa, staged an attack in Ethiopian territory in July 2022.
5. Why all the instability?
Africa’s oldest nation state, Ethiopia has long been plagued by discord among its more than 80 ethnic groups. The country was an absolute monarchy until the 1974 socialist revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. It became a multi-ethnic federation in 1991, when a TPLF-led alliance of rebels overthrew the Marxist military regime that followed Selassie. The Tigrayans, though comprising just 6% of the population, came to dominate national politics. After failing to quell three years of violent protests over the marginalization of other bigger communities, including the Oromo and Amhara, Hailemariam Desalegn quit as prime minister in 2018. The then-ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front named Abiy, an Oromo, as his successor. Abiy’s party won a decisive majority in mid-2021 elections.
6. What’s been the impact on the economy?
Ethiopia’s $105 billion economy expanded by an average of more than 7% annually between 2018 -- the year Abiy took power -- and 2021, but the International Monetary Fund sees the growth rate slowing to less than 4% in 2022. With its finances under strain, the government announced in 2021 that it wants to restructure its $28.4 billion of external debt. But the US has urged multilateral lenders to halt their engagement with Abiy’s administration, and a block on their funding could derail the debt overhaul. The IMF is also yet to initiate a new program for Ethiopia -- a key requirement for debt restructuring -- after the previous one lapsed without any money being disbursed. | 2022-08-08T05:19:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ethiopia’s War Ended. Now There’s Hunger and Strife - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ethiopias-war-ended-now-theres-hunger-and-strife/2022/08/08/be68678a-16d7-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ethiopias-war-ended-now-theres-hunger-and-strife/2022/08/08/be68678a-16d7-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
For months, spiking inflation has roiled poor and rich nations alike. The rising costs, which have reached 40-year highs, are largely thanks to the cascading global effects of the pandemic combined with the sudden supply chain and energy market disruptions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as readers of this newsletter are well aware. Their effects have been deep and far-reaching.
Some countries are already in the grips of painful economic contractions; for others, including the United States, the prospect of recession seems around the corner. Europe, ensnared by its reliance on Russian gas, is bracing for what’s being billed as a “winter of despair.” Aid agencies and U.N. officials warn of hunger stalking the planet, as price rises push staples out of reach for tens of millions of people. The global macroeconomic maelstrom has already collapsed one debt-ridden, developing economy (Sri Lanka), while other nations (Zambia, Laos and Pakistan, to name a few) find themselves on the brink.
But for major multinational fossil fuel companies, it’s the best of times.
Recent second-quarter earnings reports proffered eye-popping figures: BP posted second-quarter profits worth $8.5 billion, its biggest windfall in 14 years. ExxonMobil went one further — its $17.9 billion in net income was its largest-ever quarterly profit. U.S. company Chevron, London-based Shell and France’s TotalEnergies also recorded blockbuster results. Put together, these five major companies made $55 billion this past quarter, as hundreds of millions of people around the world bore the brunt of surging prices at the pump.
And it’s not just oil and gas — coal, which climate campaigners are desperately seeking to phase out, is surging, too. Glencore, the world’s largest coal shipper, generated record profits in the first half of 2022 and plans to pay out an additional $4.5 billion in dividends and buybacks to shareholders.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres believes this state of affairs is abhorrent. In remarks made last week, he hammered energy companies for price gouging at a time of global crisis and urged governments to aggressively tax these corporations’ profits.
“It is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the backs of the poorest people and communities, at a massive cost to the climate,” Guterres said, assuming once more his perennial role as the world’s town crier on the threat of climate change and the need for governments to drastically reduce emissions.
“This grotesque greed … is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people, while destroying our only home,” he added.
A host of countries, especially in Europe, have attempted to raise funds off companies that raked in mammoth profits in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There have been mixed results. Italy’s lame-duck government recently reported that its 25 percent windfall tax on Italian energy companies had so far not yielded what authorities expected, with some companies appearing to snub payment. The funds are expected to be redistributed to help struggling households and businesses.
Last month, Britain’s Conservative government pushed through its own 25 percent windfall tax on companies operating in the North Sea, which officials think will help raise an additional 5 billion pounds ($6 billion) over the next year to help ordinary Britons with their energy costs. The move was cast as insufficient by opposition Labour politicians, who want to see further tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies scrapped.
Far from Ukraine, Sri Lanka is the epicenter of a global crisis
The Tories’ counterparts across the Atlantic are even more protective of fossil fuel concerns. Democratic legislation that would rein in price gouging and impose a form of windfall tax on U.S. companies face a fundamental roadblock in Congress, with Republicans in the Senate staunchly opposed to imposing such measures on the oil industry.
Oil industry executives have insisted they are reinvesting some of their profits into projects that are part of a broader green energy transition. Some oil experts also contend that profitability in the energy sector is cyclical and subject to the volatility of the market. “The industry is currently enjoying record levels of profitability, but two years ago the covid-related commodity crash was an epic debacle,” Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James investment bank told my colleagues.
Climate campaigners argue that the ballooning profits of the past half-year and the snail’s pace of the energy transition are all part of the plan for fossil fuel corporations, many of which have spent vast sums lobbying Group of 20 major economies on curbing the scale and speed of their decarbonization policies.
“For decades climate policy has been designed based on a theory that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels and increase the price of carbon and that the market — turbocharged by alternatives such as wind and solar that are now cheaper than fossil fuels — will respond by constraining supply,” wrote Tzeporah Berman in the Guardian. “But that’s not happening fast enough because there is currently no mechanism to counteract the tax breaks, fossil fuel subsidies and delay tactics that are distorting the markets.”
Downstream from the boon of oil company shareholders is the mounting hardship faced by hundreds of millions of ordinary people around the world. According to U.N. data, global food prices have risen about 50 percent since December 2019 — that is, before the onset of the pandemic. And since the start of this year, the price of crude oil rose 26 percent and, consequently, global shipping prices surged 22 percent.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.N. agencies estimated that about 828 million people — one-tenth of the global population — went undernourished in 2021. Now, about 50 million people across 45 countries are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N. World Food Program, with conditions expected to worsen by the end of the northern hemispheric summer.
“Household budgets everywhere are feeling the pinch from high food, transport and energy prices, fueled by climate breakdown and war,” Guterres said last week. “This threatens a starvation crisis for the poorest households, and severe cutbacks for those on average incomes.” | 2022-08-08T05:20:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oil companies get record profits amid global crises - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/oil-companies-profits-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/oil-companies-profits-inflation/ |
Man is slain in Washington, D.C. police say
The incident, a shooting, was reported in Northeast, police said.
A man was fatally shot in Northeast Washington early Sunday, D.C. police said.
Adrian Mack, 31, of Greenbelt, was found about 12:15 a.m. in the 300 block of 50th Street NE, police said. Officers went there in response to the sound of gunshots.
Mack was suffering from gunshot wounds, and died at a hospital, they said.
The site is in the Lincoln Heights area, near the Kelly Miller Recreation Center and the campus of Kelly Miller Middle School. | 2022-08-08T06:02:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man is shot and killed in Lincoln Heights area of NE Washington, D.C. police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/man-shot-killed-lincoln-heights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/man-shot-killed-lincoln-heights/ |
Raila Odinga and William Ruto are in a tight race ahead of the presidential election on Tuesday
Campaign posters for Raila Odinga and William Ruto in Nairobi on Aug. 4. (Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)
NAIROBI — The election jams play at nightclubs and on YouTube, at gas stations and on the minibuses speeding through traffic.
Ahead of Kenya’s presidential election on Tuesday, the catchy songs are an ever-present soundtrack. With the contest projected to be a neck-and-neck competition, former prime minister Raila Odinga and deputy minister William Ruto have both turned to Kenya’s young musicians for a boost.
“Politicians need ground game,” said Malaak Ayuen, 25, a member of Mbogi Genje, a popular hip-hop group supporting Odinga, “and musicians, we are on the ground.”
In seeking to replace outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta, the contenders are especially eager to reach Kenya’s massive youth population. Those under the age of 35 make up more than three-quarters of the population, and people ages 18 to 35 make up a whopping 40 percent of the registered electorate.
As Ayuen walked through Eastlands wearing sunglasses and an Mbogi Genje hoodie, fist-bumping kids who recognized him in the poor Nairobi neighborhood where the group’s three members grew up, he listed the problems he hears from peers. Joblessness. Public corruption. Police violence. Lack of opportunities.
When it comes to choosing Kenya’s next leader, many young people, he said, “have given up.”
To capture their votes, politicians are turning more than ever to music — including groups like Mbogi Genje, who are part of a genre of Kenyan hip-hop called gengetone — said Patrick Monte, a musicology lecturer at Kabarak University in Nakuru who studies the intersection of politics and music. Whether the strategy will succeed, given the extent of youth disillusionment, is an open question, he added.
But what is clear, Monte and artists said, is that this campaign season represents a financial opportunity for artists, many of whom are struggling. While musicians sometimes genuinely support the politicians they promote, other times they say it’s about the money. Often it’s a combination of the two.
“The relationship between the artists and the politicians is symbiotic,” Monte said. “Both are profiting.”
Sitting outside his mansion in Kisumu in Western Kenya, Odinga, 77, smiled when asked about his campaign’s use of young musicians. The veteran opposition leader, who is on his fifth bid for Kenya’s highest office, said he recognizes “a generational gap” between his campaign and the youth.
Young people, whose unemployment rate jumped in recent years to 14 percent, are experiencing a crisis, Odinga said. He said he has a plan to boost employment, including more effective job training, but communicating his plans to younger voters has been hard. Music proved among the best ways. “That’s why we went in that direction,” he said.
Both campaigns have focused on improving the lives of Kenya’s poor, who have been devastated by rising food and fuel prices. Despite recent economic growth, about 35 percent of Kenyans live on less than $2 dollars a day and the top 0.1 percent of Kenyans own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent.
Ruto has promised a “bottom-up” economic approach and blamed Kenyatta, his onetime ally and partner in government for the past decade, for many of the country’s economic woes. On the campaign trail, he has framed the election as a fight between “hustlers” like himself and “dynasties” like the Odingas and the Kenyattas. (Odinga’s father was the country’s first vice president, and Kenyatta’s was its first president. Kenyatta is now backing Odinga, though they were adversaries for years.)
Odinga has countered that Ruto is trying “to create a class war.” Odinga highlighted his plan to give monthly stipends to the poorest Kenyans and said he offers the best chance to crack down on government corruption, adding that Ruto is not the champion of the poor he claims to be.
Abubakar Mohamed, a 21-year-old singer, said he only had about 900 subscribers on his YouTube channel before members of Ruto’s party approached him. The prices of ugali, a stiff porridge made from maize, and cooking oil had soared in recent months, and he’d struggled financially. He said he had been frustrated that he often did not have enough money to produce music videos. But as his video for Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance gained traction, with more than 200,000 views on YouTube, Mohamed hoped his star would rise.
“He is a hustler just the same way that I am a hustler,” said Mohamed of his support for Ruto.
After being approached by Ruto’s party, Mohamad, who goes by Abush Chininto, and his band went to visit the deputy minister at his house. He said Ruto gave them about 400,000 KSH, or $3,355, which they split among seven people. But Ruto hurried off to church, Mohamed said, before the group could detail their other requests, including a studio and funding for cameras.
Eric Wainaina, who was raised under the repressive regime of President Daniel arap Moi, became one of Kenya’s most famous singers and anti-corruption activists after taking aim at the government with the hit song “Nchi ya Kitu Kidogo,” or “Country of bribes” in Swahili.
Wainaina said the proliferation of election-related songs this season — with everyone from the presidential candidates to local parliamentary hopefuls adopting songs — is “a recognition of the power and the value” of the music industry. After he was indirectly approached by Odinga’s campaign, Wainaina gladly agreed to let them use his recent release, “Mama Luka,” about a woman who remains hopeful despite all the broken promises. He had supported Odinga and his running mate for years. While Wainaina said he wasn’t paid for the song, he doesn’t fault musicians who profit off the campaign.
He said he hopes Odinga would address poverty and other issues described in “Mama Luka.”
“Let them use the song, ” he said, “and when they get into power, can we have a conversation about improving this stuff?”
One of the most popular election songs this season started as a nightclub banger. “Sipangwingwi” — which roughly translates to “I cannot be controlled” in Sheng, or Swahili slang — was not intended to be political, said its creator, the rapper Exray. But he didn’t object when Ruto started dancing to it at rallies, and the two eventually formed a partnership, appearing together at events and making a remix.
Kenya’s national cohesion and integration commission, which was created in 2008 following post-election violence, said “Sipangwingwi” could stoke division and banned it in public. Critics said the ban was politically motivated and toothless.
Even as their popularity has exploded, members of Mbogi Genje continue to live in Eastlands, the neighborhood where they grew up. They make money by selling clothes and branded gear and have invested in a small plot of land where they care for chickens and ducks.
Group member Anthony Odhiambo, 26, said they know how hard their peers have it. “It’s hard to find a way to live,” said Odhiambo, who used to DJ on the side to pay the bills.
When they were approached by Odinga’s camp about creating a song, they were attracted by a promise of help building a music studio and a sum of money they declined to detail. But they said they also believed he will be the best advocate for young people.
The band members, who have serious faces but quick smiles, are each from different tribes, and they said their top priority come election day is avoiding a repeat of the violence, rooted in tribal divisions, that has marred past elections.
They are confident that Kenya’s young people care less about the divisions among tribes that shaped past generations. The group’s emblem — a two-handed fist bump — is a symbol of that unity. | 2022-08-08T06:11:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For presidential candidates in Kenya’s election, musicians play a key role - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/kenya-election-musicians-odinga-ruto/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/kenya-election-musicians-odinga-ruto/ |
FILE - This photo combo shows, from left to right, Travis McMichael, William “Roddie” Bryan, and Gregory McMichael during their trial at at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Ga. Months after they were sentenced to life in prison for murder, the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood faced a second round of criminal penalties Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, for federal hate crimes committed in the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man. (Pool via AP, File) (Uncredited/Pool) | 2022-08-08T06:50:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Men face sentencing for hate crimes in Ahmaud Arbery's death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/men-face-sentencing-for-hate-crimes-in-ahmaud-arberys-death/2022/08/08/1f3c3c24-16da-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/men-face-sentencing-for-hate-crimes-in-ahmaud-arberys-death/2022/08/08/1f3c3c24-16da-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Chad’s military government and some rebel groups fighting in the country signed a pledge on Monday in Qatar, ahead of planned national reconciliation talks later this month in the African nation. The main rebel group, however, did not agree to the terms and did not sign the pledge. | 2022-08-08T06:51:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chad's junta, rebel groups sign pledge in Qatar before talks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/chads-junta-rebel-groups-sign-pledge-in-qatar-before-talks/2022/08/08/117f6d80-16e5-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/chads-junta-rebel-groups-sign-pledge-in-qatar-before-talks/2022/08/08/117f6d80-16e5-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
A Chinese air force pilot conducts combat exercises around Taiwan on Aug. 7. (Wang Xinchao/Xinhua News Agency/AP)
TAIPEI, Taiwan — China’s military said Monday it would continue military exercises around Taiwan, extending an unprecedented show of force in retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island last week that has raised the potential for conflict involving Beijing, Taipei and Washington.
After four days of military drills encircling Taiwan, the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said in a post on the microblog Weibo that it was “continuing” exercises, with a focus on anti-submarine combat and sea assaults.
The military maneuvers have sent tensions in the Taiwan Strait to their highest level in decades, threatening key shipping routes and trade in a region crucial to global supply chains.
Since Thursday, the PLA has fired missiles around Taiwan and sent almost 200 military aircraft and at least 40 warships to menace the island, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. More than two dozen Chinese military planes have crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, the unofficial sea border between Taiwan and China.
Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan drew outrage from officials in Beijing, who claim the self-governed democracy is an inseparable part of China and chafe at high-level visits by foreign dignitaries. Beijing has sought to isolate Taiwan by picking off its allies and pushing it out of international organizations.
In response to the visit, China launched military drills, imposed sanctions on Pelosi and her family, and canceled or suspended talks with Washington on issues ranging from climate change to drug trafficking and military matters.
On Monday, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian defended the cancellation of military talks in retaliation for Pelosi’s visit, calling Beijing’s countermeasures a “necessary warning” to Washington “not to go down the wrong path.”
“We urge the U.S. side to respect China’s core interests and concern and abandon this illusion of using the Taiwan question to contain China,” Wu said in remarks carried by state broadcaster CCTV.
The drills in six zones targeting Taiwan from all sides put the Chinese military maneuvers closer than ever to the shores of Taiwan’s main island, encroaching within the 12-nautical-mile zone that Taiwan claims as its territorial waters. The exercises, which began on Thursday after Pelosi had departed Taipei — a sign Beijing did not want to court direct military confrontation with the United States — were originally scheduled to wrap up Sunday.
Taiwan’s Transportation Ministry said Monday that some flights and shipping routes were returning to normal after disruption over recent days. The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command did not say when its exercises would end. Taiwan’s military has upgraded its alert level and deployed ships and a shore-based missile system to monitor the situation.
An article posted by state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday said that PLA warships would now “regularly conduct training” on the other side of the “so-called median line.” “There are no so-called ‘Taiwanese territorial waters.’ Taiwan is part of China and the Chinese navy sails in its own territorial waters,” it said.
Such intimidation may undermine Beijing’s goals. China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have repeatedly pledged their commitment to peaceful unification with the Chinese mainland, but have said the PLA will resort to force if necessary.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement Monday that the aggressive military posturing by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had succeeded only in pushing citizens away.
“Taiwan’s mainstream public opinion firmly opposes the CCP’s threat of force,” it said, citing poll results it released in June in which more than 90 percent of respondents said they opposed China’s diplomatic suppression of Taiwan. “This is entirely the result of the CCP’s wrong policy and misjudgment of the situation,” it said.
Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report. | 2022-08-08T08:13:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China’s military extends exercises after Pelosi's Taiwan trip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/taiwan-china-military-exercises-pelosi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/taiwan-china-military-exercises-pelosi/ |
MINNEAPOLIS — Cavan Biggio hit a sacrifice fly in the 10th inning and Whit Merrifield scored on an overturned call to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to a 3-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins and split the four-game series.
ST. LOUIS — Nolan Arenado and Paul DeJong both homered and drove in four runs to help the St. Louis Cardinals outlast the New York Yankees 12-9, completing a three-game sweep.
NEW YORK — Jacob deGrom struck out 12 and carried a perfect game into the sixth inning of his second start all season, pitching the New York Mets past the Atlanta Braves 5-2 for their 12th victory in 14 games.
CANTON, Ohio — Tony Boselli, the first pick in Jacksonville Jaguars history, was among eight members of the Class of 2022 enshrined Saturday at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium.
BROOKLYN, Mich. — Kevin Harvick ended a 65-race winless drought that lasted nearly two years with his sixth victory at Michigan International Speedway on Sunday. | 2022-08-08T08:22:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/08/08/1639d72c-16e8-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/08/08/1639d72c-16e8-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Nick Kyrgios won the singles and doubles titles Sunday at the Citi Open. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
Imagine this Nick Kyrgios on the world stage.
Tennis fans — and even a new crop of curious observers attracted to his magnetic mayhem — already know what he can do. But not enough people have seen this Kyrgios.
This is the one who jets into Washington a day after winning the doubles title at the Atlanta Open — his second championship of the year with partner Thanasi Kokkinakis, following a Grand Slam crown at the Australian Open. And this is the one who gets straight to work at the Citi Open, taking the court Monday night with a different doubles partner, Jack Sock. Together, they defeat the tournament’s third-seeded duo. During their two-set victory — with Kyrgios firing 132-mph aces that make the professionals trying to return them look silly — the win doesn’t feel like an upset at all.
This Kyrgios then sledgehammers his way through the Citi Open singles draw to plant himself in Sunday’s final. And unfortunately for Yoshihito Nishioka, who had upset the top seed Saturday, he would have no shot against this Kyrgios — the insanely talented player who decides to care over the span of a few days and ends up dominating.
If tennis could get this Kyrgios on a consistent basis, then fans in this country wouldn’t be desperate for the next American male Grand Slam champion. They would be satiated by the Nick Kyrgios Experience: watching the Australian’s masterful serves, ooooo-ing at his beautiful shots, nervously laughing at his random beef with ballboys and, all things considered, enjoying some pretty entertaining tennis.
Instead, this Kyrgios showed up on the public courts of an ATP 500-level tournament where his work was witnessed by a sellout crowd of 7,123. That isn’t exactly anonymity, but compared with the attention Kyrgios attracted during his run to the Wimbledon final this summer, his week as king of the courts in D.C. will not make the same ripples in the tennis world.
That is unfortunate. Here in D.C., Kyrgios realizes his vast potential. He lives up to the mantle that so many believe he can handle. Even tennis legends say he’s good for the game, but at 27 he has won just seven ATP titles. His matchup with Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final electrified the tournament, but Kyrgios remains without a Grand Slam singles title.
Alas, two of his singles championships have come right here at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center.
“Ahh, D.C.,” Kyrgios said after lofting the abstract silver structure of a trophy.
After a break, Kyrgios returned to the main court, this time with Sock, and won the doubles title in straight sets.
“I love it here,” he said. “It feels like home.”
This city and this tournament have treated him like a native son. The 2022 promotional poster perplexed Citi Open chairman Mark Ein because, in a loaded draw for both men and women featuring four former top-ranked players, seven Grand Slam champions and multiple competitors in the top 20, who goes where? But there was Kyrgios right of center next to Andy Murray. His image also covered the door to the men’s restroom, and a constant serenade of “C’mon, Nick!” and “Let’s go, Nick!” provided the soundtrack of a hot Sunday evening.
The friendly D.C. crowd experienced all of the wonder and the “Why would he do that?” that makes up a Kyrgios match.
In the second set, his forehand return kissed the line and produced coos from the grandstands. Shots such as that remind everyone of the player who won the junior title at the Australian Open at 17 and, at the time, seemed poised to take over the world.
Later in the set, while up 40-0 in the sixth game, he halfheartedly attempted a between-the-legs shot that died in the net. Kyrgios loves basketball, and in that sport, such an ill-advised decision would be akin to pulling up 40 feet from the hoop while on a five-on-none fast break. Shots such as that drag even his most ardent supporters back into their seats as they realize Kyrgios is his own worst enemy.
Even this Kyrgios can be frustrating to watch. He has all that talent, greatness waiting to be unleashed, and while winning big in a championship match he’ll still waste time complaining to his supporters’ box, the chair umpire and even the defenseless ballfolks. Before a serve, the ballkids must have bounced too many balls his way, so Kyrgios raised his arms, shook his head and questioned in his agitated Australian accent, “What’s going on?”
Noticing the odd scene, fans laughed anyway — it was just Nick being Nick. Later, a few boos rained down when he paused during his service game to address something that irked him with the umpire.
Still, the crowd remained in his corner. The mix of the good and the bad — and occasional flashes of dominance — makes up the full Nick Kyrgios Experience.
After the show was over, Ein complimented Kyrgios by praising him for being “so dialed in.” Later in the evening, Ivan Dodig, half of the doubles team that fell to Kyrgios and Sock, was more blunt.
“You can be that good, man,” Dodig said on the court. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
When Kyrgios spoke after his singles title, he showed grace to his opponent; he and Nishioka played together with the Washington Kastles of World Team Tennis in 2019, the same year he won his first Citi Open title. As an unsaid apology, he gave a shout-out to the ballkids, ballmen and ballwomen. But he saved most of his love for D.C., one of the few cities where he has harnessed all of his tools.
“It’s emotional for me to be back here again and have another title,” he said.
For those waiting for him to figure it out, they will always have this week in D.C. It’s just too bad this Kyrgios hasn’t consistently shown up elsewhere. | 2022-08-08T09:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nick Kyrgios impresses at Citi Open again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/nick-kyrgios-dc-tennis-citi-open-success/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/nick-kyrgios-dc-tennis-citi-open-success/ |
From left: Gus Welch, Alex Arcasa, Glenn “Pop” Warner, Stancil “Possum” Powell and Jim Thorpe ca. 1912. (Cumberland County Historical Society/Courtesy of Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA)
This story is adapted from “Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe,” which will be published Aug. 9.
For 20 long years after Jim Thorpe signed a contract with Hollywood, the sporting colossus from the Sac and Fox Nation waited anxiously for the studios to produce a movie about his life. When it finally came out in 1951, two years before his death, the film offered a mostly sympathetic story; star power in Burt Lancaster, the dynamic lead actor who portrayed Jim; and several evocative scenes of his epic rise to global fame and the troubles that followed.
Biographical pictures are invariably fictionalized accounts and should be regarded on those terms, but along with the usual conflations and inaccuracies of detail, “Jim Thorpe — All American” was misguided in a more important way, reinforcing stereotypes of a White perspective on a Native American’s life.
Thorpe — whose Olympic records in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games were finally restored last month, 110 years too late — was the main character in the film, from greatest athlete in the world, all-American football star and major league baseball player to fallen hero. But the story was told from the perspective of the narrator, Pop Warner, Jim’s old coach and supposed savior. The implication was that if only Thorpe had taken Pop’s advice, stopped brooding about his fate and fully integrated himself into White society, he would not have suffered the way he did.
Patronizing — and wrong.
Glenn Scobey Warner, the Pop whose name lives on as the symbol of youth football, was an imposing figure in the athletic world of the early 20th century, an innovative and successful coach who was almost as well known in that subculture as Thorpe, his most prominent football and track and field star. Together they turned little Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania into an athletic marvel that competed winningly on the fields of play with the elite colleges of the East, from Harvard and Penn to Syracuse and Army.
With Warner’s brilliant coaching and Thorpe’s dominant performance on the football field, Carlisle’s 27-6 thrashing of Army in 1912 stands as one of the most symbolically meaningful moments of athletic retribution in American history. Soldiers on one side, Indians on the other, competing on the Plain at West Point, an even playing field at last. N. Scott Momaday, the Native American novelist and playwright, said it was like reinventing history. There was, he said, “something in the air that cold November day — something made of omens and prophesies. Some old imbalance was being set right.”
Jim and Pop in that sense rose to fame together, bonded by circumstance and mutual need. But the truth was more complicated. The glorification of Warner in the movie and beyond was misplaced. It glossed over his cowardly actions during the most trying time of Thorpe’s career, when Olympic officials rescinded his records and took away his medals and trophies after learning he had played bush league baseball for minimal pay for two years. And glowing portrayals of Warner also ignored the fact that as football coach he professionalized his supposedly amateur Carlisle team and that his players eventually rebelled against his demeaning methods, leading to a congressional investigation and his departure.
A dubious mission
Founded by the Army’s Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, only three years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the flagship institution of federally operated Indian boarding schools. Its dubious mission was to exterminate Indians not in body but in language, dress, behavior, tradition, religion and soul. Cut their hair and outfit them in uniforms resembling those worn by the enemies of their forefathers, the U.S. cavalry. “Kill the Indian, save the man” was Pratt’s motto. Football, as a college sport then largely the province of Ivy League old boys, was considered an important part of that assimilation process.
Thorpe started competing in track and playing football for Warner’s teams in 1907, and by the following season he had emerged as a brilliant all-around track man and star left halfback. Teammates, opponents and observers could sense he was special. They could see his easygoing nature, his lack of nerves, the resilience of his body and his resistance to pain, the rare combination of strength, speed, stubbornness, instinct and agile grace, the hint of danger and the spark of electricity. Poet Marianne Moore, who lived in Carlisle and taught business classes at the school during Thorpe’s era, later said he “had an ease of gait that is hard to describe. Equilibrium with no stricture but couched in the lineup in football he was the epitome of concentration, wary, with an effect of plenty in reserve.”
Football was just one of Thorpe’s many talents at Carlisle. He excelled at everything, from ice skating on Letort Creek to ballroom dancing in the school gymnasium. By the spring of 1909, he was starring in two sports at once, competing in multiple events from the hurdles to the shot put, high jump and broad jump in track while also pitching and hitting for Carlisle’s baseball team. He tossed a no-hitter and a shutout on the mound and “covered first base like a veteran.” When the season was over, he and two teammates left school to play summer baseball for the Rocky Mount Railroaders in the Eastern Carolina League.
That is when the trouble for Thorpe began — and when Pop Warner’s hypocrisy and duplicity started to be revealed. His athletes did not slip away to play minor league baseball surreptitiously. For years, some of Pop’s ballplayers had joined various teams in the low minor leagues each summer, where they were paid about 30 bucks a month, many of them recruited by a Pennsylvania-based scout who was Warner’s close friend. Records show Thorpe’s departure for Rocky Mount was so well known that Carlisle’s superintendent, Moses Friedman, tried to prevent him from leaving, arguing that it was more important for him to stay in school. It strains credulity to think Warner was unaware of the dispute.
Hundreds of college athletes spent their summers playing pro baseball during that era, but most tried to protect their amateur status by using aliases. One among them was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in the Kansas State League under the name Wilson. A scout for the New York Giants recalled that players in the Eastern Carolina League “had as many aliases as the gunmen in New York.” Thorpe, however, played under his own name, which appeared in stories and box scores virtually every day for the two summers he was in the league, first for Rocky Mount and later for the Fayetteville Highlanders.
Although Thorpe decided not to return to school during those two years, he was in frequent contact with Friedman and met twice with Warner, once after meeting the team at a game in St. Louis and then embarking on a long hunting trip with the coach in Oklahoma, Jim’s home territory. Again it requires a willing suspension of disbelief to assume Pop did not ask Jim what he had been doing while away from school.
Warner’s once-dominant teams struggled without their star left halfback until finally the coach persuaded Thorpe to return in 1911. His lure was that Jim could not only restore Carlisle to football glory but also train for the 1912 Olympics, employing his all-around skills in the five-event pentathlon and 10-event decathlon. It was a moment of mutual vulnerability: Warner needed Thorpe as much as Thorpe needed Warner. If Thorpe had not returned to Carlisle, his name could have been lost to history; instead he went on to one of the most incandescent bursts in American sports history, culminating with gold medals in Stockholm and an overwhelming gridiron performance against Army at West Point during his final stellar season.
A scoop and a confession
On Jan. 21, 1913, Roy Johnson, a reporter for the Worcester Telegram, tracked down one of Thorpe’s former coaches from his Eastern Carolina League days who was spending the winter at a relative’s house in Massachusetts. It was Charles Clancy, who had coached Jim briefly with the Fayetteville Highlanders. After a short but revealing interview, Johnson realized he had something sensational and returned to the newspaper office to bang out a story that was “smeared all over the front page” the next morning: “THORPE WITH PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL TEAM SAYS CLANCY.”
It was considered the scoop of the sporting year. Old news, perhaps, in the cities and towns of North Carolina but freshly explosive everywhere else and repeated in newspapers across the nation. When word reached Warner at Carlisle, he professed shock and denial. His first instinct, before consulting Thorpe, was to declare Jim innocent. Thorpe himself stayed silent for a day, discombobulated by the aura of scandal, then decided to present a full acknowledgment. Yes, he had played baseball for about $2 a day in the Eastern Carolina League. The confession, he later said, “lifted, as magic, a great load from my mind and shoulders.”
But he found himself alone. All the powers that be, men who had every reason to know what Thorpe had done, professed ignorance, choosing to save their own reputations and leave Thorpe hanging. Warner declared that he never knew and drafted a confession letter for Thorpe that placed all of the blame on the athlete while falling back on patronizing, racist language as a halfhearted excuse. “I was simply an Indian school boy and did not know all about such things,” Warner had Thorpe saying.
Friedman, the superintendent, also claimed he knew nothing, as did James E. Sullivan, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who was close to Warner and served on the advisory board of the Carlisle Athletic Association. With Warner’s blessing, Friedman took Thorpe’s Olympic trophies and medals from the Carlisle trophy case and sent them to New York for shipment back to Sweden. Sullivan, who considered himself the moral arbiter of all things amateur, arranged for the International Olympic Committee to rescind Thorpe’s records, his name excised as though he had never competed at Stockholm, the second-place finishers declared the winners.
Thorpe spent the rest of his life trying to restore his Olympic standing, and his many supporters continued the quest after he died of a heart attack at 65 in 1953, attaining justice only last month. The arguments in his favor were based on both technicalities and common sense.
