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The Nationals recently claimed 27-year-old Alex Call off waivers. (Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
Sometimes one team’s expendable outfielder, designated for assignment on Aug. 5, is another’s leadoff hitter, at least at Nationals Park on Sunday. Or if nothing else, this is the case for Alex Call and the Washington Nationals, who recently claimed the 27-year-old off waivers and fast-tracked him to the big leagues.
Who is Call? Drafted in the third round by the Chicago White Sox in 2016, he hits right-handed and was having a career year with the Columbus Clippers, the Class AAA affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians. In 327 plate appearances in AAA — 22 of them with the Rochester Red Wings, the Nationals’ top affiliate — Call had a .292 average, .423 on-base percentage, .521 slugging percentage, 55 strikeouts and 51 walks. With three options remaining, and with close to six years of team control, Washington could see Call as a dependable extra outfielder with a slightly higher ceiling. With experience in left, center and right, he is expected to rotate with Lane Thomas, Victor Robles, Yadiel Hernandez and Joey Meneses, who has played first and the corner outfield spots.
From July: Joey Meneses, long a major-leaguer-in-waiting, might finally get his shot
In a tiny sample size in the majors, Call has just two hits in 20 chances, including an 0 for 4 debut in D.C. on Sunday. But he is the sort of hitter — high contact, low chase rate, patient, perhaps some untapped power — the Nationals are likely to target on waivers and in minor league free agency moving forward. That was made clear when they leaped at the opportunity to claim him.
When the first-place Guardians needed to promote a pitcher, they DFA’d Call despite his strong season and teed Washington up. With the worst record in the majors, the Nationals have the top waiver spot, meaning they have the first crack at any player available there. Even if teams may have jumped the waiver line to acquire Call in a trade, the Guardians couldn’t take that route because it was after the deadline. Between the start of the 2020 season and mid-August 2022, they made only one claim, nabbing right-handed starter Rogelio Armenteros from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since, though, as the rebuild has shifted their roster-building strategies, they have claimed nine players in a calendar year: reliever Patrick Murphy, first baseman Mike Ford, reliever Francisco Pérez, infielder Lucius Fox, reliever Hunter Harvey, outfielder Josh Palacios, starter Cory Abbott, Call and reliever Jake McGee.
This list is a reminder that waiver claims are the definition of throwing something against the wall, hoping it sticks. There is typically one logical reason, if not more, for why a guy was DFA’d by his previous club. Murphy was shaky for the Nationals in 2021, then again in 2022, and was DFA’d in late April before sticking with the team in AAA. Ford never appeared for Washington and is bouncing around other systems. Pérez, also in Rochester, has struggled in limited innings with the Nationals. Fox cracked the Opening Day roster because of an injury to Ehire Adrianza but has spent much of the season with the Red Wings. Palacios was optioned Sunday morning to make room for call. Abbott, 26, is currently getting his shot as a stopgap in the rotation.
That leaves Harvey, Call and McGee. Harvey, 27, could prove to be a very solid claim if he stays healthy. A former first-round pick by the Baltimore Orioles, Harvey missed close to two months with a pronator strain, returned with improved mechanics and has been mostly sharp in a conservative workload. McGee, 36, arrived as a total reclamation project, making a bit of sense because the Nationals didn’t have a left-handed reliever. He has a 6.52 ERA in 2022 and has already been DFA’d by the San Francisco Giants and Milwaukee Brewers.
And then maybe more than any player above, Call landed with the Nationals because they were intrigued by his numbers and skill-set — and because trading Juan Soto and Josh Bell made a stripped-down roster even more flexible for the foreseeable future.
Before adding Call, the Nationals had outfielders Donovan Casey, Yasel Antuna and Palacios on the 40-man roster but not active. After adding Call, they DFA’d Casey, one of the four players acquired for Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, and eventually sent Palacios down. Casey cleared waivers and remained with the organization, staying in Rochester. His arc — called up in April, optioned before debuting, slumping until he was cycled out to clear space for Call — is less a slight indictment of the Turner-Scherzer return and more another part of the rebuilding process.
Not every fringe player acquired in a deadline trade or waiver claim will click. Frankly, most won’t. But the Nationals would be smart to keep using part of their system to churn through projectable minor leaguers or players who once produced in the majors. They went for the latter in a handful of moves this summer, signing outfielder David Dahl and right-handed pitcher Daniel Ponce de Leon, then claiming McGee. But their interest in Call showed an effort to find contributors who could prove to be above-average with an opportunity, not just were in the past.
In recent weeks, outfielder Franmil Reyes and right-handed pitcher Dinelson Lamet were DFA’d and placed on waivers. Again, the Nationals had the top spot and a clear path to either player. Reyes, a 27-year-old DH, was plodding along for Cleveland after smacking 37 homers in 2019 and 30 last year. Lamet, once a promising starter for the San Diego Padres, then sent to the Milwaukee Brewers in the Josh Hader trade on Aug. 1, was getting knocked around most outings. So Washington let both pass, choosing to use an open 40-man roster spot on Call and his impressive on-base percentage.
Lamet went from the Brewers to the pitcher-starved Colorado Rockies. Reyes went from the Guardians to the Chicago Cubs, who visit Nationals Park for a three-game series this week. Call was the higher-upside claim with far less of a track record. Unknowns are intriguing until results take shape. | 2022-08-15T17:12:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Alex Call fits into the Nationals rebuild - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/alex-call-washington-nationals-rebuild/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/alex-call-washington-nationals-rebuild/ |
Liz Cambage, right, announced that she is stepping away from the WNBA after she and the Los Angeles Sparks separated last month. (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register/AP)
After agreeing to part with the Los Angeles Sparks late last month, four-time WNBA all-star Liz Cambage announced Monday that she is stepping away from the league “for the time being,” writing on social media that she hopes the league will do its “part in creating safer environments and a stronger support system for their players.”
Cambage, a 6-foot-8 center who averaged 13.0 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 25 games with the Sparks this season, had expressed frustration with the league in the past and added she planned to “focus on my healing and personal growth before providing clarification on past rumors.”
Cambage and the Sparks parted in late July. “We want what’s best for Liz and have agreed to part ways amicably,” Sparks managing partner Eric Holoman said in a news release at the time. “The Sparks remain excited about our core group and are focused on our run towards a 2022 playoff berth.”
The Sparks (13-23) finished last in the Western Conference and were led by interim coach Fred Williams after firing Derek Fisher in early June. When Cambage joined Los Angeles in February, she said, “It’s always been my dream to wear the Purple & Gold and play in LA,” according to the WNBA’s announcement of her signing.
WNBA all-star Liz Cambage and Los Angeles Sparks part ways
In her note Monday, Cambage apologized for departing “abruptly” and called playing for the team “a dream come true.”
Cambage, 30, played for the Las Vegas Aces in 2019 and 2021, when she averaged 15.9 and 14.2 points, respectively. She opted out of the pandemic-altered 2020 season.
She was drafted second overall in 2011 by the Tulsa Shock, which later moved to the Dallas area and rebranded as the Wings. She averaged 11.5 points and 4.7 rebounds and was named an all-star in her rookie campaign. Following the 2013 season, Cambage took a four-season hiatus from the WNBA before returning in 2018 with the Wings; she averaged career highs of 23.0 points and 9.7 rebounds that year.
Cambage has also played for Australia’s national team, winning bronze at the 2012 Olympics in London. Last year, Cambage was alleged to have directed racial slurs toward her opponents during a scrimmage with the Nigerian national team, though she disputed those claims. Before the Tokyo Olympics, she announced her decision to withdraw from the Games, citing mental health concerns related to the Olympic “bubble.” | 2022-08-15T17:12:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cambage stepping away from WNBA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/liz-cambage-leaves-wnba/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/liz-cambage-leaves-wnba/ |
Airlines are separating families on rebooked flights. Here’s what to do.
Yet another side effect of the summer of travel chaos
Getting bumped from your flight — a situation that occurs when an airline overbooks — has become a more common experience for travelers during this chaotic summer of flying. Unfortunately, sometimes getting bumped or rescheduled after canceled flights comes with getting separated from the people or the pets you’re flying with. Shifting your travel plans because of a flight bump is frustrating enough, but being separated from your travel companions can really mess with logistics.
The bad news is that it’s happening everywhere this summer, and there’s no way to escape it. Last month, Air Canada sent a Toronto man’s cats to California without him, and Qantas booked a 13-month-old baby and her parents on separate flights. Unfortunately, if you’re flying, it could happen to you.
So what do you need to know if you find yourself in this situation? We talked to experts to get some insight.
Why do people get separated from their family or pets?
Airlines have contracts with passengers called “conditions of carriage,” which lay out the terms of an airline’s responsibility when flights are canceled or delayed, along with other rules, travel industry lawyer Jeff Ment said. In these contracts, some airlines agree to book their passengers on the next available flight, even if it’s on another airline, he pointed out, but some will only book passengers on their own flights.
In almost every situation, passengers who are on a flight that is canceled by the airline can get a refund if they don’t take their rebooked option and then make their own decision about how they want to get to their destination.
Based on the contracts of carriage, airlines have the upper hand in these situations, Ment said, but a passenger is allowed to refuse the rebooking until the airline is able to accommodate the entire group. Ment said there’s no law that requires airlines to keep families or pets and owners together.
There are faults in the system that complicate this, though. Booking systems don’t recognize that young children can’t just do their own thing, airline analyst Bryan del Monte said. “They treat every passenger as if they’re fully functional and capable of being separated.” With that being said, there are laws about seating minor children with parents and seating families together, del Monte added, but since it’s considered “guidance” rather than a basis for fines, airlines are generally careless about it.
Despite several recent headlines about incidents, there isn’t any data to show how often this happens, unfortunately. Another unknown? How much money the airline industry in the United States makes from seat reservations when people are paying to sit together. The government doesn’t require airlines to report those figures, del Monte said.
In 2016, Congress approved an extension of the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill — known as the Families Flying Together Act — which requires carriers to ensure that children under age 13 can sit next to a family member at no additional cost, del Monte said. In response, the Transportation Department issued a notice to airlines encouraging them to seat children under 13 with an adult who is traveling with them.
“It’s an awful thing to have travelers broken up, particularly when they’re kids involved,” said aviation expert and consumer advocate William McGee.
What can I do to stop this from happening to me?
“The system is at its breaking point,” McGee said. Years ago, if part of a group of travelers were bumped, they would generally wait around for the next open flight and get on that one together. Today, however, the circumstances are less certain, and waiting to fly with the person you’re traveling with could end up causing even more issues. You might have to take the seat when the space is available, McGee said, even if it means splitting up for the flight, because finding two available seats later on could be a tricky feat.
Summer travel is chaos. Here are 8 things to know.
There isn’t much you can do to stop yourself from ending up in this kind of situation. Del Monte recommended that travelers still make an effort to do all they can to get ahead of it, like booking early, “but it won’t preclude you having a bump.” Even del Monte himself has gotten bumped from flights he booked a month or more in advance.
“The only thing people can do is buy travel insurance,” he said. “When the airline screws you over, it’s going to be travel insurance that pays for that extra hotel stay and the extra expenses,” he added. “It’s going to be travel insurance that compensates you for all the real expenses when your plane is suddenly canceled or delayed.” | 2022-08-15T17:12:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Airlines are separating families, kids and pets on rebooked flights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/parents-kids-families-separate-flights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/parents-kids-families-separate-flights/ |
Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a historic mistake. Trump is the beneficiary.
For the past week, Republican snowflakes have been having a meltdown over the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence for classified documents he took while leaving office. The MAGA legions darkly suggest that tyranny looms if FBI agents can treat a former president like a normal criminal suspect.
For anyone familiar with how other democracies from France to South Korea have indicted, convicted and even imprisoned former leaders, this is more than a little strange. Where do Republicans get the idea that a former president should be above the law?
It all goes back, I suspect, to Richard M. Nixon, the first president caught red-handed breaking the law. Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski concluded that “there is clear evidence that Richard M. Nixon participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice by concealing the identity of those responsible for the Watergate break-in and other criminal offenses.”
Yet the special counsel was prevented from indicting Nixon while he was in office because Nixon’s own Justice Department held that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.” That opinion was conveniently seconded in 2000 by Bill Clinton’s Justice Department when he was under threat of a potential indictment from the Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr. It was then cited by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in 2019 as grounds for not prosecuting then-President Trump for likely obstruction of justice.
No court has ever ruled that a president cannot be indicted, and some eminent scholars dispute that finding, but the Justice Department has acted as though this conclusion were holy writ. That means that the only way to hold a sitting president accountable is via the impeachment process. But Trump was impeached twice and acquitted both times because senators of his own party ignored overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
If you want to know why Trump thought he could get away with inciting an assault on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, I would submit that part of the reason was his previous success in beating the rap for trying to extort the president of Ukraine. Then, after having been acquitted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, he felt free to leave Washington with classified documents. Just imagine what he will do in the event he returns to office. I doubt our democracy would survive another Trump term.
Surely, you might think, Trump would finally be held to account now that he is no longer in office, but another Nixon precedent has created an implicit assumption of immunity even for ex-presidents. On Sept. 8, 1974, a month after being sworn in, President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon … for all offenses against the United States which he ... has committed.” This was his way of putting the Watergate scandal — “our long national nightmare” — behind us.
Ford was pilloried for his decision. His approval rating plunged 21 percentage points overnight and never recovered. Yet even many of those most critical at the time — including Ted Kennedy, Bob Woodward and former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste — later concluded that Ford was a “decent and honorable man” who had done the right thing after all. Ford even won the 2001 Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for letting Nixon off the hook.
Well, I humbly submit, it’s high time to rethink Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon along with the Justice Department’s decision to grant Nixon immunity from prosecution while in office. Both decisions should be recognized as historic mistakes whose toxic fallout still poisons our democracy.
Things might look very different today if Nixon had gone to the slammer instead of escaping the wreckage of his presidency to rehabilitate his reputation and win acclaim as an esteemed elder statesman. He was a crook and should have been treated as one. The kid-gloves treatment Nixon received created an expectation of criminal impunity for both sitting and former presidents that leads Republicans to think that it’s an outrage for Trump to be probed by prosecutors, no matter how many laws he might have broken.
Republican partisans are absolutely right that it’s unprecedented for the FBI to search a former president’s home — just as it would be unprecedented to indict a former president. But it shouldn’t be. Any current or former president who commits a crime should face the consequences. In this case, if a jury concludes that the orange man broke the law, he should wind up in an orange jumpsuit.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is receiving horrific abuse, but he is doing the right thing — the long overdue thing — by pricking the bubble of presidential impunity. Republicans who suggest that the FBI search turns us into a “banana republic” have it backward. Allowing Trump to escape accountability is the real threat to our democracy. | 2022-08-15T17:54:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a historic mistake. Trump is the beneficiary. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/nixon-presidential-pardon-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/nixon-presidential-pardon-trump/ |
Woman fatally stabbed in Southeast D.C.
Cynthia Stewart, 41, was killed inside a residence in the 3900 block of 4th Street SE, police said.
A 41-year-old woman was fatally stabbed Sunday night in Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police.
Police found Cynthia Stewart inside a residence in the 3900 block of 4th Street SE around 9:45 p.m. Stewart, from Southeast D.C., was pronounced dead on the scene, authorities said.
An investigation is ongoing, and police have not made an arrest, authorities said. | 2022-08-15T18:28:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman fatally stabbed in Southeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/cynthia-stewart-stabbed-southeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/cynthia-stewart-stabbed-southeast-dc/ |
Wall Street banker bonuses are supposed to be kept secret for a variety of reasons. If everyone knew who was paid what, there would be an uprising as people discovered that clear underperformers were getting compensated more than them. It happens. Wall Street compensation is not always about performance. As I outlined in a column earlier this year, it’s largely driven by office politics. I didn’t tell anyone what I received when I worked at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. outside of my partner on the exchange-traded fund trading desk.
Information about very large bonuses became public in Lehman’s bankruptcy filing, which had a list of the highest-paid employees in the firm. My boss’s boss made $8 million a year, and his boss made $25 million. A handful of people were making from $60 million to $80 million. The response within the firm was: so that’s where the money went. I was making $850,000, which is nothing to complain about, but I felt I probably deserved an extra couple hundred thousand. Bonuses, though, are a zero-sum game. A certain percentage of profits is allocated to compensation, and if one person gets more, someone else gets less. That’s just how it works.
This may seem like an odd time to be talking about Wall Street compensation, as it isn’t bonus season, but banker compensation is in the news. Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Executive Officer Howard Lutnick is currently at the center of a lawsuit alleging that his $50 million compensation package constituted “excessive pay” relative to the value he added to the firm’s commercial real estate unit. And Johnson Associates Inc. just released a widely-followed report predicting that bonuses for those underwriting debt and equity could tumble more than 45% this year, while those advising on mergers and acquisitions could see a drop of 25%.
Huge divisions in pay within a bank is an underappreciated risk. Those employees, especially at the lower end, who feel they aren’t being fairly compensated may also feel as if they don’t have any “skin in the game.” They may not work as hard to drum up revenue, or they may be willfully indifferent or oblivious to capital market risks. There is also the phenomenon where older, more experienced, highly paid employees are eliminated and replaced with junior employees. Ben Ashby, a former managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chief Investment Office & Treasury, wrote a column for Bloomberg Opinion in 2021 about this “juniorization” of Wall Street, and how 40% of the senior risk managers had been let go at Credit Suisse leading up to the Archegos Capital Management debacle.
You can go around in circles on what constitutes “excessive” compensation, but being a CEO is a hard job. Howard Lutnick has kept Cantor Fitzgerald relevant more than 20 years after Sept 11 terrorist attacks that wiped out most of the firm. And though Wall Street compensation has always been top-heavy, it has gotten even more so in recent years. That’s partly because of the focus on pay at financial institutions deemed “too big to fail” in the wake of the financial crisis. The result was an effort to tie compensation directly to revenue, and some employees at the top produce a lopsided amount of revenue. Where being a mid-level employee on Wall Street used to ensure an extremely comfortable living -- and that’s an understatement -- such is not always the case these days as top producers suck up all the compensation. (To be sure, no one working at a big bank is having a hard time making ends meet.)
This expanding division in pay is a risk for banks, as employees who feel they aren’t being fairly compensated will have an outsized incentive to leave. Several people that I used to work with at Lehman have told me over the years that there was some ill will after I left the firm to start a newsletter because as head of the ETF desk I was a key player and my absence left a hole. My response has always been that the firm should have paid me more! If I was paid $1.5 million instead of $850,000, it would have made the decision to leave much more difficult. Traders and salespeople are talented, and the optimal amount to pay them is the minimum amount that keeps them from leaving. In my case, the firm miscalculated. Maybe I would still be trading ETFs if it didn’t.
As for Lutnick, you could look at his compensation as a reward for an accumulation of his contributions over time. Then again, Lutnick isn’t making a whole lot less than JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who was paid $84.4 million last year running a much larger and more complex financial institution. I can’t say whether Lutnick deserves the money, but every employee at a bank has an important role to pay, and if their contributions are not recognized, divisions can emerge and mistakes can happen.
• Junior Bankers Deserve Their Bonuses. Really: Jared Dillian
• KKR Wins by Treating Workers More Like Owners: Brooke Sutherland
• Blythe Masters Wants to Help You Cash Out Early: Chris Bryant | 2022-08-15T18:41:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wall Street Bonuses Are Too Small for Many - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wall-street-bonuses-are-too-small-for-many/2022/08/15/829b9688-1cbc-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wall-street-bonuses-are-too-small-for-many/2022/08/15/829b9688-1cbc-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
The air mass over the eastern U.S. is offering a preview of autumn.
The National Weather Service's forecast for high temperature anomalies Monday. (WeatherBell) (WeatherBell)
After you’ve dealt with relentless heat and tropical humidity for months on end, even the slightest hint of autumn is alluring. Large parts of the Lower 48 are forecast to see below-normal temperatures this week, with some areas 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the week before.
After enduring a sweltering first half of August, and the hottest nights on record during July, the Weather Channel calculates that 50 million Americans will see cooler-than-average high temperatures Monday and projects that number to grow to 74 million by Wednesday.
While heat alerts are active in the West this week, the weather's telling a much different story for those in the East!
A summer cooldown will leave millions with below-average temps. Catch our coverage today to see your city's forecast 😎 pic.twitter.com/JjHdPpDs0l
For a large part of the workweek, cooler-than-average weather will stretch from the Mountain West to the Mid-Atlantic.
In some areas, the changes will be drastic.
Boston hit 98 degrees three days in a row to begin last week, completing its hottest 30-day stretch on record. Now the city is hovering in the upper 70s to lower 80s, with more comfortable humidity and clearing skies.
St. Louis also started last week in the upper 90s but is in the 70s to begin this week.
In the Mid-Atlantic, it’s an early taste of September and October, with highs only in the 60s to mid-70s and a cool, damp rain to kick off the workweek.
July 2022 featured hottest nights in U.S. history
While it’s forecast to be cooler than average in much of the eastern two-thirds of the country over the coming days, parts of the Northwest and California will bake, with temperatures 10 to 20 degrees above normal.
Although the current weather certainly doesn’t bear the stamp of Jack Frost, the source region for this cooler weather is the Arctic.
Using NOAA’s HYSPLIT model, which simulates the movement and origins of air parcels all around the world, we can deduce that this air mass actually began over the Arctic back on August 3. It was north of Greenland, then traced a loop before sauntering south over the Hudson Bay and settling over the interior Northeast and Mid-Atlantic over the weekend. Now it’s spread across much of the eastern U.S.
Who will see what?
A cold front stretches from near Charlotte to Nashville before kinking north toward Springfield, Mo., and Wichita. It then bends back southward, and is draped along the New Mexico-Colorado border.
To the north, highs are sitting 10 to 15 degrees below average, with temperatures remaining hotter than normal to the south.
The coolest temperatures are pooling immediately along and to the north of the front. St. Louis, for example, is looking at a high of 74 degrees Tuesday, about 15 degrees below average. Columbia, Mo., might see a 72, 16 degrees below average, and Quincy, Ill., will wind up more than a dozen degrees below average.
The remainder of the week there will be cool too, with highs Wednesday around 80 in St. Louis. That may sound balmy, and it is, but it’s still 9 degrees below what’s typical. That’s the coolest air mass most have felt since late May into June.
The cold had already settled into Columbus, Ohio, on Monday, where the high temperature only hit 70 degrees. That ties for a record daily minimum. Columbus’s average high this time of year is about 85 degrees.
[8:40 AM] The high temperature yesterday in Columbus only reached 70 degrees, which tied the record for the lowest maximum temperature on record for the date August 14. pic.twitter.com/nP7BdcpF53
New York City went from a high of 97 degrees last Tuesday to only 79 degrees Saturday, and will remain with highs in the 70s through Wednesday.
In the nation’s capital, temperatures have stood in the 80s, but were only predicted to peak in the lower 70s on Monday and mid-70s on Tuesday. That’s thanks to a zone of low pressure at high altitudes containing a pocket of cold air over the area.
Washington hasn’t had a high in the 70s since July 9. The air mass is much more comfortable than the steamy, sultry humidity characteristic of the past several weeks.
Even in Texas, where the cold front technically hasn’t made it, there are signs of cooler weather lurking nearby. San Antonio, which has hit 100 degrees 58 times so far this year — one day shy of an all-time annual record — only made it to 88 degrees Sunday. That’s the coolest high temperature observed there since May 25.
Signs point to the cooler temperatures sticking around and actually expanding over most of the Plains, the central U.S. and the Rockies through the end of the week. Highs could run 5 to 15 degrees cooler than average for most folks east of the Continental Divide.
Temperatures should gradually warm up in the eastern U.S., but odds are pointing to near-average or slightly below-average temperatures prevailing for much of the month. | 2022-08-15T18:42:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Change of pace: 70 million Americans cooler than average this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/15/us-weather-cooler/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/15/us-weather-cooler/ |
The source of a resounding boom over Salt Lake City? Probably a meteor.
Satellite imagery and a video from a Utah ski resort helped solve the case of the mysterious noise
A video released by Snowbasin Resort shows a meteor flying above the resort in Huntsville, Utah, on Saturday. (AP)
When a thunderous boom was heard across the Salt Lake City area over the weekend, it confused residents. Was the seemingly inexplicable noise an earthquake or construction noise? Perhaps it was military testing or something from space?
After hearing the explosion while out on a Saturday morning run, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) tweeted that all signs pointed to a meteor.
Multiple doorbell cameras captured audio of the boom, which was heard in northern Utah and southern Idaho. Then there was a mystery to solve: Cox had said the cause of the boom was not an earthquake, something which the University of Utah independently confirmed, or related to any military testing, as had been the case in a similar incident in April.
The National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office found itself playing detective, using satellite data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) system to scan the skies above Salt Lake City. They looked for lightning flashes, though lightning wasn’t really what they were looking for.
Sure enough, the satellite picked up two instances of bright flashes on Saturday morning. The flashes did not appear to be consistent with any thunderstorm activity in the area, meaning it was more than likely that the satellite had picked up on a passing meteor.
Ultimately, video evidence from Utah’s Snowbasin ski resort provided all but absolute proof that Saturday’s boom was caused by a meteor. A few cameras managed to capture a fireball, which is a larger than normal meteor, flying over Utah’s scenic skies that same morning.
Saturday’s meteor passed over Utah just past the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, though it is unclear whether the meteor was a part of that event — which is caused by visible debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet — or whether the two events just happened to align.
The Saturday boom is hardly the first time a mysterious explosion has caused widespread confusion.
Last September, NBCWashington reported that dozens of people called 911 after a mysterious loud boom was heard in the Shenandoah Valley. It was initially unclear would could have caused a loud boom on the ground.
According to local reports, area meteorologists used lightning-tracking satellite technology to confirm that the boom was most likely caused by a meteor. A handful of sightings, including from a pilot who spotted the meteor tracking relatively low in the atmosphere, also helped astronomers from NASA confirm that the incident was an exploding meteor.
Some Reddit users digging into Saturday’s noise suggested the meteor’s passage may have been predicted decades ago.
On Aug. 10, 1972, a meteor that came to be known as the “Great Daylight Fireball” entered the atmosphere over Utah and traveled hundreds of miles into Canada before reentering space. Stunning photos of the fireball show it streaking over the Grand Tetons.
The #GreatDaylightFireball☄️entered Earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle and didn't lose sufficient energy to be captured by Earth's gravity and fall to the ground. It is thought the #asteroid had a diameter of ~10m. It hasn't been seen since.
©️James Baker, 1972, Wyoming pic.twitter.com/2FXLFLwurG
Some astronomers theorized that the asteroid that caused the fireball was on a roughly 25-year resonance, meaning that it would pass through the area in 1997 and again in 2022, according to a prediction from Austrian astronomer Zdenek Ceplecha.
Scientists have expressed skepticism about such a 2022 appearance, and nothing notable was observed in 1997.
“I think it’s very unlikely that this was the same object but it’s fun to entertain the possibility,” said Mark Boslough, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, in an email.
Boslough wrote that scientists should be able map out a trajectory for Saturday’s fireball to determine if the events are linked.
“I do not expect it to match The Post-1972 orbit of the Great Daylight Fireball, but it would be a fantastic event if it did,” he said. “Even in that case, there would not have been any reason to expect it to have entered the atmosphere over Utah again, since the Earth’s spin is not synchronized with its orbit or the orbit of any asteroid. Coincidences do happen.” | 2022-08-15T18:42:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The source of a resounding boom over Salt Lake City? Probably a meteor. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/15/utah-fireball-meteor-asteroid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/15/utah-fireball-meteor-asteroid/ |
A healthy diet is the keystone for living longer and better. Eat right — plenty of fiber, lean protein, healthy fats, whole grains, beans, vegetables and fruit, and nuts and seeds (read: lots of plants) — and you’ll reduce your risk for heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, dementia and many other conditions.