The rules of the Stockholm Olympics required that challenges to an athlete’s amateur standing be filed within 30 days of the end of the Games. The IOC decision against Thorpe came six months later, well beyond the deadline. A technicality, to be sure, but all Olympic rules were technicalities in one way or another, and this one should have absolved Thorpe. Moreover, Thorpe’s semi-professionalism had nothing to do with track and field. Playing baseball and excelling in the all-around events of the decathlon required completely distinct skills. Compare that with the situation of one of his Olympic teammates, future general George S. Patton, who competed in the modern pentathlon, requiring riding, shooting and fencing skills that he refined while on the Army payroll; or the entire Swedish team, whose members were allowed to leave their jobs and train while under full salary for months before the opening of the Games.
Or, circling back to Pop Warner, compare it with what had been going on in the Carlisle football program for years. When a federal inspector undertook an investigation of the school in 1914 at the behest of Congress, he uncovered how Warner had used the resources of his athletic association to control the internal workings of the school and its public image, using Carlisle’s share of the lucrative gate receipts from games at Harvard, Penn and other big schools to pay off local newspaper correspondents, merchants, lawyers, ministers and law enforcement authorities. Anyone who had influence and might help the program was getting money from Warner.
First and foremost, that meant the players. Hundreds of checks went to athletes who were “kept for the purpose of playing football,” in Inspector E.B. Linnen’s words. Linnen documented that all of the top stars — including “James Thorpe, Frank Mount Pleasant, William Garlow, Gus Welch, Antonio Lubo, Peter and Frank Hauser” — were receiving $10 to $15 per month along with larger sums, loans and free overcoats and watches from Carlisle merchants.
To put this in context, many major college programs found ways to get money to their top athletes. It could also be argued that athletes supplied the entertainment talent that made money for the schools and deserved some financial reward. What the investigation established above all else was the hypocrisy and duplicity of Warner, who had been operating an athletic program as a form of quasi-professionalism while claiming amateur innocence in the case of Thorpe. If the system was corrupt, the blame fell heavily on administrators, not the players — and especially not Thorpe and the other young Indian athletes who arrived from impoverished reservations to bring profits to a school gaining fame from an exotic heritage it was designed to erase.
One of the instigators of the congressional investigation was Welch, the quarterback on the 1912 team. Welch filed a petition against Warner in part out of disgust with his coach for bailing on Thorpe during the Olympics controversy, which he saw as a tipping point after years of unease among the players. Along with revelations about financial payments, the investigation included interviews with many of Pop’s football players who accused him of profiting by selling packs of game tickets in hotel lobbies and of abusing his players mentally and physically, occasionally hitting them and calling them “g--d--- boneheads” and “sons of b----es.” As Welch testified in an affidavit, “Mr. Warner is a good football coach, but a man with no principle.”
It was not long thereafter that Warner left Carlisle for Pittsburgh, another stop in a winning career that carried him on to Stanford and Temple and a hallowed place in the college football annals. The events at Carlisle, aside from the many victories on the field, were whitewashed from history.
A revealing fiction
In the 1951 movie about Thorpe’s life, there is a scene where Jim and Pop reconnect in Los Angeles. It is 1932. Jim is 45. His playing career is over. He is down on his luck, finding odd jobs as a ditch-digger and the emcee of dance contests, when Warner reemerges in the role of savior. He finds Jim in the dank basement dressing room of a decrepit ballroom taking off the greasepaint makeup of a dime store Indian. Pop chews Jim out for picking up “the idea that the world owed you something.” Before leaving, he gives his old star tickets to the Opening Ceremonies of the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. At first Jim rips the tickets in half, saying he doesn’t want them, but soon he is in the stadium sitting next to Warner.
None of this happened in real life, but the scene is illuminating nonetheless. When the U.S. team marches in, Warner joins the crowd in enthusiastic applause. Jim sits stone-faced. The movie switches to newsreel briefly as Vice President Charles Curtis opens the Games. Pop turns to Jim and says: “The announcer forgot to announce one thing, or maybe he didn’t find it necessary. Charles Curtis, Indian.” Curtis, a Kansan, claimed Indian heritage, his mother a member of the Kaw Nation, and the implication was that the vice president had so successfully integrated himself into the highest rungs of White society that his race need not be mentioned. Thorpe could have accomplished the same, according to Pop, if he had stopped feeling sorry for himself and his people.
The reality was different. It was the vice president who got Jim into the Games. He worshiped Thorpe and was dismayed to read newspaper reports that the great athlete had not been invited to the Coliseum for the Opening Ceremonies. “I actually felt almost tearful when I read the story,” he said, directing Louis B. Mayer of MGM to make sure Jim was accommodated.
When Thorpe received the tickets at last, he considered the initial snub an insult not to him but to all Indians. “It had to be another Indian who finally got me the invitation,” he said. Pop Warner had nothing to do with it. | 2022-08-08T09:48:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The hurtful myth of Pop Warner as Jim Thorpe’s savior - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/08/08/jim-thorpe-book-pop-warner/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/08/08/jim-thorpe-book-pop-warner/ |
Scranton, Biden’s birthplace and a place at the heart of his political identity, has continued to struggle during his presidency. But many residents cite woes that far predate his tenure.
SCRANTON, Pa. — In the past, grocery shopping for Marie Schumacher meant little more than a trip to her local Gerrity’s, a northeastern Pennsylvania chain with several stores near her house. But as prices soared, Schumacher started a new Tuesday routine: hopping in the car and driving 10 miles to a discount chain in Dickson City.
“Everything has obviously gone up — like a dozen eggs here would be almost $5,” said Schumacher, 81, who started the trips during the pandemic to help out friends worried about catching the coronavirus.
She doesn’t think Scranton’s most famous native son is responsible for the city’s shuttered industries, empty storefronts or $5 eggs, but she also doesn’t think President Biden has done much to help reverse the community’s slide. “Nothing has changed here since he’s been president,” she said.
Biden leaned hard into his upbringing in this blue-collar city in his bid for the White House, and his presidential speeches and anecdotes are peppered with references to Scranton. He empathizes with financial struggles by mentioning his father’s “long walk up a short flight of stairs” to tell the family he’d lost his job. He says America’s social policies should reflect Scranton’s values, where “people stuck up for you — stuck up for one another.”
White House insists economy is strong as allies grow uneasy about Fed
“People are very nervous and rightfully should be,” said Ty Holmes, a Scranton School District director and the president of the local NAACP who, during a presidential visit in October, asked Biden to help revive the city’s pre-K program.
“Scranton is not a place where people have a large amount of money to begin with — never has been,” Holmes said. “These are people who are starting to have anxiety. I’m not a specialist in economics or financials, but there’s no way you can’t see we’re in the beginning stages of a recession.”
Publicly, the love affair between Scranton and Biden, who spent the first 10 years of his life here, is reciprocal. Scranton has bestowed the name Biden on three streets: one in the heart of the city’s downtown, another on a recently re-christened (and occasionally vandalized) expressway, and a third on the street where his childhood home sits. Lackawanna County, which includes Scranton, went strongly for Biden in 2020 and helped him win Pennsylvania, despite being encircled by communities that voted for former president Donald Trump.
And in October, Biden returned to Scranton to launch his Build Back Better initiative — whose goal, he said, was to help communities like Scranton. Another trip to the city was scrapped a few weeks ago after Biden contracted covid-19.
“Scranton isn’t my home because of the memories it gave me — it’s my home because of the values it gave me,” Biden said outside the Electric City Trolley Museum during the October trip, as his cousins sat in the front row. “So when I ran for president, I came back to Scranton. … And I resolved to bring Scranton values to bear, to make a fundamental shift in how our economy works for working people.”
Last week, Joe McAndrew, a 65-year-old retiree, sat outside his apartment on Biden Street and reflected on a country now led by the man whose name is on the street sign. McAndrew doesn’t regret voting for Biden. He wanted Trump out, and thinks the former president “should be in jail, because he’s the one that caused the insurrection.”
Still, McAndrew said he’s worried about the rising price of food and housing. His landlord just announced a rent increase, and he’d like to move to a better place, but even nearby apartments that have sat empty for months are too expensive — and so, it seems, is almost everything else, despite the dropping price of gas.
“I went food shopping the other day and just two little bags [of groceries] was 60 bucks,” McAndrew said. “Everything went to sky high. These open apartments are $1,500 a month.”
Nearby, several storefronts look like they’ve been shuttered for years. One features a handwritten “no loitering” sign. Another, apparently from a relocated bank, has been closed since 2014.
Iron works at the core of the city’s founding began to close at the beginning of the 20th century. The last coal mines started closing a few decades later. In the latter half of the century, Thomson Consumer Electronics, which produced picture tubes for televisions, employed more than a thousand people in the Scranton metro area, but after the North American Free Trade Agreement, the company moved its factory to Mexico, where it could pay workers far less.
“We had 1,600 families poking around for something that would help make ends meet,” said Rep. Matthew Cartwright, a Democrat who represents Scranton in Congress and has appeared several times with Biden. “People took retail and service jobs, restaurant jobs. And you’d have to take two of them to supplant the income they lost.”
As a result, Scranton has slowly emptied out. It had more than 140,000 residents around the time Biden was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in 1942. That has dwindled to just under 77,000, and more than 1 in 5 people live below the poverty line.
It’s not even clear the city can meet its pension obligations to retired firefighters and police officers, said Joan Hodowanitz, the citizen representative on the Scranton Firefighters Pension Commission, and another economic blow could be devastating. “We don’t know what the stock market’s going to be six months from now or even a year from now,” Hodowanitz said. “So it could become another drag on the city’s financial health.”
For years, people seeking the White House have come to Scranton, hoping to show they understand the tough losses wrought by uprooted industries. Biden is not the first president, or would-be president, to wrap himself in the tough-as-nails reputation of a town built by miners and ironworkers. People in Scranton, all too familiar with the four-year political cycle, try not to roll their eyes when candidates visit to praise them as “scrappy.”
“When Trump came here campaigning for president, he said he was going to bring the mines back,” said Ed O’Hearn, who’s lived in Scranton most of his life and worked in the machine shop at Thomson Consumer Electronics. “They’ve been closed for decades, and we’re all making a big joke about it: ‘Oh, we’re gonna put our application and we’re going to get a good job in the mines.’ Nobody’s really shocked too much when they hear somebody’s promises, or when those promises don’t come true.”
During a 2016 visit to northeastern Pennsylvania, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton spoke about gun control while recalling how she learned to shoot behind her family’s cottage overlooking nearby Lake Winola, according to the New York Times. “Secretary Clinton has northeastern Pennsylvania blood running through her veins,” Scranton’s mayor at the time, William L. Courtright, told the crowd, describing her as “a local woman that made it big.”
Biden spent Election Day 2020 in Philadelphia and Scranton, and by then, the question of who best represented this area had featured prominently in the presidential race. On the day Biden accepted the Democratic nomination, Trump visited Old Forge, Pa., and claimed that Biden only embraced his short, long-ago stint in nearby Scranton to score political points.
“So tonight … Slow Joe will speak at the Democrat convention, and I’m sure that he’ll just knock ’em dead,” Trump said. “And he’ll remind us that he was born in Scranton. But you know, he left like 70 years ago. … So I view it differently. He abandoned Scranton.”
With Biden in the White House, Scranton remains a powerful shorthand for people on both sides of the political aisle. “What matters to President Biden, and therefore to his economics team, is how are families like the one that he grew up in doing?” Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, recently told The Washington Post.
In June, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, sought to use the president’s birthplace against him. “Biden talks about his Scranton roots, but he couldn’t care less about the struggles hard-working Pennsylvanians face today,” she said on the day Biden spoke at an AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia. “Soaring inflation, record gas prices, and a baby formula shortage are only a few of the crises he’s dealt Keystone State families.”
Jimmy Connors, the mayor of Scranton from 1990 to 2002, has spent the last few years rebutting claims that Biden’s talk of Scranton is for show. During the campaign, he took reporters — and anyone else who asked — to visit people who pulled out pictures of Biden through the years at weddings and parties and funerals.
Now Connors says Biden’s doubters need to give him more time, an argument that’s easier to make with Biden’s recent run of legislative wins.
“There’s a certain percentage of people that are saying ‘Who can we get to replace Joe?,’ even Democrats, and I’m saying to them, ‘Look, you’re throwing him over the side a little early.’ Even before this week, I said, ‘Let’s give him some time.’ He put NATO back together. He’s facing down Putin the bully. He’s helping Ukraine now. The gas prices have been dropping for the last couple of weeks.”
And he said Scranton is reflected not just in Biden’s economic policies, but also in his bipartisanship and emphasis on equity.
“Scranton never got rid of some of the stuff that was important to keep — some of the buildings, some of the values that we have,” he said. “That has never disappeared from Scranton.” | 2022-08-08T09:53:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s policies have not revived Scranton. But few there blame him. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/biden-scranton-economic-struggles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/biden-scranton-economic-struggles/ |
Three things to know about Kenya’s elections tomorrow
For one thing, ethnicity might matter less – and class more – than in the past.
Analysis by Jane (Mango) Angar
Supporters cheer during a rally for Raila Odinga, presidential candidate for the Azimio La Umoja Coalition, in Nairobi, Kenya, on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022. (Michele Spatari/Bloomberg)
On August 9, Kenyans will vote for the presidency, national legislature, and county offices. This year’s national elections mark three decades of multi-party elections, and two decades since the end of Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year autocratic rule.
Historically, Kenya’s elections have been hotly contested, riven by ethnic divisions, large-scale violence, and allegations of election fraud. Legal challenges to the results have repeatedly gone to the Supreme Court, which actually annulled the August 2017 election results.
That contentious past will shape this year’s elections, but some important things have changed. Here are three things to watch.
Ethnicity may matter less than in past elections
Kenyans have historically voted for candidates who share their ethnic identity, which affects how politicians campaign. Since no single ethnicity makes up more than 50 percent of the country, candidates form ethnic coalitions and try to convince various ethnic communities they would benefit or lose should a given candidate gain power.
But for a few reasons, ethnicity may matter less this time.
First, this is the first election since Kenya achieved independence in 1963 with no Kikuyu presidential candidate. The Kikuyu are Kenya’s largest ethnic group; many regard them as the country’s most politically and economically powerful community. Of Kenya’s four presidents, three have been Kikuyu, including the current president Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta.
But Kenyatta is stepping down – and is not supporting his deputy president, William Ruto, a member of the Kalenjin ethnic community. While Kikuyu and Kalenjin have often been political rivals, Kenyatta and Ruto ran together in 2013 to insulate themselves from charges brought by the International Criminal Court, which accused both politicians of inciting violence against the other’s supporters after the 2007 elections.
Rather than keep this alliance intact, Kenyatta is backing his longtime rival, the Luo candidate Raila Odinga. They’ve been rivals since the political rivalry between their fathers in the early post-colonial years. Odinga, leader of the main opposition party, has made four unsuccessful bids for the presidency. This will be his fifth attempt.
It shocked the country then, when Kenyatta and Odinga allied in 2018, with a now-famous handshake. These new alliances complicate ethnic voting, especially for Kikuyu who typically vote as a bloc. Without a Kikuyu candidate, they are divided between those who see Ruto as the workhorse behind Kenyatta’s term administration, and those who support Kenyatta’s decision to align with Odinga.
Class may matter more
Second, for the first time, Kenyans seem to be discussing class differences. Ruto has been campaigning on the idea that ordinary hard-working Kenyans, whom he calls “hustlers,” have to fight back against “dynasties” – politically entrenched elites like Kenyatta and Odinga. Using the “hustlers versus dynasties” slogan, Ruto portrays himself as an anti-establishment man of the people.
Ruto’s populism matters at a time when the cost of living is the central issue. Kenyans have endured rising inflation, food shortages, and grinding poverty, all exacerbated by the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and drought.
More diversity in political candidates
For the first time in Kenya’s history, a presidential candidate from a major party – Raila Odinga – has a female running mate. In fact, three of the four presidential candidates have women running mates. Odinga selected Martha Karua, a former justice minister referred to as the “iron lady” for thriving in a male-dominated political arena and for her staunch defense of human rights. Many women leaders see Karua’s candidacy as an important step in a country where women account for only 23 percent of the national legislative seats and female candidates endure threats and harassment.
But it’s not just women. More persons with disabilities are running than ever before, despite persistent prejudice and lack of resources. By one estimate, at least 300 of the 5,000 political aspirants in the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) primaries had a disability. This may reflect the influence of the Kenyan Inclusive Political Parties Programme (KIPP) on party policies. Additionally, all major political parties now have robust Disability Leagues, caucuses that advocate inclusion and mobilize the estimated 4 million voters with disabilities.
Election violence is less likely
Elections in Kenya have often been marred by violence. In the 1990s, the ruling party attacked and burned opposition supporters’ homes to suppress turnout. After the 2007 general election, Odinga accused the ruling Party of National Unity (PNU) of rigging the election. Angry over an allegedly stolen election and about perceived Kikuyu dominance in politics and land, some opposition supporters attacked PNU supporters. Over 1,300 people were killed in the ensuing months of violence between PNU and ODM supporters and police. In 2017, Human Rights Watch estimates that over 100 people were killed before and after the August and October elections, as police attacked opposition protests.
As election day approaches, 17 percent of surveyed Kenyans express concern about serious violence. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) estimates a 53 percent likelihood of violence. Many Kenyans still blame other ethnic groups or past regimes for their lack of land; politicians have exploited that resentment to incite election violence. In drought-prone northern regions, some communities increasingly rely on violence to steal cattle and secure water and grazing space. In Nairobi, the capital city, residents fear the resurgence of Mungiki, a violent criminal gang that morphs into a political militia for pay during elections.
Additionally, 54 percent of Kenyans distrust the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the body in charge of elections. This heightens fears of election rigging and the possibility of violent protests against election results. Observers also worry that social media, Tik Tok in particular, is failing to monitor hate speech and disinformation.
But it takes a lot to convince ordinary people to attack others, especially acquaintances or neighbors. Politicians must persuade followers that the benefits of using violence, like defending status, property, or life, outweigh potential costs such as injury, arrest, or stigma.
What’s more, several factors may restrain violence, including a relatively strong and independent Supreme Court, a population that largely rejects violence, years of state and donor-funded investment in local peace and resilience-building programs, and the fact that the incumbent president is not running for re-election.
Kenya’s 2022 elections are shaped by old guard politicians, flawed political institutions, voter anxiety, and unresolved tensions. But if elections are peaceful, they will reveal a deepening democracy that, despite its fractures, is increasingly resilient.
Jane (Mango) Angar is a PhD student in political science and a resident research associate in the Center on the Politics of Development at the University of California, Berkeley.She studies disability politics and election violence.
Kathleen Klaus (@KathleenKlaus) is an associate senior lecturer in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University and author of “Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-making”(Cambridge University Press, 2020). | 2022-08-08T09:53:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Kenya's 2022 elections be violent? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/kenya-kikuyu-kenyatta-ruto-odinga-kalenjin-luo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/kenya-kikuyu-kenyatta-ruto-odinga-kalenjin-luo/ |
Sujay Kaushal, a University of Maryland biogeochemist, stands next to a manhole that has been exposed by erosion along a stream on the university campus on July 8 in College Park, Md. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
The Washington region is growing — a metropolis of nearly 6 million people where area officials are pressing to build another 320,000 homes by the end of this decade.
And with that growth comes an increasing, largely unregulated problem: Salt. Lots of it.
Paved streets, sidewalks and parking lots need de-icing in winter, with the sodium chloride in road salt running off into streams. Washing machines drain sodium-containing detergents and industrial firms discharge sodium-laden water into wastewater systems, which already treat the human waste of a society addicted to salty foods and drinks.
All these sources contribute to what environmental scientists refer to as a “freshwater salinization syndrome” that is damaging local waterways, harming wildlife and affecting the quality of drinking water throughout the United States — posing risks to people with health conditions that make them sensitive to the two elements in salt: sodium and chloride.
While drinking water quality remains safe for most people now, the compounding effects of a mineral that has been so central to daily life are accelerating and may eventually become irreversible, researchers say.
That’s particularly so in urban areas like metropolitan D.C., studies on the problem show.
Water utilities, warily monitoring the problem, say they may need to invest several hundred millions of dollars in new desalinization plants to reverse the trend.
Salt from icy roads is contaminating North America's lakes
“Salt is probably the most serious problem in world history related to water,” said Sujay Kaushal, a University of Maryland biogeochemist, adding that the damaging effects on streams and aquatic life are early red flags to a predicament that could eventually consume the region.
He compared the cumulative effects on the region’s watersheds to the hardening arteries of someone with a high-salt diet.
Soap bubbles gathered on the surface of the orange-and-black tinted water flowing from a storm drain pipe into Campus Creek behind the University of Maryland’s College Park campus.
“You see how the water changes color there?” Kaushal asked, pointing to an orange plume.
The colors came from iron and manganese, among the metals that have been entering streams from the pipes and soil with more frequency in recent years — an effect of salt corrosion. And the bubbles, entering through an apparent sewer line leak, were from sodium-containing laundry or dishwasher detergent — a major contributor to the region’s salt problem.
Kaushal passed a feathery thicket of invasive salt-resistant reeds and hiked down to the eroded stream bank as a crew of students who’ve been measuring salinity in streams across the region prepared to test for electrical conductivity, a gauge of how many charged salt ions are in the water.
Some days, when it’s dry out, the tests show conductivity comparable to Gatorade, 450 milligrams of sodium per liter. On others, it climbs to the level of a cup of instant ramen, 1,820 milligrams of sodium per liter.
Kaushal, 47, has been sounding alarms about the rising concentrations of salt in the water for nearly 20 years.
His research papers have shown higher levels of salt in streams in urban areas, where roads and parking lots act as funnels for storm runoff into streams.
The studies have shown how human waste is also an increasing contributor as the sodium and chloride it contains passes through water treatment plants — along with the salts in water softeners, lawn care products and detergents.
And they’ve detailed how salt ions strip away metals inside those pipes and in stream soils, creating “chemical cocktails” that — along with the salt itself — can kill plant life, insects and stream invertebrates, driving away the fish that consume them.
Last September, Kaushal and his team produced another paper finding that freshwater salinization syndrome has begun to undermine the effectiveness of multimillion-dollar stream restoration projects to reduce the flow of pollutants entering the Chesapeake Bay.
With finding after finding, Kaushal has been like a protagonist in an ecological disaster film, unable to get enough people to listen amid while the signs of a looming crisis surface everywhere, including in his own Chevy Chase neighborhood in 2015, when brownish manganese-enriched water started flowing.
Welcome to Salt City, where cars, sidewalks and shoes bear winter's briny crust
The invasion of salt on freshwater sources “has led to ancient civilizations collapsing," he said, citing the downfall of Mesopotamia nearly 4,000 years ago. "It affects our food, our drinking water, our air, even.”
Once algae-pocked emblems of water pollution during the early 1970s, the Potomac River and the Occoquan Reservoir — the two sources of drinking water used by Fairfax Water to serve more than 2 million customers in Northern Virginia — are now trending in the wrong direction on salt while the other contaminants have largely been cleaned up.
The concentrations of sodium in Potomac water drawn in Loudoun County have crept up from about 10 milligrams per liter in 1996 to nearly 16 milligrams per liter this year, with occasional spikes above the Environmental Protection Agency’s advisory level of 20 milligrams for people with high blood pressure.
In the reservoir, sodium concentrations are now consistently above that threshold and, on some days, above the 60 milligrams per liter mark the EPA says is the high threshold at which some people notice a taste difference in the water, according to Virginia Tech’s Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory.
Concentrations of chloride — which can be toxic to aquatic life and, in high doses, cause high blood pressure and kidney problems in humans — have also trended upward in both waterways.
The EPA does not have standards regulating sodium in drinking water or streams. For aquatic life, the federal water quality standard for consistent levels of chloride is 230 milligrams per liter.
So far, that level has not been exceeded in any of the region’s drinking water sources, though area streams and rivers often show amounts that are far higher when road salt is used during the winter, researchers say.
The trends may be “the canary in the coal mine” indicating the approach of a more worrisome “tipping point,” said Stanley Grant, director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory.
Beyond that irreversible mark “is a really bad point to start planning,” said Grant, whose lab has been studying pollution in the reservoir for 50 years.
“It’s not that the sodium levels, for example, that are currently in the reservoir are particularly problematic,” Grant said. “It’s the fact that you see that trend upward.”
For the most part, efforts to raise public awareness have focused on reducing the amount of salt-based de-icers used on roads during cold weather, a step already taken by public works departments responsible for road upkeep.
Area officials are also urging neighborhood associations and businesses — who are wary about being sued if someone slips on ice on their property — to use salt judiciously.
Fairfax County issues corrective action notices, with as much as $32,500 in penalties if the recipient is a repeat offender. Since that effort began in 2019, the county has doled out 52 such notices, though nobody has been fined, county officials said.
“We’re putting down a little too much because we’re being overcautious," said Martin Hurd, a Fairfax County environmental protection specialist. “People don’t really make the connection that it has these downstream effects.”
Residents gathered at a recent Prince William County Board meeting, eager to share their anger over plans to convert farmland in the Gainesville area into 2,100 acres of computer data centers.
Most of them live in Heritage Hunt, a 1,863-home neighborhood near the site that was also once farmland and is now a significant contributor of salt to the Occoquan watershed.
They and environmental groups have seized on the argument that new data centers — and roads and parking lots — would have devastating impacts to the watershed by adding urban runoff to the slice of protected agricultural land known as the “Rural Crescent.”
As data centers bloom, a century-old African American enclave is threatened
Many data centers also use water to keep their machines cool, producing sodium-enriched wastewater that flows into sewers, though the industry has been shifting toward more eco-friendly cooling systems.
“Why jeopardize the environmental balance it provides to the watershed of Northern Virginia?” Chuck Zumbaugh, one resident, told the county board at the meeting.
The proposal is part of an ongoing assessment of the overall land use plan in Virginia’s second-largest county as it seeks to accommodate more growth and, in the process, become a major economic hub in the Washington region. The $8.4 billion data center industry is one route to that goal, considered easy money as far as tax revenue goes, given that the mammoth structures require few county services while the 33 data centers already in the county contribute $79 million to the annual budget.
Fairfax Water has been monitoring those discussions, sending a letter to the county in May that urged officials to incorporate “a rigorous evaluation of the potential impacts" to the Occoquan watershed.
It’s part of an evolving watchdog role the water utility has taken on as the rural buffer zone around the reservoir — itself lined by homes with commanding views of the water — steadily disappears.
The rapid growth of the tech industry in the region factors into that role more frequently.
In 2019, Fairfax Water saw a surge in sodium entering the reservoir from one source: Micron Technologies, Inc., a global computer chip manufacturer whose $3 billion expansion of its plant in Manassas is expected to generate 1,100 high-skilled jobs by 2030.
Micron, which uses sodium while washing its chips, discharges 2.3 million gallons of wastewater per day, accounting for 14 percent of the sodium in the treated water entering the reservoir. As part of the expansion, Micron plans to increase that amount by 70 percent.
Fairfax Water discovered that the concentrations of sodium in Micron’s output had also jumped, to 140 milligrams per liter from 100 milligrams per liter, which itself was nearly 40 percent higher than years before.
The tech company initially ignored the utility’s requests to reduce its sodium discharge, angering Fairfax Water board members and employees, according to a recording of a 2019 board meeting.
“Our customers are going to taste this if we don’t do something now,” a Fairfax Water employee told the board during the meeting.
After some back and forth — including a complicated proposal to allow Micron to continue at the higher levels during rainier weather — the company agreed to return to 100 milligrams per liter. That took effect in October, a Micron spokeswoman said.
Though resolved, the episode illustrates the various economic pressures now placed on drinking water sources in the region, said Phil Allin, chair of Fairfax Water’s board.
“It’s a valuable resource and it’s something that we can’t screw up,” he said about the reservoir.
But the demand for more development is pressing.
And it’s not just new industry. Like the rest of the Washington region, Prince William is trying to cultivate more affordable housing. A shift toward larger suburban homes with more space prompted by the coronavirus drove up prices in an already expensive housing market. In the spring, inflation further drove up prices, leaving many homes out of reach to thousands of lower-to-middle-income families.
Several supervisors on Prince William’s Democratic controlled board see the 117,000-acre Rural Crescent as a logical place to put some new homes and businesses — including, possibly, data centers — after other, more densely populated areas of Prince William have been built out.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to build more homes and I’m pretty sure it’s going to create these salt runoffs,” Supervisor Victor S. Angry (D-Neabsco) said near the end of the meeting.
“On the other hand, I have folks who deserve a slice of their paradise, their own home, in these locations," he said. "And we’re going to do that. It’s a tough decision.”
Bulldozers rumbled at the construction site of a development in Fairfax City that, along with 50 townhouses, will feature a 200-unit senior living facility, part of a separate demand for housing as the region’s elderly population continues to grow.
About 50 yards away, an eroding sliver of Accotink Creek was covered by algae blooms and other signs of urban runoff as a few tiny minnows darted past where a culvert will cover the stream as part of the development.
The creek and its surrounding Accotink watershed, which has lost a significant portion of insects and invertebrates that are fundamental to healthy waterways, is the only one in the Washington region that is being regulated for particles found in winter salt, specifically chloride.
The success of that effort — which focuses on best practices for handling road salt, in part through requirements linked to storm sewer system permits — could be a guide for future regulation of streams.
Researchers argue the need for more regulation is becoming urgent, though they acknowledge that it could be costly for local agencies and complicated in urban areas that have competing needs surrounding economic development and social equity.
“It’s a wicked problem, man, because you’ve got all these different factors coming into play,” said Grant, whose lab is embarking on federally funded research that, in part, will look at how much sodium in drinking water people can live with — data that will inform discussions on ways to change consumer behaviors with respect to salt.
More research is needed to better determine how bad of an impact the salt is having, said Will Isenberg, a specialist focusing on watershed and ecology issues at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
“Something that we and other states have been requesting of the EPA is to raise the priority of freshwater salinization so that we can have that kind of information,” he said. “If it’s determined that a water quality standard is necessary for whatever ion, then we can weave that into our regulatory programs.”
An EPA spokesperson said the agency is in the process of updating its aquatic life criteria for chloride, informed by the latest research on salt ions.
With the Accotink, Virginia’s DEQ decided to create a “total maximum daily load”, or TMDL, limit for chloride after a federal judge ruled in a 2012 lawsuit against an EPA effort to regulate for the flow of urban runoff damaging streams.
Fairfax County and the Virginia Department of Transportation — who both sued the EPA over the issue — argued it would be unreasonably expensive and impractical to try to control the flow of storm water.
After years of study and community dialogues over the chloride TMDL, it is just beginning to be implemented, DEQ officials said.
Currently, chloride levels in the creek range from minimal amounts at some sites to as many as 2,500 milligrams per liter in others, according to data provided by DEQ.
Whether a TMDL for chloride or any other salt ion will be created for other streams with rising salinity depends on how well those bottom-dwelling insects, worms and mollusks fare, which could take several years to know, environmental officials and groups addressing the problem say.
“It’s a problem that has been a long time in the making, so it’s going to take a long time to turn around,” said Steven Bieber, who oversees the water quality program at MWCOG. “And a lot of effort to turn it around.”
In the meantime, the signs of mounting stress to stream life continue.
Virginia neighborhood's Confederate street names spurs fight
Katy Johnson recalled how, in the portion of the creek behind her Fairfax City home, the song of Cope’s Gray Tree frogs — dependent on aquatic life in the stream — once filled the night every summer.
The frogs, sensitive to salt, are gone now, said Johnson, a volunteer with the Friends of Accotink Creek restoration group.
“I really miss those frogs,” she said. | 2022-08-08T10:10:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Salt in fresh water sources becoming worrisome in D.C. region, experts say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/salt-sodium-water-levels-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/salt-sodium-water-levels-dc/ |
Their stories are told in “First Down,” an 11-minute documentary about their underdog team
Utah's West Granite Quakes are featured in the new documentary “First Down.” (Ricky Chavez)
Naliyah Rueckert went through a hard time after her parents split up. But at age 13 she found an outlet for her anger in an unlikely place: on a field, playing tackle football.
An all-girls full-contact tackle football league had recently started near her hometown of Midvale, Utah, and Naliyah’s mother, Renica Rueckert, thought the sport would be good for her.
“I was naturally an aggressive and angry girl, and football sparked something in me,” said Naliyah, now 19 and a community college student.