Plants’ benefits stem from their many naturally occurring chemical compounds, such as flavonoids and lignans. “These compounds are essentially information that speaks to your genes. Certain foods have substances in them that may turn on anti-inflammatory genes, for example,” says Sonya Angelone, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “As a result, adding some foods to your diet may help you avoid the expense and side effects of medication.”
The idea of food as medicine isn’t new. “Before we had actual drugs, food was the main option,” says Christy Alexon, a clinical associate professor of nutrition at Arizona State University. “Of course, there are some conditions where you can only go so far with food, but for a lot of your normal everyday issues, food may be able to help.”
And because the following “prescriptions” are all healthy foods that are part of a well-rounded diet, it’s hard to go wrong. (If a problem is ongoing, speak with your doctor to determine the cause and the best course of action.)
Try: Tart cherry juice. Gout is caused by a buildup of uric acid in the blood that leads to the development of crystals. These crystals can collect in joints and tissues throughout the body, causing inflammation and pain. A small 2019 study with overweight subjects, published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition, found that drinking 1 cup of tart cherry juice daily for four weeks reduced blood levels of uric acid and C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation) by almost 20 percent. “It contains a molecule that’s similar to the drug allopurinol, which is used to treat gout,” Alexon says. “Look for 100 percent juice, not the sweetened kind.” Eating raw cherries may also help reduce the risk of a gout attack.
What to avoid: Alcohol, fatty meat, and sugary drinks can aggravate gout.
Try: Raspberries, artichokes and chia seeds. These are some of the best sources of the kind of fiber (insoluble) that helps move stool through your gut, Alexon says. Try a cup of raspberries as a snack, add some marinated artichoke hearts to a salad or mix a tablespoon of chia seeds into a smoothie. “Dried fruits, such as prunes and apricots, can frequently be helpful with chronic constipation because they have a lot of insoluble fiber and contain other chemical components that have their own laxative properties,” says Joel Mason, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine and nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. Just remember to increase your water intake when you’re adding fiber-rich foods, Alexon says: “If you don’t, it can make the problem worse.”
What to avoid: Cut back on fatty meat, dairy products and refined carbs, which may be reducing your intake of nutrient-dense, high-fiber foods.
Try: Oatmeal or kiwifruit. “There is some research showing that having a snack with some complex carbohydrates before bed, such as oatmeal, can increase levels of the mood-regulating chemical serotonin, which helps induce sleep,” Alexon says.
Kiwis have serotonin, too, and that may be one reason people in a small study (sponsored by a kiwifruit marketer) who ate two kiwis an hour before bed dropped off more easily. They’re also rich in folate, a B vitamin. Low folate levels have been linked to insomnia.
In general, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, which is high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, healthy fats and lean protein, has been correlated with better sleep quality, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Nutrients.
What to avoid: Drinking or eating foods with caffeine too close to bedtime can leave you staring at the ceiling, especially if you do so in the afternoon or evening. Alcohol can disrupt sleep in the middle of the night, and eating heavy meals too close to bed can upset your stomach or cause heartburn or acid reflux, which can also disrupt your slumber.
Try: Pumpkin seeds. These green seeds, a.k.a. pepitas, contain compounds called sterols. Researchers believe these may help improve urination problems that accompany benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which occurs when the prostate gland becomes enlarged. A 2014 German study, with almost 1,500 men with BPH, found that those who ate the equivalent of about 2 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds a day saw greater relief in prostate symptoms than those who took a placebo or pumpkin seed extract capsules.
What to avoid: Diets high in fat and red meat may increase BPH risk. Alcohol and caffeine may trigger the urge to urinate.
Try: Salmon, tuna, trout and sardines. These cold-water fish are rich in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), an omega-3 fatty acid — known for anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective benefits. A 2019 study published in Translational Psychiatry found that consuming omega-3s (up to 1,000 mg a day), especially those that contain mostly EPA, helped improve depression. A 3-ounce serving of herring contains approximately 770 mg of EPA, 3 ounces of salmon has 590 mg and 3 ounces of rainbow trout has 400 mg. Aim for at least two servings of fish a week.
What to avoid: Diets that are made up of a lot of processed, refined foods and which lack nutrient- and fiber-dense vegetables and whole grains can harm gut health. Research shows that the gut has its own mini nervous system that is connected to the brain. When there are digestive issues, the gut can send signals to the brain that may trigger or worsen feelings of anxiety and depression. | 2022-08-15T18:42:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Foods as ‘prescriptions’ for a healthy life - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/15/foods-as-healthy-prescriptions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/15/foods-as-healthy-prescriptions/ |
Democrats are focusing the midterms on the GOP. Republicans should welcome it.
A woman walks past the elephant logo of the Republican Party on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 18, 2016. (Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images)
Democrats have made clear they intend to make the midterm elections a battle between them and “MAGA Republicans.” The GOP should accept the challenge and respond with a tactic not used in decades: television advertising focused on the party as a whole.
Campaigning was fiercely party-driven for most of U.S. history. Candidates would, of course, try to make their own mark, but the thrust of campaigning was carried out by organized parties on behalf of the entire ticket. The result was that voters often backed a party’s slate rather than pick and choose between individuals in each race. The party whose presidential candidate won the popular vote also won control of the House in every vote during a presidential election year between 1852 and 1956.
That changed as partisan identities forged in the crucibles of the Civil War and Great Depression began to fade. As a result, voters began increasingly to split their tickets between candidates of either party. An ancestral Democrat, for example, might vote for Ronald Reagan for president and back Democrats for most other offices. Heritage Republicans moved in the opposite direction, backing Democrats for higher offices but Republicans for lower ones.
This ushered in the modern age of campaigning that focuses on personalities rather than parties. Candidates, perceiving that they could stand apart from their parties, started to raise money to fund their own advertising and distinct brands. This, in turn, created the modern campaign experience, where endless candidate ads blur into one another during election season. That is still the typical way campaigns unfold. Today, it’s increasingly common for individual candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars for their own races.
But this approach no longer makes much political sense. Hyper-partisan polarization has dramatically reduced the number of voters willing to split their tickets between candidates of opposing parties. This is evidenced by the small number of House districts that vote for one party for Congress and another party for president. As recently as 2008, this was the case for 20 percent of House seats. In 2020, only 16 of the 435 districts — or less than 4 percent — returned a member from a different party from the top of the ticket.
The Senate is following the same pattern. In 2016, every state elected a senator of the same party as that of the presidential candidate who won the state, the first time that had happened since the 17th Amendment mandated the direct election of senators in 1913. In 2020, only Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) won in a state that the other party’s nominee won. Simply put, voters today first decide which party they favor and then look to see who that party is putting up for office.
This means Republicans must fight fire with fire. If Democrats are going to use the president’s bully pulpit to fan partisan flames, Republicans must fight back. Lacking control of either chamber of Congress, they cannot use their offices to push their messages. That leaves only one option: large-scale television campaigns.
Those ads would, like any good campaign, strike both positive and negative poses. The positive ads would extol what — and who — Republicans are. Republicans are often mischaracterized as old, White and male, but the reality is anything but. A good GOP ad campaign would play up the many officeholders and voters from all genders and ethnic backgrounds and send the message that the Republican Party welcomes all.
The positive messages should also be broad and aspirational, evoking the desire to renew the American promise for our troubled times. They should resist the urge among many in the base to strike tones of fear of the future and a return to the past. That might resonate among the party’s devout, but if those beliefs were widespread, Republicans would already be the majority. The party needs to strike the balance between past and future that President Abraham Lincoln struck in the Gettysburg Address: “a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Party-focused campaigns have helped deliver some of the GOP’s largest election wins. Its 1946 midterm campaign, also fought in a time of rampant inflation, used the slogan “Had Enough?” and resulted in a large Republican wave. The 1980 GOP effort funded party-focused ads that both appealed to unease with the country’s direction and addressed people who had rarely if ever voted Republican with the cute slogan “Vote Republican. For a Change.” A 2022 GOP campaign could recycle these two winners, which are still presciently relevant to the times.
President Biden’s record unpopularity gives Republicans a chance for a landslide win. Running a strong, nationwide television campaign for the entire party could seal it for them. | 2022-08-15T18:42:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats are focusing the midterms on the GOP. Republicans should welcome it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/gop-midterm-strategy-counter-democratic-ads/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/gop-midterm-strategy-counter-democratic-ads/ |
Two simultaneous elections will be held Tuesday — with voters casting ballots under unusual new conditions
Republican U.S. House candidate and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin speaks as former president Donald Trump looks on during a rally at Alaska Airlines Center on July 9, 2022, in Anchorage. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
ANCHORAGE — Sarah Palin’s bid to join the U.S. House, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s effort to keep her Senate seat and Donald Trump’s influence on both of their races will be tested Tuesday in two simultaneous elections in Alaska — with voters casting ballots under unusual new conditions.
On one side of the ballot, Alaskans will vote in a three-way special general election to fill the remainder of the House term left open by Republican Don Young, who was the chamber’s longest-serving member until his sudden death in March. The 45th president has endorsed Palin, a former governor and vice presidential nominee, over fellow Republican Nick Begich III and Democrat Mary Peltola. The election will be Alaska’s first using a ranked-choice system that voters passed in 2020.
Definitive results probably will not be determined for at least two weeks. State elections officials say they won’t start counting second choices and redistributing votes until the deadline for absentee ballots to arrive, and political observers see a race without a runaway candidate.
The ballot’s other side features Murkowski’s Senate primary, where she faces Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka, a former department commissioner in Alaska’s state government. Throughout the primary season, Trump has sought to oust Republicans across the country whom he perceives as hostile to him. After Murkowski voted against Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, Trump attacked her sharply and predicted her political demise.
Unlike in 2010, when Murkowski lost the Republican primary to a tea party candidate and won the general election only after a write-in campaign, she is favored to advance Tuesday to the November general election. That’s because of Alaska’s new open primary system, in which all 19 U.S. Senate candidates are appearing on a single, nonpartisan ballot, with the top four advancing to the November vote.
Murkowski, Tshibaka and Democratic Party-endorsed Pat Chesbro, a retired principal and schools superintendent, are considered the front-runners to advance, which has made for a primary with relatively little drama.
“There’s no great anticipation about whether or not Lisa Murkowski is going to advance,” Murkowski said in a phone interview Sunday from outside Fairbanks, where she was between a renewable energy fair and a soak in a pool at a local hot springs resort. “So, it does have a different feel.”
The race to replace Young has been livelier.
Palin surprised many Alaskans by filing, at the last minute, to run in her first election since her unsuccessful 2008 vice-presidential bid, and since her decision to step down as Alaska’s governor a year later.
Forty-seven others also filed to run in the June special primary election. They included the Anchorage newspaper’s gardening columnist, a Southeast Alaska halibut fisherman and a man legally named Santa Claus — who lives in the city of North Pole.
Palin, Begich and Peltola advanced to the general election, along with left-leaning independent Al Gross. But Gross dropped out shortly afterward, leaving the three others as the sole candidates on Tuesday’s ballot.
The three finalists in the special election are also candidates in the House primary for the November general election. That race appears on the same side of the ballot as the Senate primary in Tuesday’s vote. The top four finishers in the pick-one House primary will advance to November.
With the new ranked-choice system being used in the special election, voters state their top preferences for candidates. Unless a candidate gets more than half of first-choice votes — in which case that candidate would win outright — state elections officials will remove the third-place finisher from contention. Their voters’ second choices would then be transferred to the two remaining candidates.
While there’s been scant polling on the race, strategists in the state say they expect the most first-choice votes to go to Peltola, a former state legislator who would be the first Alaska Native member of the state’s congressional delegation. While Alaska leans Republican, Begich and Palin are likely to split the conservative vote, they said.
Palin, whose campaign has pushed “energy independence” and lobbed attacks at President Biden, held a rally with Trump at a packed Anchorage arena last month. Since then, she has announced no public events in Alaska and has touted endorsements from national conservative figures such as former housing and urban development secretary Ben Carson. Palin spoke earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, and she blasted the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club last week.
Palin campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment. Begich was quick to highlight her absence from events in Alaska.
“Her track record is really about making a case for herself — not for the state, not for those around her, but really about building her personal brand,” said Begich, a nephew of Democratic former U.S. senator Mark Begich and a grandson of Nick Begich, a Democrat who held Alaska’s seat in Congress until his plane went missing in 1972.
Palin, meanwhile, has taken her own shots at Begich, which is making some conservatives anxious: The negative campaigning from the two Republicans risks costing them each others’ second-choice votes, analysts say, making it more likely that Peltola will be elected.
“You want them to look at their second choice as someone they can live with. You can’t turn the second choice into someone they’d never vote for,” said Sarah Erkmann Ward, an Anchorage-based GOP strategist. If Peltola wins the special election, she added, “Republicans will have a collective moment where they need to reassess their strategy.”
Peltola’s campaign, meanwhile, has focused more on local issues, such as plummeting salmon returns in some of Alaska’s rivers, and she touts her background as a fisheries manager.
She responded to attack ads tying her to Biden and increased gas prices by joking that residents of her rural home region of Southwest Alaska would be delighted to pay $5 a gallon, as prices there have been substantially higher.
Peltola has also, however, stressed her support for abortion rights, and her volunteers have been calling independents and moderate Republicans — particularly women — in an effort to peel off first- and second-choice votes.
The Alaska election is the latest in a series of special U.S. House elections held in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. Democrats and nonpartisan analysts have said they have seen signs of more Democratic optimism about the midterms in the special election results. But they acknowledged that Biden and his party continue to face significant political head winds.
While Alaska-based operatives across the political spectrum say Peltola has a realistic chance to win Tuesday’s election, national party arms such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) have stayed out of the race so far.
Peltola, in a phone interview Sunday, called that decision “bizarre,” although she said it should tell voters that she’s “just a regular Alaskan” and not a “D.C. politician.” Her allies, meanwhile, are hoping that Peltola gets more support in the November general election, when she would be running for a full two-year term in Congress.
“It’s understandable, in a year when Democrats have been on the defensive, that they’ve been cautious about investing and learning in more red states,” said John-Henry Heckendorn, a nonpartisan Anchorage political consultant who is working with Peltola’s campaign. “But I think it’s very clear to people on the ground that they’re missing a huge opportunity if they don’t invest in this race.”
Maddy Mundy, a DCCC spokesperson, said in a statement that ranked-choice voting could create new opportunities for the party. “We are watching this race closely and look forward to seeing the finalized results from Tuesday’s election,” said Mundy.
If Palin is eliminated, enough of her voters are expected to rank Begich second that he would come from behind to beat Peltola, said Ivan Moore, whose Alaska Survey Research firm has done some of the only polling on the race. But if Begich, a businessman and software entrepreneur, places third, Moore said, he expects Peltola to win, because too many Alaskans have soured on Palin to rank her as their second choice.
“That will catch up with you when you get into the final two,” Moore said in a phone interview Sunday. | 2022-08-15T18:43:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alaska vote tests Trump’s influence, Palin’s bid and a new election system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/alaska-palin-murkowski-peltola-begich/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/alaska-palin-murkowski-peltola-begich/ |
The precedented investigation of an ex-president’s actions
President Bill Clinton appears at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)
“Has anyone paused to think about the implications of investigating a former president?” asked the top aide to the former Republican president. “Hauling aides before Congress for a political show is one thing, but hauling them before a grand jury is another story.”
The aide added: “It strikes me that we are witnessing the creation of a very dangerous precedent.”
The quote above sounds like it came since we learned last week that the FBI had searched former president Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago — a situation Republicans have roundly condemned as unprecedented, and as representing the political weaponization of the Justice Department (despite not knowing precisely what led to the search).
But while this search of an ex-president itself appears to be without precedent, the legal scrutiny and even a criminal investigation involving a former president’s actions is not. The quote is actually from a March 2001 column by former Nixon White House aide John Dean, who was concerned about a budding federal investigation into Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.
Today the federal probe of Rich’s pardon and others issued by Clinton is more a historical footnote than anything else, as it never resulted in criminal charges. But as we confront another investigation of a former president’s actions while leaving office, it’s worth emphasizing that our leaders have been probed by the Justice Department before. And as with the current investigation, that probe occurred under a Justice Department run by the opposite political party.
Less than a month after Clinton left office in January 2001, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mary Jo White, confirmed something that had been suspected: that her office would investigate whether Rich and those around him effectively purchased his pardon through donations to Democratic organizations and the Clintons themselves (including $450,000 for the Clinton presidential library fund). The Washington Post reported at the time that George W. Bush’s new attorney general, John Ashcroft, had reviewed the decision to open the probe.
The news of the probe drew sharp and concerted rebuttals from Bill Clinton himself, who denied any wrongdoing or improper connection between the donations and his decision.
The night of the announcement, Clinton told Geraldo Rivera he had been “blindsided” by it and blamed it on Republicans (even though Democrats also criticized the pardon). He added: “There’s not a single, solitary shred of evidence that I did anything wrong, or that Marc Rich’s money changed hands. There’s certainly no evidence that I took any of it.”
Three days later, Clinton published a New York Times op-ed proclaiming his innocence.
“The suggestion that I granted the pardons because Mr. Rich’s former wife, Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton library foundation is utterly false,” Clinton wrote. “There was absolutely no quid pro quo.”
In the following weeks came revelations of subpoenas of Clinton library fundraising documents and government documents related to the pardon. Ashcroft later expanded White’s mandate to include all of more than 170 pardons Clinton issued on his final day. Clinton’s half brother, Roger Clinton, was subpoenaed for his work on several pardon requests. Rich’s ex-wife was reportedly given immunity. Clinton would soon express regret over the Rich pardon, maintaining his innocence but acknowledging it was “terrible politics” and complaining that he gave his enemies fodder to “mug” him “on the way out the door.”
The news soon faded, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But documents released in 2016 and early 2017 detailed the extent of the probe. They showed it included two grand juries, “hundreds of interviews” and “numerous witnesses.” They also showed White’s successor who took over the probe in late 2001, later-FBI Director James B. Comey, was “enthusiastic” about the investigation. (Comey had prosecuted the case against Rich in the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
Despite that apparent enthusiasm and four years of investigation, the probe resulted in no criminal charges when it was closed in 2005.
The comparisons between Trump’s lot and other presidents and presidential candidates are flying thick and fast right now — particularly with regard to Hillary Clinton’s emails and a specious parallel Trump and his allies have tried to draw between his handling of government documents and Barack Obama’s. And as with almost every comparison, this is not apples-to-apples; plenty of factors make the Rich investigation unlike what we’re seeing today. Leading that list is that Clinton was never served with a search warrant, and it’s not clear precisely how aggressively White and her successors probed his actions, specifically (though Clinton was obviously quite concerned at the outset).
But there are also plenty of potentially valid reasons that the probe of Trump’s actions might have gone further than the one into Clinton, including most notably that Trump or someone in his circle removed sensitive government documents and that he apparently declined to return all of them when the government kept inquiring about the matter. (It stands to reason that if Clinton withheld key documents in the Rich probe, the government might have been quite interested in retrieving them.)
The potential crimes cited by the government for the Trump search, as laid out in the search warrant released Friday, also suggest that the actions at issue may have gone beyond mere possession of the documents.
As Dean himself said this weekend: “There’s a reason Trump provoked this. He’s the one who didn’t cooperate. He’s the one who forced [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s hand. We don’t know what it is he has or had.”
In other words, despite the rush to judgment about an abuse of power — and with the knowledge, as Dean once argued, that investigating former presidents is a fraught exercise that will force the Justice Department to account for its actions — it’s probably worth finding out precisely why this investigation of a former president’s actions has progressed along these lines. But it’s not unheard-of for the Justice Department to scrutinize a former president’s actions. | 2022-08-15T18:43:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An ex-president's actions have been investigated before: Bill Clinton faced scrutiny over pardons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/trump-bill-clinton-rich-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/trump-bill-clinton-rich-investigation/ |
Twitch streamers traumatized after four ‘swattings’ in a week
Last Tuesday, Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti, a trans Twitch streamer whose combative style has endeared her to legions of young LGBTQ viewers, posted a video to YouTube. “My life is in danger,” read its title. “I need your help.”
In the video, Sorrenti let her audience know she had been the victim of a “swatting” — a potentially deadly form of online harassment in which trolls fabricate a crime to get armed police to show up at a streamer’s real-life location. Sorrenti is far from alone: In the past week, four streamers have had police forces wrongfully called on them.
Swatting is not a new trend and has been deployed against numerous gamers, internet users and content creators for well over a decade. In 2017, it resulted in the death of a 28-year-old man, Andrew Finch, after a dispute over a Call of Duty match. The player responsible for the swatting, Casey Viner, was sentenced to 15 months in prison; the man who made the call at his request, Tyler Barriss, received 20 years. More recently, states like Ohio and Kentucky have introduced bills to make swatting a felony, with the latter state’s version becoming law earlier this year.
Nonetheless, laws around swatting — where they exist at all — remain inconsistent and difficult to enforce due to the ease with which harassers can use software to spoof phone numbers and IP addresses, allowing them to call far outside their own localities and obscure their real identities. It’s also a uniquely visible tactic in the world of livestreaming, giving harassers the power to dramatically interrupt broadcasts such that viewers and streamers can’t help but take notice. Twitch stars Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa have claimed to sometimes grapple with multiple swattings per week. The former relocated as a result.
In addition to Sorrenti, Twitch star Adin Ross, “Call of Duty”-focused Twitch streamer Nadia Amine and controversial YouTube streamer Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins were also swatted — the latter three during live broadcasts that remain viewable online. In Ross’s case, several officers could be seen entering his room with weapons drawn. Ross ended his stream shortly after. Watkins, meanwhile, was handcuffed by a similarly sized squad of officers, with one forcing Watkins’s camera person to end the stream. After a tense moment involving multiple officers, Amine managed to befriend one, who encouraged Twitch chat to subscribe to her channel before leading her away to discuss what had happened.
Sorrenti was not broadcasting when she was swatted. She relayed the details on social media, saying she awoke last weekend to the sound of police yelling from her doorway. According to Sorrenti, a harasser had sent an email impersonating her to city councilors in London, Ontario, saying she was in possession of an illegal firearm, had killed her mother and planned to go to city hall and “shoot every cisgendered person that I see.” She said one of the officers who showed up at her residence pointed an assault rifle at her face.
Sorrenti was arrested and later released, but she said the London Police Service confiscated her and her fiance's electronics — including Sorrenti’s work computer and phone — and deadnamed her multiple times, meaning that officers called her by her pre-transition name and misgendered her.
“The fact that a fake email led to the London Police Service booking me under my deadname reveals the prejudices many police have toward transgender people,” Sorrenti said in her video about the incident. “Instead of the police helping me, they terrorized me and my loved ones, traumatizing me and leaving my fiance and I on the verge of losing everything. They victimized me for being the victim of a hate crime.”
Sorrenti’s situation came to the attention of politicians like Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (and extremely sporadic Twitch streamer).
“Trans folk, and especially trans activists, deserve the freedom to make themselves heard,” Singh said on Twitter. “Not to be doxed and swatted, arrested at gunpoint and deadnamed repeatedly. No one deserves this.”
The London Police Service has since acknowledged these actions in a statement published online.
“It has come to my attention that Ms. Sorrenti was referred to during her time in London police custody by an incorrect name and gender,” wrote chief Steve Williams of the London Police Service. “We acknowledge the distress this has caused Ms. Sorrenti and we will be reviewing the occurrence to understand how that might have happened.”
In the wake of the swatting, Sorrenti launched a GoFundMe for the purposes of moving, recouping her and her fiance's losses and putting together a legal-defense fund against “ongoing and future threats to my safety.” So far it has collected over $80,000.
In tweets and broadcasts addressing his own swatting, Ross described the police force that entered his home using much more favorable terms, but the situation still left him rattled.
“Traumatizing, man,” he said of the experience in a video posted to Twitter. “It’s scary. It comes with being in this position. [My partner and I] are still in shock. … It’s a sick, cruel world we live in.”
Amine was similarly shaken: “Scary world we live in,” she tweeted.
Within the livestreaming community, the recent swattings have led to discussions about what can be done. Many streamers have pointed out that police departments often make note of specific residences after bogus claims, so as to be wary of future suspicious calls linked to a particular address.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Twitch recommended concerned streamers reach out to law enforcement as soon as possible. Some streamers have suggested that Twitch could create a system of its own to preemptively inform police departments of potential swatting victims, but Twitch noted that it faces restrictions in the sorts of personal information it can responsibly provide to any party — law enforcement included.
In the statement, Twitch explained that it has been working to mitigate swatting in other ways.
“We operate an industry-leading off-service policy that allows us to take action against Twitch users who have committed egregious, violent off-service offenses,” the company said in its statement. “We have quadrupled the size of our global law enforcement response team over the past two years as our own audience has grown, and this team of trained professionals works 24/7 to build relationships with local and national law enforcement officials, and assist swiftly with criminal data requests that can shed light on law enforcement investigations.”
How Twitch took down the Buffalo shooter’s stream in under two minutes
One organization, the Seattle Online Broadcasters Association (SOBA), has taken things a step further. The nonprofit, which supports the content creator community in Seattle, consulted on the Seattle Police Department’s 2018 establishment of an anti-swatting registry that allows residents to proactively flag themselves as potential swatting victims. In addition, SOBA also worked with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to advocate for anti-swatting legislation which ultimately passed in 2020. It also pushed for several local creators to be placed on the Seattle Police Department’s Swatting Mitigation Advisory Committee.
“Our hope is that by providing resources, both the Seattle Police Department and local broadcasters can better inform themselves of the risk and take measures appropriate to them to counteract the threat,” said John Higdon, co-founder and president of SOBA. “We encourage other communities to build relationships with local government and community organizations and deal with potential issues proactively.”
But Higdon cautioned that even these measures do not guarantee safety from swatting. Additionally, outside of Seattle it can be difficult to make such arrangements with local law enforcement without first having been a victim; Sorrenti said in her video that her brother had requested for Sorrenti and her family to be put on a list by London Police Service prior to the swatting, to no avail. Some streamers are also wary of being put on a police list to begin with.
American SWAT teams have faced public scrutiny in recent years. Devised decades ago to take on bank robberies, hostage situations and other emergencies, SWAT teams are now being used to serve warrants to private residences for instances that often pertain to drug offenses. SWAT strikes have only grown more prevalent over the years, from around 3,000 per year in 1980 to as many as 80,000 per year as of 2014.
“[Swatting] works as a threat and a form of harassment only because police interactions in general, and SWAT raids in particular, carry the potential for deadly harm and terror,” said Ayobami Laniyonu, assistant professor at the center for criminology and sociolegal studies at the University of Toronto. “What’s troubling with swatting is the breathtaking ease at which online trolls can put people — frequently women, people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+ and folks at the intersection of those identities — in mortal danger simply by placing prank calls to the police who are there, ostensibly, to keep the public safe.” | 2022-08-15T18:45:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Streamers Keffals, Adin Ross and IShowSpeed all swatted in same week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/15/keffals-adin-ross-ishowspeed-swatting-twitch-youtube/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/15/keffals-adin-ross-ishowspeed-swatting-twitch-youtube/ |
Transcript: The Monkeypox Outbreak with Rosamund Lewis, MDCM
MR. DIAMOND: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Dan Diamond, a national health reporter here at The Post. The World Health Organization last month declared that monkeypox was a public health emergency of international concern. As of today, there are more than 31,000 global cases and more than 11,000 here in the United States. I’m joined today by Dr. Rosamund Lewis. She’s the World Health Organization’s lead on monkeypox. She’s going to help us make sense of the current situation. Dr. Lewis, welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. LEWIS: Thank you, Dan. Hello.