That first season, in 2015, about 50 girls registered, snapping up every spot in the league just three days after sign-ups opened, said Renica Rueckert, who played in a women’s tackle football league and helped coach her daughter’s team. The girls’ league, which was initially open to only fifth- and sixth-graders, now has more than 650 players and includes girls up through 12th grade.
“Naliyah took to football like I did,” said Rueckert, 39. “It gave her a sense of sisterhood and camaraderie. I watched my daughter grow and become strong physically and emotionally because of football.”
“I had a lot of hardships, but football became my therapy,” Naliyah added. “When I was on the field, I didn’t need to worry about what was going on at my house.”
Naliyah’s story is among many in “First Down,” an 11-minute documentary about the girls’ league team that has been making the rounds at U.S. film festivals this year.
In it, one of the players describes the team in part by saying, “We all come from backgrounds that are rough.”
Producer and director Carrie Stett said she hopes the film will challenge the belief that girls shouldn’t play football.
Stett was a Dallas Cowboys fan when she was growing up in Shreveport, La., and said she often wished that girls had the same opportunity to participate in her favorite sport.
“I played tennis in high school, but there was a wall for women when it came to football, and there is still a wall there now,” said Stett, a filmmaker in Los Angeles.
Two years ago, when she realized that June 2022 would mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX, Stett said she decided to look into how the federal civil rights law has affected girls in school sports. The 1972 law prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.
During her research, Stett learned about a Utah girl and her father who had sued several school districts in 2017 for Title IX violations, because girls’ tackle football wasn’t available as an interscholastic sport.
Brent Gordon and his daughter Sam lost their lawsuit in 2021, but Stett was intrigued by the success of the Utah Girls Tackle Football League the Gordons had started with Utah occupational therapist Crys Sacco.
Tackle football leagues for women have existed for years, but the Utah program was believed to be the first full-contact league for girls in the country when it started seven years ago, said Stett, noting that the league has three age divisions: elementary, junior high and high school.
Stett contacted the Utah league and arranged to travel to Salt Lake City in early 2020 to make a short documentary about one of the teams, the West Granite Quakes — nicknamed the Underdogs because of their losing streak.
The film was accepted into several festivals in 2021 and 2022. Outfest, the Jim Thorpe Independent Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival have already screened the film, and it will be shown later this month at the Salute Your Shorts Film Fest in Los Angeles and Cinequest in San Jose.
Stett said she is hopeful that the film will show people a window into the game and the girls who play it competitively.
Youth football has become a controversial sport, as many parents have not allowed their children to play for fear of head injuries. Last year, legendary former quarterback Brett Favre warned parents not to let their children play tackle football before age 14, saying youth football can greatly increase kids’ risk of eventually developing the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE.
Tackle football injuries, including concussions, top the list of injuries in high school sports, and a 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that youth tackle football athletes had 23 times more significant head injuries than flag football players.
Stett said that shouldn’t be a reason for girls not to play.
“Yes, there are injuries, but like boys, the girls are taught proper tackle techniques,” she said. “A risk of concussion has never stopped football. Why should that be an excuse not to play the game?
“My goal is to help raise awareness about the need to have more equality in sports,” Stett added. “Football is an outlet for young girls to feel empowered and have a community, and why shouldn’t they?”
For years, girls have played on boys’ teams in high school and a few have played tackle football in college. Olympic soccer player Carli Lloyd attended a Philadelphia Eagles training camp in 2019 and said earlier this year she she’s open to opportunities to kick for an NFL team.
But for the most part, female players can’t take their football aspirations beyond the Women’s National Football Conference — a nonpaying league with 18 teams that was founded in 2018.
“To have a successful pro system, you need a feeder system,” said Stett. “You need girls who grow up playing. That’s why we need more leagues like the one in Utah.”
For the girls on the West Granite Quakes team, football became more than a sport.
In “First Down,” several high school members of the team talk about personal challenges they have faced, from difficult home lives to body image issues and a feeling of not belonging.
One girl identified as Giselle says in the film that she went home and cried after her first practice with the team because she had finally found a place where she felt her weight and body was accepted.
Another player, Liz, talks about how football helped her forget, at least temporarily, the daily frustrations she endured while she was growing up poor in what she called a “house of eviction.”
On the football field, the teens found a way to channel their anger and learned how to work together, Stett said.
“They’re from an area of town that is challenged, and they don’t have many of the same opportunities as some of the other girls in the league,” she said. “But on the field, they could leave all that behind.”
She said she also found inspiration in Sacco, the occupational therapist and league co-founder and coach. During filming, Sacco was in the process of transitioning from female to male.
Sacco, 40, said he was initially terrified to tell the team that he had changed his first name to Crys.
“They embraced who I am, and we moved on to focusing on football,” he told The Washington Post. “When I first took on this team, they hadn’t won a single game or scored a single touchdown. But one day at a time, we built up their confidence.”
Although the girls featured in the documentary have graduated from high school and are no longer on the team, Sacco is now coaching a new crew of players, including Lilliana Knotek, 15.
Lilliana’s father, Allen Knotek, is a single father who has helped coach the West Granite Quakes.
“Lilli definitely gets banged up in football — everything from cuts and scrapes, bruises and cleat marks on her legs,” said Knotek, 36.
“After a game in April, she came home like that, then went to the prom four hours later,” he said. “But she loves football as much as I do, and I’m her biggest fan.”
Lilliana said that practicing her tackle moves in the front yard with her dad is among her favorite activities.
“We practice for hours and I love it,” she said. “Some people were surprised at first when I started playing football — they thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it or that I’d get hurt.”
“I proved them wrong, and I’d really like to be on a national team someday,” she added.
Naliyah Rueckert said she can relate.
Her mom was a linebacker for the Utah Falconz, one of the teams in the Women’s National Football Conference.
“I want to play with the Falconz,” Naliyah said. “Just like my mom.” | 2022-08-08T10:19:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'First Down' film tells story of Utah girls' tackle football team - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/08/utah-girls-tackle-football-documentary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/08/utah-girls-tackle-football-documentary/ |
Motorcyclist dies after crash in Dumfries
Police said a 46-year-old motorcyclist died Sunday after a crash in Dumfries, Va.
The incident happened just after 11 a.m. near Route 1 and Allen Dent Road, according to Prince William County police.
Authorities said the driver — who was later identified as Jason A. Whitaker of Quantico — was headed south on Richmond Highway in “an apparent reckless manner,” according to several witnesses. As Whitaker headed to the intersection, he ran a red light and hit an SUV before he fell off the motorcycle, slid into the intersection and struck a pickup truck, police said.
He was taken to a hospital, where he later died. Four people in the SUV were taken to a hospital as a precaution, police said, and later released. The truck driver was not hurt. | 2022-08-08T10:58:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Motorcyclist dies in crash in Dumfries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/motorcyclist-killed-dumfries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/motorcyclist-killed-dumfries/ |
Unlike most Trump-endorsed candidates, Tim Michels won’t say if he would attempt the legally impossible feat of reversing Trump’s 2020 loss.
Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, at a rally held by former president Donald Trump in Waukesha, Wis., on Friday, has refused to say whether he would try to reverse Trump's 2020 loss in the state. (Lianne Milton for The Washington Post)
WAUKESHA, Wis. — Beckoned to the stage by former president Donald Trump just days before Wisconsin’s primary for governor, Tim Michels touched on an issue important to many Republican voters in this battleground state.
“I’m telling you, we are going to have election integrity here in Wisconsin,” the construction executive assured the crowd on Friday night.
He then quickly moved on to other topics.
Michels’s profile contrasts with those of other gubernatorial hopefuls Trump has endorsed. In Pennsylvania, he picked state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), who led an effort to overturn the election in the state and was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, when the U.S. Capitol came under attack. In Arizona, Trump backed former television anchor Kari Lake as she campaigned on false claims that Trump won in 2020 and promised to change the way votes are cast and counted in the state. In Michigan, Trump endorsed former anchor Tudor Dixon after she raised her hand during a debate when asked if she believed the election was stolen. Mastriano, Lake and Dixon all won their primaries.
Victories by Mastriano, Budd show potency of Trump’s false stolen election claims in GOP
Now, Trump is banking on a different type of candidate in Wisconsin — one who won’t spell out what he would do when it comes to elections. In doing so, Trump overlooked two other major contenders: state Rep. Tim Ramthun, who has rallied behind Trump’s false assertions, and former lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who has argued the 2020 results were rigged by election officials.
At his rally in suburban Milwaukee on Friday, Trump indicated he’d made his endorsement calculation for Wisconsin based on who he believes is most capable of defeating Gov. Tony Evers (D), who for 3½ years has blocked Republican efforts to rewrite election laws.
Public polling has been scant for Tuesday’s primary, but Ramthun has distantly trailed the others, and Trump has insisted that Kleefisch cannot win in November.
“Rebecca Kleefisch does not have what it takes to beat Tony Evers,” Trump said.
Trump has also harbored a grudge against Kleefisch. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the former president in an April meeting with Michels criticized tweets about Kleefisch’s teenage daughter going to homecoming with the son of Brian Hagedorn, a state Supreme Court justice who ruled against Trump in one of his lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 results.
Changes to election rules could have implications for who wins the next presidential election in a state that is often narrowly decided. Evers told supporters recently that if a Republican beats him this fall, “we will see the elections change to the point where the legislature makes the final decision — and that should scare the living crap out of everybody in this room.”
Joe Biden beat Trump by about 21,000 votes out of 3.3 million cast in Wisconsin — a margin similar to the one that Trump enjoyed four years earlier. Courts have repeatedly ruled Wisconsin’s election was properly called for Biden, and a legislative audit and a review of votes by a conservative group found no evidence of significant fraud.
Michels’s cautious strategy reflects the 50-50 nature of Wisconsin, where candidates need the support of independent voters to win. The Republican nominee will need to capture those swing voters, as well as the segment of the Republican base that is obsessed with how the 2020 election was conducted.
The three Republicans running for governor in Wisconsin have said they want to keep in place a recent ban on most ballot drop boxes, bar nonprofit groups from making donations to help pay for elections and ensure voters can’t have someone else return their absentee ballots on their behalf. They also want, in some fashion, to get rid of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which was created by Republican lawmakers in 2015 to oversee elections and enforce voting laws.
Michels has avoided being pinned down at every turn on election matters. He has largely dodged reporters and skipped a June debate that he knew would center largely on election issues.
Of the three Republicans, Michels has been the least specific about what he wants to do with the elections commission. In May, he said that, as governor, he would force the state’s six commissioners out of their jobs so new ones could be named. Three weeks later, he changed course and said he wanted to eradicate the commission. In June, he said he would soon offer a third plan for the Wisconsin Elections Commission — but so far hasn’t. At a debate last month he said he would create what he called a “WEC 2.0” that features members from across the state.
Michels’s lack of a hard line has not gone over well with some in the Republican base.
“We’re getting rid of it and we’re going to start a new one,” Michels said of the elections commission at a conservative gathering in June. “We’re going to build it from scratch.”
The crowd was stunned.
“Wait. You’re not getting rid of it?” one man asked.
Michels reiterated that he planned to dismantle the commission and create a new one. Some in the crowd groaned.
In July, six weeks after receiving Trump’s endorsement, Michels sidestepped questions from Madison TV station WKOW about whether he would try to decertify the 2020 results, saying he would have to “see what these bills look like.” Soon afterward, Trump put pressure on Michels and noted he had left open the possibility he would seek to revoke the state’s 10 electoral votes.
“Tim Michels will win if he remains strong on the Rigged and Stolen Election. Otherwise, he has no chance,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
A day after Trump’s post, Michels put his attention on the 2020 election during a rally in the parking lot of a trucking company along Interstate 94 south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant.
“My very first priority is election integrity,” he said as his supporters sipped Miller Lite. “Everywhere I go on the campaign trail, people, the media, everybody says, ‘Tim, Tim, was the election fixed? Was the election rigged?’ I have a lot of questions, as everybody else has questions.”
In a brief interview afterward, Michels wouldn’t say whether he would try to reverse the 2020 election if he wins.
“I won’t get sworn into governor until January of 2023,” he said. “You know, that’s a long time after the 2020 election, and the 2024 election cycle will have already started. That’s what we need to focus on.”
At a debate days later, Michels said decertifying the 2020 election is “not a priority.” A week after that, during the final primary debate, he expressed more openness to decertification, saying, “I will look at all the evidence and everything will be on the table, and I will make the right decision.”
Kleefisch in an interview criticized Michels for not being clearer with voters about his views on elections, saying his dodging on the issue “might have been a chance for voters to lose trust in Michels.”
Kleefisch said there is “no clear path” to decertifying the 2020 election. She said as governor she would certify the 2024 presidential results because by then she would have changed the state’s election policies.
Kleefisch recently received the endorsement of former vice president Mike Pence, who refused to go along with Trump’s demands after the 2020 election to not count the results from Wisconsin and some other states he lost. Kleefisch in February would not answer whether she believed Trump or Pence was right in that dispute.
Like Michels, she has avoided answering some other questions about elections. In the fall she said Biden won but later declined to acknowledge that point. This spring, she declined to say whether she would have certified the 2020 results had she been governor then.
Kleefisch has insisted the 2020 election had been “rigged” because Democrats on the state elections commission prevented the Green Party candidate from getting on the ballot because the paperwork the party filed was inconsistent. Republicans had hoped the Green Party would have picked off some of Biden’s votes. But Kleefisch said she wouldn’t make up her mind on whether the election had been stolen outright until Republican lawmakers complete a stalled review of the 2020 election that they launched last year.
“I think that until we get to the bottom of what happened in 2020, and we actually have a conclusion from which we can move forward, then we need to continue to investigate the 2020 election,” she said.
She wants to disband the elections commission and gives its duties to a committee of lawmakers or the secretary of state. Unlike many other states, Wisconsin’s secretary of state has few responsibilities for elections.
At Friday’s rally in Waukesha, Trump noted Kleefisch was lieutenant governor when Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Republican lawmakers approved creating the elections commission seven years ago.
“This commission is a disaster,” Trump told the crowd. “It was created on her watch.”
Ramthun, who wants to give the elections commission’s powers to the secretary of state, is going much further than either of his opponents. At a recent news conference in the state Capitol, he said sheriffs might want to consider seizing voting machines and ballots. As he has for months, he called for invalidating the 2020 results.
“In a way, we don't know exactly the true outcome of the election,” he said, even though the results are known from the official canvass, recounts and court rulings. “So how can you certify something that is unknown? And yet it was certified. So we have to decertify that to turn that switch back off again.”
Some Republicans aren’t buying Ramthun’s talk. At the Jefferson County Fair last month, corn and soybean seed salesman Gregory Cook said he wanted the candidates to focus on pocketbook issues instead of the last election.
“Some of them are making it too much of a point,” Cook said after picking up a Kleefisch yard sign. “And no one cares. That’s my opinion. We’re past it. It’s two years ago.”
Evers in an interview said Republicans are reckless in how they’re talking about elections — especially by attacking a commission that Republicans put in place.
“The bottom line is they created it,” Evers said. “It’s been fair and safe and secure. We have a bipartisan commission — let’s let it work. And what they’re doing will cause fewer people to vote. Simple as that. And they must think that that’s to their advantage.”
At Trump’s rally Friday for Michels, speaker after speaker fired up the crowd by questioning how the 2020 election was conducted. Trump repeated his false claims about a stolen election, telling the crowd: “I ran twice, I won twice — did much better the second time than I did the first, getting millions more votes in 2020 than we got in 2016.”
But when he invited Michels to the stage, Trump barely mentioned election rules and instead talked about construction equipment and Michels’ success as a businessman.
“He’s all over the world building these big tunnels that go through incredible granite mountains,” Trump said. “I was with him, I spent more time talking about that than I did, frankly, politics. … He’s big. He’s big time, is the point. This is big stuff. The biggest in the world at what he does.” | 2022-08-08T11:07:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s pick for Wisconsin governor won’t weigh in on 2020 results - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/wisconsin-tim-michels/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/wisconsin-tim-michels/ |
Crypto’s Limp BlackRock Response Is a Clear Tell
You would think the news that Coinbase Global Inc. had entered into a partnership with BlackRock Inc. to help institutional investors manage and trade Bitcoin would energize the slumping cryptocurrency market. After all, if the world’s largest asset manager is interested in transacting in Bitcoin, it would mean Bitcoin and crypto in general had just been given its imprimatur. That is what the crypto folks have been looking for all along, which is some recognition that crypto is a legitimate asset class to go along with equities, fixed income, commodities and currencies.
Although Coinbase’s shares rose some 30% last week on the news, Bitcoin fell. If the partnership had happened during the crypto mania of 2019-2021, you can be sure that Bitcoin would have soared and all the crypto evangelists on Twitter would have been out proselytizing in full force, preaching to all non-believers to “have fun staying poor.” Bitcoin’s disappointing reaction is especially concerning when you consider that this was just the latest in a string of what should have been a positive development that turned out not to be a catalyst. Recall that just a few months ago Fidelity Investments said it would begin to offer Bitcoin in retirement plans for customers, and the bear market in crypto kept on going.
This year has been awful for crypto, with a couple trillion of dollars of value wiped out and the liquidation of several large hedge funds and exchanges, not to mention the resultant collateral damage in the non-fungible token, or NFT, space. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index’s 57% plunge in 2022 has dwarfed the 13% drop in the S&P 500 Index. More people are now questioning the viability and usefulness of the blockchain technology that underpins crypto.
It’s not hard to feel a bit of schadenfreude toward crypto investors these days. They were making gross amounts of money all out of proportion to their intelligence or work ethic, and sack dancing all over people in the traditional world of finance. There was a time when almost all the accounts I blocked on Twitter for their obnoxiousness had “#BTC” in their bio. They’re not exactly sympathetic characters. We had a hunch that it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. One of the central tenets of Bitcoin was that it was supposed to act as a hedge against inflation. That has turned out to be false.
The truth is that crypto should have a place in the portfolios of institutional investors. I’m not saying there should be a huge allocation, but crypto has some characteristics that make it useful for diversification purposes. (To be honest, it was much more useful for diversification purposes before it became highly correlated to tech stocks.) It doesn’t take a big imagination to come up with a scenario where crypto goes from less than 1% of the global market capitalization of all assets to 3% to 5%. That could certainly happen in the next bull cycle for crypto – and there will be another cycle. We just don’t know when.
The best thing for the crypto world would be the last thing it would ever want to see: regulation. I say this as someone who generally has a dim view of regulation. Getting rid of all the scams and the pump-and-dump schemes would make crypto a safer place to invest. Only then can it begin to attract serious institutional money rather than just dabblers. To be sure, the Securities and Exchange Commission has some things in the works, such as pushing to get crypto exchanges regulated much like traditional securities exchanges. “There’s no reason to treat the crypto market differently just because a different technology is used,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a recent video.
I follow sentiment, and conditions are so poor that I would view the adoption of a regulatory framework as the only potential positive catalyst for crypto at this point. It may be the only way to attract money into the market, because if the BlackRock-Coinbase partnership can’t get anyone excited about Crypto, then nothing will. | 2022-08-08T11:24:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crypto’s Limp BlackRock Response Is a Clear Tell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cryptos-limp-blackrock-response-is-a-clear-tell/2022/08/08/15997a6c-170a-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cryptos-limp-blackrock-response-is-a-clear-tell/2022/08/08/15997a6c-170a-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Questions loom over impact of $369 billion in new climate spending
The Inflation Reduction Act, which the Senate approved Sunday, is likely to be passed into law by the end of the week. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
In some ways, it’s a peculiar time for Congress to be heaping tax credits onto the electric vehicle industry.
Sales of electric vehicles are skyrocketing and recently hit record highs, according to Cox Automotive. General Motors, which lost access to the old U.S. tax credit for electric vehicles three years ago, has sold 70,000 plug-ins since then despite a public relations disaster involving burning batteries. Pricier Tesla has reached an annual pace of nearly 1 million car sales worldwide. And multiyear back orders have piled up for electric versions of GM’s Hummer, Volkswagen’s updated minivan and Ford’s Mustang among others.
Despite that robust business, the Inflation Reduction Act, which the Senate approved Sunday and is likely to be passed into law by the end of the week, will pump $36 billion to incentivize more electric car purchases over the next decade. It’s part of $369 billion in the bill for tax subsidies and other measures designed to speed up the clean energy transition.
A wide range of economists and energy and climate experts agree the money will be a powerful tool to reduce carbon emissions and transition America’s economy to one that contributes much less to global warming. Yet even if the federal money becomes available, a lot else will have to come to pass to make the investment pay off.
An entire supply chain of rare minerals, semiconductors, batteries and financing all have to fall into place before Americans give up their combustion engines. American consumers can only claim the full $7,500 credit for an all-electric engine if their manufacturers displace Chinese batteries by 2024 and minerals from China or other countries lacking free-trade agreements by 2025 — a threshold that automakers are warning could be impossible to meet. And China, furious right now over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, is expected to watch as the United States openly strives to liberate itself from manufacturing in the People’s Republic.
Non-financial barriers — such as local opposition to building wind and solar farms or a lack of transmission lines — must be overcome. And with roughly 40 tax credits in the legislation, some of those aimed at transforming the energy economy from automobiles to wind turbines to heat pumps will inevitably miss the mark. Some portion of those funds will be pocketed when they aren’t entirely needed — many companies have promised to transition to clean energy irrespective of federal policy.
And some money will go to projects that never materialize or fail altogether. The 2009 stimulus bill, the largest investment in clean energy before the new bill, created a clean energy loan program that infamously funded the failed solar start-up Solyndra, which became an embarrassment for the Obama administration. And it poured billions of dollars into a light-rail system in California that has still not come to fruition.
“It’s very hard to try to target incentives to activities that wouldn’t otherwise happen,” said N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard University economics professor and chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. “Some dollars are wasted, but that’s the nature of government subsidies.”
Proponents argue that the money in the bill will help overcome these many potential obstacles.
“The tax incentives are good because we know that they work,” said Matt Casale, director of environmental campaigns at U.S. PIRG, a public interest group. “They do a good job of moving that investment forward and leveraging that investment.”
The electric vehicle benefits are a good illustration of these dynamics. Existing tax law provides $7,500 tax credits for each of the 200,000 electric vehicles made by an individual manufacturer. After that, the credits are phased out for that manufacturer over the course of a year. If GM’s customers since April 2019 got the full tax credit, they would have received $200 million to $300 million for doing something they did anyway.
But the Inflation Reduction Act would sweeten the pot, with the government extending the full $7,500 tax credit through 2032 while scrapping the 200,000 unit ceiling, which has already affected Tesla, GM and Toyota. For more modest income earners, the tax credit will be refundable, meaning that regardless of the buyer’s income, the purchase price reflects the full tax credit. That won’t matter for buying Teslas, which generally sell in the $65,000 range, but GM is offering the Bolt for less than $30,000.
GM and other major carmakers say they have ambitious plans for increasing electric vehicle sales, plans that are essential if the United States is to meet its climate change targets. Bolt’s 2021 sales number set a record, but it still came to a measly 24,827 — about a seventh of 1 percent of all the cars sold in the United States last year.
Looking to 2030, by comparison, GM is investing $15.7 billion to convert much of its entire fleet to electric vehicles — and it’s counting on Congress for a boost.
“The reason why these types of policies are so important is because it is an accelerator of EV adoption,” said Matt Ybarra, a GM spokesman.
The Inflation Reduction Act would cover a much broader array of projects than simply EVs. One of the bigger items in the bill, a $44 billion production tax credit, would promote wind, solar, battery storage and hydrogen technologies. Other credits totaling about $9 billion would spur the installation of efficient heat pumps and electric stoves. Credits that have been extended every two years will now last a decade, increasing certainty about the future.
In a number of cases, the Inflation Reduction Act aims to accelerate efforts already underway.
For example, the bill demands that the oil and gas industry either captures leaks of methane, a very harmful greenhouse gas, or pays a hefty fee for failing to do so. But much of the industry has already agreed to abide by proposed regulations clamping down on methane leaks.
The legislation also could accelerate investments in massive renewable energy projects that major energy companies are already pursuing. Production tax credits worth about $30 billion are designed to accelerate U.S. manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical minerals processing. The investment tax credit would provide $10 billion more to build clean technology manufacturing facilities.
Even as energy giants BP and Shell continue to drill for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, they along with Equinor, another major energy firm, are among those companies now funding the construction of wind turbines in waters off New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York.
“I have one client looking at Texas and New Mexico. Having this extension will help them make that decision, and they will be able to pull the trigger,” said Devin Hall, a tax partner at the law firm Crowe dealing with big energy companies.
Yet even with this new federal support, other barriers might stand in the way.
Off the Atlantic coast in the New York area, developers must deal with “local opposition from certain communities and fishing groups, the need for interconnection and transmission upgrades, and the usual array of commercial, technical, legal, and financial hurdles that accompany billion-dollar infrastructure projects, particularly those that involve installation of towers the size of a Manhattan skyscraper at sea,” Carl Valenstein and Jonathan Wilcon, lawyers at Morgan Lewis, wrote in an analysis in December.
The pair said that under the Jones Act, only U.S. ships can be used for trade within U.S. borders, making it difficult to tap more advanced European vessels.
The oil and gas industry is also interested in other provisions, especially the generous tax provision for projects that would capture carbon — and store or use it. The tax credit would provide $85 a ton to bury the carbon dioxide underground, $60 a ton for utilization or injection for enhanced oil recovery, and $180 a ton for capturing directly from the air.
The act would also bestow $30 billion to the nuclear industry by providing tax credits to the owners of existing reactors — not to incentivize them to do something, but to just stop them from closing down, as many have threatened to do. The United States has 92 reactors, but seven have closed in the past decade, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“We continue to review the provisions, but a significant and positive impact of the act will be the production tax credit for nuclear that would help preserve the long-term operation of New Jersey’s and our nation’s largest source of carbon-free power generation,” said Marijke Shugrue, spokeswoman for PSEG, a large New Jersey-based utility that owns half interest or more of five reactors.
The new legislation would also establish a federal “green bank” with $27 billion to use for loans to energy-related projects, including solar, wind, battery storage and much more. That money could be leveraged three to four times, extending its influence to $75 billion to $100 billion of projects.
Not all of those work out. A $535 million loan to Solyndra was lost after the solar panel company went bankrupt, one of a handful that failed, prompting intense scrutiny from Congress. But overall the Energy Department under Obama received far more in interest payments than the sum lost by those failures.
On balance, while private capital has already been flowing into clean energy projects, many projects have been unable to nail down financing. Reed Hundt, co-chair of the Coalition for Green Capital, whose network of 20 state and local green banks has an unfunded backlog of $21 billion.
Those include scores upon scores of projects, including a new public bus fleet in the Washington-Montgomery County-Virginia region; geothermal projects to help lithium extraction in the Salton Sea; efficient affordable housing in Texas; and $20 million to replace and electrify the heating systems in 924 units of a World War II-era housing development near an immigrant community that was rezoned.
“Investment is moving in this direction,” said Jeffrey Schub, the former executive director of the Coalition for Green Capital. “If time wasn’t of the essence, we wouldn’t need a green bank. But we need to speed up the clock. It’s a question of putting our foot on the gas and moving more money in this direction.”
The geothermal firm Dandelion Energy is also eager for the reconciliation bill to be adopted.
“It’s going to benefit us — a lot,” said Michael Sachse, Dandelion’s chief executive, who has been in talks with Lennar, the nation’s second-largest home builder and an investor in Dandelion. “Suddenly all the math makes sense.”
The legislation would increase the amount of tax credits for geothermal investors and it would extend the time period to 10 years, similar to credits available for solar projects. A home builder or other investor can pay for the geothermal system and lease it back to home buyers, who will end up paying a fixed fee that would be less than they would have paid for air conditioning.
Sachse said Dandelion has installed geothermal in about 600 homes this year and plans to double the pace next year.
But even with tax credits, transforming the U.S. economy and bringing climate change measures to millions of purchasing decisions isn’t so easy. Installing geothermal in existing homes can be difficult because drilling equipment is large and can’t squeeze in. Currently, geothermal provides less than 1 percent of U.S. energy capacity, the Energy Department said, and 90 percent of projects are in Nevada or California.
Matt Casale and his wife are logical customers for the sort of energy efficiency measures and tax breaks that lie at the heart of the proposed legislation. Through his work, Casale is an advocate for heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles and energy efficiency for buildings.
“I’ve been trying to do this with my own home,” Casale says. “We’re penciling out the numbers.” The kitchen was already electric when they moved in so buying a new electric stove was “an easy choice” and with an old roof, it seems like the right time to replace it and install solar panels.
The furnace, while old, is not broken. “We’re expecting it to go in the next two years, so we’re planning to go in for a heat pump then,” Casale said. That will cost them anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 — without the new federal tax credits. That is still “a big purchase,” Casale said, and “one of the challenges for people, is that it’s a system you don’t replace often.”
For rooftop solar, they’ve received estimates around $40,000. “Our roof is pretty old,” he said. “Those financials look to be penciling out nicely.”
But after all of those investments, Casale plans on waiting a few years before switching to an electric vehicle and getting a charging plug at home. “So, we’re not yet all electric, but we’ve made a road map for how to get there,” he said. | 2022-08-08T11:24:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will the climate package in Congress help those who need it? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/08/will-climate-package-congress-help-those-who-need-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/08/will-climate-package-congress-help-those-who-need-it/ |
Experts say potential benefits depend on a number of factors, including how people choose to spend the extra time off
Numerous studies over the years have documented a link between fewer working hours and lower emissions. (iStock/Washington Post Illustration )
It’s what you might call a “potential triple-dividend policy, so something that can benefit the economy, society and also the environment,” said Joe O’Connor, chief executive of the nonprofit group 4 Day Week Global. “There are not many policy interventions that are available to us that could potentially have the kind of transformative impact that reduced work time could have.”
Over the years, studies have documented a link between fewer working hours and lower emissions — reductions that experts explain may be the result of changes to commuting, energy use and lifestyle habits. One analysis of data looking at more than two dozen countries from 1970 to 2007 predicted that if work hours were reduced by 10 percent, there could be drops in ecological footprint, carbon footprint and carbon dioxide emissions by 12.1 percent, 14.6 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively.
For instance, reducing working hours could affect people’s lives outside of work, said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He suggested this kind of change could lead people toward more environmentally friendly habits. “They become used to a different lifestyle that’s a lower consumption lifestyle because they have more time.”
But those benefits would depend on a number of factors, experts emphasize, including how people choose to spend nonworking time. It’s also critical, they said, to remember that reducing working hours is just one strategy to combat climate change.
“There’s no one arguing that the four-day workweek is a silver bullet that will address all of our environmental concerns in one go — far from it,” O’Connor said. “But can it be a very powerful enabler and a very powerful contributor? I think absolutely it can.”
Nobody wants to be in the office on Fridays
Commuting and travel
In 2020, the transportation sector accounted for about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Global emissions plunged an unprecedented 17 percent during the coronavirus pandemic
According to a 2006 paper, if the United States adopted European work standards, the country would consume about 20 percent less energy. And if Europeans gave up those shorter workweeks, the authors wrote they would “consume some additional 25 percent more energy.”
For example, if an entire workplace shuts down on the fifth day, that would help lower consumption — less so if the office stays open to accommodate employees taking different days off. Energy consumption could also increase overall if people spend their day off at home or elsewhere doing activities that would use more resources than if they were at work.
“The majority view coalesces around the idea that intense working often leads to intense living,” O’Connor said. “By offering people additional time back, you’re enabling people to have more time to make sustainable life choices.”
One theory, Schor said, is that people who work more and have less free time tend to do things in more carbon-intensive ways, such as choosing faster modes of transportation or buying prepared foods. “Convenience is often carbon-intensive and people opt for convenience when they’re time-stressed.”
“When we talk about the four-day workweek and the environment, we focus on the tangible, but actually, in a way, the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible,” O’Connor said. “It’s in the shift away from a focus on hard work to a focus on smart work. It’s the cultural change in how we work and the impact that could have on how we live, and I think that that’s the piece that’s really revolutionary.” | 2022-08-08T11:24:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How a 4-day workweek could benefit the environment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/08/4-day-workweek-environment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/08/4-day-workweek-environment/ |
How theater veteran Nova Y. Payton would spend a perfect day in D.C.
Nova Y. Payton isn’t one to shy from daunting roles. The D.C. theater veteran has played Effie White, the “Dreamgirls” character that won Jennifer Holliday a Tony and Jennifer Hudson an Oscar, several times onstage. She was set to star in Signature Theatre’s production of “Mamma Mia!” as Donna, the role immortalized on-screen by Meryl Streep, in 2020 before the pandemic intervened. Last fall, she joined the cast of “Into the Woods” as the Witch — a part famously inhabited by Bernadette Peters onstage and, again, Streep on-screen — at Austin’s Zach Theatre.
Next up for Payton: the role of Celie in “The Color Purple,” running Aug. 16 to Oct. 9 at Signature Theatre. After Whoopi Goldberg starred in the acclaimed 1985 film, LaChanze played the part in the 2005 stage musical and Cynthia Erivo stepped in for the rousing 2015 Broadway revival, Payton will play the protagonist in Alice Walker’s decades-spanning tale of subjugation, perseverance and self-discovery in the American South.
“How do you put your own stamp on something that’s been done so beautifully by some amazing people?” says Payton, 42. “The only thing I can come up with is just being honest with it and finding my truth in her and creating my whole journey throughout this story. So it’s exciting to do, it’s challenging — I love a good challenge — but also, at the same time, it’s a little scary.”
There’s nothing to fear, of course, on Payton’s theoretical perfect day, which the Fort Washington resident spends zipping around the D.C. area with her 13-year-old son, Micah, and 4-year-old daughter, Minah.
I’m a mom of two, so I would start the day by wrangling in my kiddos, as I love to call them. My kids always have things to do, so the first thing I’d do is take my daughter to her ice skating lessons at the Tucker Road Ice Rink in Fort Washington. I’m not a coffee person — I’m more of a tea and smoothie person — so I would stop at Tropical Smoothie Cafe and get the avocolada smoothie, with the spinach and kale pack and no turbinado.
From there, we’d take my son to his basketball practice and then go have lunch. I thought long and hard about my dream meal, and it’s definitely shrimp and grits from Milk & Honey Cafe. It’s so good. Another one of my favorites is Bob & Edith’s Diner, which I love because you can get breakfast, lunch or dinner — it doesn’t matter. If we go there, I would do two eggs scrambled, hold the cheese, with turkey sausage and blueberry pancakes. I also wouldn’t mind a side of grits with a little butter and cheese.
Then we’d cut across to National Harbor for a walk around the area. There’s so much to do over there — they’ve had that UniverSoul Circus recently, so I’d take the kiddos to that. Then I would drop them off at home, because I’ve had the daytime with them, and I’d go out to enjoy spending time downtown. I wouldn’t mind going to some of the museums, and I’ve really been wanting to see the Hirshhorn, so I would go there.
Next, I’d cut over to Old Ebbitt Grill and get myself a little crab cake platter for dinner. Or I would go to the food truck Garlic Sensations, which is amazing. You can get crab cakes, you can get fish and shrimp, you can get hush puppies, macaroni and cheese and string beans. I’d definitely have to walk that off, so I’d hit another museum — probably the National Museum of Natural History.
After that, I’d actually like to head in early because the nighttime downtown gets a little cray cray for me. So I’d go back home and do something outside with the kids before deciding on something to watch. I’d allow the kids — whoever’s turn it is — to pick. Minah will probably say “Sing 2” — she loves to watch that and sing over it, which is why we don’t get a chance to really hear the movie! And Micah is really into “Stranger Things.” So we’d put on one of those and end with a movie night. | 2022-08-08T11:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A D.C. Dream Day with 'The Color Purple' star Nova Y. Payton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/nova-payton-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/nova-payton-dream-day/ |
Becky Hubbard, 46, said she got an ultimatum from her doctor after Tennessee imposed new abortion restrictions: If she wanted to stay on methotrexate for disabling arthritis, she had to go on birth control despite her age and history of infertility. (Earl Neikirk for The Washington Post)
“It is frustrating as hell,” said Hubbard, a former nurse who lives in Johnson City, Tenn., now waiting to see her gynecologist.
The sudden imposition of antiabortion laws after Roe’s reversal has left patients, doctors and pharmacists wading through a minefield of treatment issues and legal and ethical dilemmas related to women’s health care — even in situations like Hubbard’s that have nothing to do with pregnancy.
“Methotrexate is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Traci Poole, a practicing pharmacist and faculty member at Belmont University College of Pharmacy in Nashville. “If you are of childbearing age, are you going to be denied medications that could potentially interfere with a pregnancy?”
There are no reliable estimates of how many women like Hubbard may have had their treatment regimens affected under the spate of new abortion bans. But some patient advocates say they have received dozens of reports from people encountering obstacles in the weeks since Roe’s reversal.
“We were surprised at the sheer number of complaints from people with arthritis and autoimmune conditions who were having problems filling prescriptions for methotrexate after the Dobbs decision,” said Steven Newmark, director of policy and chief legal officer for the Global Healthy Living Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people with chronic diseases.
The group is now attempting to check those accounts, submitted through Creaky Joints, its digital forum for people with arthritis and their caregivers. Newmark said the group has also reached out to elected officials to try to clarify state policies — so far with no success. He said he would be surprised if even those with strong antiabortion views would not want to protect people living in pain.
“Trigger laws should not be impacting chronically ill patients in need of medication,” he said.
Doctors and pharmacists acknowledge being blindsided by the speed of the changes to state laws and say they are making changes to their practices to protect against liability. Major pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens, for instance, are instructing employees to make extra checks to validate that prescriptions will not be used to terminate pregnancies and delaying filling them until their intended use is confirmed.
Civil rights and women’s advocates denounce many of these changes, questioning whether they may violate federal protections against discrimination on the basis of sex or disability. The issues are particularly disturbing, they say, since women are far more likely than men to have autoimmune diseases, and to be treated for conditions ranging from acne to anxiety and depression.
“We are seeing the spillover effects of Dobbs,” said Usha Ranji, associate director for women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on health policy. “The impact is going to fall hard on women.”
Antiabortion activists, for their part, reject that view. They say they’re troubled by accounts like Hubbard’s because they never intended to restrict drugs like methotrexate to women with chronic health conditions.
“Intent is the key here,” Glenn said. “If you’re a rheumatologist, you’re not doing abortions. If you’ve never prescribed methotrexate for abortion, you’re free to continue prescribing it as you were.”
For Hubbard, Roe’s reversal has been life-changing. Before Tennessee’s “heartbeat” ban blocked most abortions in the state, she said her doctors had no problem treating her with methotrexate even though she wasn’t taking birth control.
But most of all, she hates the idea of going off methotrexate, an extraordinarily effective anti-inflammatory taken by nearly 60 percent of all rheumatoid arthritis patients, according to the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center.
“It is the gold standard for almost every rheumatological or autoimmune disease that affects the connective tissue, especially the joints,” said Fehmida Zahabi, a rheumatologist in the north Dallas area and president of the State of Texas Association of Rheumatologists.
The drug has gained notoriety for other uses as well. Methotrexate is specifically named in several abortion bans because at a higher dose, it has been used to induce abortions and also to end ectopic pregnancies when an embryo implants outside the uterus — a dire situation in which the fertilized egg cannot survive and must be removed to avoid life-threatening complications for the mother.
What Hubbard knows is that a treatment regimen featuring methotrexate enabled her to resume her life after her arthritis had become so crippling she had to stop working as a nurse. Although she began taking the medication in 2014, it has taken years of trial and error to find the right combination and dosages of drugs to keep the disease from progressing. While she still can’t work full time, she said she sells crafts that she makes at home and is able to spend more time with her adopted 14-year-old son.
She said she fears that without methotrexate, her pain would take over her life again. “If you can’t get the medicine that gets you out of the flares, you just have to live with the pain.” Hubbard said. “It’s awful.”
Newmark, the patient advocate, noted that the difference between taking medication and not for those with severe rheumatoid arthritis “is the difference between living normally and writhing in pain in bed.” Switching to another treatment is not simple, either, he added, because patients often spend years experimenting to find the right combination of drugs to keep their diseases in check.
Hubbard’s doctor declined to comment for this story, saying he could not discuss an individual patient’s treatment.
“Physicians have been placed in an impossible situation — trying to meet their ethical duties to place patient health and well-being first, while attempting to comply with vague, restrictive, complex, and conflicting state laws that interfere in the practice of medicine and jeopardize the health of patients,” Jack Resneck, Jr., president of the American Medical Association, told federal lawmakers on July 19.
The American College of Rheumatology assembled a task force last month to try to assess the scope of the problem, said Kenneth Saag, the group’s president. “There is concern … that one of the unintended consequences is that patients are going to have reduced access to this medicine and other medicines,” he said.
Physicians are also worried about their potential liability from antiabortion laws that took effect virtually overnight in some states following the high court’s decision, said Saag, director of the division of clinical rheumatology the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
They’re also concerned about the ramifications of accidental pregnancies. While doctors prescribing drugs such as methotrexate routinely talk to their patients about the importance of birth control, he said, unintended pregnancies occur, posing distressing questions for doctors and patients.
“Some women have elected historically to consider pregnancy termination” in such situations, he said. “In some places, that may no longer be an option.”
Anxious patients
As doctors balance their liability against their patients’ needs and medical standards of care, women who depend on such drugs say they feel frightened and anxious about whether they will be able to obtain their next refill.
“Things went down south really fast,” said Eby, now 26. She developed inflammation in her eyes, which led to cataracts. The medicine that stopped her eyes from deteriorating further was methotrexate.
“Your health can deteriorate rapidly and also permanently,” if you stop taking methotrexate, Eby said. “My vision damage was permanent.”
Eby said she takes birth control, but her doctors also recently added a pregnancy test to the routine lab work she has to undergo every three months to stay on the medication — a change that coincided with Texas’s increasingly strict abortion restrictions.
“They hadn’t done that before,” Eby said.
“It’s not safe to just cold-turkey stop,” said lupus patient Becky Schwartz, 27, who lives in Tysons, Va.
She said the firm that owns her rheumatologist’s practice put a temporary pause on methotrexate prescriptions in July as it evaluates the laws that took effect after the Supreme Court’s decision, although Virginia has not imposed new abortion restrictions.
But the date her prescription runs out looms big. “I will have no meds left come September,” she said.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision, pharmacists, who have liability for prescriptions they dispense, also have been scrambling to figure out how to respond.
“It becomes a huge problem if we see patient on Thursday or Friday and we don’t get the pharmacy to call back" immediately, said Zahabi, the Dallas-based rheumatologist. “The patient can’t get treatment for three or four days, which can be agonizing.”
But Poole dismissed such concerns saying pharmacists have advocated for years for the use of such codes in the interest of patient safety; many medical offices already provide them on electronic prescriptions.
Elisa Greene, associate professor of pharmacy practice at Belmont University College of Pharmacy, noted that prescribing and filling prescriptions for drugs that can cause birth defects is not a new issue. She contrasted the lack of guidance to doctors and pharmacists handling prescriptions like methotrexate with the tight regimen required by the FDA for those prescribing or dispensing Accutane — an acne treatment that can cause birth defects.
Doctors and pharmacists, along with their patients regardless of age or gender, are required to enroll in an education program about the drug’s potential dangers, she said. And female patients of childbearing age must have negative pregnancy test results before a prescription is filled.
“That requirement … is not in place for methotrexate,” Greene wrote in a text message.
Living in pain
A week ago, she fell down during her son’s birthday celebration because of the pain in her joints. “Things have definitely gotten worse,” she said. “My joints aren’t doing as well.”
Hubbard said she wishes she had the foresight to anticipate that Tennessee’s fetal heartbeat law, which took effect the day after Roe’s reversal, would have such a big effect on her own life.
“I knew there would be other things [than abortion] affected,” she said. “Never in my life did I think it would be my rheumatoid arthritis medicine.” | 2022-08-08T11:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion bans complicate access to drugs for cancer, arthritis, even ulcers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/abortion-bans-methotrexate-mifepristone-rheumatoid-arthritis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/abortion-bans-methotrexate-mifepristone-rheumatoid-arthritis/ |
A look at some medications under increased scrutiny amid abortion bans
A bottle of methotrexate pills. (Annie England Noblin/Reuters)
Since abortion bans have taken effect in many states, there is increased scrutiny on drugs that can be used to terminate pregnancies that also have other common uses, as well as on drugs for non-pregnancy-related conditions that are known to harm a developing fetus.
The list of drugs that can cause birth defects is long, including some antibiotics such as Cipro, mood stabilizers including lithium, and several medications to control arthritis, epilepsy and even acne.
Methotrexate, sold under brand names that include Xatmep and Trexall: The drug, which slows the growth of cells and inhibits inflammation, is used to treat severe rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and certain cancers of the breast, lung, head and neck, and blood. It can also be used to treat autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, lupus and multiple sclerosis. Methotrexate is given by injection to terminate ectopic pregnancies by stopping fetal cells from growing. The tissue is then reabsorbed.
Mifepristone, sold as Korlym or Mifeprex can be used to control high blood sugar in patients with Cushing syndrome who also have Type 2 diabetes. The drug also dilates the cervix and blocks the effects of progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. It can be given in pill form, along with misoprostol, for medication abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy or to complete a miscarriage.
Misoprostol, or Cytotec, can be used to prevent stomach ulcers caused by anti-inflammatory medications such as aspirin and ibuprofen. During pregnancy, it can be used to induce labor and prevent postpartum hemorrhage. The drug is given in pill form along with mifepristone to complete miscarriages and for medication abortions. It can also be used to soften and open the cervix before a surgical abortion.
Anticonvulsants: Several drugs used to prevent seizures such as phenytoin (Dilantin) and carbamazepine (Tegretol) are associated with increased risk of physical birth defects in a baby. Some epilepsy medicines can also harm the baby’s growth or development.
Isotretinoin, most commonly known as Accutane, belongs to a class of vitamin-A based dermatologic medications known as retinoids, and is used to treat severe cystic or nodular acne by decreasing the production of oily sebum on the skin. People who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant are advised not to handle the drug, which can be absorbed through the skin and lungs, or to inhale its dust, because of the severe risk to the developing fetus. However, the system for prescribing the drug is already highly regulated, including a requirement of negative pregnancy tests from patients before they can get prescriptions. | 2022-08-08T11:25:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A look at some medications under increased scrutiny amid abortion bans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/medications-abortion-methotrexate-mifepristone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/medications-abortion-methotrexate-mifepristone/ |
30 years ago, Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu made history and reshaped running
Tulu inspired a generation of Ethiopian women to become distance runners while shattering racist tropes
Perspective by Hannah Borenstein
Hannah Borenstein is an anthropologist and a Harper Schmidt fellow at the University of Chicago Society of Fellows.
Ethiopa’s Derartu Tulu leads South African Elana Meyer during her gold-medal run in the 10,000 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. (Rusty Kennedy/AP)
“It just may be perfect for some of the African runners in particular,” the announcer said 30 years ago, referencing the oppressively hot weather. On Aug. 7, 1992, the women’s 10,000-meter Olympic final took place in Barcelona. It was indeed a scorcher, but the climate was only tangential to the symbolic gendered, racial and geopolitical stakes at play.
Great Britain’s Liz McGolgan, the United States’ Lynn Jennings, South Africa’s Elana Meyer and Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu all got their close-up before the commentator declared them to be the athletes that will make up “the race.”
Tulu would go on to win an Olympic gold medal, becoming the first Black African woman to do so. Her victory would inspire an entire generation of young Ethiopian women to pursue sports, despite the odds stacked against them. But Tulu’s win reverberated even further. To many, she represented an embodied sense of global racial justice, defeating a White South African rival and cementing Ethiopia as a global powerhouse in running — and no longer just on the men’s side. Her name belongs among the greats who have shaped women’s sports around the world.
Thirty years ago, the 1992 Barcelona Olympics were poised to initiate the start of a new global era in sport. They took place less than a year after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and the end of South Africa’s apartheid law. With a burgeoning media landscape with global broadcast capabilities, stakes were especially high. When newly competing nations South Africa and Ethiopia — embodied by Meyer, who is White, and Tulu, who is Black — toed the line at the end of the Olympic Games, the race was as much about symbolic and cultural value as it was about running fast.
During the Cold War, the Games had become a site for geopolitical and international racial conflicts. For example, South Africa had been banned from competing in the 1964 and 1968 Games for refusing to condemn apartheid. In 1970, it became the first nation to be formally excluded from the modern Olympics. In 1976, when the IOC refused to ban New Zealand after its rugby team had toured in South Africa that year, 29 countries — mostly African — boycotted the Games. Ethiopia was chief among them.
Ethiopia’s participation in the Olympics had also waned over the years, mainly because of the Games’ function as a symbolic battlefield for Cold War politics. Despite having several Ethiopian men atop global sporting podiums in the 1960s, Ethiopia was largely absent between 1976 and 1992.
It was not until the 1970s that Ethiopian women began to train and compete in sports in school. Because women continued to face cultural barriers to entering elite sports, Ethiopian women had not yet been able to compete in the Games. The country was better known internationally for enduring a famine that led to mass death and coincided with a brutal civil war in the 1980s than for its athletes.
But in 1992, both Ethiopia and South Africa returned to the Olympics, and the 10,000-meter race pit them against each other: Tulu and Meyer were expected to dominate. Meyer began running in primary school, and by the age of 13, she was one of the top prospects in South Africa, slightly aided by the relative ease of participation of White athletes there. Had South Africa been permitted to compete in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games, she would have had the performances to qualify and excel. Tulu grew up in Bekoji, Ethiopia, which has since become famous as a “Town of Runners” because of its success in training star athletes. Although she seized the opportunity to run in grade school, her mother forbade her from doing so, forcing her to sneak out of the house and win local competitions in secret.
The 10,000-meter race is a long and grueling 25 laps. Often, the first half of the race is run in a big group at a relatively slow pace, with the race picking up tempo and becoming more interesting in the second half.
Ten minutes into the race in Barcelona, the commentators noted that Tulu and Meyer were probably the best “kickers” in the field, meaning they were the most skilled in sprinting at the fast pace needed late in the race. While a few athletes dropped off from the pack, not much changed for the next nine minutes. Then, all of a sudden, Meyer surged and changed the dynamic.
“All of South Africa is tuned in to their television sets because she has been voted the athlete of the year last year in that country and of course coming in here she was their one big medal hope,” the commentator noted excitedly.
Tulu was the only athlete to cover Meyer’s move. Commentators suggested she had high heat tolerance — she was wearing a white T-shirt — because she was from Africa, an overplayed trope grounded in racist assumptions about Black athletes having “natural” and “environmental” advantages in sport that diminished their hard work and achievements.
In Tulu’s case, the trope was even more wrong because she was famously from Bekoji, a town that lies at over 9,000 feet, where temperatures seldom go above 75 degrees and where grass is often covered by frost in the early mornings. Further, the Ethiopian training style and philosophy was centered on avoiding hot temperatures and the strong equatorial sun. Tulu, like nearly all Ethiopian athletes, trained at dawn and dusk in brisk conditions and would have had a hard time finding hot and humid conditions in which to train.
In the final laps of the race, Tulu displayed brilliant running strategy. Meyer urged her to take the lead with a hand wave, and Tulu would not comply. As the laps ticked away, Meyer’s form broke. She nodded her head up and down; her arms flailed with greater gusto every straightaway; her teeth began to show as her grimace grew deeper. All telltale signs of a runner on the verge of breakdown.
Tulu, by contrast, stayed stoic. Meyer tried to surge ahead, to no avail, and the commentator uttered, “She turned around to see the effect and all she saw was someone in a white T-shirt, staring down at her heels.” Then Tulu handily took the win.
After winning, Tulu draped an enormous Ethiopian flag over her body and took Meyer along with her on a victory lap. International media outlets loved the display of interracial solidarity and saw it as evidence of women asserting themselves in a sport that had treated them as lesser. One New York Times journalist declared: “African women are only now beginning to emerge as a new force in track and field, after years of cultural attitudes that discouraged athletic participation” and that “the two women, wrapped in their flags, seemed to symbolize the new Africa of multiracial sports.”
But it was also a win for Black African women. It recast the global image of long-distance female runners, which at the time had appeared as overwhelmingly White. Even though depictions of Tulu’s perceived “natural” ability and strength may have been pitted against Meyer’s wit and skill, Tulu’s ultimate victory upended expectations. It also signaled to the world that Black African women, often portrayed as docile recipients of patriarchy and racism, could rise to the top of a racist and sexist world.
Following Tulu’s victory, stories of her heroism flooded Ethiopian news and media. “Princess Derartu Goes to Barcelona for Coronation,” an Ethiopian Herald headline read. Young women heard interviews over the radio about her performance, training and upbringing and drew inspiration from that. Athletes remember seeing Tulu in the papers and cite her as a direct influence for choosing to move to Addis Ababa and pursue sports. Roundabouts, streets and buildings are named after her.
Since Tulu’s performance in 1992, an Ethiopian woman has won the 10,000-meter Olympic final all but two times, with several other countrywomen also landing on the podium. And Ethiopian women have gone on to win countless marathon and track titles. Tulu now serves as the president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation, but her Olympic win and her legacy live on in a multitude of ways; most notably, through the footsteps of hundreds of young girls training to be just like her. | 2022-08-08T11:25:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 30 years ago, Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu made history and reshaped running - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/08/30-years-ago-ethiopias-derartu-tulu-made-history-reshaped-running/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/08/30-years-ago-ethiopias-derartu-tulu-made-history-reshaped-running/ |
Air conditioning remade politics. Now, it’s key to navigating climate change.
As the planet heats up, more will depend on air conditioning to keep cool
Perspective by Joseph M. Siry
Joseph M. Siry is a professor of architectural history at Wesleyan University and author of "Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970" (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021).
A window unit in Houston on July 21. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
In much of the United States, air conditioning is fairly ubiquitous, however. The technology grew and developed here in critical ways, and helped shape the politics and history of the United States itself. Its spread across the country — early in D.C., and then across the South and Sun Belt — helped to transform the movement of Americans and regional distribution of political and economic power since World War II. This history shows how changes in the built environment have contributed to the climate crisis and points to the urgency of transforming our buildings to mitigate the effects.
This extended to Capitol Hill, where, beginning in the 1920s, Congress, after much debate, appropriated funds for the air conditioning of the U.S. Capitol and nearby House and Senate office buildings. Air conditioning transformed the annual cycle of congressional activity. Before air conditioning, a session of Congress typically lasted for less than 300 days, adjourning by the end of June for the summer. The city was largely deserted from mid-June to September, even in periods of national crisis. Yet, in years after 1938, when air conditioning became operational throughout Capitol Hill, Congress carried its sessions past 300 days and beyond the end of June, when heat waves settled over Washington. Air conditioning curtailed calls for early adjournment.
Air conditioning also transformed daily bureaucratic life in buildings such as the Pentagon, which had the world’s largest air-conditioning plant in a single structure when it opened in 1943. By the 1950s, the General Services Administration found that productivity in government offices increased by 9.5 percent when air conditioning was installed. In Washington, where peak temperatures of 106 degrees and 60 percent humidity had been recorded, air conditioning, “far from being a mere luxury,” proved “essential for normal operating efficiency of personnel.”
The experience of Washington’s many federal employees with air conditioning on the job was a key factor in raising demand for it in other settings, including department stores, theaters, hotels and other commercial sites seeking to draw more consumers.
The rationing of electric power and equipment during World War II initially slowed local adoption of air conditioning in D.C. But as early as 1942, the area’s Potomac Electric Power (Pepco) became the nation’s first summer-peaking utility, meaning that more electricity was used in summer to support air conditioning than was used in winter to power heating equipment. By 1953, Washington had more air conditioning per capita than any other American city. In 1966, about 56 percent of Pepco’s residential customers, including those in the suburbs, had air conditioning of some type; by 1981, that number had risen to nearly 90 percent.
Washington’s transformation anticipated air conditioning’s effects across the South and the Sun Belt. Its capacity to mitigate the effects of Southern climate made the South and Southwest attractive for industrial and related demographic growth, shifting economic and political power from its traditional centers on the East Coast and in the Midwest. It made intolerably hot places in the summer habitable and made some of them, from Southern California to Florida, attractive to retirees, new white-collar industries and other year-round newcomers. Improving the indoor environment with air conditioning also enabled the lengthening of the Southern school year by addressing, as one observer noted in 1946, “Unquestionably, one of the largest single obstacles to greater educational advancement in the Deep South.” That is, “the physical conditions under which the faculty and pupils must work.”
Air conditioning has not only shaped the United States, but the world as well. While it is still less widespread in Europe, it is growing there. Japan adopted air conditioning in commercial buildings in Tokyo in the 1930s, and the technology rapidly advanced there, including in homes, from 1960 to 1990. Yet in southern India there was very little air conditioning until the mid-1990s. In China in 1999, air-conditioning units were in about 20 percent of urban households; by 2007 that figure had risen to 80 percent. For equatorial nations such as Singapore and perpetually hot regions like the Persian Gulf, air conditioning has been crucial for development.
A key problem is that air conditioning has always been energy intensive. By 2000, 48 percent of the energy consumed by buildings in the United States (the largest single component) was used for comfort cooling and refrigeration. The release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from fossil fuels involved in powering air conditioning has made it central to climate change.
Its centrality both as a technology essential to global health and comfort and as a contributor to global energy demands and global warming mean that it behooves the world community to develop technologies and policies that will enable us to access this modern mechanism’s benefits while decreasing its inordinate consumption of resources and bad environmental effects.
Just as air conditioning has transformed where and how we live, efforts to mitigate the harms of climate change focus partly in how we approach our built environment. Since the late 1970s, states have recognized the importance of reducing energy consumption in buildings and have adopted policies to reduce air conditioning’s dependence on electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. In the early 21st century, the culture of green building has developed rapidly. Improved material envelopes for buildings, mechanical systems that use less energy and digital monitoring of those systems have reduced energy use. Passive house standards, net-zero carbon buildings and net-zero energy buildings are concepts that have taken hold throughout the developed world, where air-conditioning’s use is highest per capita, with an ever-broadening commitment and cooperation among building owners, architects and engineers, state and local governments and utilities to reduce building energy consumption.
The U.S. government has been active in research and development of energy-efficient buildings since the 1970s. In 2006, the GSA reported that it would use only the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System for assessing federal projects. By one account, as of 2018, the United States had decreased energy intensity in federal buildings by 50 percent since 1975. More recently, much is being accomplished through such programs as the Energy Department’s Better Buildings Initiative. And U.S. efforts are only part of a global push for green buildings, from China to Germany to Dubai, among many countries.
It has long been recognized that the climatic effects of reducing building energy use are potentially great. A 2008 report from the U.S. National Science and Technology Council claimed that even at that time, the technology existed to reduce energy consumption in new buildings by about 70 percent relative to conventional norms. | 2022-08-08T11:25:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Air conditioning remade politics. Now, it’s key to navigating climate change. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/08/air-conditioning-remade-politics-now-its-key-navigating-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/08/air-conditioning-remade-politics-now-its-key-navigating-climate-change/ |
Denny "White Rat" Roberts, left, and Brad Stevens yell over a crevasse created by the flood to home owners on the other side in Panco, Ky. Roberts and Stevens were reaching out to families that were stuck on their properties to see if there was anything they could do to help. (Photos by Jessica Tezak for The Washington Post)
By Jessica Tezak
As the waters rose last month, Brad Stevens got a flurry of calls.
His congregants were trapped, desperate for help. Unprecedented rains had caused catastrophic flooding across eastern Kentucky, washing away homes, roads and bridges. At least 37 people died, according to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D). Many more have been trapped or left without access to food and water.
“For about five hours the water was so high that you couldn’t do anything except sit back, wait and see what was going to be left behind, who made it through,” said Stevens, 44, pastor of Church of God Worship Center in Clay County.
Now, Stevens and others are turning their focus from rescue to recovery. His church has become a hub for food, water and other donations, along with an organizing center.
By the end of Friday, Sizemore’s driveway was filled in and a temporary bridge had been installed. Burley Sizemore Jr. had feared that his property would be forgotten, imperiling his family. When the bridge was completed, he wept.
Brad Stevens predicts the need for these kinds of repairs will remain high in the months ahead, as thousands of people are in need. Soon, he predicts, he’ll need to gather and distribute air compressors, nail guns and lumber as people began to repair their homes.
“Honestly at this point, I think we are at a place to where, as far as taking water, taking initial rapid-response supplies, we are sort of getting beyond that,” he said. “It’s going to take work and money to get [communities] restored. Whether it’s us or another group, that’s what’s going to be happening for a long time.”
But Stevens and others know that no matter what, community members will be here for one another. In Clay County, Tim Parks — who normally serves as the tourism director for Manchester, Ky., has been traveling the county with supplies for days. “In Eastern Kentucky, we’ll make more with less,” Parks said. “It ain’t about the money. Everybody’s hearts in it.”
Stephanie Kuzydym contributed to this report. | 2022-08-08T11:25:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After the Kentucky floods, local pastor Brad Stevens becomes a lifeline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/eastern-kentucky-flooding-roads-rebuild/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/eastern-kentucky-flooding-roads-rebuild/ |
Man sentenced to 25 years for violent anti-Asian assault at Sam’s Club
People march and hold signs during a Stop Asian Hate protest March 27, 2021, in Detroit. (Nicole Hester/Ann Arbor News/AP)
After Jose Gomez III attacked a man with a serrated knife and slashed the man’s 6-year-old son in the face at a Texas Sam’s Club in March 2020, he screamed: “Get out of America!”
Gomez pleaded guilty in February to hate-crime charges. Prosecutors say he admitted he was trying to kill the father and his child because he thought they were Chinese and blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the 21-year-old from Midland, Tex., has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, prosecutors announced Thursday.
“Hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have spiked during the pandemic and must be confronted,” Kristen Clarke, an assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “All people deserve to feel safe and secure living in their communities, regardless of race, color or national origin.”
The Sam’s Club attack came amid a spike in anti-Asian incidents during the pandemic, with nearly 11,000 reported between March 2020 and December 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks such episodes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. FBI data showed that in 2020 the number of hate crimes reached its highest level in nearly two decades, a statistic driven largely by assaults against Black and Asian people, The Washington Post reported.
The rise also came as then-President Donald Trump frequently referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and other xenophobic titles, which some advocates said stoked anti-Asian sentiment.
The Justice Department has since come under pressure to more quickly review reported hate crimes, and it announced new efforts in May, The Post reported. Department officials said at the time that they had charged more than 40 people with hate crimes and secured convictions for at least 35 of them since January 2021.
Racist anti-Asian hashtags spiked after Trump first tweeted ‘Chinese virus,’ study finds
It was March 14, 2020 — the day after a national emergency was declared — when Gomez followed the family into the Sam’s Club, believing they were Chinese and “from the country who started spreading that disease around,” according to prosecutors. He then found a serrated steak knife and bent it so that it wrapped around his fist with the blade facing outward, prosecutors said.
Gomez approached the family, which included two children ages 6 and 2, and punched the father in the face with the knife in his hand, prosecutors said. Gomez then found a larger knife, which he used to slash the 6-year-old boy in the face, causing a deep wound, according to a criminal complaint.
A Sam’s Club employee attempted to intervene and was stabbed in the leg, according to the complaint. Gomez was eventually subdued.
Gomez later admitted to wanting to kill the father and the 6-year-old because he perceived them as a coronavirus-related “threat,” prosecutors said.
Gomez, who was taken into custody the night of the attack, faced life in prison for the hate-crime charges. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Monday.
“Hate-motivated violence will simply not be tolerated in our society and every person deserves to feel safe from such vicious harm,” Ashley C. Hoff, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said in a statement Thursday. “Today’s sentence sends the message loud and clear that our office will aggressively prosecute federal hate crimes while seeking justice for victims.” | 2022-08-08T11:25:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jose Gomez III sentenced to 25 years for anti-Asian hate crime in Texas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/jose-gomez-iii-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/jose-gomez-iii-sentence/ |
By Rae Lewis-Thornton
A pharmacist prepares a dose of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine at a pop-up vaccination clinic in West Hollywood, Calif., on Aug. 3. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Rae Lewis-Thornton is an AIDS activist who has been living with HIV for 38 years and author of “Unprotected: A Memoir.”