MR. DIAMOND: Let's start with some local perspective on the global health fight. The United States currently represents about one-third of global monkeypox cases. Why do you think the case count in the United States is so high and has been going up so rapidly compared to other countries?
DR. LEWIS: Well, the case count has been going up rapidly in a number of countries if you see at different points in time. So, the first countries where cases really rose very quickly were of course the United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal, and that was followed by Canada and then France as well. And Brazil is concerning now. So yes, the United States of America is a country that has a concerning situation at the moment. It's not the only one, though.
MR. DIAMOND: I think part of my question, Dr. Lewis, is we are coming off two years where the United States has become the global leader in confirmed COVID cases. Now we're the global leader in confirmed monkeypox cases. You're a global health expert. What are we doing wrong here in the States?
DR. LEWIS: I think we'd prefer to talk about what we're doing right. So, the important things are information, communication, testing, contact tracing. There are many different aspects of the response that we can talk about. And those are accessible in different ways in different countries. And so different countries may have challenges regarding testing, for example, and the United States is one country that has in fact responded by expanding its testing capacity from public health laboratories only to also include commercial laboratory companies.
So, this--every country has to find its own way; it has to find following the recommendations of the World Health Organization issued following the public health emergency of international concern. And there are many different strategies. It's only by employing all strategies together. And this may be one of the challenges, because in countries that have a federal system of states, provinces or other, you know, ways in which they're--the jurisdictions happen in different levels, then it's not always as straightforward as for countries which have one health system, for example.
MR. DIAMOND: We do have that fragmented system here in the States. So, to your point, as you're looking around the globe, and you're seeing different countries employ those different strategies, and hopefully all of them, is there a country that you might hold up? Is there an example of a strategy that you'd like to see replicated in more places around the globe?
DR. LEWIS: There are three things that are critical in this outbreak. The first is information, the second is action, and the third is evidence gathering. So, in terms of information, it's really important for those who are most at risk to have the information they need to have, which is why we've talked a lot about fighting stigma, reducing stigma, avoiding discrimination for all countries, but also for countries where certain activities may be criminalized, for example, reaching people with the information they need to appreciate their own risk and protect themselves.
The second one is action. So, there are many things we can talk about in action. We've already touched on several of them: Rapid detection of cases, isolation in the first instance, contact tracing; again, information to contacts; and where available, vaccines and treatments.
And then last one is evidence. There's a lot we still don't know about what's happening. So, although monkeypox is not a new disease, and orthopoxviruses are not new--smallpox was one of those--there's still a whole lot we have to learn. So, we can't assume that we have all the answers already. We need to collect the evidence and the information we need to continue to fine tune our response.
MR. DIAMOND: Let's use the rubric that you just suggested, so communication, evidence in the middle a strategy. Let's talk a little bit about communication. Monkeypox has been spreading disproportionately in gay men with multiple sexual partners. Dr. Tedros, the head of the World Health Organization, last month issued a warning calling on gay men to temporarily limit the number of sexual partners. In retrospect, Dr. Lewis, do you wish that those warnings had come earlier, had been more direct, to stave off potential outbreaks earlier this summer?
DR. LEWIS: We move with the information as fast as we can at the time that we can release that information or share it. So, in the early days, it wasn't entirely clear, but it became clear quite quickly, that those who are at risk are those who have multiple sexual partners, for example. It's not the fact that someone is gay puts them at risk. There are, you know--it's perhaps having--there were some amplifying events where people met together in large gatherings, social gatherings or smaller parties where there's sex on premises.
It's really now we're trying to understand better that it's about--it's about multiple contacts, casual contacts. And contact tracing has been difficult for some countries for some of those reasons. So the importance of the communication aspect is to really appreciate, you know, what is an individual's risk. Can each individual really appreciate? Is there a way that I can reduce my risk by reducing the number of partners, by changing the activities that we engage in, by changing some of the very sexual activities that we engage in?
MR. DIAMOND: Here in the United States, I think there are more than 95 percent of cases in gay men. Is that roughly the case around the globe? Are you seeing a different trend in the data that you have?
DR. LEWIS: No, the information we have has been very consistent, and it's that 99 percent of cases are still in men. When you think about it, that's quite extraordinary for an infectious disease. We don't normally see that kind of gender disparity in an infectious disease. So, on the one hand, there are concerns that some of it may be under ascertainment, that maybe testing is only being offered to certain groups of people, and that may be part of--part of it. But we still think that based on the data we have, and based on more data that's coming out all the time, including among publications, scientific publications of cases, that it's still the vast majority of cases are among men, and of those 98 percent are still among men who have sex with men. Again, we're concerned about under ascertainment, a lack of access to tests.
But this is an important finding. And we really tried to describe what it is we're seeing in an outbreak. But that doesn't mean that--you know, that this group is responsible for the outbreak. It doesn't mean that they should be stigmatized. It's really about offering services where they need to be offered and to whom they need to be offered.
MR. DIAMOND: This issue of trying not to stigmatize it is very much on our mind as health reporters and also on our mind here in Washington, D.C. There was recently an attack not too far from where I'm sitting on several gay men who were accused of carrying monkeypox. They were badly beaten. How do you balance warning gay men that they're at elevated risk of this disease against the fear of inciting hate or even violence?
DR. LEWIS: It's certainly been a tight rope that all public health agencies and all reporters such as yourself have been walking since the beginning of this outbreak. What's critically important is engaging with the communities themselves. So, at WHO we do that at global level. We have regular touchdowns with representatives of LGBTQ associations, various groups of, you know, people who advise us about the language to use, about the things to talk about. But also, those are the same groups that should be contacted at every level--at every level of the response--national, federal, local, community. And so they will tell you, they will tell us--they do tell us, you know, what are the--what are the channels of communication that are helpful, what are the messages that are helpful, what are the messages that may actually push people away, which is the last thing we want to do.
So, for example, right from the beginning, WHO was working through messaging platforms that were not necessarily on the public website to begin with. We're putting more and more information on the public website now. But at the beginning, we were working through meetup--through meeting apps, Grindr, and others. We were working through associations, organizers of pride festivals. Again, it's not the pride festival itself, which is a celebration of identity, but the events that may happen on the on the outskirts of a festival. So even today, you know, we're becoming a bit more comfortable talking about the situations such as saunas, bathhouses, places where there's sex on premises as part of the activities, because this is where the risk is. As I said before, it's not being gay that represents a risk. It's the activities where one might encounter others who may not even know that they're infected, and that they may pose a risk to several people at the same time. And that explains why this can behave in the way that it does and in an amplifying manner, where you have many cases occurring at the same time from a single large event.
MR. DIAMOND: Maybe one more question on the messaging and thinking about reaching the gay community. Forty years ago, HIV was originally seen as a gay man's disease. That's arguably why we missed or at least a big reason why we missed opportunities to try and stop that disease in its tracks. Now, it's 2022, a different virus, a different time. But, Dr. Lewis, are there vestiges of that legacy with HIV that we are doomed to repeat in some way with monkeypox?
DR. LEWIS: People are concerned about that legacy and the concern that mistakes may be made or mistakes are being made. But there are of course lessons to be learned and advantages. So, for 40 years, people have worked on HIV prevention and control. For 40 years, people have worked on access to antiretroviral therapy. For 40 years people, have worked on community organization, community engagement, risk communication, and working with groups of people, including now especially young people who don't have that memory of that--of that era 40 years ago. So that is--that is the positive. We build on that and learn the lessons from the stigmatization of people at that time, because at that time, what happened is a lot of it was driven underground, that people were, you know, feeling stigmatized and would not necessarily seek out information.
I think today what we're really trying to do is provide the information where it needs to be, which is those--for those who are at risk. This also includes members, family members, household members. So, it's not exclusively men who have sex with men or people who have multiple partners. There can be others who have risks--for example, sex workers or family members of people who are just living in the same household. You're living in close proximity. And these--you know, these are situations where people also need to be aware that others may be at risk. It's not the majority of the situation right now, and it's not something we want everybody to be very worried about, but it's important to again appreciate your own risk so that you can lower your own risk.
MR. DIAMOND: In terms of household members, I believe I read something in the Lancet over this weekend about a pet dog, a greyhound in Europe, that contracted monkeypox from its owners. Does the WHO have any more evidence on animals picking it--picking up monkeypox from owners, any transmission that way?
DR. LEWIS: So far, no. So this has been a theoretical risk to up until now. We know--we know all about the prairie dog outbreak, a monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. linked to prairie dog pets, for example. But there was no human to animal transmission during that outbreak. It was all persons who were infected by contact with these new pets that they acquired in several states from a central source and the pets had been infected. So, this is the first incident that we're learning about where there is human to animal transmission. This has not been reported before, and it has not been reported that dogs have been infected before. So, on a number of levels, this is new information. It's not surprising information, and it's something that we've been on the watch out for.
So, we do have--within our own ranks, we have people who are experts in One Health and animal health and working with the organization World Organization for Animal Health, for example, and the Food and Agriculture Organization through the One Health approach. So, we are working very much with those partners to address this. And so the messaging that has been given up until now was, you know, that pets should be isolated from their--from the family members who may be infected. This has been an example of precautionary approach, precautionary messaging, because we didn't have the information that this had ever happened before. It had not been recorded before. But it was a reasonable cautious message to give. And now we have the first incident where this has actually occurred.
So again, we don't know if that dog can go and transmit the infection to anyone else, for example. But sometimes we as public health professionals, we have to--even when we don't have the evidence, we have to, you know, work together to figure out what's the most useful messaging that can--that can allow people to appreciate their level of risk. This is an example where most pets will not be at risk. It may only be those who are actually in the household of someone who's infected.
MR. DIAMOND: It sounds like we can't blame this outbreak on the prairie dogs. Let's shift to strategies to respond. I wanted to talk a bit about vaccines. There is global demand for what seems to be a limited supply. We saw this during COVID. Some countries were front in line. Others were waiting much longer. What lessons, Dr. Lewis, can we take away from COVID about prioritizing these limited supplies and how these decisions need to be made?
DR. LEWIS: Well, every outbreak is a bit different as we know, right? So, this outbreak is--monkeypox is different from COVID-19. And first of all, we've already discussed about the population groups that are most at risk. So, the first thing is that mass vaccination is not recommended for monkeypox response. There's no reason to support that at the moment. And it's not looking like it's going to change in the immediate future. So, the most important thing is to prioritize vaccines and countermeasures, and also access to testing and other things for those who are most at risk. They should not be the only ones. There may be other circumstances where others may need to be offered these types of services. But the first thing is that we need to prioritize based on public health need.
So, the same goes for the global level and for the national level, that epidemiologists need to be able to follow the outbreak, ascertain what's happening, identify who's at risk, and then based on that, identify the best possible strategies based on limited supply. So, at the moment, the limited supply is going primarily to persons who are already at high risk. And those include contacts of someone who's infected, as well as others who may be at high risk independently of whether they've already been a contact or not.
MR. DIAMOND: Doctor, here in the United States, our leaders are moving forward with a plan to split monkeypox vaccine doses into fifths to stretch our supply in a way that they say will allow us to cover more people if necessary. The U.S. government says that strategy is safe. The manufacturer Bavarian Nordic says they have safety concerns. I'm curious what you think.
DR. LEWIS: Well, this vaccine, the one specifically that we're talking about now, we call it MVA, Modified Vaccinia Ankara, because it's commercialized under three different names in different places, right? It's Jynneos in the U.S. But others may be watching this. It's also known as Imvanex in the European Union, or in Europe, and it's also known as Imvamune in Canada. So, it's commercialized under different names, so we just call it MVA. It keeps things simpler.
And so this, this particular product was developed in the intervening period between the eradication of smallpox in 1980 and the--and now. And so during that period of 40 years, there has been a lot of work to develop safer countermeasures. These vaccines are well understood. They're well known. They're based on a live virus called vaccinia. This particular version of the--of the product, MVA-BN, is still a live virus, but once it's in the body, it doesn't replicate. So, it cannot cause an infection of its own, if you will. And so from that perspective, this vaccine is known to be much safer--and there's a lot of studies on that--than the vaccines that were used during smallpox eradication, for example.
What's different about this particular approach--and again, there have been, you know, the sort of using smaller doses, but in an intradermal, in the skin type of injection, as opposed to subcutaneous which is under the skin--this is an approach that's already been demonstrated for use in several different diseases in vaccine products. And it is an approach that has been used when there has been a limited vaccine supply.
And the manufacturer is concerned only because--well, they're concerned because it's their product, and the studies of intradermal, there's only been really limited studies about intradermal use of this. There was a study. It showed that the immune response generated by the intradermal injection was at least as good as the immune response generated by the subcutaneous injection. But the intradermal injection did cause a bit more redness, a bit more irritation, a bit more pain in the injection site. And so--and so for that, certainly the redness and the irritation.
And so for that reason, it's like, well, we--it's like everything else in this outbreak. We have some information that we already have and we are relying on and some countries are relying on more than others. And then we also have information that we need to collect--we need--we need to collect the need to do studies and we need to collect the data on. So if these--as these products are being rolled out using new strategies, then it would also be important to embed studies within those rollout strategies so that we can learn ourselves whether, you know, there is in fact the same safety profile, and there is in fact the same efficacy, effectiveness profile.
MR. DIAMOND: For those who are watching and would like to ask a question, you can go on Twitter and tweet @PostLive with your questions. Just one follow up there, Dr. Lewis. How much time, how much additional study do you think we need to determine if these vaccines, if MVA and its various names is effective? Is this three months? Six months? Will we know in a year?
DR. LEWIS: Oh, this will depend on the types of studies that are done. And there--I mean, there's every reason to think that these vaccines may be effective because as I said, there's a whole history of smallpox eradication and the use of these types of vaccines for this class of viruses called orthopoxviruses. But we actually don't have specific information whether this particular product is useful in a monkeypox outbreak situation. And now we're adding another layer, which is changing the mode of administration.