I’ve watched the rise of monkeypox with great sadness and horror. Sadness because of all the people suffering from what can be an excruciating infection. And horror because it seems we are watching as public health officials make the same mistakes they made during the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
As HIV/AIDS surged in previous decades, the government scrambled to address the strange illness that seemed to afflict mostly men who had sex with men. In fact, it was first referred to as “gay-related infectious disease,” or GRID, and other names that resulted in people viewing it as a “gay disease” for decades.
I fear we are making the same messaging errors with monkeypox. Yes, the vast majority of cases so far are among men who have sex with men. But history has taught me that no singular community is exclusively at risk for a disease.
The near-exclusive emphasis on gay men regarding HIV/AIDS set up the public health response for failure in two respects. First, it heaped stigma, shame and blame on gay men like a truckload of garbage dumping at a waste site. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) even proposed isolating people living with the disease like a leper colony.
Second, it left other groups — especially Black and Brown women — with a false sense of security. Many women, myself included, believed that we couldn’t contract HIV. “I’m not gay, and I certainly do not have sex with gay men,” we would think. “Therefore, I am not at risk.”
By the time we learned that many men who had sex with men also had sex with women, thousands of women had contracted the virus. Black women made up the majority of AIDS cases among women in the United States. I was one of them.
Many of these women contracted the virus because of a culture known as the “down low.” That included men who lived double lives and men coming home from prison, who didn’t consider themselves gay and returned to their heterosexual relationships, with HIV in tote. Women also contracted HIV from their partners who used intravenous drugs. Additionally, about 52 percent of women contracted HIV from their own drug use. Neither had anything to do with men who had sex with men.
Even after it was understood that HIV was not exclusive to men who have sex with men, by and large the information campaign and the medical community held on to their gay-centered approach, with grave consequences for treating women living with HIV/AIDS. Some women went misdiagnosed because their symptoms didn’t match those seen in gay men with AIDS.
Even the initial definition of AIDS was shaped by how the disease presented itself in men, locking women out of critical government benefits because we didn’t meet the “criteria” of having AIDS. An HIV-infected man with recurrent candidiasis in the throat, for example, qualified for disability, while an HIV-infected woman with cervical cancer and a low T-cell count did not. The definition was finally changed in 1993 to include women, almost 12 years into the pandemic. Even when I applied for disability benefits two years after the definition was changed, with an extremely low T-cell count, I was still denied.
This is personal for me. By the time I transitioned to AIDS in 1992, we were 11 years into the pandemic and there had not been one study in the United States on women living with the disease. Steeped in misogyny, women mattered only when it came to mother-child transmission.
While there is still much we don’t know about monkeypox, unlike HIV/AIDS, it is not a sexually transmitted disease. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says it is transmitted primarily through bodily fluids; close skin-to-skin contact when a blisterlike sore is present, including cuddling, kissing and sex; and coming in contact with clothes, bed linens and towels of an infected person. That is not limited to intimacy between men. As result, public health officials warn that the virus could begin spreading more broadly.
Winston Churchill said it best: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We know from history how the medical communities’ emphasis on the health of gay men made it easier for the general public to believe that a “scary” disease was someone else’s problem. I already see it happening. People want to believe that it’s someone else’s disease until it happens to them. And the sad truth is that while humans discriminate against people, viruses do not. | 2022-08-08T11:25:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We’re making the same mistake with monkeypox that we made with HIV/AIDS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/monkeypox-hiv-aids-same-messaging-mistakes-gay-men-not-the-only-people-at-risk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/monkeypox-hiv-aids-same-messaging-mistakes-gay-men-not-the-only-people-at-risk/ |
‘The Bikeriders, 2019’, from “SCUMB Manifesto” MACK, 2022. (Justine Kurland)
There can be no mistaking the message that photographer Justine Kurland is sending with her latest book, “Scumb Manifesto” (Mack, 2022). That’s because she lays it all out on the cover, in bold all-caps letters.
“I, JUSTINE KURLAND, AM SCUMB. I THRIVE IN THE STAGNANT WASTE OF YOUR SELF-CONGRATULATORY BORING PHOTOGRAPHY. I BUBBLE UP, A RAW LIFE FORCE, MULTIPLYING FROM THE USELESS EXCREMENT OF YOUR MISOGYNYSTIC BOOKS. … YOUR TIME IS OVER OFFICER HISTORIAN. I CALL FOR THE END OF THE GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE MALE CANON, IT’S DADDY WORSHIP AND ITS MONOPOLY ON MEANING AND VALUE.”
Get the message? It’s not very subtle or demur. Why should it be? And I imagine it ruffles a lot of feathers too, as it should. Whether you agree with what Kurland is doing with this book, it is important to examine one’s heroes and, if need be, tear them down. I don’t think that should be controversial at all.
It goes without saying that throughout the history of the world, there have always been people whose ideas and voices are given more weight and authority than others. That happens because of many things — war, patriarchy, economic status. Who’s at the top of the heap? Who’s at the bottom? The answer to that question is rarely fair.
I’m only pointing out the obvious when I say that life isn’t really about being fair. Power isn’t really spread out equally. And women, people of color and the poor have been on the raw side of the deal for too many years to count.
“Scumb Manifesto” is a series of collages that Kurland made from her personal library of photobooks. In fact, she purged her photo book collection in the act of making this work. She cut up the work of 150 straight white men who have monopolized the photographic canon.
I have to confess that I can’t identify most of the work that was used in the collages, probably because I’m more familiar with photojournalism than photography in general. That’s not to say that photojournalism is any better in its own “canon.” Nope, it’s just as off-kilter and unbalanced.
There is a list of images at the end of the book. Sometimes its descriptions can identify the photographer’s work that is being cut up — off the top of my head, I recognize Danny Lyon, Walker Evans, Brassai and Martin Parr. There are far more, of course. But it’s almost beside the point. The book is about taking the overwhelmingly male canon and transforming it and thereby reclaiming it.
The title of Kurland’s book plays off one of the first feminist texts written by Valerie Solanas. It was titled “Scum Manifesto,” and it essentially called for, as Kurland points out in an essay in her own book, “an end to men, and the power that seeks domination, exploitation and death, and the creation of a superior, all-female society.”
Solanas is also known for shooting Andy Warhol. And according to Kurland, she did this because Warhol stole one of her plays.
In a world made up of hierarchies and unbalanced power structures, that really is no surprise — that a prominent person would steal what is not his to puff himself up.
This happens in countless ways every day. It is partly how people get ahead and stay there. So, whether you like Kurland’s book doesn’t really matter. It is a forceful and bold statement about reclaiming agency from a world that happily takes it away in the first place.
You can read more about the book on the publisher’s website. | 2022-08-08T11:26:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ustine Kurland's "SCUMB Manifesto" - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/08/over-100-straight-white-male-photo-books-were-cut-up-make-this-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/08/over-100-straight-white-male-photo-books-were-cut-up-make-this-book/ |
Post Politics Now Biden heads to flood-stricken Kentucky ahead of bill signings this week
On our radar: Biden heading to flood-stricken Kentucky
The latest: House poised to pass Inflation Reduction Act later this week
Noted: Biden’s policies have not revived Scranton, but few there blame him
Noted: With Sinema’s help, private equity firms win relief from proposed tax hikes
On our radar: GOP nominee for Michigan attorney general named in probe of election security breach
Take a look: On the Sunday shows, lawmakers react to Pelosi’s Taiwan visit
Analysis: Culture wars could be a winning issue — for Democrats
President Biden gives a thumbs up during his walk to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Sunday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Today, President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are heading to Kentucky to meet with families and get a briefing on flooding that has claimed more than three dozen lives and is the worst in the state’s history. The trip comes ahead of a pair of high-profile bill signings at the White House this week. On Tuesday, Biden plans to sign legislation that aims to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry. On Wednesday, he’ll sign a bill expanding health-care access for military veterans exposed to toxins.
Those bills are among a spate of legislative victories racked up by the Democratic-led Congress, with another likely to come by week’s end. On Sunday, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit. The House plans to return to Washington on Friday to take up the bill.
8:30 a.m. Eastern: Biden leaves his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., en route to Kentucky. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will gaggle with reporters on Air Force One. Listen live here.
12:30 p.m. Eastern: Biden receives a briefing in Lost Creek, Ky., on the ongoing response efforts to the recent flooding.
2 p.m. Eastern: Biden visits with families in Eastern Kentucky affected by flooding.
3:15 p.m. Eastern: Vice President Harris meets with college presidents to discuss access to reproductive health. Watch live here.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are heading to Kentucky on Monday to visit with families and get a briefing on the worst flooding in the state’s history. It has killed more than three dozen people.
Biden is scheduled to travel to Kentucky from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where he headed Sunday after ending his isolation at the White House because of his infection with the coronavirus.
The Bidens are expected to be met in Kentucky by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and his wife, Britainy. According to the White House, the president will receive a briefing on ongoing response efforts at an elementary school in Lost Creek, Ky., before visiting with families affected by the flooding in an Eastern Kentucky neighborhood.
Biden is scheduled to return to Washington late Monday afternoon. He plans to sign two pieces of high-profile legislation on Tuesday and Wednesday. One aims to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry while the other expands health-care for military veterans exposed toxins.
Vice President Harris is scheduled to remain in Washington on Monday with one public event on her schedule: a meeting with university and college presidents to discuss access to reproductive health care. It is the latest is a series of such events Harris has held following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Senate passed the sprawling legislation, a key part of President Biden’s economic agenda, on Aug. 7 after almost 20 hours of debate on the Senate floor. (Video: The Washington Post)
The House is scheduled to return to Washington on Friday to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit that passed in the Senate on Sunday with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris.
The Post’s Tony Romm reports that the package would authorize the biggest burst of spending in U.S. history to tackle global warming — about $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below their 2005 levels by the end of this decade. The proposal also would make good on Democrats’ years-old pledge to reduce prescription drug costs for the elderly. Per Tony:
In part by tweaking federal tax laws — chiefly to target tax cheats and some billion-dollar companies that pay nothing to the government — the bill is expected to raise enough money to cover its new spending. Democrats say the measure is also expected to generate an additional $300 billion for reducing projected budget deficits over the next 10 years, though they have not yet furnished a final fiscal analysis of their legislation.
“This is one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in a decade,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview before the bill’s passage in the Senate. “Things that Americans have longed for, and couldn’t get done.”
RELATEDRepublicans block cap on insulin costs for millions of patients
President Biden leaned hard into his upbringing in Scranton, Pa., in his bid for the White House, and his presidential speeches and anecdotes are peppered with references to the blue-collar city.
Reporting from Scranton, The Post’s Cleve R. Wootson Jr. writes:
Biden empathizes with financial struggles by mentioning his father’s “long walk up a short flight of stairs” to tell the family he’d lost his job. He says America’s social policies should reflect Scranton’s values, where “people stuck up for you — stuck up for one another.”
You can read Cleve’s full story here.
The Post’s Jeff Stein reports that the decision came as Democrats tried to hold their caucus together through nearly 19 hours of debate over the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which the 50-50 Senate approved Sunday with the help of a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris. Per Jeff:
Sinema, who for over a year has blocked Democratic ambitions to increase taxes, raised objections on Saturday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The senator argued that, without changes to the bill, small and medium-size businesses that happen to be owned by private equity firms would be exposed to the tax, violating a Democratic pledge to hike taxes only on the largest firms.
A Sinema spokeswoman said several Arizona small businesses, including a plant nursery, had raised concerns.
You can read Jeff’s full story here.
The Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman, Emma Brown and Tom Hamburger report that in a petition filed Friday with a Michigan agency that coordinates prosecutors, a Nessel representative wrote that her office has a conflict of interest because a preliminary investigation by state police has determined that her opponent — lawyer Matthew DePerno — was “one of the prime instigators” of a conspiracy to persuade Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines. The petition was posted online Sunday by Politico.
Nessel asked that an independent prosecutor be named to review the investigation and determine whether to file criminal charges against DePerno and eight others. They include a Michigan state representative and a county sheriff, as well as other key figures in the election denier movement.
On the Sunday talk shows, lawmakers from both parties decried the military show of force and other actions China has taken following the recent visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he was glad that Pelosi made the trip. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) suggested Americans stop buying products made in China. You can watch their comments, among others, above, in a video pulled together by The Post.
But based on recent polling, the issue matrix has shifted enough to provide Democrats some hope that they can limit potential losses and beat expectations, especially in statewide races for the U.S. Senate and governorships, The Post’s Paul Kane writes. Per Paul: | 2022-08-08T11:26:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden heading to flood-stricken Kentucky ahead of bill signings this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/biden-kentucky-flooding-bills-semiconductors-veterans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/biden-kentucky-flooding-bills-semiconductors-veterans/ |
Fredricksburg Nationals pitcher Andry Lara is 2-6 with a 5.54 ERA with 82 strikeouts and 37 walks. (Steve Miller/Fredericksburg Nationals) (Stephen Miller/Steve Miller/Fredericksburg Nationals)
July 26 was a rainy Tuesday at Virginia Credit Union Stadium in Fredericksburg. It was so rainy that the low Class A Fredericksburg Nationals’ game against the Salem Red Sox had to be suspended in the fifth inning until the following day.
But Fredericksburg’s starting pitcher, Andry Lara, didn’t even make it that far.
Lara was pulled after four innings in another disappointing start during a rough July. Coming to the ballpark the next day, he was faced with his stat line haunting him from the right field scoreboard like a ghost: five earned runs and a home run on five hits, four walks and four strikeouts for a 5-0 deficit.
There he was, though, standing outside the clubhouse under the stadium’s bleachers that Wednesday alongside his friend, catcher and makeshift interpreter, Allan Berríos, with a wide smile on his face as he recalled his journey up to now. In less than three years, Lara went from a 17-year-old living in Coro, Venezuela, to a professional pitcher with a $1.25 million signing bonus, living and playing in a country whose language and people were foreign to him — all amid a global pandemic.
“I’ve liked it a lot,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it as much as I can, and already I’ve learned so much.”
Lara knows this slump — his ERA in four July starts was 7.31 — won’t last forever. He also knows he can’t afford to stop smiling because of some bad performances.
But more than anything, he knows exactly what his manager and pitching coach in Fredericksburg know — that this 6-foot-4, hard-throwing 19-year-old has the potential to be in a future rotation for the rebuilding Washington Nationals.
“He’s had great starts and he’s had some so-so starts,” Fredericksburg Manager Jake Lowery said. “But he’s a kid that, you know, the future of the Washington Nationals rides with him.”
Lara is the youngest pitcher on the Fredericksburg roster, and his first experience in the organization was meant to be in 2020. But with the minor league season canceled amid the pandemic, he spent the year making daily trips between his hotel room and the Nationals’ training facility in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was doing the only two things he could do — work out and hang out in the hotel with the other Venezuelan players.
When rookie ball returned to Florida in 2021, Lowery was the Florida Complex League Nationals’ manager.
“[Lara] was kind of like my horse — he was my ace,” Lowery said of those first games together in Florida. The teenager had everything Lowery could hope to expect from a highly talented yet inexperienced starter — a fastball in the upper 90s, a growing arsenal of pitches, energy and confidence.
While that hasn’t changed as Lowery and Lara moved from Florida to Fredericksburg together, the quality of players they’re facing has. And in this first full minor league season — he started two games for Fredericksburg in 2021 — that has meant Lara’s outings getting shorter and his walk total increasing. In 18 starts, Lara has issued 37 bases on balls, including four games of four or more.
“Still a prospect, still throwing the ball extremely hard, still very young for this league, and he’s kind of battling some stuff,” Lowery said. “… He’s still trying to find that balance of ‘I want to go deep into games’ but also ‘I want to have strikeouts.’ So it’s a good challenge for him, a good learning experience.”
There’s almost a nonchalance when coaches or teammates talk about Lara’s recent struggles. To them, it’s not supposed to be easy for a teenager to succeed at any level of baseball, and growing pains are expected.
Sometimes, those pains come in the form of taking months to develop off-speed pitches, as Lara has done with Fredericksburg pitching coach Joel Hanrahan. But confidence takes just as much time to develop, and though it’s hard to imagine the towering Lara lacking in belief, Hanrahan knows how tough it can be to get behind in the count as a youngster.
“When he has a good game, the walks are down and he’s attacking the strike zone,” Hanrahan said. “So when he throws the ball over the plate, when he’s in advantage counts where he’s getting ahead, he doesn’t hurt that much. The games that he struggles are things that it’s 2-1 counts, 3-1 counts, he gets three or four walks in there and it’s kind of put himself in the hole. So just being able to challenge the strike zone early and trust your stuff.”
“Bad starts to me are like lessons,” Lara said. “They always help me get ready for the next one, and all I get from them are lessons. I don’t feel any pressure.”
In Berríos’s mind, he shouldn’t feel any. “He already has the stuff,” said the 24-year-old, who has played at Class AA Harrisburg. “It’s just command.”
Lara has plenty of time to work on that because, by his own admission, his life hasn’t changed much since the pandemic began. Aside from one trip to Kings Dominion, which he said was “cool,” his schedule looks nearly the same as it did in Florida: wake up, go train, play or watch a game, go home, sleep.
This year he has gotten the real clubhouse experience, especially in one that Lowery said is about half-Latino. Walking down the stairs from the concourse to the clubhouse, one trades the dad rock sounds of Van Halen for the boom-boom drops of Bad Bunny and El Alfa. Lara said he tries his hardest to have the pick of the clubhouse tunes.
“I don’t listen to [American] music. I only listen to Latin stuff,” he said.
To hear Lara tell it, he has been away from Venezuela long enough that it doesn’t hurt anymore, but he’s still just a teenager who misses his homeland “like crazy.” He has been able to go back every Christmas, and Lowery knows his whole family watches every game back in Coro, even the difficult-to-access ones.
At 19, though, Lara has big dreams — he wants to make the majors by the time he’s 21, a lofty goal for even the best prospects. With the stretch he’s in right now, that might seem distant.
But Lara made the journey from Venezuela, leaving everything he knew to take a shot at his dream. If his teammates and coaches are correct, he also has the right stuff to make that dream come true, even if it means seeing a few more rough stat lines. | 2022-08-08T12:25:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals prospect Andry Lara is still smiling after rocky July - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/andry-lara-nationals-pitching-prospect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/andry-lara-nationals-pitching-prospect/ |
Drug companies are warning that pricing reform spells doom. Don’t fall for it.
Gregg Girvan
Various prescription drugs on an automated pharmacy assembly line at Medco Health Solutions in Willingboro, N.J. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Avik Roy is president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) and a former policy adviser to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Marco Rubio. Gregg Girvan is a resident fellow at FREOPP.
It’s not surprising that big drug companies are less innovative than their smaller brethren. Because small biotechs can offer their scientists stock options, the brightest and most creative drug developers prefer to work at start-ups, where, if successful, they can retire early.
It also protects the smaller companies where most innovation actually takes place. It exempts “orphan drugs” treating rare diseases; drugs that cost the Medicare program less than $200 million per year; drugs that represent 80 percent or more of a company’s sales to Medicare Part B or D; and drugs that represent no more than 1 percent of Medicare’s Part B or D pharmaceutical spending. The bill requires Medicare to focus its negotiations on drugs whose monopolies have lasted 12 years or longer — more than enough time for genuinely innovative companies to generate a return on their R&D investment.
We should absolutely continue to reward truly innovative drugmakers for medicines that benefit patients. But monopolists who raise prices on decades-old drugs are not contributing to innovation. They’re contributing to Medicare’s insolvency.
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the bill’s Medicare drug reforms will reduce federal spending by nearly $200 billion from 2022 to 2031. And the CBO estimated that those savings could increase in future decades. Furthermore, when Medicare’s costs decrease, seniors benefit from lower premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Unfortunately, Democrats have loaded up their reconciliation bill with a 15 percent minimum corporate income tax that would force younger, innovative biotech companies to spend less on R&D. And overall, the bill’s deficit reduction potential has been undermined by about $400 billion over a decade in new energy subsidies, and more than $300 billion in federal loan guarantees that may never be repaid.
Nevertheless, fiscal advocates have fought for years to improve Medicare’s sustainability. Medicare drug reform — as a standalone effort — could do just that. | 2022-08-08T12:38:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Drug companies are warning that Medicare pricing reform spells doom. Don't fall for it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/drug-companies-medicare-pricing-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/drug-companies-medicare-pricing-reform/ |
Summer of KidsPost: Enjoying science and history
KidsPost readers went to Tryon Palace in North Carolina and Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos.
(The Washington Post illustration/Family Photos)
Time seems to be moving at warp speed this summer. Maybe it’s because we’ve seen how busy readers are. Some have sent us terrific photos about how they are spending their break from school.
This week, the Summer of KidsPost features readers who enjoyed science and history adventures. Read more to learn about them, but we also would like to know about you, too. If you’re going on a vacation or day trip, bring a KidsPost page along, have your picture taken and share it with us. We can’t make summer last longer, but we can enjoy your photos for months to come.
Finn Metcalf, 11, and Miles Metcalf, 9, of Takoma Park, Maryland, visited the Galápagos tortoises on Santa Cruz Island, one of Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands. Finn, Miles, their family and a group from Lewis and Clark College also traveled to the Ecuadoran Amazon rainforest. The Galápagos Islands are a group of 19 islands in the Pacific Ocean that have unusual and diverse marine species because of their remote location in the middle of three ocean currents. After his visit to the islands in 1835, scientist Charles Darwin was inspired to develop the theory of evolution, about how living things with certain traits survive over time.
Olive Trone, 8, of Fairfax, Virginia, visited Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina. This was the home and offices of the royal governor of North Carolina from 1770 to 1775. After the American Revolution, it was where the North Carolina General Assembly held its first sessions, and it was home to state governors until 1794. Olivia visited this site on the way to the beach with her family.
We hope to hear from more KidsPost readers about what they are doing this summer. We’ll feature a selection of readers’ photos in the print KidsPost and at kidspost.com through Labor Day. In September, three randomly selected participants will receive a KidsPost prize package.
● Get a recent copy of KidsPost. If you don’t have access to the print newspaper, you can print a PDF of kidspost.com or an online KidsPost story. Take it on your vacation or day trip. | 2022-08-08T12:47:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Summer of KidsPost: Enjoying science and history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/08/summer-kidspost-enjoying-science-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/08/summer-kidspost-enjoying-science-history/ |
Sign of the times. (Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)
Friday’s positive jobs report — which far exceeded expectations — would seem to suggest that recession fears have been a bit overblown. At the very least, it adds yet another contradictory data point to a baffling collection of economic indicators.
This was very good news — or would have been, had a recession not started that every month. But no one knew this at the time.
To be fair, not everyone was on the soft-landing train. Investors bailed out of the stock market at year’s end, and many concluded that this augured a rough year ahead. Legendary economic commentator Leonard Silk noted that the stock market had “tumbled as though it were forecasting a major recession or even a depression.” Right on cue, nonfarm payrolls fell by 260,000.
But then the pessimists came up short. Factory orders for January 1974 shot up 5.4% from December. Surveys of manufacturers revealed a 13% planned increase in capital expenditures for the coming year. When President Nixon gave the State of the Union address, he confidently declared that “there will be no recession in the United States of America.”
It looked as if he was right. Not long afterward, nonfarm payrolls for February rose 175,000. And those job losses from the previous month? Only 105,000 workers were put out of work, not 260,000. Subsequent revisions ultimately nudged this number into positive territory.
Very Important People were having none of it. Herbert Stein, who chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, celebrated the “underlying strength” of the economy in March. In April, prominent economist Paul McCracken delivered an address at a conference on forecasting that described a recession as “unlikely.” The following month, Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns added: “I don’t like recessions and don’t believe it will happen.”
As economists and policy makers struggled to make sense of contradictory data, the oracles at the National Bureau of Economic Research muddied the water further. Member Solomon Fabricant channeled Erwin Schrodinger and his half-dead, half-alive cat, declaring that if the recession was “real” it must have begun the previous November — but he simultaneously maintained it was “not yet a real recession.”
It had long ago slipped, as most people concluded by fall. And it would remain in recession for another six months, during which the more familiar symptoms of a contraction, most notably job losses, made their appearance.
The recession would only end in March 1975. But the end, like the beginning, was not fully understood at the time. A month after the recession would eventually be understood to have ended, Alan Greenspan, who had become President Gerald Ford’s economic adviser, remained pessimistic. “Greenspan Sees Recession Continuing,” the New York Times declared.
• Identifying Recessions Is More Art Than Science: Stephen Mihm
• Inflation Beast Won’t Lie Quietly Again: Allison Schrager | 2022-08-08T12:55:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Think Recession Fears Are Overblown? You Need to Read This - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/think-recession-fears-are-overblown-you-need-to-read-this/2022/08/08/731995b6-1712-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/think-recession-fears-are-overblown-you-need-to-read-this/2022/08/08/731995b6-1712-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Perspective by Steven Petrow
Health-care worker Charles Liu, left, administers a dose of the monkeypox vaccine at a clinic in West Hollywood, Calif., on Aug. 3. (Caroline Brehman/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Last week, I was on one of those dating apps when I noticed a new hashtag, #monkeypoxvaccinated, on a growing number of profiles. (Hashtags help people find like-minded individuals — in this case, folks who have been vaccinated against monkeypox.) On one profile, a North Carolina educator (who asked for anonymity because he’s not fully out to his family) posted, “I’m happy to assist anyone who needs info or help with regard to the monkeypox vaccine.”
“Here we go again,” I thought to myself. I remembered how frightening the coronavirus had been only two years ago, especially to those of us seeking intimacy. Suddenly, a kiss was not just a kiss, but a potential vector for a potentially fatal disease. And for those of us who’d lived through the 1980s and 1990s, the intersection of sex and HIV/AIDS remains embedded in our DNA. So, too, does the stigma and bias leveled at those with HIV disease, especially queer men.
Monkeypox is a virus similar to smallpox, with more than 6,600 cases (a likely undercount) reported in the United States as of Aug. 1. Cases are surging in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles (and have been reported in all but two states, Montana and Wyoming. Nearly all cases to date have been among men who have sex with men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although the virus is not classified as a sexually transmitted disease because it’s also spread by skin-to-skin contact, among other nonsexual ways.
I was in a stunned San Francisco when the state announced a public health emergency. Among the concerns I heard: How do I protect myself? How do I protect others? How do we stop the stigma?
Even though there have been a minuscule number of deaths from monkeypox to date (just six worldwide as of early August), people at risk — and not at risk — are frightened by it. The disease is not a minor one. The lesions are often excruciatingly painful, sometimes compared to glass shards scraping against the skin, may require lengthy hospitalization and can take weeks to heal.
Since frightened people don’t always behave well, it’s time for a primer in monkeypox manners.
I know it may sound odd to cite Emily Post, but etiquette at its core is about how we interact with others, and her original principles of consideration, respect and honesty are as applicable to a health emergency as to any wedding brouhaha. Underpinning any such discussion is the importance of getting informed, reducing opportunities for transmission and caring for — and not condemning — those who become ill.
Stay up-to-date: It was only two weeks ago, when I heard that a colleague had gotten vaccinated for monkeypox, that I started to pay attention — and I am a gay man. I quickly came to understand that, as The Washington Post has previously reported, “sexual activity is a major driver of the current surge.” But the CDC warns that it also can be spread by any kind of close contact, such as dancing shirtless, cuddling or sharing sheets and towels. Respiratory spread is also possible, but usually over prolonged periods of time (for instance, if you live with someone infected with monkeypox). Read up and keep up on the latest guidance from reputable news sources.
Talk about your health status: Some health experts have advocated for abstinence, at least for a while. But Hyman Scott, medical director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, told me, “It doesn’t work … telling people to not have sex is not effective.” Instead, public health advocates like those at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation recommend reducing the number of intimate contacts and asking questions before sex: Talk with potential partners about any recent illness, ask about their (and disclose your) number of recent partners, and whether anyone has had new lesions or rashes. “One thing we can do is be frank about our sex lives, report on who we’ve had sex with and what kinds of sex and when,” one man on a dating app told me after his first monkeypox vaccination. “That will help people make informed decisions.”
Practice safer sex: This is a lesson many of us learned in the earliest days of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, when almost any kind of intimacy, from a handshake on up, was fraught with the possibility of infection. Although monkeypox is much less infectious than covid-19, the CDC and other experts recommend caution. Those who may be at risk should avoid kissing — and find ways to have sex or be intimate that avoids going skin-to-skin. Cover up rash or lesions with clothes (or a bandage), avoid touching them, which can spread them to others and other body parts, and wash everything — hands, bedding, towels and sex toys — afterward. Good hygiene protects everyone.
Create a “pod”: Remember the friend pods many of us developed at the height of the pandemic? To keep our sanity, we socialized with small groups of people we knew and trusted. The same idea applies here with sexual partners if you are not coupled off or in a monogamous situation. An opinion piece in Poz.com suggested that “Pod members should monitor for symptoms for a few days … after [their] last potential exposure before engaging in sex within pods, and sexual activity should be limited to those within the group.” Again, trust and open communication is crucial.
Get vaccinated: I know, I know, another vaccine. The good news: The Jynneos vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against monkeypox. The bad news: It is in short supply. Two shots are required, about four weeks apart, and the vaccine is considered at least 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox. If you’ve been exposed, get the vaccine as soon as you can. The CDC recommends getting the vaccine within four days of exposure to prevent transmission. “If given between 4-14 days after the date of exposure, vaccination may reduce the symptoms of disease, but may not prevent the disease,” the CDC says. Because of a shortfall of Jynneos, some experts are advocating that people be encouraged to take a less desirable vaccine, ACAM2000, which was approved for the related virus of smallpox but not for monkeypox.
Isolate if infected (or if you start to show symptoms): A 50-something widower on the West Coast, who asked me not to identify him because of possible stigma, self-isolated as soon as he felt and then saw “a very ugly lesion” in his throat, although it took him a full week to get diagnosed. During that interval, he declined various invitations and started telling friends that he suspected he had monkeypox. “I didn’t want to be a spreader in my community.” He did the right thing — isolating from the time he experienced symptoms until he was no longer infectious several weeks later.
Disclose your infection only on a need-to-know basis: “I chose who I told carefully [because] I didn’t want everybody to know immediately,” explained one man I know. “I was trying to avoid stigma and feeling diseased.” Among those he told was a recent date, who as it turned out, also had been diagnosed with monkeypox. Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at New York University, acknowledged that fear: “There is stigma. The community of gay men already bears that, the political climate in much of the nation is overtly hostile, and another ‘gay’ disease reinforces that.” Nevertheless, Caplan recommended informing your health-care providers, such as dentists and massage therapists, about possible infection, although it may result in their deciding not to treat you. “We have an obligation not to harm others or put them at involuntary risk,” Caplan said in an email.
Be kind: Offer assistance. Do not judge. As with anyone you might know who becomes ill, ask what you can do to help, keep conversations private and don’t let fear get the better of us. There are no “gay” viruses or “straight” ones. Scott put it this way, “Currently, the LGBTQ+ community is experiencing the brunt of this outbreak but anyone can be at risk for monkeypox given how it’s spread.” In other words, a virus is a virus is a virus. | 2022-08-08T12:55:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monkeypost manners: Navigating a virus affecting how we live and love - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/monkeypox-behavior-tips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/monkeypox-behavior-tips/ |
Mental health issues are on the rise, but teenage girls seem to have more problems than others, a psychologist says
By Jelena Kecmanovic
‘A cry for help’: CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health
Further back, the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that the percentage of 12- to 17-year-old girls who experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year rose from 12 percent to 25 percent between 2010 and 2020. For boys, the increase was from 5 to 9 percent during the same period.
“Puberty interacts with stress to make girls prone to depression, self-injury and other psychological problems” said Mitchell J. Prinstein, chief science officer of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the author of “Popular: Finding Happiness and Success in a World That Cares Too Much About the Wrong Kinds of Relationships.” “And the amount and variety of stress increases during tween years.”
At the same time, girls face the same pressure as boys that comes with more serious academics and, for example, sports demands in middle school. But research suggests that they often take to heart more the message that you must excel at everything. Between ages 12 and 13, the proportion of girls who said they were not allowed to fail increased from 18 to 45 percent.
“Tween girls work so hard at being perfect everywhere for everybody, that they inevitably fall short and are exhausted by the time they come home,” said Phyllis L. Fagell, clinical professional counselor, school counselor and the author of “Middle School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond — and How Parents Can Help.” “Many would be surprised to hear how harshly they judge themselves and how self-critical their inner dialogue sounds.”
Social shifts further hurt tween girls
Early puberty cases in girls have surged during covid, doctors say
After years of slow but steady increase in social media activity, tweens today use it 17 percent more than 2019. Unsurprisingly, girls are more engaged with social media, while boys play more video games. The problem is that the girls’ higher social media use affects them more strongly than boys. The more time they spend on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok, among others, the more they will probably experience depression, low self-esteem, poor body image, worse sleep and other mental health problems.
Meta knew its apps harm teens' mental health, families allege
For example, eighth-graders who meet up with their friends “almost every day” fell from more than 50 percent in the 1990s to about a quarter in 2015 — and is likely less now. | 2022-08-08T12:56:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mental health problems have grown, but especially among tween girls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/tween-girls-mental-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/08/tween-girls-mental-health/ |
The Senate finally passed a historic climate bill. Now what?
Welcome back to The Climate 202 after the newsletter took a break last week! Today we have a special edition that looks in-depth at the major climate bill that passed the Senate. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. But first:
‘You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’: Democrats cheer passage of historic climate bill
For decades, it has been virtually impossible to pass major climate legislation through the Senate. That finally changed on Sunday, when Senate Democrats passed their ambitious climate and tax package, a crucial step in a grueling journey to deliver the largest climate investment in U.S. history.
The 755-page piece of legislation, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, cleared the chamber by a vote of 51-50 after nearly 20 hours of debate on the Senate floor, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.
For many climate advocates, the bill is far from perfect. While it contains a record $369 billion in new spending to fight global warming and bolster clean energy, it also includes several provisions that would prolong the life of polluting fossil fuel infrastructure — a concession to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the Senate's most conservative Democrat.
But after months of working to secure Manchin's elusive vote, Senate Democrats presented a united front in support of the measure, which they said would still make a significant dent in the emissions that are dangerously heating the Earth.
“You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told The Climate 202 on Sunday.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of the Senate's most vocal climate hawks, agreed.
“This is a planetary emergency, and this is the first time that the federal government has taken action that is worthy of the moment,” said Schatz, who fought back tears as he left the Senate floor after the bill's passage. “Now I can look my kids in the eye and say we're really doing something about climate.”
Sen. @brianschatz is visibly emotional & wiping away tears after final passage of the IRA.
“This is a planetary emergency, and this is the first time the federal government has taken action that is worthy of the moment,” he tells reporters. “Now I can look my kids in the eye.”
— Maxine Joselow (@maxinejoselow) August 7, 2022
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said the bill would enable the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That would bring the nation within striking distance of President Biden's goal of cutting emissions at least in half over the next decade.
The House plans to return Friday to pass the package. The measure will then head to the White House for Biden's long-awaited signature.
Bernie gets burned on fossil fuels
The package was largely the product of private negotiations between Manchin and Schumer. That means rank-and-file Democrats were not privy to the pair's compromises on fossil fuels, including a requirement for the Interior Department to hold oil and gas lease sales before approving rights-of-way for renewable energy projects on public lands.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, blasted these compromises in a fiery floor speech on Saturday.
“We have got to do everything we can to take on the greed, the irresponsibility, the destructiveness of the fossil fuel industry — not give billions of dollars in corporate welfare to an industry that has been destroying our planet," he said.
During the Senate's so-called “vote-a-rama” on Sunday, when any senator had the power to force an amendment vote, Sanders offered proposals that would have stripped any “giveaway” to the fossil fuel industry and reinstated the Civilian Climate Corps, a popular climate program that was dropped from the Manchin-Schumer deal.
However, Democrats united in opposition to the Sanders amendments, saying it was important to keep the deal intact. They also remained largely unified in defeating Republican attempts to force tough votes on climate and other issues.
“Ultimately, there's so many great things in the bill," Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored a major cap-and-trade bill that died in the Senate in 2010, told The Climate 202 on Sunday.
“I'm going to finish this bill, take a nap, and then begin the fight to complete the Green New Deal and create a Civilian Climate Corps," he added.
The struggle ahead over permitting reform
The deal came in part because Biden, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed to seek and pass new legislation easing the federal permitting rules for pipelines and other infrastructure in the coming months.
The permitting measure would run afoul of the rules governing reconciliation, the process that Democrats used to pass the climate package and avoid a Republican filibuster. Schumer has said the permitting proposal will instead attach to a stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, that Congress will need to pass in September to avoid a government shutdown.
In an interview with our colleague Tony Romm, Schumer acknowledged that the permitting agreement is a “mixed bag” because it could benefit not only fossil fuel projects such as pipelines, but also renewable energy projects and transmission lines needed to carry clean electricity.
“Look, I don't like parts of it,” he said. “But there are parts of it the green people like because it makes permitting green power easier, and red states have been blocking transmission lines where there are places where there is a lot of wind and sun.”
However, it's unclear whether Democrats can secure 10 GOP votes to pass the permitting measure. While Republicans have long called for streamlining the environmental review process for large infrastructure projects, they are reluctant to support a bill tied to Democrats' party-line package.
“I would really love if permitting actually came before reconciliation,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (D-N.D.), who participated in bipartisan energy meetings with Manchin in which they discussed permitting.
In a statement Sunday, Manchin projected confidence that senators would pass the permitting proposal when they return from their August recess.
“We are moving full steam ahead on comprehensive bipartisan permitting reform so we can efficiently and safely bring more domestic energy projects online,” he said. “Congress will pass that legislation next month.”
How the Inflation Reduction Act might impact you — and change the U.S. — Jeff Stein, Maxine Joselow and Rachel Roubein for The Post
After passage of climate bill, long road awaits — Steven Mufson for The Post
Salt in water sources becoming worrisome in D.C. region, experts warn — Antonio Olivo for The Post
How a four-day workweek could be better for the climate — Allyson Chiu for The Post
Iraq broils in dangerous 120-degree heat as power grid shuts down — Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim for The Post
What’s driving the massive, destructive rainfalls around the country — Brady Dennis for The Post
U.S.-China diplomatic breakdown clouds outlook for global climate progress — Valerie Volcovici for Reuters
Also the feeling after a Senate vote-a-rama: | 2022-08-08T12:56:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Senate finally passed a historic climate bill. Now what? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/senate-finally-passed-historic-climate-bill-now-what/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/senate-finally-passed-historic-climate-bill-now-what/ |
As it turns out, the other paper published around the same time, this one in the British Medical Journal, did a deep examination of the clinical data. The author team, headed by scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration, combined the results of 232 different trials comparing SSRIs with placebos for patients with depression. This way, they had something equivalent to a giant trial with more than 73,000 patients.
• This Arthritis Drug Deserves Its Aggressive Patent Protection: Stephen L. Carter | 2022-08-08T14:27:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pharma Overpromised on Antidepressants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pharma-overpromised-on-antidepressants/2022/08/08/d41a8e30-171a-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pharma-overpromised-on-antidepressants/2022/08/08/d41a8e30-171a-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
In his attempt to make up for SoftBank Group Corp.’s record 3.16 trillion yen ($23.4 billion) net loss this quarter, Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son offered two gifts to investors. The first is a $3 billion share buyback. The second is a lesson on Japanese feudal history.
In a somber earnings presentation, Son displayed a famous portrait of Tokugawa Ieyasu painted after a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Mikatagahara in 1573. The painting — known as the Shikamizo — shows the feudal lord’s pained face and was purportedly commissioned by the future shogun so he would not forget his humiliating retreat and near-total destruction.
Those are feelings Son clearly shared. “We’ve lost 6 trillion yen in six months,” Son said. “I too want to reflect on this, and have it serve as a reminder.”
It was a rare moment of contrition from the SoftBank founder, who two years ago less wisely appeared to compare himself to Jesus Christ to defend himself against critics who misunderstood his strategies. His speech Monday was deliberately downbeat. He skipped cheerleading for the future initial public offering of chip designer Arm Ltd., and announced that he is in talks for someone to take asset manager Fortress Investment Group off his hands. The dancing golden eggs and unicorns flying over the “Valley of Coronavirus” of previous presentations were nowhere in sight.
He also issued an internal warning, announcing “unprecedented” cost cuts across SoftBank that may lead to “dramatic” job losses ranging from junior employees to senior, back office to front. He said there would be no sacred cows.
Perhaps it’s the least that can be expected after a disastrous quarter. His Vision Fund posted a loss of 2.33 trillion yen. That followed what was then a record 2.2 trillion yen loss in the previous three months, as lofty tech valuations collapsed. His second Vision Fund is $10 billion in the red.
Son announced a new policy of “heightened investment discipline” and said he’s resisting the urge the buy the dip, unlike Warren Buffett, who turned from a net seller of equities to a buyer in the most recent quarter with $3.8 billion in purchases. “We must above all avoid being wiped out entirely,” Son said. “I understand the desire to get impatient while prices are cheap, but if we do that we might suffer a serious wound that we can’t recover from.”
Given his recent investing record, that might be wise.
What it means, however, is that Son is at risk of buying high and selling low. He announced Monday that he recently sold most of his stake in Uber Technologies Inc. and all of Chinese online property platform KE Holdings. New investments in the most recent quarter were just $600 million, down a jaw-dropping 97% from a year ago.
There’s little need for new investments, Son said. With 473 portfolio companies, he already has plenty of golden eggs and perhaps one of them will finally grow to the level of an earlier SoftBank bet, Alibaba Group Holding. The future giants of the AI age are within that grouping, Son reckons, and he just needs one or two of them to succeed. He also bemoaned the recent tendency of startup leaders to overvalue their firms, hinting that the purse strings would remain closed until private valuations came down.
The tale of Tokugawa Ieyasu is also one of redemption. After his painful defeat, he consolidated power, outlived most of his opponents and peers, and went on to win the decisive Battle of Sekigahara to become the ruler of a unified Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted 265 years, a similar timespan to Son’s 300-year vision.
Of course, it took more than 25 years after defeat for Tokugawa to end up on top. But Son — at 64, only four years older than Tokugawa was when he became Shogun — reiterated his intentions to stay on as the leader of SoftBank in order to right the wrongs he says he has done to investors.
If he can do that, it will be one for the history books.
SoftBank’s Son Has Survived Bigger Disasters: Gearoid Reidy
The Eternal Optimism of Masayoshi Son: Culpan and Reidy
Tiger and Sequoia Take SoftBank to the Cleaners: Shuli Ren | 2022-08-08T14:27:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SoftBank’s Shogun Has a Rare Moment of Contrition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/softbanks-shogun-has-a-rare-moment-of-contrition/2022/08/08/88ec3106-171b-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/softbanks-shogun-has-a-rare-moment-of-contrition/2022/08/08/88ec3106-171b-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
Of course the Supreme Court needs to use history. The question is how.
By William Baude
The Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 14. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
William Baude is a law professor at the University of Chicago.
The Supreme Court’s seismic term was notable not only for the decisions it reached but also how it reached them: making extensive use of history. This might seem like a bad development — turning back the clock on societal progress and calling for judges to do hackish, “law-office history.” But it is not. The question going forward is not whether the court should use history but how.
The court finds itself using history for both legal and practical reasons. History is inextricably connected to law. Our Constitution and statutes were enacted in the past, and amended in the past, and so understanding their content is an inherently historical endeavor. History, practiced properly, also can supply objectivity, giving the justices a basis for deciding beyond their personal views and the controversies of the day.
These uses of history, ironically, provide support for powerful legal change. If the court is to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent, as it did in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it points to something even older and more deeply rooted than Roe v. Wade itself — the history and tradition surrounding the Constitution. So, too, if the court is to second-guess the gun control legislation of modern jurisdictions, as it did in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it does so by pointing to the Constitution’s text and history.
The use of constitutional history has been challenged as inherently regressive. Why should today’s public policy decisions owe anything to past eras when women or people of color were excluded from power? This argument misses the point. In cases like Dobbs, the court seeks to free government from constitutional constraint, arguing that today’s governing majorities are entitled to make their own choices about abortion policy, no matter what dead White men in wigs may have thought. In cases like Bruen, the court relies on historical arguments that the right to keep and bear arms was especially vital to newly freed African Americans in the wake of the Civil War. And in other cases, the court has used history to vindicate the rights of criminal defendants and other unpopular groups.
Another critique is that judges cannot do history well, and that their judgments will inevitably be results-oriented. The justices went to law school, not graduate programs in history, and only a few of their law clerks have such training. Historians frequently condemn the court’s historical claims as oversimplified, overconfident and twisted to reach the desired outcome. This too misses the point. What the Supreme Court is ultimately deciding is law, not history for its own sake. It turns to the historical record to better understand the text that it is entrusted with interpreting, and uses legal procedures to do it — a traditional performance of the craft of judging.
That the court is doing law, not just history, also responds to accusations that the court is inconsistent in which historical periods it emphasizes. The ultimate question is what our most fundamental law provides, which means focusing primarily on the periods when the Constitution was written and amended, and only secondarily on subsequent interpretations. The court is not trying to provide a broader history of our society’s attitudes toward guns, sex or anything else. Indeed, that is not its role.
The real issue is not whether the court should be using history, but whether there are legally relevant pieces of history that it is missing. There is reason to worry about that in both Dobbs and Bruen. In Dobbs, the court makes it hard to recognize rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. But another clause of the Constitution, which the court relegates to a footnote, protects the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” against state abridgment. History suggests that these privileges or immunities include unenumerated rights of citizens, maybe even rights that are recognized over time. If so, Dobbs’s analysis is incomplete.
Meanwhile, in Bruen, the court refused to allow any kind of “interest balancing” of gun rights against public safety. But deeper historical research may support such balancing after all. At the Founding and during Reconstruction, many constitutional rights were subject to regulation in the name of the public good. Such arguments could support more regulation of Second Amendment rights than the court suggests.
These historical problems do not necessarily mean that Dobbs or Bruen reached the wrong result. But they could make a big difference to the scope of those decisions in coming decades.
This brings us to the broader lesson. In recent years, many critics of the court — including some dissenting justices — have ceded the initiative. They have tried to shield themselves behind precedents or to poke holes in the majority’s arguments without advancing a competing constitutional theory.
That is true even of recent dissents that engaged superficially on historical grounds. That will not be enough. The court’s increasing reliance on history creates an opportunity for those critics to provide their own rigorous account of our law and constitutional tradition. To seize that opportunity, they will have to make the best use of history, not try to escape it. | 2022-08-08T14:28:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court was right to rely on history in the abortion and gun rulings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/supreme-court-use-history-dobbs-bruen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/supreme-court-use-history-dobbs-bruen/ |
Trump wants to punish a Wisconsin legislator for not stealing the election
The 2020 election can’t be overturned — nor should it be.
In this March 16, 2022 photo, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) speaks to reporters in Madison. (AP Photo Scott Bauer File)
Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes in 2016. He lost it by a similar margin in 2020. In both years, the state was evenly divided, with Trump seeing similar margins in similar places.
To an external observer, there’s nothing inherently weird about this: a swing state that tipped one way tipped the other way four years later. To Trump, though, his loss in Wisconsin two years ago remains flatly unacceptable, if not inconceivable. To the extent that he is now endorsing a challenger to the state’s fervently conservative assembly speaker, Robin Vos (R), solely because Vos hasn’t overturned the 2020 results.
Something he has no power to do. Something there is no reason for him to do.
Let’s start with that second point. Trump has fixated on Wisconsin since shortly after polls closed in that state. Over the course of the past 21 months (!), Trump’s rationale for how and where the state’s results were putatively stolen from him have evolved. I mean that literally; Trump’s fraud claims are Darwinistic, with more potent ones supplanting feebler offerings. But all share a common characteristic: They are baseless.
Trump has alleged that the sudden emergence of a batch of ballots in the middle of the night favoring Joe Biden was suspicious. It was actually just the reporting of ballots from Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous.
Trump claimed, in a statement bashing Vos, that the state Supreme Court had declared “hundreds of thousands of Drop Box votes to be illegal.” It didn’t. In a sharply partisan ruling, it instead said that collection of ballots with drop boxes was illegal. Even hard-right groups like True the Vote, which has being trying to cast drop boxes as conduits for fraud (despite the utter lack of evidence to that end) admitted in a hearing that they weren’t claiming drop-box votes themselves were illegal.
True the Vote’s claims are at the heart of the film “2000 Mules,” a favorite of Trump’s for its claims that tens of thousands of illegal ballots were cast in swing states. Not only does the film show no evidence of its central claim — that people dumped ballots in a number of drop boxes — the movie’s own analysis suggests that only 14,000 ballots were submitted in this manner in Wisconsin. Even if each had been for Biden (which, again, is utterly useless speculation!), he’d still have won.
An investigation from a team led by a Republican who once served on the state’s Supreme Court, Michael Gableman, argued that there were irregularities around the vote in 2020. Among them was a claim that nursing homes had regularly seen 100 percent turnout, suggesting something suspicious. This claim was incorrect.
The report otherwise centered on complaints about privately funded efforts to bolster elections systems in the state. A nonprofit group’s grants to several cities was presented as potentially illegal, despite courts having already determined that they weren’t. Regardless, that does not in any way affect the validity of votes cast.
To any rational observer, the takeaway is obvious: Trump and his allies are grasping for straws and finding nothing in their hands but molecules of air. Among those allies, incidentally, is Gableman, the former supreme court justice. In the wake of the release of his report earlier this year, he’s enjoyed the benefits of Trump’s favor, including being feted at Mar-a-Lago. In part this was because Gableman went above and beyond. His team’s report stated clearly that it was not intended to “challenge certification of the Presidential election.” But, in presenting the report to the state legislature, Gableman claimed that elected officials “ought to take a very hard look at the option of decertification of the 2020 Wisconsin presidential election.”
Such a “hard look” would largely fall to Vos. His response has been consistent: he has no power to decertify the election. Setting aside the uselessness of it — Biden has been president for 20 months and even if he had lost Wisconsin, he still had more electoral votes — there’s simply no power granted the legislature to unwind the votes cast. For what would seem to be obvious reasons.
This doesn’t deter Trump in the abstract, of course. On Jan. 6, 2021, he asked Vice President Mike Pence to simply overturn the results of votes in several states, despite Pence having no power to do so. Trump has repeatedly (and recently) asked Vos to do the same thing, happily without the violent mob this time.
Vos can’t. So now Trump is endorsing his opponent in Tuesday’s primary.
“As Speaker of the Assembly, Robin Vos consistently blocked efforts at conducting a full cyber forensic audit of the 2020 Election,” Trump wrote in a statement endorsing Vos’s opponent — someone who Trump three weeks ago said he “didn’t know.” “In fact, his appointee to study Election Fraud in Wisconsin, highly-respected Justice Michael Gableman, found massive Election-changing fraud, abuse, and irregularities. Despite hearing this powerful evidence, Vos refused to do anything to right the wrongs that were done.”
(The “election-changing fraud," etc. is assessed in the bulleted list above, of course.)
Elsewhere in the statement, Trump raises other putative reasons for opposing Vos, like his views on the gasoline tax. But as is often the case with the former president, his heart is on his sleeve: he’s mad that Vos, like Pence, won’t do a thing he can’t do.
In his statement endorsing Vos, Trump notes that he’s joined in backing Vos’s opponent by none other than Michael Gableman. Over the weekend, Gableman lent his voice to a robocall on behalf of the challenger.
Those unfamiliar with the situation may be surprised to learn about the origins of Gableman’s probe. In June 2021, it was announced that he’d been tapped to probe potential election irregularities … by Robin Vos. Vos would later extend Gableman’s contract to continue his work.
The probe found nothing to suggest that the election results in Wisconsin shouldn’t stand. Even if it had, there was nothing that Vos could do about it anyway. And even if there were, it wouldn’t somehow unwind 20 months of Biden’s presidency or make Trump president again.
Trump’s effort to oust Vos is almost refreshingly direct. He wants Wisconsin legislators to invent a way that he can be retroactively declared the winner in 2020 and, since Vos won’t do that, he’s lashing out. It’s not even really stealing the election, since the election isn’t even in his grasp. But that doesn’t change the obvious and consistent motivation: using what power he has to try to convince the world that he didn’t lose two years ago.
Unfortunately for his efforts, he did.
The latest: Biden says he is concerned, but not worried, about China’s military drills | 2022-08-08T14:28:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump wants to punish a Wisconsin legislator for not stealing the election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/trump-wisconsin-2020-election-vos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/trump-wisconsin-2020-election-vos/ |
Cale Gundy had coached with the Sooners since 1999. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
Oklahoma wide receivers coach Cale Gundy, the longest-tenured football assistant in the Big 12 Conference, resigned Sunday night after reading aloud a “shameful and hurtful” word off a player’s iPad during a recent film session. The 50-year-old Gundy, who has coached with the Sooners since 1999, described the events that led to his resignation in a statement on Twitter.
“Last week, during a film session, I instructed my players to take notes,” he wrote. “I noticed a player was distracted and picked up his iPad and read aloud the words that were written on his screen. The words displayed had nothing to do with football. One particular word that I should never — under any circumstance — have uttered was displayed on that screen.”
Gundy, the younger brother of Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy, said he “was horrified” when he realized the word he had read.
“What I said was not malicious; it wasn’t even intentional,” Gundy continued. “Still, I am mature enough to know that the word I said was shameful and hurtful, no matter my intentions.”
Gundy played quarterback at Oklahoma from 1990 to 1993 and served as a graduate assistant on coach Gary Gibbs’s Sooners staff in 1994 before coaching quarterbacks and running backs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1995 to 1998. He returned to Oklahoma in 1999 as the running backs coach for first-year coach Bob Stoops. In 2017, Gundy was promoted to co-offensive coordinator under former Sooners coach Lincoln Riley, who left for Southern California last year.
“I take responsibility for my mistake,” Gundy wrote before announcing that he was stepping down immediately. “I apologize. … This team — its coaches, players, administration, and fans — do not deserve to be distracted by off-the-field matters while working to continue the tradition of excellence that makes me so proud to be a Sooner.”
Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables, who was hired to replace Riley in December, accepted Gundy’s resignation “with sadness” on Sunday.
“He’s dedicated more than half of his life to Oklahoma Football and has served our program and university well,” Venables said in a statement. “We’re thankful for that commitment. We also acknowledge that in stepping aside he’s placed the program and the welfare of our student-athletes first. In coaching and in life, we’re all accountable for our actions and the resulting outcomes.”
Venables announced that L’Damian Washington, an offensive analyst for the Sooners, will become interim wide receivers coach. | 2022-08-08T14:28:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma assistant Cale Gundy resigns after saying ‘shameful’ word in film session - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/oklahoma-football-cale-gundy-resigns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/oklahoma-football-cale-gundy-resigns/ |
Leandro Lo, world Jiu-Jitsu champion, fatally shot in São Paulo club
By Terrence McCoy
Leandro Lo of Brazil competes in the Abu Dhabi World Professional jujitsu Championship on April 17, 2014. (Francois Nel/Getty Images)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Leandro Lo, one of the world’s best Jiu-Jitsu fighters and eight-time world champion, was fatally shot in the head in a São Paulo club early Sunday morning, authorities said, shocking the sports community and drawing displays of mourning from across the country that invented and popularized Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Brazilian media, citing Lo’s attorney, reported that there had been an altercation at the posh Clube Sírio. A man approached Lo’s circle of friends, attorney Ivã Siqueira Junior told Folha de São Paulo, and tried to provoke the group. He picked up a bottle from their table and wouldn’t return it. The lawyer said Lo knocked the man down.
Once on his feet again, the man “took four steps back,” one witness told the national television program Fantástico on the condition of anonymity. “He took out a gun from his waist and shot him in the head at point blank.”
Authorities issued an arrest warrant for military police officer Henrique Otavio Oliveira Velozo on suspicion of his involvement in the shooting. Outside of the precinct, fans and supporters of Lo yelled “killer” and “vagabond” when the officer arrived late Sunday afternoon.
His death served as another grim reminder of the epidemic of gun violence that continues to grip Latin America’s largest country and kills tens of thousands of people every year.
“Lo was one of the greatest athletes our sport has ever produced,” the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation said in a statement. “Lo’s global influence, passion and dedication to Jiu-Jitsu will forever be remembered and honored for the great champion and person he was.”
His mother, Fatima Lo, posted on Instagram a drawing of him climbing up into the sky, clad in his Jiu-Jitsu uniform.
“I will miss you so much,” she wrote. “A piece of me is missing.”
“In the street, in school, you’re always going to be scared of the bigger kids,” Lo said in one YouTube video. “So I said, 'If I’m going to fight, then I’m going to know how to defend myself.”
He was introduced to Jiu-Jitsu through a social program, Fighting for God, whose mission is to provide needy kids with structure and guidance through the martial art, and before long was ascending to the upper echelons of competition. He eventually became the world’s best in five Jiu-Jitsu categories and was named world champion eight times.
“The biggest among us,” said Unity Jiu-Jitsu School in New York City. “The most beloved, the biggest warrior, the nicest person.” | 2022-08-08T15:41:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leandro Lo, Jiu-Jitsu champion, shot in São Paulo club - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/leandro-lo-jiu-jitsu-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/leandro-lo-jiu-jitsu-shot/ |
Miriam Berger
Mourners attend on Aug. 8 the funeral of four Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
GAZA CITY — A cease-fire between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza brought a tense calm to both territories Monday, ending a three-day conflict that killed 44 Palestinians and showcased the precision of Israel’s U.S.-backed antimissile defense system, known as Iron Dome, which kept the Israeli casualty count at zero.
“The United States is proud of our support for Israel’s Iron-Dome, which intercepted hundreds of rockets and saved countless lives,” President Biden said in a statement on Sunday. Biden welcomed the Egyptian- and Qatari-brokered cease-fire, which began Sunday at 11:30 p.m. local time, and commended Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid for his “government’s steady leadership throughout the crisis.”
Though both sides claimed victory, the cease-fire promised no long-term fix for the 15-year-long standoff between the militant-controlled Gaza Strip and Israel — which, along with Egypt, has blockaded the coastal enclave since 2007, effectively trapping more than 2 million people in an area roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia.
Besides a handful of cross-border firings in the minutes after the cease-fire’s start, the agreement held into Monday and enabled humanitarian aid to reach Gaza for the first time since Israel cut off outside supplies early last week.
Dwindling electricity threatened to shutter hospitals as they continued to treat the more than 350 people wounded in the fighting. Although the first fuel trucks crossed into Gaza at 7:30 a.m. Monday, officials said it would take time to restart the 75-megawatt generator that provides much of the strip’s eight hours of electricity a day.
Gazans filled the streets Monday, many coming out of their houses for the first time since Friday afternoon, when surprise airstrikes shattered what had been a day of prayers and beach trips. Stores were crowded with shoppers who had been scared to venture out during the weekend, even though dairy aisles and produce bins had yet to be replenished. Most of the stores were still dark inside.
Retail blocks were bustling, but pockets of despair were not hard to find. Just off Monsura Street, Riyad Qaddoum, 65, relived the moment Friday when he heard a loud explosion around the corner from his house. Running to investigate, he found the bodies of three people killed when two missiles struck a motorcycle ridden by a suspected Islamic Jihad militant. Among the dead was his 5-year-old granddaughter, Alaa Qaddoum. She had been standing outside her aunt’s house waiting for a walk to the park. Blood spots and shrapnel marks still speckled the wall.
“Why couldn’t they have waited until [the motorcycle] was away from the kids?” Riyad said above the music from two crowded funeral tents on his street, one for Aala, another for a 60-year-old man who had been sitting on the stoop of a mosque when the strike killed him. “She was excited to start kindergarten.”
Fifteen of the 44 killed in Gaza were children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Palestinian officials in Gaza said Israel was responsible for all deaths.
The Israeli military has disputed the Gazan account, saying that the majority of civilians killed over the weekend were hit by Islamic Jihad rockets that misfired and landed in the strip.
Even before the cease-fire, Israeli officials boasted Sunday morning of having achieving their tactical goals, which they said included the assassinations of two of Islamic Jihad’s top military commanders, as well as airstrikes on more than 140 tunnels, weapons storage facilities and rocket-launch sites. The operation also killed at least 10 other Islamic Jihad members, as well as three members from other Gaza-based militant organizations, according to an Islamic Jihad statement issued on Monday.
“But the greatest success was a strategic victory: that we did what we wanted and ended it when we wanted,” said Miri Eisen, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israeli military. “We were able to define a beginning, a middle and an end.”
The situation first flared on Tuesday, when Israeli forces arrested a high-level Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank. Soldiers also launched a wave of arrests targeting suspected Islamic Jihad members, making dozens of arrests around Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin and other West Bank locations.
The same day, the Israeli military restricted movement around southern Israel, keeping communities there in an effective lockdown as a security precaution. Israel will hold its fifth election in nearly four years in November, and Lapid, who has been head of government for just over two months, faced increasing pressure to take action against Islamic Jihad as tensions escalated.
The air battle began on Friday afternoon, when Israel launched preemptive airstrikes against Islamic Jihad, which it said had positioned snipers and antitank missiles at the border to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Hamas, the much larger Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, was notably absent from the weekend’s hostilities. In May last year, Hamas and Israel engaged in an 11-day conflict that killed more than 200 in Gaza and 12 in Israel.
While Hamas and Islamic Jihad are allies, the latter is seen as more ideologically extreme: Islamic Jihad has previously fired rockets into Israel as a challenge to Hamas’s leadership.
The Palestinian Authority, which rules parts of the West Bank and is a rival to both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was also notably quiet as the death toll rose in Gaza.
But the escalation did threaten a wider confrontation between Israel and Iran, Islamic Jihad’s main backer. While Iran has provided Islamic Jihad with funds, training and weapons, analysts said Iran probably had no direct role in sparking the fight; once it began, however, Iran’s leadership gave Islamic Jihad its full public support.
“Reality dictated that Palestinian Islamic Jihad had to stop firing, despite Iran encouraging it to keep going,” said a senior Israeli diplomat who was involved in the mediation process and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the process.
The movement’s head, Ziad Nakhaleh, arrived in Iran last week before the violence flared. On Saturday, he met with Ismail Qaani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps overseeing the country’s foreign military operations, who warned Israel will pay “a heavy price” for its Gaza strikes.
Over the three days of fighting, Islamic Jihad lobbed some 1,100 rockets toward Israel, including at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the international airport, according to Israeli army data.
“Islamic Jihad is stronger today,” Nakhaleh said at a news conference in Tehran on Sunday night just before the start of the cease-fire. “All the enemy cities were within the range of our resistance missiles.”
Berger reported from Jerusalem. Shira reported from Tel Aviv. | 2022-08-08T15:58:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israel cheers its wins, Gaza mourns its dead as ceasefire holds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/gaza-israel-ceasefire-islamic-jihad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/gaza-israel-ceasefire-islamic-jihad/ |
Be wary of firm seeking to protect your home’s title. It could be a scam.
There are a multitude of businesses out there trying to make money offering services that you may or may not need. (iStock)
Q: I received an offer in the mail from a company in San Diego. They offer a service to protect the title on our home from someone stealing it to take out loans for credit lines and second mortgages without our knowledge. According to the company, these thieves would take the money and leave us with the legal obligation to pay back the funds.
Is this kind of fraud even possible? Do we need this service? I’m sure others have received this mailing. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you.
A: There are a multitude of businesses out there trying to make money offering services that you may or may not need. Be vigilant when you assess these offers, since many may themselves be scams. You certainly don’t want to give out any personal information to any company or person without understanding what you’re getting into and without verifying the company independently.
Sometimes companies send out mailings to homes offering services that a homeowner might get free from a government service. In some states, you’re entitled to a reduction on your home’s real estate taxes if you live in the home as a primary residence. For the most part, you simply fill out a form with the taxing jurisdiction to get the discount. However, some companies monitor homeowners’ tax bills and will send out mailings letting homeowners know that they provide them with a service to get a tax reduction for a fee.
In other jurisdictions, the office that handles the recording or filing of real estate documents may offer a service that will notify homeowners if a document transferring ownership of the home has been recorded or filed. Ask if your local recorder of deeds office or other office that handles the recording of documents provides that service to homeowners. If they do, you can simply sign up for their automated system, which will send you information if something changes on your title. And, yes, there are companies that offer this service for a fee even though you may be able to get access to the same information free.