So, it's really important to collect information as we go along. Some countries may want to already start with randomized control trials right from the beginning. Some countries may want to do a range of different types of what we call observational studies, where you can't randomize persons to receive vaccine or not, but you can compare different strategies. You could compare subcutaneous with intradermal administration. You could compare, you know, MVA, for example, or with another study of MVA plus ACAM2000 so that the sort of adverse events associated sometimes with ACAM2000 can be reduced by a prior dose of the safer vaccine. There's many different study designs that can be done even as we roll out the product. And so WHO’s position is very clear on this, that really this evidence must be collected.
At the same time, we do need to act where action is needed to try and stop this outbreak, because the whole world is also not immune to orthopoxviruses. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980. And so the vast majority of people around the world, anyone under the age of 40 or 50, depending on the country, will not have immunity to this class of viruses. So, both of these actions are critically important, but they also need to be linked and embedded in the response.
MR. DIAMOND: I am one of those people who was not vaccinated against the pox viruses. I want to--since we've moved into the evidence section of the conversation, it seems, I wanted to ask a follow-up or two about the course of this virus. Is there a chance, Dr. Lewis, that monkeypox--which here in the States has not been linked to a single confirmed death--that this virus will become more lethal?
DR. LEWIS: Well, that's a question that none of us know the answer to. So, DNA viruses are known to--this is a very large virus. It's one of the largest viruses known, and they're also known to mutate.
MR. DIAMOND: I’m sorry, when you say--when you say large virus, what do you mean by that? Just the DNA of it?
DR. LEWIS: Yeah, the actual size of the of the virus--of the virus entity itself. So, for example, there are different sizes, like there's different sizes of almost anything, but there's different sizes of virus. And this one is and the orthopox viruses are known to be the largest. But that also--it's also because they have a very large DNA genome. And that genome and the DNA structure mutates much more slowly than, for example, the RNA viruses, which in COVID-19, in SARS-CoV-2 that we're seeing mutating, and we're learning about all the different strains that are coming out all the time. We'll also learn the same about the monkeypox virus. But it--but it's known to mutate more slowly, and so we expect it to mutate more slowly. So, as we're learning about the mutations, that is also something that is new information for pox virologists and public health professionals.
Just before we continue on that, though, there's one thing I do want to say about vaccines which we haven't mentioned yet, and regarding the evidence that you were asking about and we were talking about, and that’s that, you know, in this situation about the monkeypox outbreak, but also in any situation using any vaccine, it takes time for the body to mount an immune response. So, people should not think that because they're vaccinated today, they're protected tomorrow. For the MVA, the--and the U.S. has remained with this strategy of two doses--they changed the method of administration, but they've remained with a two-dose schedule. So the peak immune response arrives two weeks after the second dose. So, we're talking you're waiting for your vaccine, and then you have your first dose, and then you wait four weeks for your second dose, and you still wait two more weeks for the immune response to be at peak level two weeks after the second dose.
So, during this time, so, you know, the person is not protected fully against--as fully as the vaccine can offer, which as we said is something we don't really know yet. But even during that time the person is not fully protected as they will be two weeks after the second dose. So, it's like with the COVID where we had the Swiss cheese strategy. We're in many, many layers of different things that we need to do to protect ourselves and protect others, protect those we love, and protect our communities. So, this is the same. If someone is very keen to get a vaccine, that is really fantastic. At the same time, they're not going to be able to--they're not going to be protected for several weeks, and their partners will also not be protected during that period of time. So, it's still important to layer the different modes of prevention and self-protection during this period that you're waiting for a vaccine to be effective. I think that's really important information for everyone out there who's keen to get a vaccine.
MR. DIAMOND: Right. Wear the raincoat and also carry the umbrella at times when you need it.
DR. LEWIS: That’s a good analogy.
MR. DIAMOND: It's free. You can have it. What is the World Health Organization's plan, Dr. Lewis, if this virus does become permanently entrenched in dozens of countries outside of West and Central Africa where it had historically been found? Will the WHO recommend routine vaccination as you did in decades past with smallpox?
DR. LEWIS: Well, this is early days yet. So, as we said, we have a lot to learn about this virus. We have a lot to learn about the way it's transmitting. We have a lot to learn about the outbreaks themselves. Are they going to settle down, or are we going to be able to go back to zero cases? But the future is going to look different from the past. And that's because, as I said, worldwide, the immunity gap is there now.
This includes in parts of the world where the virus or different variants of it do circulate in animals. And so there will always also be the zoonotic aspect of it, right? So, there will be the zoonotic spillovers, where people can become infected through various activities, you know, whether hunting or trapping animals that may have been an infection. So that's one aspect of it.
So, it's not going to go away. It's been there since the 1970s, and that part of it is not going to go away. But in addition, we now have human to human transmission--you know, pretty efficient human to human transmission based on the activities that bring people into close proximity, skin to skin contact, penetrative sex. These are all activities that bring people into a situation where they might encounter the virus. And so the virus has found a home where it's efficiently transmitting. And because many of the cases--not all--many of the cases still manifest with fewer lesions or fewer systemic symptoms such as fever, for example, then it may be that in some situations the virus can continue to transmit without being detected.
And this--so once countries now are putting in place surveillance systems for monkeypox, unfortunately, it's going to be likely that they're going to need to keep those surveillance and detection and response mechanisms in place until we really understand better what the future is going to look like.
MR. DIAMOND: Whether it's COVID, monkeypox, other zoonotic illnesses, it seems like there's a new outbreak every few months linked to animals, essentially. Dr. Lewis, do you think climate change is accelerating these viral threats?
DR. LEWIS: Well, this certainly has been postulated to be one of the reasons that zoonotic diseases are encroaching more in human populations. But also human populations are encroaching more on their habitats, right? So as cities grow bigger, this urbanization, people move from rural areas into cities, and people from rural areas--sorry, from urban areas, as the cities get larger and larger, encroach on natural habitats where animals no longer have enough space to live, for example.
I mean, I'm generalizing, but this is certainly one of the features that is that is a real recognized component of One Health and that a comprehensive approach needs to look at all of the aspects, including climate change, including urbanization, including land use, including protection of wildlife habitats. And these are all things that--and for people to--again, it's about information and awareness, and what kinds of activities are bringing us into contact. It's not only wildlife. It's also agriculture, right? So, animals--the viruses that affect flocks or, you know, large agricultural operations can also pose risks to people.
MR. DIAMOND: Dr. Lewis, last question in maybe the minute left. WHO had been looking at renaming the monkeypox virus for fear of stigma, looking at renaming the specific clades within. Can you just give a quick update on that work?
DR. LEWIS: Sure. So last week, there was a meeting convened by WHO, but it was a meeting of experts to discuss the names of the clades of the monkeypox virus, because that is the work of orthopox virologists and evolutionary biologists who gathered in a space created by WHO so that they could have this conversation, and they recommended changing the names of the--updating the names of the clades, from Congo Basin and Central African clade to clade one from West African clade to clade 2. So this is--this is the recommendation of the scientists that attended that meeting, and WHO has facilitated that work.
The second part about the virus itself is the work of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. This is not a WHO committee. There's been some reporting over the weekend, you know, that can--that can look to clarify some of these issues. And this is a separate committee. It's--they take care of virus species and virus taxonomy separate from WHO. And then the WHO is responsible for naming of diseases. We saw that in COVID-19 this was done quite quickly, and this is because it was a new disease, and the disease didn't exist before.
For diseases that have existed, we have the International Classification of Diseases. And so we are--we have launched a mechanism. The platform has been open for two months now. We hear a lot of concerns. We don't hear a lot of proposals. We are now beginning to receive proposals on the platform. And these will be assessed according to their scientific validity, their acceptability, their pronounceability, whether they can be used in different languages. And there is a part of the organization that is not the emergency program that leads on that work, and so we work with our colleagues, and that process is underway. And so any suggestions that people do have for the new name for monkeypox in any language should be and can be submitted to the platform created--well, it's there for that purpose.
MR. DIAMOND: Well, you heard that here. So, Dr. Lewis, we're out of time. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your work at the World Health Organization. Hope you'll come back soon.
DR. LEWIS: Okay, thank you, Dan.
MR. DIAMOND: And thanks to all of you for joining us today. If you would like to see past programs, future events, you can go to Washington Post Live, specifically WashingtonPostLive.com. You can register for upcoming events, as well. I’m Dan Diamond, a health reporter here at The Post. Thanks so much for joining us today. | 2022-08-15T18:45:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The Monkeypox Outbreak with Rosamund Lewis, MDCM - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/15/transcript-monkeypox-outbreak-with-rosamund-lewis-mdcm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/15/transcript-monkeypox-outbreak-with-rosamund-lewis-mdcm/ |
Workers from the Zaporizhzhia facility describe disappearances at the hands of Russian soldiers and fear of nuclear catastrophe
Young men swim in the Dnieper River on Aug. 15, across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, which is under the control of Russian forces. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
“It’s kaboom — then everybody runs,” said one employee, messaging from Enerhodar, the Russian-held town on the banks of the Dnieper River that is home to Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Another employee, who sometimes works suspended off the ground to service equipment, said the vibrations are often so strong from outgoing Russian artillery fire that managers makes him stop working.
The workers were among six from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant who spoke to The Washington Post, describing the daily terror of working at the nuclear facility that Russia has used as a shield for its attacks in recent weeks.
Their accounts provide a window on the deteriorating security situation at the plant, which has triggered global concerns about the potential for a nuclear catastrophe. Some Ukrainian officials say stirring panic could be precisely Moscow’s aim, in the hope that international pressure will force Kyiv to make territorial concessions. Others say they fear Russia is laying the groundwork for a so-called false flag attack they will blame on Ukrainian forces.
For the staff, that adds another layer of peril and fear to an already extreme working environment since Russian troops seized the plant six months ago. Since then, staff members have disappeared, camera phones have been banned, and representatives of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear energy company, have been present at company meetings.
“Everything has changed, our lives have flipped upside down,” said Svitlana, 53, who worked as an accountant for the plant, as she and her extended family arrived into Ukrainian territory south of Zaporizhzhia. The journey of 75 miles takes families as long as four or five days, with large traffic jams at Russian checkpoints where soldiers search cars and phones.
The city, whose name means “Gift of Energy,” was built in 1970 by the Soviet Union for families of workers at the city’s coal-fired power station on the river. The nuclear plant, the site of which covers about half a square mile, was added ten years later.
Its six pressurized light water reactors can be seen on the skyline from Ukrainian-held territory just 3 miles across the river, which has come under intense bombardment in recent weeks.
“We were watching it all online,” said the employee who worked servicing equipment. He, like others, did not want his name published because of risks to his security and job. “My first concern was for the personnel that was there, and then also about the consequences.”
Russian guards told them they were only allowed to go to the reactor unit they were working on. Access to the roof areas was banned without special permission from Rosatom administrators, the worker said. Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy firm, has denied it has taken over day-to-day operations of the plant, but has acknowledged having a team on-site.
“Everyday, there was a thought, will I come back home today?” he said. “You are constantly in danger.”
Andriy Tuz, a spokesman for the plant who warned about the risks of Russian incoming fire when the plant was captured, appeared in a video posted by Russian media outlets in late June saying he retracted his statements.
“We were taught that even if there is a nuclear explosion, you have to stay until the last,” said the 40-year-old who works servicing equipment. He estimates that only around 10 percent of workers doing similar jobs to his remain.
“They are so stressed, they are not even sleeping at night,” he said. “The boiling point is really high. There is no connection to your family when you are at work. All you hear is the outgoing, you don’t know what’s happening.”
It was a month ago, on July 16, that the first volley of artillery from Russian troops based in Enerhodar rained down on Nikopol, across the water. Residents say it began at weekends and evenings, but has picked up pace in recent days.
War? Ordinary life? In Ukraine, it depends on where you call home
On Aug. 10, one rocket ripped through the apartment building of Natalya Khodak, 47, who had lived there since she was five years old. She watched as rescuers pulled her upstairs neighbor dead from the rubble that collapsed into her newly refurbished bedroom.
Ukraine has insisted that Russian shelling has done the damage to the plant. Russia has “violated all international conventions and resolutions” during its occupation of the nuclear plant, said Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, German Galushchenko, accusing Moscow of “nuclear terrorism.”
The plant worker still at the site who described the recent explosions, said he did not believe Ukrainian troops could be responsible, because the time between the outgoing fire and incoming sounds too short — just a few seconds.
“It can handle a small plane falling on it,” said Olga Kosharna a nuclear expert and former board member of Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory inspectorate. She says she believes it is in Russia’s interest to keep the plant intact, as it attempts to connect the plant to the grid for occupied Crimea.
“I’m concerned for the personnel,” Kosharna said. “The risk of a mistake is through the roof. In an emergency there are protocols, and if a lot of personal have left, that will be a problem.” | 2022-08-15T19:42:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Workers describe dangerous attacks near Ukraine nuclear power plant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/15/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-attacks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/15/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-attacks/ |
No sign man who fired shots near Capitol was ‘politically motivated,’ police say
Richard A. York III, 29, drove his vehicle into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol on Sunday, fired shots indiscriminately and then killed himself, authorities say
U.S. Capitol Police officers work near a barricade on Capitol Hill, where a man killed himself early Sunday after firing shots into the air. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images)
Capitol Police said Monday that there was no indication that politics motivated the man who drove his vehicle into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol, fired shots and took his own life.
A day after the incident, there were more questions than answers about why Richard A. York III, a 29-year-old from Delaware, killed himself near the home of Congress, after crashing into a barrier and possibly setting his car ablaze. But police reasserted their earlier statement that politics did not appear to be a driving force, even as law enforcement officials are on edge following an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club last week.
Days after that search, an armed man tried to breach an FBI field office in Ohio, sparking a standoff that ended when he was shot and killed by law enforcement.