You asked if this is even a “thing.” Yes, it’s fraud and it happens. Some homeowners have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity in the blink of an eye.
Here’s a brief description of how you transfer ownership of a home from a seller to a buyer. A seller prepares a document conveying the seller’s ownership interest in the home to a buyer and that document then gets filed or recorded with the office that handles the land records where the home is located. It’s that simple. (In some places, they may use a title registration system and the manner in which you file documents may require some additional steps.)
If someone steals your title, they will have to create documentation that says they are you and fraudulently sign the transfer documents to themselves. Then, they’ll try to get a loan against the equity (cash-out refinance or home equity loan or line of credit) and immediately strip out the equity.
If you live in the home you own, it’s unlikely that you would need any title protection services. From what we can gather online, these services will monitor any documents that may get recorded against the title to your home. These services claim that they will assist you if someone records something against the title to your home that they should not have done. However, their service can come with a monthly charge of around $20. That is not a small amount.
Frankly, if you’re concerned about your credit and home equity, you might be better off freezing your credit with the credit reporting bureaus. Once you do this, a fraudster would have a hard time impersonating you to try to obtain credit or a mortgage using your name.
Sam has come across situations where a fraudster used fraudulent documents to change the ownership of the home from the legitimate owner to the fraudster. Then, the fraudster sold the home under their own name. However, it’s harder to do this when you live in your own home. When you live in your own home, buyers will want to see the home or lenders will want to access the home for mortgage purposes. As such, it’s unlikely that a scam artist will try to do this when you can see people coming to your door.
Over the years, we’ve seen companies offering insurance that protects the value of your home. If the value goes down and you sell, they pay you some of the difference. Other companies will provide a method that claims to “lock” the title to your home to protect you. You also have warranty companies that will service and replace appliances and fixtures in your home should they break down. If you were to obtain all of these services, you’d be out thousands of dollars each year.
Our advice is to stay vigilant, and find out if you can go online and look for any changes on the title to your home. If you can, then monitor the online system every couple of months. Next, freeze your credit with the three major credit bureaus and you’ll be well on your way to protecting your single largest asset — while saving yourself some money along the way.
If any of our readers have had any positive experiences with companies that provide this title service when a fraudster has recorded a document against you, please let us know how things turned out. We’ll share the information in a future column. | 2022-08-08T15:58:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Be wary of firm seeking to protect your home’s title. It could be a scam. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/08/be-wary-firm-seeking-protect-your-homes-title-it-could-be-scam/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/08/be-wary-firm-seeking-protect-your-homes-title-it-could-be-scam/ |
The pharmaceutical giant, which has been on a buying spree, gains one of the few FDA-approved treatments for sickle cell disease with the all-cash deal.
(Mark Lennihan/AP)
The acquisition of the company behind one of the few FDA-approved treatments for sickle cell disease, is the latest blockbuster deal for Pfizer, which has been looking for veins of long-term growth following a cash bonanza driven by its covid-19 vaccine. In May it spent $11.6 billion to swallow up Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding, which treats acute migraine headaches. More recently it shelled out $6.7 billion for Arena Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on immuno-inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease.
Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder in which red blood cells can become hard, sticky and “sickle-shaped,” leading to a range of health problems including infection and stroke. It affects about 100,000 Americans who are disproportionately of African, Middle-Eastern and South Asian descent, according to CDC data.
Pfizer will pay $68.50 per share under the terms of the all-cash deal, which represents a 7.3 percent premium on Global Blood Therapeutics’ Friday closing price, and a 42.7 percent premium compared to Thursday’s closing, before the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were in advanced merger discussions. | 2022-08-08T15:58:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pfizer inks $5.4 billion deal for sickle cell disease treatment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/08/pfizer-sickle-cell-disease/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/08/pfizer-sickle-cell-disease/ |
Lin Manuel Miranda thanks the audience after his performance of the award-winning Broadway musical “Hamilton” in Puerto Rico. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post)
In “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has long noted that the acclaimed Broadway show was “a story about America then, told by America now,” represented in the diversity and talent of a cast from all walks of life that helped the show win 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
But a Texas church’s rendition of the popular musical has gained attention for different reasons, after the show was edited to include several biblical references not mentioned in Miranda’s original production. It was followed by a sermon that compared being gay to having an addiction. The “Hamilton” team in New York also says it did not give a license or permission to the Door McAllen church in McAllen, Tex., to stage the performance, thus making the show an illegal reproduction.
The version of “Hamilton” produced by the Door McAllen and RGV Productions that was performed and live-streamed Friday and Saturday included scenes in which the characters Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler Hamilton talked about how Jesus “saved” them, according to videos of the show from author and podcast host Hemant Mehta. After one of the performances, Pastor Victor Lopez gave a sermon with language that compared being gay to alcohol and drug addiction, according to the OnStage Blog, the first to report about the show.
Shane Marshall Brown, a spokesman for “Hamilton” in New York, told The Washington Post in a statement that it was “unaware of this unauthorized staging of ‘Hamilton.’ ”
“Hamilton does not grant amateur or professional licenses for any stage productions and did not grant one to The Door Church,” Brown said. “We issued a cease-and-desist letter for the unauthorized use of Hamilton’s intellectual property, demanding the immediate removal of all videos and images from previous productions from the internet, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, their own website, and elsewhere.”
Representatives for the Door McAllen and Miranda did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Monday. Senior Pastor Ramon Gutierrez told the Dallas Morning News in a statement that the church had acquired legal permission from the “Hamilton” team to produce the church’s version of the show. Yet Gutierrez noted in a Sunday sermon that the church had received the legal request to remove clips of the performance that were published online to promote the show.
This is the clip they must not want anyone finding out about... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/UGR4PeOp8b
The musical, which is based on the 2004 biography “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, draws heavily from hip-hop music and features people of color as the Founding Fathers and other historical figures. In addition to the 11 Tony Awards and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the musical won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. A filmed version of the Broadway production was released on Disney Plus in 2020 after the streaming service paid $75 million to obtain the rights in one of the largest film acquisitions ever, according to Deadline.
The Broadway production of the show has repeatedly noted that it represents a “diverse America.” The show made headlines in 2016 when the cast addressed Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who had attended a performance, about their concerns over the incoming Trump administration and how they were “alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights.”
The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries of McAllen, about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, is a nondenominational entity founded with the intention of “reaching lost souls with their compassion and desire to serve,” according to its website.
While large parts of the church’s take on “Hamilton” remain the same, the inclusion of biblical references presents some significant differences. In one scene, the character of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton notes that “Jesus gives me the strength to pull through,” even though it is not in the original production. At one point, the character of Alexander Hamilton is asked to pray and “receive Jesus Christ in your heart right now,” according to video posted to social media by Mehta.
“Do you not only confess but repent of all of your sin? Do you accept him as your Lord and savior?” Hamilton is asked, according to the video. “Heavenly father, I pray for Alexander, I pray that you bring him peace of mind, that you would restore his family and marriage. In Jesus’ mighty name, I pray.”
Another scene alters the lyrics in “The World Was Wide Enough.” In the original version, Hamilton, played by Miranda, sings: “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me.” The version from the Door McAllen, however, puts a different spin on it.
“What is a legacy?” the actor portraying Hamilton says. “It’s knowing that you repented and accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ that sets men free. You sent your sinless son of man on Calvary to die for me!”
The edited scenes and the sermon comparing being gay to an addiction met with backlash from critics, including Howard Sherman, a theater writer and interim managing director at Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York.
“LGBTQ lives are NOT sinful. Addictions are not sins but illnesses,” Sherman wrote on Facebook. “This church cannot be allowed to deploy ‘Hamilton’ as a tool to spread messages that are contrary to the messages of Hamilton, of musicals, of theater and they cannot be allowed to take artists’ work for their own ends.”
Brown told The Post that the “Hamilton” team informed the church that they could proceed with the Saturday performance if it was not live-streamed or recorded and if no photos or videos of the performance were posted online. The “Hamilton” team “would be discussing this matter with the parties behind this unauthorized production within the coming days once all facts are properly vetted,” Brown said.
“We would like to thank our devoted fans for bringing this to our attention,” Brown said. | 2022-08-08T15:59:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas church's illegal 'Hamilton' performance ends with sermon comparing being gay to addiction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/hamilton-texas-church-gay-addiction-edited-scenes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/hamilton-texas-church-gay-addiction-edited-scenes/ |
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer at a news conference after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
There have been pieces of legislation that were more difficult to birth than the Inflation Reduction Act the Senate passed Sunday — but not many.
This legislation went through so many deaths and reincarnations that it’s hard to keep them all straight — from an initial $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan to a scaled-back $1.75 trillion plan introduced in October to one proposal after another teased and then withdrawn, usually when the mercurial Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) decided he didn’t like whatever was on offer.
But now that it’s done — pending a vote in the House that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will no doubt deliver — it caps a remarkable burst of legislative achievements, including a gun safety measure, an industrial policy bill to accelerate production of semiconductors and a veterans health bill.
This is what it means to have a party in Washington that cares about governing. Even if the passage of a big, complicated bill doesn’t inspire you to burst into song, and even if the deep structural problems of our system remain, it shows that at the right moment, with the right people in charge, the country can still make progress.
Politics changes all the time, but over the past few decades, a particular cycle has repeated itself. A Democrat gets elected president. Their party labors mightily to pass consequential bills. Not all of them succeed, but many do. Eventually, a Republican wins the White House, and their party cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations, then does little else with its control of Congress.
You can’t say elected Democrats didn’t work their hearts out on these bills, especially the Inflation Reduction Act, even if the result is (as always) imperfect. But try to imagine the Republican Party as it’s currently constituted doing what Democrats just did.
Picture Republicans spending a year or so negotiating with one another, producing version after version of a complicated bill, trying to balance competing interests within their party, persisting through repeated setbacks and ultimately producing a victory everyone in their party can live with.
You can’t, because Republicans just don’t have it in them. The only subject they care enough about to craft a complicated bill on is taxes, which is relatively easy because they all agree they should be lower, at least for corporations and the wealthy.
But give Republicans a difficult legislative task — such as following through on their oft-made pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with what Donald Trump memorably called “something terrific” — and they flounder and flail.
There was once a time when Republicans were capable of crafting legislation that could even garner some Democratic support. But that’s a fading memory. After the tea party and the triumph of Trumpism, the number of Republicans interested in using the legislative process to solve complicated problems keeps dwindling.
Say what you will about the superannuated Democratic leaders: At least they know how to pass a bill. Yet the Democratic base is often less satisfied with the quality of its party’s performance than the Republican base is when its party controls Washington. That’s part of the cycle, too. When a Democratic president is elected, expectations run high for a wave of transformative new laws — and the long and painful legislative process inevitably makes people feel at least some measure of disappointment even when a good deal is accomplished.
It’s tempting to tell anyone feeling disillusioned to grow up, that governing is hard and nobody gets everything they want. But I would argue against tempering our hopes for this presidency and those to come.
Taking the governing process seriously means acknowledging the importance of the division of labor, with different people playing different roles. It’s the job of activists to think creatively and press relentlessly for change, which often means saying that legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t go far enough. It’s the job of progressive members, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), to criticize the bill — but give it their votes so it can succeed.
It’s the job of other members to advance the parochial interests of their constituents — and negotiate and compromise. It’s the job of the White House to tell everyone it’s a spectacular accomplishment that should make us all rapturous with joy.
The rest of us should be able to say that this bill is a great achievement for what it does on climate and prescription drug prices and a good deal more, precisely because we know how hard governing is. Mature citizens want to be stirred by grand visions of the future while knowing that the reality will be difficult and involve trade-offs and letdowns.
That’s an inevitable part of the cycle of politics, too: dreaming, then working, then accepting something less than the dream, then deciding to keep working and dream again. So let’s give President Biden and Democrats in Congress the credit they deserve even as we demand they go further and do more. It’s the only way to get anywhere. | 2022-08-08T15:59:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This is what happens when the party in charge cares about governing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/inflation-reduction-act-democrats-governing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/inflation-reduction-act-democrats-governing/ |
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on July 21, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
President Biden, despite his party’s thin House majority and the 50-50 Senate, has arguably passed more important bills than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. And LBJ had a filibuster-proof Senate majority throughout his presidency (a high of 68 Democrats at one point) and huge House majorities (his low, after the 1966 election, was a 61-vote advantage).
With the passage Sunday of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which would invest in green energy, contain prescription drug costs and make it much more difficult for big corporations to evade paying taxes, Democrats capped a run of victories. That includes the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure plan, the gun-safety bill, the semiconductor manufacturing bill, expanded health care for veterans exposed to burn pits, reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, Senate approval for admitting Sweden and Finland to NATO, and confirmation of 76 federal judges (including the first Black female Supreme Court justice).
Throw on top of that the 9 million jobs gained since Biden took office; the widely successful rollout of coronavirus vaccination and treatments that are preventing serious illness for the vast majority of Americans; the record-low 8 percent uninsured rate; and the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and it’s clear this administration has a remarkable record.
Biden certainly has not gotten everything he wanted. Voting rights reform, subsidized child care, free community college and the rest of the expansive Build Back Better plan did not get through. The Senate has not been able to codify Roe v. Wade, protections for gay marriage or access to contraception. And while gas prices have dropped by roughly a dollar, they are still historically high, contributing to high inflation.
But think of it from the other perspective. What did the vast majority of Republicans vote against? It’s gobsmacking:
Republicans opposed the American Rescue Plan en masse, including measures to reduce child poverty by 40 percent, protections from eviction during the height of the pandemic, money to tackle the coronavirus, food assistance for those going hungry during the pandemic, and money to keep businesses from failing and first responders from being laid off at the state and federal levels.
All but 19 Senate Republicans and 13 House Republicans voted against the infrastructure plan.
More than 30 Republican senators voted against the modest gun safety bill. All but 14 House Republicans opposed it.
174 House Republicans voted against the Pact Act, the bill to provide health care to sick veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And after inexcusably delaying the bill in the Senate, more than 10 Republicans voted against it.
Republicans almost unanimously opposed an independent Jan. 6 commission; a voting rights bill (including the reauthorization of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which used to draw virtual unanimous approval); and the impeachment or conviction of Donald Trump for orchestrating a failed coup.
Republicans voted overwhelmingly against measures to stop gas price gouging and against capping insulin at $35 (193 Republicans in the House and 43 in the Senate).
Senate Republicans unanimously opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, putting them on the side of dozens of major corporations that pay nothing in federal taxes and tax scofflaws who, because of lack of funding for the IRS, avoid paying their fair share.
The vast majority of House Republicans voted against access to contraception. About 75 percent voted against gay marriage. And virtually all of them voted against codifying Roe, against privacy protection for women who use pregnancy-related apps and against protections for women to travel to another state for reproductive health care.
For any member not representing a deep-red district or state, many of those votes are not only problematic but indefensible.
What and whom are Republicans for? According to their votes: forced birth, protecting big corporations and tax cheats from paying taxes, the National Rifle Association and Second Amendment absolutists, oil companies and Big Pharma, to name a few things. The ties that bind them — aversion to lifesaving coronavirus vaccines, election denial, censorship, reverence for the Confederacy and persecution of LGBTQ Americans — used to be considered beyond the pale. Now, they are standard positions.
Understandably, voters are upset about inflation, although the GOP has yet to lay out a single coherent plan to address it. Meanwhile, agenda items that Republicans have put forth are grossly unpopular and bizarre (e.g., raising taxes on poor people, repealing the Affordable Care Act, making Social Security and Medicare discretionary).
Certainly, poor candidate selection represents a challenge to the GOP, but even the slickest candidate would have a hard time peddling this loony stuff. Whatever Democrats’ errors and inadequacies might be, as least they don’t believe in all this hooey. | 2022-08-08T16:00:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How many nutty stances can the Republican Party take? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/republicans-gop-how-many-nutty-stances-can-one-party-take/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/republicans-gop-how-many-nutty-stances-can-one-party-take/ |
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon, beset by cascading revelations in the Watergate scandal, announced he would resign the following day.
It’s not just the millions who may become pregnant who have to contend with new limits on access to abortion. It’s also the corporations looking to hire, the medical schools trying to recruit, the communities working to enlist doctors — including obstetricians and gynecologists.
That’s one of the early lessons of the Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which had preserved access to abortion for a half-century. It’s too soon to draw sweeping and authoritative conclusions, but the decision has led to questions with few easy answers.
Setting aside for a moment the dramatic effects on health, will states with new bans have trouble attracting corporations, workers, doctors, college students? What effects will the restrictions have on rules about, say, child support? Or how about workplace liability?
My colleagues Amber Phillips and Tom Hamburger looked at the aftershocks in Indiana, which on Friday became the first state to adopt a ban since the Dobbs decision in June.
“‘We are concerned that this law will hinder Lilly’s — and Indiana’s — ability to attract diverse scientific engineering and business talent from around the world,’ the company said in a statement issued Saturday. ‘Given this new law, we will be forced to plan for more employment growth outside our home state.’”
Doctors and medical students given pause
Also on Saturday, my colleague Christopher Rowland documented “hesitancy among some doctors and medical students who are reconsidering career prospects in red states where laws governing abortion have changed rapidly since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.”
Chris chronicled:
Physicians who support abortion rights “worry that limits on training for new doctors will undermine recruitment of young talent. They are concerned about restrictions on fertility treatment. They anticipate that conservative legislatures will seek to impose bans on certain types of contraception, including IUDs and Plan B medication. Most Republicans in the U.S. House voted last month against a measure protecting the right to contraception.”
It’s too early to gauge the scale or duration of the shift, Christopher noted. “But amid a national shortage of reproductive health practitioners, the early evidence indicates that red states have, at minimum, put themselves at a disadvantage in the competition for crucial front-line providers, experts said.”
More fallout
Dobbs is being felt in other ways.
Last week, for instance, Georgia confirmed that the provision in its abortion law that “ … any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat … shall qualify as a dependent minor” meant expectant parents could claim a $3,000 state income tax exemption.
As for the political considerations, my colleague Paul Kane reported that Democrats might get a boost in the November midterm elections from the Dobbs decision as well as widespread frustration over gun violence. My colleague Philip Bump expressed his skepticism here.
And then there’s Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who recently predicted that not only would the shifts be large and lasting but that they would benefit social conservatives.
“More and more red states are going to become more red, purple states are going to become red and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer,” Hawley said. “I would look for Republicans as a result of this to extend their strength in the Electoral College. And that’s very good news.”
But the red/blue politics are complicated. Consider the recent vote in very-red Kansas.
House poised to pass Inflation Reduction Act later this week
“The House is scheduled to return to Washington on Friday to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping package to combat climate change, lower health-care costs, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit that passed in the Senate on Sunday with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Harris,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
Biden says he is concerned, but not worried, about China’s military drills
“President Biden said Monday that he is concerned, but not worried, about China’s extension of military exercises in the seas and airspace around Taiwan that began after last week’s visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.),” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
“I’m not worried, but I’m concerned that they’re moving as much as they are,” Biden said. “But I don’t think they’re going to do anything more than they are.”
“A top leader of the Pakistani Taliban militia was reported killed Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan, potentially dealing a serious blow to peace talks being negotiated between the extremist group and Pakistani officials with assistance from senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan,” Pamela Constable reports.
“An entire supply chain of rare minerals, semiconductors, batteries and financing all have to fall into place before Americans give up their combustion engines. American consumers can only claim the full $7,500 credit for an all-electric engine if their manufacturers displace Chinese batteries by 2024 and minerals from China or other countries lacking free-trade agreements by 2025 — a threshold that automakers are warning could be impossible to meet. And China, furious right now over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, is expected to watch as the United States openly strives to liberate itself from manufacturing in the People’s Republic,” Steven Mufson reports.
“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) is seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Republican nominee for her job after a state police investigation found evidence that he helped orchestrate an effort last year to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment in an effort to prove there was fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” Rosalind S. Helderman, Emma Brown and Tom Hamburger report.
“In a petition filed Friday with a Michigan agency that coordinates prosecutors and posted online Sunday by Politico, a Nessel representative wrote that her office has a conflict of interest because a preliminary investigation by state police has determined that her opponent — lawyer Matthew DePerno — was ‘one of the prime instigators’ of a conspiracy to convince Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines.”
For the New Yorker, Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker chronicle “how Mark Milley and others in the Pentagon handled the national-security threat posed by their own Commander-in-Chief.”
“It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: ‘You [expletive] generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?’”
“‘Which generals?’ Kelly asked.”
“‘The German generals in World War II,’ Trump responded.”
“'You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?’ Kelly said.”
“But, of course, Trump did not know that. ‘No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,’ the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.”
Paul Manafort in his first in-depth interview since going to prison for Trump: ‘I don’t apologize’
“I don’t feel like I need to explain myself,” Manafort tells Insider's Mattathias Schwartz. “But I’m not unwilling to explain myself. There are certain things that I would probably not do again. But I don’t apologize for things I’ve done in my life. Because I’ve always had the right motives for what I did in my life.”
“Do you want to mention any of the things that you would not do again?” Schwartz asks.
“I would have to think about that,” he replies. “I don’t know if — and if I — I’m not sure if I want to — the point is, the things that I have been publicly criticized for over the last several years are not correct. They’ve created a narrative of me that is not me.”
On Aug. 7 President Biden left the White House for the first time in 18 days, telling reporters he “felt good” following his coronavirus recovery. (Video: The Washington Post)
“If his election showed how far a self-described ‘kid from Scranton’ could go, two years of his presidency have exposed the limits of what Biden — maybe any president — can do for a place like this. If Biden’s political goal is to help people like his former neighbors, it’s not clear he’s succeeded, at least not yet,” Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports.
“Over five decades in Washington, Joe Biden knew that the way to influence was to be in the room where it happens. But in the second year of his presidency, some of Biden’s most striking, legacy-defining legislative victories came about by staying out of it,” the Associated Press's Seung Min Kim and Zeke Miller report.
“Mr. Biden’s portrayal of al-Zawahri as a key plotter of the Sept. 11 attacks was echoed in many news accounts about his speech, including in The New York Times. But it surprised counterterrorism experts, as did the characterization of al-Zawahri’s role in the Cole bombing,” the New York Times's Carol Rosenberg and Charlie Savage report.
The House Republicans who broke ranks for the marriage bill, visualized
“Of the 47 House Republicans who voted in favor of the same-sex marriage legislation, 24 are on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of seats to target in the midterms. But only a handful represent true swing districts according to the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter’s ratings, given that polling continues to show Republicans are more likely to regain the House majority. They only need to net five seats from Democrats to do so,” Marianna Sotomayor and Hannah Dormido report.
Sherrod Brown: Becoming the workers’ party again
“As inflation continues to batter families’ bank accounts—and the president’s poll numbers—even free-traders of yesteryear are beginning to admit the problems of a labyrinthine supply chain stretched across the globe,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) writes for the American Prospect.
“And for the first time in my memory, there’s real momentum to take action to fix it. Democrats just passed the kind of industrial policy we haven’t seen in many decades, to build out domestic supply chains of key inputs like semiconductors. It will create the kind of jobs that too many communities have lost. And it sends a clear message to these Americans that we have not forgotten them.”
Karl Rove: Manchin’s deal won’t save the Democrats in the midterms
“Even while arguing that the bill’s passage will ‘make the Democratic closing argument stronger,’ Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think tank, admits that would only give “a point or two” to Democratic candidates. That’s simply not enough. It’s also already hard for Democratic candidates, especially in the House, to put daylight between themselves and Mr. Biden. This bill binds them tighter to the president and his dismal poll numbers,” Karl Rove writes for the Wall Street Journal.
At 12:30 p.m., Biden will take part in a briefing on the area’s flooding response at Marie Roberts Elementary School in Lost Creek in Chavies, Ky.
The Bidens will visit with affected families and see the response in eastern Kentucky at 2 p.m., and Biden will deliver remarks.
At 3:25 p.m., the Bidens will depart Chavies and return to the White House by 5:50 p.m.
A long, long weekend in Washington
last person to vote should have to wear a cone of shame for the remainder of reconciliation | 2022-08-08T16:00:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jobs. Education. New abortion limits may come with a price. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/jobs-education-new-abortion-limits-may-come-with-price/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/jobs-education-new-abortion-limits-may-come-with-price/ |
Rescuers remove a body from the wreckage of a bus at the crash scene in Podvorec, near Zagreb, Croatia, Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022. A bus with Polish license plates has skidded from a highway in northern Croatia, and police say more than 10 people were killed. Croatia’s state HRT television reported that several more people were injured, many seriously. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-08-08T16:01:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Polish pilgrims injured in Croatia bus crash to return home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/polish-pilgrims-injured-in-croatia-bus-crash-to-return-home/2022/08/08/be2abc92-1726-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/polish-pilgrims-injured-in-croatia-bus-crash-to-return-home/2022/08/08/be2abc92-1726-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
People sprinkle dirt over the grave of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, at Fairview Memorial Park in Albuquerque on Aug. 5. (Chancey Bush/AP)
Police in Albuquerque are searching for a silver Volkswagen sedan that they suspect was used in the fatal shootings of four Muslim men over the past year, striking terror into the city’s close-knit Muslim community.
Three of the killings have taken place in the past two weeks, with the most recent occurring the night of Aug. 5. Police think the shootings might be connected to an earlier homicide in November 2021. All four victims were men of South Asian descent.
Police released a photo of a car that they think was “used as a conveyance” in the four incidents and asked the public for help, noting that the vehicle had tinted windows and appeared to be a Jetta.
Authorities have not determined a motive for the killings. At least three of the shootings followed a pattern in which the victims were “ambushed with no warning, fired on and killed,” a senior police official said, according to the Associated Press.
The FBI’s Albuquerque office is assisting the city’s police in the investigation, said Frank Fisher, a spokesman for the office.
The most recent victim, Naeem Hussain, was a truck driver who had immigrated to the United States from Pakistan and took the oath of citizenship on July 8, said Ehsan Shahalami, his brother-in-law.
Hussain had attended the funerals of two of the earlier victims, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, and Aftab Hussein, 41, at the Islamic Center of New Mexico. The three men share a common surname but are not related. All regularly attended prayers at the center, said Tahir Gauba, its director of public affairs.
Gauba said the string of killings has been “horrific” for the community of about 5,000 Muslims in Albuquerque, a city of more than 560,000. “I’ve been in the United States since ’95,” Gauba said. “I’ve been through 9/11. I’ve been through the Trump era. I’ve never felt this helpless and in fear.”
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, who was fatally shot Aug. 1, worked on the campaign team of Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D-N.M.), the congresswoman said during a news conference Sunday.
She described him as “a kind, funny, brilliant, amazing young man from Pakistan who came to the United States to pursue his career and his life’s dream and to study at the University of New Mexico.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) pledged Sunday that the perpetrator would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but that authorities needed community support to identify the vehicle of interest.
“We will bring this person or persons to justice,” she said at a news conference. “We will provide justice to the families who have lost everything.”
President Biden said Sunday that he was “angered and saddened by the horrific killings” in Albuquerque.
“While we await a full investigation, my prayers are with the victims’ families, and my Administration stands strongly with the Muslim community,” he said on Twitter. “These hateful attacks have no place in America.”
CAIR, which advocates for the civil rights of Muslims in the United States, said in a statement Saturday that it was offering $10,000 for information “leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.” The organization called on the Biden administration to “take a direct role” in the matter.
Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report. | 2022-08-08T16:55:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Car sought in four Muslim killings in New Mexico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/new-mexico-muslim-killings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/08/new-mexico-muslim-killings/ |
The two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize was a best-selling author who brought to life the grand sweep of time and place
By Glenn Rifkin
David McCullough, shown here in 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, was one of the preeminent American historians of his generation. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“I was overwhelmed by the violence revealed in them, the destruction,” Mr. McCullough, who was from the same area of western Pennsylvania, later told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat. More than 2,200 people died, and a thriving coal-and-steel town was submerged in muddy debris because wealthy industrialists had neglected a dam.
The passage of time had reduced the tragedy to a historical footnote, Mr. McCullough discovered, with little if any serious scholarly study devoted to it. Undaunted by his own inexperience — “I imagined myself being a writer, but never a writer of history,” he said — he set out to write a book about the Johnstown flood.
Mr. McCullough, long regarded as a master storyteller of American daring, endeavor and perseverance, died Aug. 7 at his home in Hingham, Mass. He was 89.
His daughter Dorie Lawson confirmed the death but did not cite a specific cause.
In a career spanning more than five decades, Mr. McCullough turned out hugely popular tomes about such subjects as the building of the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge. He put a spotlight on the largely unknown but extraordinary people who battled disease, bureaucracy and graft to see such awe-inspiring visions accomplished.
His biographies of two underappreciated presidents, John Adams and Harry S. Truman, shined a light on their achievements and earned him two Pulitzer Prizes.
With his sonorous and somber voice, commanding presence and shock of white hair, Mr. McCullough appeared frequently on television series such as PBS’s “American Experience.” He often collaborated with filmmaker Ken Burns and narrated Burns’s Emmy Award-winning documentary series “The Civil War.”
Mr. McCullough’s honors included two National Book Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented in 2006 by George W. Bush.
“History matters. That’s what I’ve tried to convey,” Mr. McCullough told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., in 2017. “It’s essential to understand our nation’s story, the good and the bad, the high accomplishments and the skulduggery. And so much of our story has yet to be told.”
For a generation of younger historians, among them Walter Isaacson, Mr. McCullough was a generous mentor as well as an inspiration. “At one point, when I was very young, we were talking about the various founders, and he said, ‘I’ll do John Adams, and you should do Benjamin Franklin,’ ” Isaacson said in an interview. “I felt I was able to share a feast with the master chef.”
When he got stuck while writing one of his own best-selling historical profiles (including Franklin), Isaacson would turn to a passage from Mr. McCullough’s “John Adams” or “Truman” to “try to get into the rhythms that mark his greatest passages.”
Mr. McCullough’s writing style was deceptively approachable, often belying the years he spent mining dusty archives for that telling letter, document or record that might bring a story to life.
In the course of his research for “Truman” (1992), Mr. McCullough moved for a time to the 33rd president’s hometown of Independence, Mo., to pick up the local accent and almost literally follow in the footsteps of the former president on his fast-paced early-morning walks. Years earlier, while writing “The Great Bridge” (1972), he had grown a beard in an effort to immerse himself in the life of one of the key builders of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The only way I can attain this feeling for my subject is when I’ve soaked up so much information on it, I know it from every angle and direction, and can call on all those resources to imagine that I am there,” Mr. McCullough told the New York Times.
Working for much of his career in a tiny windowed shed behind his farmhouse in West Tisbury, Mass, on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. McCullough tapped away on a manual 1940 Royal typewriter purchased for $25 in 1965.
“I like the tactile part of it,” he told the Times. “I like rolling the paper and pushing the lever at the end of the line. I like the bell that rings like an old train. ... I even like crumpling up pages that don’t work. ... I don’t like the idea that technology might fail me, and I don’t like the idea that the words are not really on anything.”
After receiving his degree in 1955, Mr. McCullough wrote for Sports Illustrated, Architectural Forum and Time magazine before joining a U.S. Information Agency publication in 1961. Later, while working at American Heritage Publishing in New York, he made his literary debut with “The Johnstown Flood,” the success of which enabled him to focus full time on his books.
“I think the most phenomenal thing about the Brooklyn Bridge is that today it works,” Mr. McCullough told The Washington Post in 1981. “And we’re in an era when practically nothing works. They were building the bridge to last forever.”
In “The Great Bridge,” Mr. McCullough explored the technological challenges, political intrigue and human drama — including the accidents and disease that crippled and killed the builders — behind the world’s most magnificent suspension bridge.
At the library at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, chief engineer Washington Roebling’s alma mater, Mr. McCullough found what he described as “the legendary trunk of letters in the attic.” From the Roeblings who built the bridge — father John and son Washington — to the nefarious dealings of Boss Tweed, Mr. McCullough revealed the soul of a project that defied the parameters of engineering and courage.
Los Angeles literary critic Robert Kirsch called the book “so compelling and complete as to be a literary monument ... that sort of work which brings us to the human center of the past.”
For Mr. McCullough, the project illuminated a crucial insight. “Discovery comes most often not from finding something unknown or long hidden, but from seeing afresh what has been on the table all along,” he told a publication of Cornell University, where he had once been a visiting professor. He described himself as a “foreign correspondent whose task was to report, not from another country, but from the past.”
Several years later, he met Burns, who turned “The Great Bridge” into his first documentary, “Brooklyn Bridge” (1981), with Mr. McCullough serving as narrator. Mr. McCullough later became host and narrator of the Emmy-winning series “Smithsonian World,” broadcast on PBS and featuring stories about history, science and human achievement.
TR and Truman
Mr. McCullough’s TV work, including more than a decade on “American Experience,” remained secondary to his writing.
His work on the National Book Award-winning “The Path Between the Seas” (1977), about the Panama Canal, inspired a deep interest in Theodore Roosevelt, a key player in the canal’s history. Mr. McCullough’s study of Roosevelt’s childhood, adolescence and early manhood became “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), which also won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.
Mr. McCullough said he hoped that his book on Roosevelt, especially his emphasis on the future president’s grueling struggle with asthma, would dispel forever the caricature of Teddy, the Rough Rider, shouting “Bully!” as he ascended San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War.
“If you don’t understand the hell he went through as a child, you can’t understand the dimensions of his success as an adult,” Mr. McCullough told The Post.
Sometimes, serendipity played a role in his work as a historian. The decision to write a profile of artist Pablo Picasso took Mr. McCullough in a new but ultimately futile direction.
But a few months into his research, he concluded that he “loathed” Picasso. An offhand discussion with his editor at Simon & Schuster led him to refocus his labors on what became his 1,000-page biography of Truman.
The president had left office in 1953 unpopular even with members of his own party, despite his considerable legacy: dropping the atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II in the Pacific, presiding over the creation of the Marshall Plan and NATO after the war, recognizing the state of Israel and integrating the armed forces. Yet he was often viewed as a mild-mannered caretaker between the presidencies of two more towering figures, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Truman had often been dismissed as a onetime Missouri haberdasher who lucked into politics. Mr. McCullough’s book was a culmination of efforts by many historians to reconsider Truman and to convey the man behind his accomplishments.
Mr. McCullough told the Times that when his publisher at first suggested Franklin Roosevelt as a suitable subject of a biography, the author almost offhandedly suggested Truman instead — the notion emerging “from somewhere deep inside of me.”
In 1954, Mr. McCullough married Rosalee Barnes. She died in June at 89. Survivors include five children, William, Geoffrey and David McCullough Jr., and Dorie Lawson and Melissa McDonald; a brother; 19 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
“Writing history or biography, you must remember that nothing was ever on track,” Mr. McCullough told the Times in 1992. “Things could have gone any way at any point. As soon as you say ‘was,’ it seems to fix an event in the past. But nobody ever lived in the past, only in the present. | 2022-08-08T16:55:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David McCullough dies; Pulitzer Prize-winning historian was 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/08/david-mccullough-dead-american-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/08/david-mccullough-dead-american-history/ |
Trump wanted ‘totally loyal’ generals like Hitler’s, new book says
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fourth from left, stands beside President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the White House on Oct. 7, 2019. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
President Donald Trump once told a top adviser that he wanted “totally loyal” generals like the ones who had served Adolf Hitler — unaware that some of Hitler’s generals had tried to assassinate the Nazi leader several times, according to a new book about the Trump presidency.
Trump complained to John Kelly, then his chief of staff and a retired Marine Corps general, “why can’t you be like the German generals?” according to “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021” by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.
When Kelly asked which generals he meant, Trump replied: “The German generals in World War II.”
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said, according to the book.
Trump didn’t believe him, the book says. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” Trump insisted.
According to those interviewed for the book, Trump’s military leaders and advisers were regularly trying to pull back on Trump’s desire to inflate his image and power, and to reconcile that desire with the values of the United States.
In one conversation from the book, Trump reportedly told Kelly he didn’t want any injured veterans to be part of an Independence Day parade he was planning.
In another portion of the book, the authors describe how Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drafted a resignation letter in the days after military police fired gas canisters and used grenades containing rubber pellets, clearing racial justice protesters from Lafayette Square ahead of Trump’s photo op in front of nearby St. John’s Church.
That event and other recent ones had prompted Milley to do “deep soul-searching,” Milley wrote in the letter, adding that he believed Trump was “doing great and irreparable harm” to the country. He wrote that he thought the president had made “a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military” and that he no longer believed he could change that.
“You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people,” Milley wrote. “I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.”
Trump, he added later, did not seem to believe or value the idea, embodied in the Constitution, that all men and women are created equal. Lastly, Milley said he “deeply” believed that Trump was ruining the international order and causing significant damage to the United States overseas and did not understand that millions of Americans had died in wars fighting fascism, Nazism and extremism.
“It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what [World War II] was all about,” Milley wrote. “In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that.”
Though the resignation letter was ultimately never sent, it showed the degree to which Milley believed Trump had already inflicted damage on the country. And though he was convinced by several not to quit, Milley would later fear two “nightmare scenarios” related to Trump’s attempts to hang onto power at home, according to the book.
“Milley feared that Trump’s ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of his own lies about the election would lead him to seek a ‘Reichstag moment,’ ” Baker and Glasser wrote, referring to a 1933 fire in the German parliament that Hitler seized to take control of the country. “Milley now envisioned a declaration of martial law or a Presidential invocation of the Insurrection Act, with Trumpian Brown Shirts fomenting violence.”
Milley later feared that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — in which a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory — was in fact that “Reichstag moment.”
“They shook the very Republic to the core,” Milley later said about the Capitol attack, according to the book. “Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”
Noted: Trump wanted ‘loyal’ generals like Hitler’s, new book says | 2022-08-08T16:59:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump wanted ‘totally loyal’ generals like Hitler’s, new book says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/trump-book-hitler-milley-kelly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/trump-book-hitler-milley-kelly/ |
Biden deserves kudos for diverse judges. But White men still dominate.
President Biden with Ketanji Brown Jackson at the White House shortly after her confirmation to the Supreme Court on April 8. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In less than two years into his first term, President Biden has successfully appointed an impressive 76 federal court judges. That means Biden, despite having a 50-50 Senate with no room for error, has confirmed more judges at this point in his presidency than each of his three predecessors.
Biden also deserves praise for improving diversity on the federal bench. More than 76 percent of Biden’s have been women (including the first Black woman to be Supreme Court justice), compared the roughly 42 percent of Barack Obama’s appointees and only 24 percent of Donald Trump’s.
Even more stunning, while 68 percent of Obama’s judges and 84 percent of Trump’s were White, that’s true of only 32 percent of Biden’s as of July 1. When it comes to Black judges, Biden (28 percent) outpaces Obama (18 percent) and underscores Trump’s abysmal record (less than 4 percent). Same goes for Biden’s record on appointing Hispanic and Asian Americans judges. Overall, about 65 percent of Biden’s nominees are people of color.
To put this into perspective, Trump nominated zero Black judges to the Supreme Court or circuit courts out of 56 appointments. Was there not a single Black person acceptable to the Trump administration? It’s hard to believe merit ranked high on Trump’s list of criteria, considering the slew of utterly unqualified White candidates he put forward.
Biden has also nominated roughly 30 former public defenders, far more than any other president. Indeed, Ketanji Brown Jackson is the only Supreme Court justice to have worked as a public defender.
Despite Biden’s record, the federal bench as a whole remains appallingly low on diversity. A recent report from the American Bar Association found, for example, “Of the 1,088 sitting judges on federal district courts, there were 48 Black women as of July 1, 2022. That’s just 4.4% of all the district court judges. California had six Black female judges in district court, while Illinois and New York each had four.” In 27 states, there is not a single Black woman on the federal bench. It’s worse at the circuit court level, where only 3.4 percent of appeals court judges are Black women. “Six circuit courts had none,” the ABA report found.
As the report makes clear, the judiciary is so overwhelmingly male and White that it will take decades to reach anything approaching a fair reflection of the country. Thanks to Biden’s effort, “the percentage of Blacks on the federal bench rose slightly — from 9.5% in 2020 to 11% in 2022. . . . Meanwhile, 7.7% of federal judges in 2022 were Hispanic — up slightly from 6.5% in 2020.” Meanwhile, less than 4 percent of federal judges are Asian American (a small increase under Biden) and no Asian American has been appointed to the Supreme Court. And the gender balance looks like the U.S. workforce from 1960: “The percentage of female federal judges grew from 27% in 2020 to 30% in 2022.”
One takeaway from these statistics: Diversity is one of many good reasons to expand the federal bench. As Bloomberg Law reports, “Despite years of requests, the last time Congress gave the judiciary a comprehensive allotment of new seats was in 1990 when it added 72 permanent district and appeals court seats and 13 temporary trial court seats. Since that 1990 measure, the judiciary reported district court caseloads have risen by 47%.” So expanding the federal could be just as important to ensure the effective operation of the judicial system in addition to efforts to open slots for diverse nominees.
Plus, the current Supreme Court is increasingly antagonistic toward voting rights and indifferent or hostile toward women’s fundamental rights. In the next term, affirmative action in higher education is likely to be on the chopping block as well. And the court’s Christian nationalist bent has become more obvious in religion cases. As such, diversity in background, race, religion and gender on the lower courts are becoming even more important to arrest the marginalization of disadvantaged groups.
The progressive Brennan Center argues, “Diversity in judicial selection has a normative dimension: in a democracy, the bench should reflect the public it serves.” There is some evidence that the presence of Black judges “heightened perceptions among Black Americans that the courts were legitimate.”
A varied lived experience among judges can help minimize the damage wrought by the high court. It might even broaden the perspective of a radical Supreme Court majority that’s still disproportionately White and male and blinkered by its narrow theocratic vision. | 2022-08-08T16:59:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden deserves kudos for diverse judges. But White men still dominate. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/biden-diversity-federal-judges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/biden-diversity-federal-judges/ |
By Sophie Fullerton
A woman and a child in Raqqa, Syria, walk past a hotel destroyed by an airstrike. (Alice Martins for The Washington Post)
Sophie Fullerton is a political scientist and human rights researcher based in New York.
Last November, around the same time the Irish travel vlogger Janet Newenham was filming videos of her strolls through Damascus and Aleppo, five members of a family, including three children, were killed in a Russian airstrike in northwest Syria. But none of Newenham’s 170,000 YouTube subscribers would have learned that from her upbeat dispatches — in her videos, Syria is not a country at war.
After a scorched-earth war — supported by Iranian forces, sectarian militias and the Russian air force — Bashar al-Assad’s regime has regained control of much of Syria, but over half its population remains displaced, and the rest languish under the same suffocating terror that inspired them to rise up against the regime in 2011.
The regime’s victory, however, has come at a price. It is now an international pariah, strangled by sanctions, indebted to both Iran and Russia. It needs an economic lifeline, and it needs it fast. But it is hard to convince investors that the country is open to business when its image remains wedded to a brutal war.
After the fall of Aleppo six years ago, the regime tried to recruit international journalists to help rehabilitate its image. Assad’s father-in-law, Fawaz al-Akhras, paid many to visit Damascus and meet high officials, including Assad himself. The effort was a PR disaster. Most reporters wrote critically about their experience, and the regime learned a valuable lesson: As long as Syria is seen through a political lens, it will struggle to get favorable coverage.
Enter the travel influencer.
Over the past few years, the regime has been earnestly recruiting YouTubers and influencers to help burnish the country’s image. The idea is ingenious since most travel influencers consider themselves apolitical, and their audiences are mainly interested in sights, sounds and flavors. The conventional tone of such videos is cheery, with little room for reminders of tragedy. To the extent that the videos acknowledge Syria’s destruction, it becomes part of the aesthetic, adding a hint of danger and pique to the adventure. On Instagram and TikTok, it’s not uncommon to see influencers posing in front of ruined neighborhoods. To them, it’s all part of the exotic Levantine experience, along with the country’s souks, bazaars, mosques, castles and restaurants.
The influencers enter the country through a visa granted only when one arranges accommodations through a regime-approved travel agency. The regime vets all visa applications to weed out journalists and activists. Once in Syria, the travelers are assigned minders, usually in the guise of translators.
While most influencers seem indifferent to the country’s recent horrors, some do have a sense of moral culpability. Protestations about not having a “political agenda” are thus common. “None of the videos ... are meant as a political commentary,” Newenham says, for example. But in another video, she follows this with the claim that Homs — one of the earliest opposition bastions to be besieged and destroyed by the regime — was leveled by “airstrikes from people outside of Syria.” The equally “apolitical” TikTok influencer Davud Akhundzada blames the country’s destruction on the Free Syrian Army for taking up arms against Syria’s government: “As a result, this is what he have left,” he says, pointing at destroyed neighborhoods.
The regime exploits the influencers’ naivete and opportunism. It amplifies their comments declaring Syria safe and secure through official media. But even without explicitly parroting regime pronouncements or producing PR for it, these influencers are advancing the regime’s agenda by imparting the false impression that the country’s troubles are behind it. Most Syrians still suffer in internal exile or as refugees abroad. More than 100,000 have simply disappeared in the regime’s torture chambers.
While most Syrians don’t have the freedom to visit their own homes, they are seeing insensitive tourists, indifferent to their pain, trampling around their neighborhoods, desecrating the sites of mass crimes. Such tourism is unethical because even its innocuous frames conceal horrors. Newenham, for example, speaks enthusiastically about her visit to Bab Tuma but seems oblivious to the fact that she is a short distance from the Air Force Intelligence’s local branch, which Human Rights Watch has identified as one of the country’s main torture facilities.
While the value of such tourism to the regime is obvious, it is more troubling that many posts have been sponsored by Western companies. Duolingo, Surfshark and Skillshare have all sponsored videos produced during these atrocity safaris, and the vloggers have been able to monetize such content on YouTube. In a statement, a spokesperson for Google — YouTube’s parent company — said it requires creators and advertisers to comply with all applicable sanctions and demonetize any content that violates its policies. They did not address the Syria videos specifically, however.
In one YouTube video, English vlogger Benjamin Rich even used abandoned homes as a backdrop to sell Surfshark subscriptions. (A Surfshark representative told me they will investigate the video after I brought it to their attention.)Newenham acknowledges some reservations in her videos, but when I reached out to her for comment, she declined to answer any questions.
It’s clear these influencers don’t want to deal with the political and ethical implications of their travel. We can’t police people’s consciences. But we can question whether the companies sponsoring such tourism are violating the sanctions placed on the regime because of its human rights violations. | 2022-08-08T16:59:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Influencers are whitewashing Syria’s regime, with help from sponsors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/travel-influencers-whitewash-syrian-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/08/travel-influencers-whitewash-syrian-war/ |
Pat Riley and Magic Johnson combined to lead the Lakers to five NBA titles in the 1980s. Riley was an assistant coach for the first title and head coach for the next four. (Lennox Mclendon/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
LOS ANGELES — A 63-win season was headed down the drain when Pat Riley realized he could no longer reach the Los Angeles Lakers.
The legendary coach, known for his slicked-back hair and high-end suits, addressed his team in May 1990, hoping to conjure a second-round comeback against the Phoenix Suns. Desperate to connect during a film session at a hotel ballroom, Riley punched a mirror for emphasis, continuing his monologue even though blood dripped down his hand. Shortly thereafter, the Lakers bowed out and his nine-season run guiding “Showtime” was over.
“I lost it in the playoffs,” Riley admitted in “Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers,” a forthcoming documentary from Hulu. “I could feel the walls closing in. I could feel it and I fought it. I could feel [the players] drawing away from me. I don't think there's any doubt in my mind that I changed. It was like war. I couldn't get down on my knees and ‘mea culpa’ this thing. I had to follow through. Eventually it came down to me calling plays for Magic Johnson. I think he might have been the only guy in my corner, maybe.”
Though Riley isn’t the brightest star in a Lakers galaxy that includes Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, he is perhaps the most compelling and candid figure in “Legacy,” a 10-part series which premieres Aug. 15.
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The comprehensive documentary follows the Lakers from 1979, when Jerry Buss bought the team, to 2020, the year that Buss’s daughter, Jeanie, became the first woman owner to win an NBA championship. “Legacy” features interviews with 75 people including Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and O’Neal, as well as the Buss children, who are still licking their wounds after a court fight for control of the franchise following Jerry Buss’s 2013 death.
“Legacy” was conceived by Jeanie Buss to provide a definitive account of Jerry Buss’s groundbreaking tenure and to introduce the “Showtime” greats to a younger generation of fans. Jeanie Buss’s devotion to her father is evident throughout, and the series achieves its main goal of celebrating the patriarch’s larger-than-life personality and many contributions to the NBA, including exclusive courtside seating and the “Laker Girls” dance team.
Of course, Lakers nostalgia is a crowded field: Already this year, HBO released “Winning Time,” a dramatized series based on Jeff Pearlman’s book about the “Showtime” era, and Apple TV Plus produced “They Call Me Magic,” a four-part documentary about Johnson. “Legacy” is easily the most ambitious and wide-ranging of these projects, but its first episode covers many of the same plot points as “Winning Time,” while its retelling of Johnson’s 1991 HIV diagnosis is outdone by “They Call Me Magic.”
“I think it’s important to hear from the people who actually live the stories,” Jeanie Buss said in a telephone interview. “We all know what the results were on the court and how many championships [Jerry Buss] won. But the stuff going on behind the scenes makes it a human story. I think people may be surprised at how difficult this business is. You have the highs of winning, but sometimes winning takes a toll. We encouraged the people who were interviewed to share their truth — the good and the bad.”
“Legacy” unfolds in chronological order, mixing contemporaneous television broadcasts, rare archival footage and recent interviews to relive the title years and boardroom drama. There are some real gems: Johnson laughs about his ill-fated coaching career; O’Neal traces his respect for Phil Jackson to their first meeting at the coach’s Montana cabin; and a teenage Bryant delivers a speech in front of his high school English class.
“[Bryant] is the best young player I ever think we’ve worked out here,” Lakers executive Jerry West says in riveting audio from 1996. “I don’t often make predictions for greatness, but I think he’s going to be great.”
Director Antoine Fuqua regularly involves multiple narrators to tell fuller, more rewarding stories. After the Lakers win the 1987 title, Riley explains that he immediately guaranteed a title repeat in 1988 because his previous teams hadn’t been focused enough to go back-to-back. Meanwhile, Abdul-Jabbar and his teammates groan that Riley’s guarantee increased expectations and kept them from savoring their triumph.
When the subject turns to Jeanie Buss’s short-lived marriage to volleyball star Steve Timmons in the early-1990s, she explains how the couple’s move to Europe impacted her career, while her brother, Jim, delights in mocking Timmons’s flat-top hair. The viewer can sense the sibling rivalry throughout Jim’s interviews, and his involvement is a credit to the project given that Jeanie wrestled away control of the franchise from him and their brother, Johnny, in 2017.
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“Everybody’s got a family and everybody can relate to families sometimes having complicated issues that they’ve got to get through,” Jeannie Buss said. “I was doing things the way my dad asked me to do them. Maybe that wasn’t the way my siblings thought it should go. But clearly the court interpreted the trust that my dad left behind, and now that’s behind us. We’re slowly coming together as a family.”
Despite Jerry Buss’s playboy reputation, Johnson’s notorious partying and the unmistakable bond between celebrity and sex in Los Angeles, “Legacy” barely dabbles in salacious material. And while Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” documentary leaned heavily on score-settling, trash talk and personality conflicts, “Legacy” is less interested in sensationalism.
“We wanted to stick tightly to the story of Dr. Buss, his family and team,” Fuqua said. “I’m not a big believer in a lot of extra drama that has nothing to do with the story. That’s not the way to do it.”
This philosophical approach led to some flat stretches in the series, but it also enabled Riley’s obsessive basketball spirit to shine. Riley expresses regret for how hard he pushed the Lakers at times, like when Byron Scott was lost to a hamstring injury right before the 1989 Finals. The Hall of Fame coach also admits that “Showtime” fame changed his personality and enlarged his ego, as he scolds himself for promoting his 1988 book during the middle of a season.
Riley, now a Miami Heat executive, is a crucial tie between the NBA’s present and past, and a much less visible and vocal one than Johnson and O’Neal. His wisdom and hard-driving personality help “Legacy” paint a complete portrait of Jerry Buss, a real estate mogul who was willing to absorb severe financial risks in his bid to unseat the Boston Celtics as the league’s premier franchise.
Just as Riley was forced to navigate the pressure to keep winning in 1990, Jeanie Buss appears consumed by the challenge of keeping the family business on track. Remarkably, the Lakers made the playoffs in 32 of Jerry Buss’s 34 seasons as owner, then missed the playoffs in the first six seasons following his death.
To right the ship, Jeanie Buss tabbed Johnson, whose close friendship with Jerry Buss was key to the “Showtime” era. Johnson, in turn, signed James, who delivered the 2020 title, a full-circle achievement that came four decades after Jerry Buss and Johnson won their first championship.
In an interview conducted shortly after the 1980 Finals, an ecstatic Jerry Buss describes winning as a “high [of] such intensity” that it took “two or two and a half months before you’re ever able to be normal again.” But after 40 years, 11 championships and a prolonged family power struggle, that childlike joy has given way to a much more knowing and guarded perspective in his successor.
“After winning in 2020, the sky seemed a little bit bluer every day,” Jeanie Buss said. “It was a lot of fun. But then, as it does in the NBA, reality sets in. Now you’ve got a big target on your back because you’re the champions.” | 2022-08-08T16:59:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hulu's Lakers documentary goes from Jerry Buss to Jeanie - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/lakers-documentary-hulu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/08/lakers-documentary-hulu/ |
Three Eastern Shore towns will pay $5 million and institute changes in policing to prevent more officer-involved deaths
People protest the death of Anton Black, who was killed during a 2018 police encounter, in June 2020 in Chestertown, Md. (Courtland Milloy/The Washington Post)
Three small towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore will pay $5 million to the family of Anton Black, a Black teenager who died in 2018 during an encounter with a White police officer, and will institute changes in policing to prevent more death involving police.
The settlement ends a nearly two-year legal battle by Black’s family and the Coalition for Justice for Anton Black, a grass-roots group that has fought for transparency and accountability in Black’s death, against the towns of Greensboro, Ridgely and Centreville, and two officers and two police chiefs from those towns. The litigation against the state medical examiner’s office, also a defendant in the lawsuit, continues.
“No family should have to go through what we went through,” Jennell Black, Anton Black’s mother, said in a statement. “I hope the reforms within the police departments will save lives and prevent any family from feeling the pain we feel every day.”
Attorneys Lyndsey Ryan, Patrick W. Thomas and Sharon VanEmburgh, who represent the three towns, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The settlement imposes a new use-of-force policy that, among other things, restricts restraining a suspect in the prone position, a long-criticized technique that has been brought to the forefront after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020. It requires additional police training for intervention, implicit bias and de-escalation. The agreement also mandates a mental health response training for all current and new officers and requires the towns to introduce new officers to the community through a town meeting and for the officers to remain on probation for one year.
“Today marks a step forward on the path toward accountability for … Anton Black and toward a Maryland in which Black lives are valued,” Deborah Jeon, legal director of the ACLU of Maryland, which represented the coalition, said in a statement.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in Baltimore, claimed that officers used excessive force and accused police of violating Black’s constitutional rights with the force used. No one was charged in Black’s death.
The settlement comes nearly four years since Black, a 19-year-old college student, died in what the lawsuit described as a “chillingly similar” manner as Floyd.
Floyd, whose death forced a national reckoning about systemic racism and policing, died as Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, pinned his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
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Greensboro officer Thomas Webster IV, who was responding to a call about a possible kidnapping, chased and used a Taser on Black. The family says Black, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was experiencing a mental health crisis. Black fled on foot after Webster discovered him and a 12-year-old boy that a 911 caller said Black was roughhousing with. In an affidavit filed in response to the suit, Webster wrote that the boy, a family friend of Black’s, told Webster “something to the effect of ‘he’s crazy, he has schizophrenia’ ” about Black.
After the chase, police body-camera footage shows Black being tackled outside his mother’s mobile home, pinned in a prone restraint on his stomach, handcuffed and shackled at his legs. He later lost consciousness and never regained it. Webster wrote in a court affidavit that he and another officer struggled with Black, trying to keep him restrained and handcuffed.
Black’s death roiled Greensboro, a rural community nearly 75 miles east of D.C., sparking protests and calls for police accountability after the family waited more than four months for the autopsy report to be made public. For years, state lawmakers pushed for policing changes based on Black’s case.
In 2021, following Floyd’s killing, Maryland passed sweeping police overhauls that repealed the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights and created new rules for when officers may use force and how they are investigated and disciplined. Since October, when a new law went into effect that requires the attorney general’s office to investigate all police-involved deaths, there have been 21 people who have died in such incidents across the state.
The package of accountability bills also included a measure in Black’s memory that requires increased transparency of public misconduct records.
Former Greensboro police chief Michael Petyo, who was aware of Webster’s history, pleaded guilty in January 2020 to one count of criminal misconduct for making “intentional misrepresentations and factual omissions” in Webster’s application for certification. Petyo was also a defendant in the civil case along with Gary Manos, the former police chief of the neighboring Ridgely Police Department, and Dennis Lannon, a police officer in Centreville. Manos and Lannon were off-duty and helped Webster restrain Black.
In her ruling, Blake said the video evidence “is not so conclusive as to ‘clearly contradict’ and outweigh the plaintiffs’ allegations. She said a reasonable jury “could reach more than one conclusion regarding whether Manos, Lannon and Webster’s use of force was reasonable.” She denied the defendants’ request for the case to be dismissed.
Black’s family and the coalition also sued the state medical examiner’s office,which at the time was led by then-Chief Medical Examiner David Fowler. Fowler, a named defendant in the lawsuit, testified last year as an expert witness for Chauvin in his murder trial. During the trial, Fowler deemed the cause of Floyd’s death as “undetermined,” linking it to heart disease and drug use rather than to his oxygen being cut off from the pressure of Chauvin’s knee.
In 2018, the state medical examiner’s office ruled Black’s death as accidental, saying that it was “likely that the stress of his struggle” with police contributed to his death, as did bipolar disorder and underlying heart issues.
The lawsuit accuses the medical examiner’s office of covering up “the obvious cause of death — prolonged restraint that prevented Anton from breathing.” The attorney general’s office, which is representing the medical examiner’s office, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
A spokeswoman with the ACLU of Maryland said the lawsuit against the state medical examiner’s office is still ongoing. | 2022-08-08T17:21:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family of Anton Black reaches settlement in police-involved death lawsuit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/anton-black-police-settlement-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/anton-black-police-settlement-maryland/ |
Peter Turcik is an avid angler, conservationist and photographer. A photo he took of a ship in the “ghost fleet” of Mallows Bay in Charles County, Md., was chosen as one of 16 new U.S. postage stamps honoring the National Marine Sanctuary System. (Peter Turcik)
When Peter Turcik first spotted Mallows Bay, his immediate thought wasn’t of the history of the Charles County bay or of its haunting beauty, a curious admixture of nature and industry. It was of fish.
“I thought, this is going to be a great place to go fishing,” he told me.
And so it has been, home as it is to largemouth bass, snakeheads, catfish and the occasional striped bass. But Turcik’s biggest catch at Mallows Bay may be the photo he took there in 2016. Last week it was released on a postage stamp, one of 16 Forever stamps honoring the National Marine Sanctuary System.
The photos on the other stamps show things like coral reefs, rocky shorelines, fish, otters and seabirds. Turcik’s photo is different because Mallows Bay is different. On his, the skeletal ribs of a derelict ship stick up from the water. Humans have put their, um, stamp on Mallows Bay.
The bay — on the Maryland side of the Potomac, across from Quantico Marine base — is known for the “ghost fleet” that rests there, more than 100 ships decaying in the shallows.
“Most of the ships we know about are cargo ships built during World War I to send supplies overseas, but the war ended before they could go to Europe,” said Turcik (pronounced ter-sick). “They salvaged whatever they could from the ships, then burned them and scuttled them in the bay.”
The ships have become artificial reefs.
“They provide fish with cover so they can be out of the main current, hide from predators, ambush prey and build nests for spawning,” Turcik said.
Other animals also call the bay home: great blue heron, turtles, osprey …
“You almost always see bald eagles there,” Turcik said.
Turcik first learned of the bay when he worked for the Chesapeake Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit in Annapolis that helped push for the spot’s designation as a national marine sanctuary, which it achieved in 2019. He visited it with Donald Shomette, who wrote a history of the bay.
It was when visiting the bay to take photos for an illustrated paddler’s guide to its attractions that Turcik took that photo of a solitary ship against a pinkening sky.
“The main way to approach photographing Mallows Bay is to plan based on the tides,” Turcik said. “You have to find the days when low tide and the soft light of sunrise or sunset meet up. There’s a bit of a limited window there.”
He took his stamp photo close to sunset, around 8 p.m.
“I looked toward the main channel of the river and saw it standing very proud out of the water,” he said.
Turcik likes low-angle shots with wide-angle lenses.
“For that one I was down at water level, laying flat in my kayak, drifting along,” he said.
In 2020, a representative of the Postal Service approached Turcik about the photo, which was posted on social media. Turcik declined to say how much he earned for allowing his picture to grace a stamp but said it’s the most he’s ever been paid for one of his photos.
And now he patiently awaits seeing the stamp in the wild, so to speak. He thinks it will be a kick to get a piece of mail with a Mallows Bay stamp on it. He preordered five sets of the marine sanctuaries set for his own use.
Turcik, 35, grew up in Western Pennsylvania. He now works for the magazine of the American Fisheries Society. He likes to get out fishing two or three times a week, though Mallows Bay is a bit of a haul from Edgewater, Md., where he lives with his wife, Kelly.
Mallows Bay, Turcik said, is a place “that’s been very much touched by human activity. I think the fact that these shipwrecks have been great habitat for wildlife is a testament to nature’s resiliency. And that gives me hope.”
Another of his hopes: that the people who send or receive the stamps will be inspired to learn more about the country’s 15 marine sanctuaries, which range from the Florida Keys to the Olympic Coast in Washington state. And that they will want to visit them, protect them and maybe take their own photos. | 2022-08-08T17:21:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mallows Bay on new National Marine Sanctuary stamp - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/mallows-bay-postage-stamp/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/08/mallows-bay-postage-stamp/ |
The tax, climate and energy passed by Senate Democrats includes a 15% minimum tax on the domestic profits of large American companies. This roundabout method to collect more money from corporations, known as a minimum book tax, is critical to the deal, since it provides much of the new revenue to fund the energy investments and deficit reduction that Democrats are hoping to tout in the midterm elections this November.
In general, they’re not big fans. Many say that it would be much simpler to raise the corporate tax rate or eliminate tax breaks that many lawmakers consider too generous. Another major critique of the bill as originally drafted was that some companies wouldn’t be able to claim all the deductions allowed under the tax code, notably tax benefits known as depreciation for investments in equipment and buildings. But a late deal struck to secure Sinema’s vote would create an exemption for depreciation tax deductions, which greatly benefits manufacturers. Sinema also pushed for another last-minute amendment to the bill that allows private equity portfolio companies to be counted separately from their owners, which means they are less likely to be affected by the tax.
5. How much money would this tax raise?
The bill as originally drafted would have raised about $313 billion over a decade, according to Congress’s non-partisan scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation, making it the biggest tax increase in the bill. That number will be revised downward based on the changes made to the tax to benefit manufacturers and private equity companies. | 2022-08-08T17:30:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the 15% US Minimum Corporate Tax Would Work - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-the-15percent-us-minimum-corporate-tax-would-work/2022/08/08/8988e4e4-1732-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-the-15percent-us-minimum-corporate-tax-would-work/2022/08/08/8988e4e4-1732-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
FILE - Nicki Minaj poses in the press room with her award for best hip-hop video for “Chun-Li” at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York on Aug. 20, 2018. Minaj will receive the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Awards later this month. Minaj, who has won five MTV trophies for such hits as “Anaconda,” “Chun-Li” and “Hot Girl Summer,” will get the award and perform at the ceremony on Aug. 28 at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-08-08T17:30:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nicki Minaj to get Video Vanguard Award at MTV Awards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nicki-minaj-to-get-video-vanguard-award-at-mtv-awards/2022/08/08/781b4ca0-1733-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nicki-minaj-to-get-video-vanguard-award-at-mtv-awards/2022/08/08/781b4ca0-1733-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html |
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