“Although this is an ongoing investigation — there is no indication at this time what happened yesterday was politically motivated,” a Capitol Police spokesman said in a statement Monday.
Around 4 a.m. Sunday, York’s vehicle collided with a barricade at East Capitol and Second streets. He then got out, began walking toward the Capitol, and fired a handgun indiscriminately as he crossed First Street, according to police. At that point, York entered onto Capitol property, where a Capitol Police officer saw him shoot himself in the head, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said during a Sunday news conference.
No one else was injured, and it appears no officers discharged their weapon.
Efforts to reach York’s family Sunday and Monday were not successful.
Police said York’s criminal history includes charges of burglary, theft and assault. Online Pennsylvania court records show several arrests and convictions dating back more than a decade, including a conviction as recently as 2020 for damaged property and simple assault. | 2022-08-15T20:00:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No sign man who fired shots near Capitol was 'politically motivated' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/capitol-shots-not-politically-motivated/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/capitol-shots-not-politically-motivated/ |
FBI tests suggest gun in ‘Rust’ shooting could not fire without trigger pull
Actor Alec Baldwin has long maintained that he cocked the gun but did not pull the trigger on the New Mexico film set
Alec Baldwin gestures while talking with investigators following a fatal shooting last year on a movie set in Santa Fe, N.M. (Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office via AP) (AP)
Recently released FBI forensics reports suggest the revolver handled by Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the “Rust” film set would not have discharged without its trigger being pulled while the gun was cocked.
In October 2021, Baldwin was holding a prop gun that discharged and killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. It is unclear why a live bullet was in the gun.
Two months later, Baldwin told ABC News that though he cocked the gun, “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.” The actor and producer said he felt “that someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”
“I would never point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never,” he said, adding, “Someone put a live bullet in the gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
The .45-caliber Long Colt F.lli Pietta single-action revolver that Baldwin was holding on the New Mexico set includes quarter- and half-cock safeties, “which are intended to prevent slippage of the hammer during cocking and the release of the hammer by a normal pull of the trigger,” according to the FBI report. During testing in these two positions, the weapon “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger. When enough pressure was applied to the trigger, each of these safety positions were overcome and the hammer fell.”
During testing in the fully cocked position, the revolver “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional.” The report notes that during testing, “portions of the trigger sear and cylinder stop fractured while the hammer was struck” which resulted in “the only successful discharge during this testing and it was attributed to the fracture of internal components, not the failure of the firearm or safety mechanisms.”
The report noted that “when an accidental discharge examination is performed, it may not be possible to recreate or duplicate all of the circumstances which led to the discharge of a firearm without a pull of the trigger.”
Luke Nikas, an attorney for Baldwin, said in a statement that the report “is being misconstrued.”
The released documents also included a toxicology report for Hutchins, which came back negative, and a postmortem examination signed by New Mexico chief medical investigator Heather Jarrell, which listed the cinematographer’s cause of death as a “gunshot would of the chest” and the manner as “accidental.”
“The critical report is the one from the medical examiner, who concluded that this was a tragic accident,” Nikas said. “This is the third time the New Mexico authorities have found that Alec Baldwin had no authority or knowledge of the allegedly unsafe conditions on the set, that he was told by the person in charge of safety on the set that the gun was ‘cold,’ and believed the gun was safe.”
In April, Rust Movie Productions, LLC was fined nearly $137,000, the maximum amount allowed under New Mexico law, after a report by New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau found the film’s crew violated safety rules and “demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety.”
“Our investigation found that this tragic incident never would have happened if Rust Movie Productions, LLC had followed national film industry standards for firearm safety,” James Kenney, New Mexico’s environment cabinet secretary, told CNN at the time. “This is a complete failure of the employer to follow recognized national protocols that keep employees safe.”
The FBI declined to comment on the reports.
The documents did not address why a live round was in the revolver. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office investigation into the matter remains ongoing.
Alec Baldwin prop gun shooting
Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured a director on a film set in New Mexico after discharging a prop firearm during the filming of “Rust." A script supervisor has sued producers, including Alec Baldwin, saying scene did not call for gun to be fired.
The investigation: Alec Baldwin says he did not pull the trigger. A search warrant details the fatal shooting and a walkout by crew members over labor conditions. Before the shooting, two film-set workers handled the gun on set.
Who was Halynya Hutchins? The 42-year-old cinematographer was known as an innovative filmmaker and a trailblazer for other women in film.
What is a prop gun? Some producers insist on using prop guns with blanks to capture the sound and look of a real gun firing, while others have been calling for them to be banished.
Dangers on U.S. film sets: The “Rust” shooting death has sparked calls for change from many in the industry as well as lawmakers. Technology could offer solution but it’s not so simple. Baldwin has since called for police officers to be present on film sets to improve weapons safety.
Not the first: Decades before the “Rust” shooting, Brandon Lee was killed by a prop gun on “The Crow.” | 2022-08-15T20:13:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI tests suggest gun in ‘Rust’ shooting could not fire without trigger pull - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/15/fbi-tests-suggest-gun-rust-shooting-could-not-fire-without-trigger-pull/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/15/fbi-tests-suggest-gun-rust-shooting-could-not-fire-without-trigger-pull/ |
In 1992, Salman Rushdie wasn’t sure he’d ever be safe
By Al Kamen
Salman Rushdie holds up a copy of his book “The Satanic Verses” at Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va., in March 1992. (Ron Edmonds/AP)
This story, originally published March 25, 1992, was republished in 2022 following the Aug. 12 attack on Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution.
Author Salman Rushdie arrived secretly in Washington this week to plead that his plight — a $1 million bounty placed on his head by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini three years ago — not be forgotten.
Rushdie went underground when his novel, “The Satanic Verses,” provoked a death sentence from Khomeini for blasphemy, and only recently has begun appearing with any frequency in public.
He has become more visible, he said in a two-hour interview Monday at a hotel in suburban Virginia, because he no longer has to worry that his statements will harm efforts to free the Western hostages in Lebanon.
But their recent release, he said, “was a knife-edged moment.” Although the release permitted him to speak out in his cause, “there was a great danger of apathy setting in” with the hostages out.
Their release did not eliminate the deceased Khomeini's religious decree, called a fatwa, against him, Rushdie said, and he still moves about under strict security. Interviewers are met at one place and then taken to him.
Rushdie said he intended to have a number of interviews and private meetings in Washington.
At the only public event — a speech last night at a freedom of expression conference in Rosslyn — Rushdie distributed the first paperback copies of his book. Even his appearance at the conference, sponsored by the American University School of Communication and the Freedom Forum, was closely held until word gradually leaked out in recent days. Security at the session was tight. All who attended passed through metal detectors and no one was allowed to leave until Rushdie was gone.
CBS correspondent Mike Wallace was listed in invitations as the speaker, but instead he introduced Rushdie, who pleaded for “the American government to show itself to be a true friend of” liberty, which has “acquired many powerful enemies” around the world.
“I am no longer certain of the commitment of the British authorities to the task of protecting me,” he said. “I ask America to come on board” and join with Britain and Europe. “The case of Iran’s fatwa against ‘The Satanic Verses’ must be closed.”
But his request for U.S. government support appeared unsuccessful. He said a meeting that had been arranged for today with representatives and senators — whom he declined to name — had been canceled for reasons he was unsure of. There may not be time to reschedule the meeting before Rushdie leaves, conference organizers said.
In the interview, the Indian-born Rushdie, who considers himself a “secular” Muslim, acknowledged that when he wrote “The Satanic Verses” he fully expected a strong reaction. Muslims and non-Muslim opponents denounced it, saying its depiction of the Prophet Mohammed is an irreverent and offensive attack.
“Obviously I knew what I was doing” in writing the controversial passages, Rushdie said. But “you don’t believe the world is going to fall on your head.”
“You think, yes, all right, some right-wing religious figures will get upset and they’ll write things about it or they’ll fulminate about it and I’ll answer and there’ll be a bit of a debate and maybe that debate will be constructive and it will allow some things to be said that need to be said — end of story.”
It didn’t work out that way. The book, published in September 1988, was banned in countries throughout the Muslim world and in countries, like India, with a substantial Muslim population. There were book-burnings and violent protest demonstrations in which several people died and scores were injured. “People were holding up signs of me with my eyes poked out,” Rushdie recalled.
Then it seemed the world did indeed fall down on his head, with Khomeini's Feb. 14, 1989, death sentence for blasphemy. A $1 million reward was offered. Anyone who published the book also was targeted. The paperback version is being put out by a secret consortium that will not identify any of the participating publishers.
The bounty was removed after protest from Western nations, but a semi-private religious foundation renewed it, and the fatwa was reaffirmed just last month, on the third anniversary of its issuance.
“The fatwa introduced the element of state-sponsored terrorism,” Rushdie said. “I don’t feel particularly scared of hotheads” in the Muslim community in England, he said. “But I don’t know how to defend myself against state-sponsored terrorism. They have grenade launchers and they have mega-bucks too.”
That is why Rushdie has had to, as he puts it, “deal within this peculiar existence for so long. And I have no way of knowing how real or how imaginary that threat is. But what I do know is that I have been told, at various moments during these three years, of intelligence reports of serious attempts being made.” He declined to say how he arrived in this country, but it is believed he arrived on a British government plane.
Two translators of the book — one in Japan and another in Italy — were victims of knife attacks in July. The Italian translator was wounded and the Japanese translator died. “What’s happening is that the fatwa is in fact being implemented,” Rushdie said.
He said his existence has not been easy. “The scariest time was at the very beginning,” he said, “because we had absolutely no idea what was coming at us. The newspapers were full of stories about death squads. The British police never had to handle a situation like this, so we were making it up as you go along. We didn’t know what was the correct response and couldn’t be sure it would be enough” to deter an assassination. “You never know when it’s going to succeed.”
He and his second wife, American writer Marianne Wiggins, were constantly moving to avoid detection. He could talk on the telephone but not see his 12-year-old son from a prior marriage. His marriage to Wiggins eventually broke up.
Rushdie said that perhaps the lowest point came after December 1990, when he announced he had embraced Islam and had agreed to suspend publication of a paperback edition of the book to allow for a cooling-off period.
Muslim opponents saw it as a ploy. His supporters were outraged. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Wiggins accused him of being weak and self-obsessed and of failing to live up to his historical role as champion of free speech, using the publicity only to further his own career.
Rushdie said he didn’t regret the effort at reconciliation but regretted “the so-called conversion statement [which] was not even written by me. But I was asked to put my name to it and did so. . . . I shouldn’t have done it. . . . There wasn’t the tiniest glimmer of a spirit of compromise from the other side. I mean not the faintest thing.”
Rushdie is frequently criticized in the British press, which says that the novel made him wealthy while taxpayers are paying $1 million a year to protect him — a figure he says is inflated. Detractors point to his leftist politics and criticism of the Conservative government that is keeping him alive.
Rushdie said that in England there was “a certain kind of niggling bitchiness that creeps into some of the discourse.” In contrast, he felt Americans “seemed to get the point . . . which is that you don’t kill people for writing books. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what the book is. . . . ”
In response to the criticisms, Rushdie said, “I think I have not done well at every moment of the last three years. There are some moments when you don’t feel like a hero, you don’t feel like having the fight today and you wish it would go away and you don’t want to stand up for freedom today. [You say] ‘You do it today, I’ll do it next week.’”
He gets advice constantly. At times, he said, “I’ve thought, you know, if you think you can do better you come and stand over here, you know. And anybody who feels like changing places, any time, if they think they can do any better, they’re absolutely welcome to try it.”
He estimated he had stayed in 30 places in the last three years, always guarded by British police. “It’s true that sometimes I was in places for only two or three days. Sometimes it’s been much longer periods.” Moves were triggered by intelligence reports indicating efforts to attack him.
“There are calmer periods and there are less calm periods and what obviously I hope is that now gradually the calmer periods will get longer and longer.” He has written two novels in the last three years and has been out and about, apparently enough to have a social life.
Rushdie said he is now in one of those calmer periods. Iran has not bothered to note his increased visibility, and his supporters met recently with Iranian Embassy officials in London to discuss the situation.
“I think now the British Muslims are saying ‘We’re not interested in this anymore,’ and the Iranians I think are rattled by the [international] pressure,” he said. “So what we have to do is rattle them some more.”
Rushdie said the decree has to be lifted if he is going to be able to resume a semblance of a normal life. Even then, he said, he’ll never be sure he’s safe. | 2022-08-15T20:13:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Salman Rushdie visited Washington in 1992 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/15/salman-rushdie-in-hiding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/15/salman-rushdie-in-hiding/ |
What to know about R. Kelly’s federal child porn and obstruction of justice trial in Chicago
The singer was arrested in 2019, and has trials in Chicago and New York. Author Jim DeRogatis explains the cases. (Video: Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
R. Kelly, the disgraced Grammy-winning superstar who faced three decades of sexual misconduct allegations before his conviction last year on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, returns to his hometown of Chicago on Monday for another round of federal charges that include creating child pornography and obstructing justice.
The trial for the 55-year-old hitmaker, whose legal name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, begins Aug. 15 with jury selection at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago. Among the key charges against Kelly is that he and his associates rigged his 2008 state trial in Chicago, where Kelly beat child pornography charges.
This federal trial is likely to rehash many of the issues from the 2008 case, only this time, Kelly’s accuser is expected to testify against him. Several of the four other victims, who were each between 13 and 17 years old when they met Kelly, are expected to testify.
Kelly climbed to fame in the 1990s with sexual and soulful hits like “Bump N’ Grind” and the triple Grammy-winning “I Believe I Can Fly.” He stayed atop his perch in pop culture for another decade-plus despite dogged reporting into the allegations of sexual abuse of young women and girls, his 2008 child pornography trial and the revelation that he wed the late R&B star Aaliyah when she was only 15. He continued to collaborate with artists such as Lady Gaga and Chance the Rapper and remained a headline draw well into the 2010s.
How the music industry overlooked R. Kelly's alleged abuse of young women
Kelly’s legal troubles came to a head after the 2019 Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” introduced a new generation to the long-running accusations against Kelly. After the series aired to wide attention, Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx in Chicago issued a call for any potential witnesses to come forward.
Kelly is already serving a 30-year sentence from his federal trial in New York but could face decades more in prison if convicted in the Chicago trial. Here’s what to know as that trial begins.
What is R. Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago about?
Kelly’s current trial stems from his indictment in 2019 in the Northern District of Illinois on more than a dozen criminal counts relating to his alleged sexual abuse of girls who were under 18 at the time.
He faces five counts of enticing a minor into criminal sexual activity; a combined two counts of conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation in connection to his 2008 trial; and a combined six child pornography counts — four counts for producing and two counts for receiving videos.
Prosecutors allege that Kelly met the girls in the mid- to late 1990s when they were middle- and high school-aged. He is accused of having sexual contact and filming them in sex acts before they were 18. The youngest victim, referred to in court filings as Minor 1, was the child in the subject of an infamous tape anonymously sent to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002 that allegedly showed Kelly sexually abusing the girl and urinating on her.
Kelly is standing trial alongside two former employees whom prosecutors said helped destroy evidence and pay off and otherwise coerce witnesses who could have been damaging to him in his 2008 trial.
U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber is presiding.
What’s this trial’s link to R. Kelly’s 2008 trial?
Kelly’s legal team at the time was a savvy crew of veteran defense attorneys well-versed in the bare-knuckle legal tactics of “26th and Cal,” the nickname for Chicago’s famed criminal courthouse. As the Chicago Tribune recently detailed, Kelly’s lawyers filed dozens of motions and successfully delayed the trial for five years. In the interim, Kelly, who pleaded not guilty and was released on bail, continued to make hits and build his career.
Crucially, the girl in the videotape who prosecutors identified as the 13-year-old victim and Kelly’s goddaughter, refused to testify, and several of her relatives denied that it was her on the tape. Jurors ultimately thought they couldn’t be certain of the girl’s identity and voted to acquit Kelly on all counts after less than a day’s deliberation.
Now, federal prosecutors say they have evidence that Kelly and his associates conspired to pay off witnesses and prevent them from cooperating with investigators, including the family of girl in the video. Now in her 30s, Kelly’s alleged victim, who refused to testify in 2008, is expected to take the stand in the federal trial and identify herself as the child in the video. Her mother is also expected to testify to the same, according to court filings.
How do R. Kelly’s federal trials in New York and Chicago differ?
A Brooklyn jury convicted Kelly in 2021 on a different slate of federal charges: racketeering and sex trafficking. Federal prosecutors in New York argued that Kelly was effectively the head of a criminal enterprise that used the star’s money, fame and influence to procure young girls that he would abuse and often videotape.
What to know about R. Kelly’s trial for sex trafficking and racketeering charges
Fifty witnesses testified at the singer’s five-week trial, many describing harrowing accounts of how he would use his star power to lure young fans or aspiring musicians into his orbit and later abuse them.
The trial also covered details of Kelly’s secret 1994 marriage to R&B singer Aaliyah, then his 15-year-old protege, that ended in annulment. Witnesses testified that Kelly married her for legal protection as he abused her, and bribed a government official to create a fake ID that indicated that she was an adult.
Also on trial with Kelly are Derrel McDavid, his former manager, and Milton “June” Brown, his former employee. McDavid is accused of conspiring with Kelly to rig the 2008 trial in Chicago, while Brown is charged with receiving child pornography.
Prosecutors allege that beginning in 2001, when Kelly realized some of the videotapes of him engaged in sex acts with girls were missing, he worked with McDavid to track them down and pay off witnesses on Kelly’s behalf to cover up any evidence of wrongdoing. McDavid is also accused of coaching witnesses in the 2008 trial, including the father of the girl in the videotape, to lie to prosecutors to protect Kelly in exchange for financial settlements and gifts.
R. Kelly fan accused of planning to ‘storm’ prosecutors’ offices
Brown, prosecutors say, also schemed to track down Kelly’s videos and buy them back in an effort to destroy or hide evidence. Both men, like Kelly, have pleaded not guilty.
What has Kelly said about the charges against him?
Kelly has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Jennifer Bonjean, Kelly’s defense attorney, said on Twitter last week the government has an “incredible advantage” over Kelly in part because of the media scrutiny of his previous case, and said it would be “difficult to find 12 people who can be fair given the media war on my client.”
Bonjean is a veteran criminal defense attorney known for taking tough cases; last year she successfully helped disgraced comedian Bill Cosby get his sexual assault conviction overturned.
Does Kelly face any other charges?
After Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago wraps up, he still faces additional state trials in Minneapolis for solicitation and prostitution and again in Chicago for sexual assault and sexual abuse. | 2022-08-15T20:13:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | R. Kelly federal trial in Chicago: What to know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/15/r-kelly-federal-trial-chicago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/15/r-kelly-federal-trial-chicago/ |
FILE - Sacheen Littlefeather appears at the Academy Awards ceremony to announce that Marlon Brando was declining his Oscar as best actor for his role in “The Godfather,” on March 27, 1973. The move was meant to protest Hollywood’s treatment of American Indians. Nearly 50 years later, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has apologized to Littlefeather for the abuse she endured. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Monday said that it will host Littlefeather, now 75, for an evening of “conversation, healing and celebration” on Sept. 17. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP)
Some in the audience booed her. John Wayne, who was backstage at the time, was reportedly furious. The 1973 Oscars were held during t he American Indian Movement's two-month occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In the years since, Littlefeather has said she’s been mocked, discriminated against and personally attacked for her brief Academy Awards appearance. | 2022-08-15T20:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Film academy apologizes to Littlefeather for 1973 Oscars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/film-academy-apologizes-to-littlefeather-for-1973-oscars/2022/08/15/45b68670-1ccf-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/film-academy-apologizes-to-littlefeather-for-1973-oscars/2022/08/15/45b68670-1ccf-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Guard Sydney Johnson and coach Pete Carril of the Princeton Tigers celebrate after a game in 1996. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Pete Carril, a Hall of Fame college basketball coach who developed a system of play known as the Princeton Offense, which propelled his undersized Princeton teams to heroic performances against NCAA Division I powers and shaped how the game is played from high school to the National Basketball Association, died Aug. 15 at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 92.
As an Ivy League school, Princeton does not award athletic scholarships, and for 29 seasons — 1967-1968 to 1995-1996 — Mr. Carril prepared future lawyers, professors and government officials to take on teams stocked with future NBA draft choices, especially during postseason tournament play.
Mr. Carril designed a half-court offense demanding constant motion by all five players, with disciplined passing and quick cuts to the basket for open shots. The goal was to spread the floor, wind down the shot clock and wear down defenders until they made a mistake — or a Princeton player wriggled free for a layup or a jump shot.
“The main thing is to get a good shot every time down the floor,” said Mr. Carril, (pronounced kuh-RILL) who was inspired by the unselfish play of Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics of the 1960s. “If that’s old-fashioned, then I’m guilty.”
During Mr. Carril’s time at Princeton, his team won the National Invitational Tournament in 1975, notched 13 Ivy League titles, earned 11 NCAA tournament berths and ambushed basketball powers like UCLA, Indiana and Duke. He was the only Division I men’s coach to win more than 500 games (most of them against Ivy League teams) without the benefit of athletic scholarships, and in 1997, he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
But Princeton’s zone defense forced the Hoyas to settle for outside shots, while the Tigers ran the backdoor, with players rushing toward the ball and then cutting behind their defenders’ backs to the basket for easy layups. At halftime, Princeton had a shocking eight-point lead. Georgetown came back in the second half and won by a single point, 50-49, but the game was seen as vindication for small schools and changed the nature of the NCAA tournament.
Until then, first-round games were relegated to cable TV. But the prospect of more David vs. Goliath barnburners helped persuade CBS to sign a seven-year $1 billion deal with the NCAA to televise every game of the tournament, transforming college basketball’s March Madness into a cultural phenomenon rivaling the Super Bowl.
Before the game, NCAA officials considered revoking automatic bids for weaker conferences because their teams were often blown out. Princeton’s riveting near miss quashed those discussions and opened the door for future upsets by small fry such as Middle Tennessee State, Florida Gulf Coast, Northern Iowa and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Sports Illustrated dubbed Princeton-Georgetown “The Game that Saved March Madness.”
With his gnomelike stature, droopy ears and tufts of unruly white hair, Mr. Carril drew comparisons to Yoda, the Jedi master of the Star Wars films. He prowled the sidelines with a game program clenched in his fist, beseeching his players. Once, when his center cut the wrong way, the frustrated coach ripped his own shirt in half.
“He was hard on guys and hard on me, but very rarely wrong,” Geoff Petrie, who played for Princeton in the late 1960s before joining the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers, told the Los Angeles Times. “He made an incredible career as a coach basically by outsmarting people.”
To deny the stronger, quicker Bruins the fast break, he ordered his players to rush back on defense and to execute their deliberate, small-ball offense, which one sportswriter likened to “water torture.” The game went down to the wire with Princeton scoring the winning basket on a backdoor layup by Gabe Lewullis, a future orthopedic surgeon.
“Princeton can be tough to sell to a highly recruited kid,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “What can I tell him? That if he has great grades, and a 1,200 SAT score, and generous parents, we might consider letting him in?”
As a senior, in 1952, he won Little All America honors for small-college players. But after brief Army service, when he showed up for his first coaching job at Easton High School, he was mistaken for a janitor. In 1959, he received a master’s degree in educational administration from Lehigh University in his hometown.
He arrived two years after van Breda Kolff and Bill Bradley, Princeton’s greatest-ever player and a future U.S. senator, led the Tigers to a third-place finish in the NCAA tournament.
His marriage to Dolores Halteman ended in divorce. Survivors include two children, Peter Carril of Princeton and Lisa Carril of Pennington, N.J.; and two grandchildren.
After he left Princeton, Mr. Carril’s basketball philosophy gained wider currency, thanks, in part, to several of his assistants who became head coaches, including Bill Carmody at Princeton, John Thompson III at Georgetown and Craig Robinson (the brother of former first lady Michelle Obama) at Oregon State. | 2022-08-15T20:14:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pete Carril, Princeton’s Hall of Fame basketball coach, dies at 92 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/pete-carril-princeton-basketball-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/pete-carril-princeton-basketball-dead/ |
Yes, we need more electric vehicles. But subsidies aren’t the answer.
A charging station in Emeryville, Calif., on Aug. 10. (Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP)
It is a ritual in Washington: After long negotiation, the passage of some signature piece of major legislation is heralded as the greatest leap forward for American society since … well, insert your favorite president here, usually either FDR, LBJ or Ronald Reagan.
Then people catch their breath and actually read the thing, pondering the details of its implementation. At which point the problems emerge. The compromises necessary to craft legislation turn your finely crafted model bill into a jury-rigged concoction where the parts don’t always fit smoothly together. This is often compounded by down-to-the-wire negotiations that introduce last-minute drafting errors.
Which is presumably how we ended up with a shiny new bill that promises, among its many provisions to tackle climate change, extended subsidies for electric vehicles. Subsidies for which, it turns out, most existing electric vehicles will not be eligible because of impractically stringent “Buy American” rules for components.
The bad news is that this complicates life for those who are planning to buy EVs in the near future. (Sorry guys.) The good news is that it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, because subsidizing electric vehicles is the wrong way to fight climate change.
Don’t get me wrong: Electric vehicles themselves look like a great way to fight climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that even after accounting for the more carbon-intensive process for manufacturing and junking electric vehicles, and for the dirty fuels such as coal that are often burned to produce electricity, average lifetime emissions of EVs will be less than half of a typical gasoline-powered car.
But we shouldn’t try to subsidize our way to an electric future. For one thing, electric cars are no longer some untested technology that needs a push to get consumer buy-in; they are mature enough to offer consumers plenty of benefits without the help. Among other advantages, they’re quieter, cleaner and accelerate faster. With fewer moving parts, they require considerably less maintenance. And of course, they’re a lot greener, which many consumers value.
They do cost more up front to manufacture, which is what the subsidies are supposed to allay. But a recent survey from Consumer Reports found that this aspect ranks as only the third-biggest concern of potential buyers, behind worries about the cars’ range and finding a place to charge.
That’s why our legislative energies would be much better spent on fixing the myriad problems with our nation’s charging infrastructure. Starting with the fact that at least one-third of Americans don’t have easy access to charging, often because they park on the street or live in a multiunit dwelling that doesn’t make it easy to get a charger installed in a common garage. These are, of course, often city dwellers who would otherwise be some of the best candidates for going all-electric.
We also desperately need to do something about the inefficient patchwork of state and local regulations as well as the utility rules that slow the installation of fast new charging stations — while driving up the cost.
The Biden administration is planning a network of 500,000 charging stations, using $5 billion from last year’s infrastructure deal. But a recent McKinsey report suggests this is less than half what’s needed. All the subsidies in the world won’t induce people to go electric unless they can be sure of finding somewhere to charge when they need it.
Of course, one might say, “Why not do both?” The answer is that to be truly revolutionary, electric vehicles need to be attractive without hefty subsidies. And if the U.S. government keeps artificially pushing down prices, automakers won’t have the incentive to create the vehicles we really need.
The biggest climate threats no longer come from developed countries, which can afford to subsidize electric cars. The bulk of future emissions growth is going to come from developing countries where citizens long to enjoy a lifestyle comparable to ours — which means, given population numbers that dwarf the rich world, they will generate many times our emissions unless they can achieve that lifestyle at a much lower carbon footprint.
The only way out of this mess is to invent technologies that are actually superior to the dirty, polluting methods we used to get rich. And by “superior,” I don’t just mean cleaner. I mean they have to be cost effective.
The top priority of those governments, understandably, is raising the living standards of their citizens, not fighting climate change. It’s no good developing beautifully green electric vehicles that are only attractive to consumers with massive subsidies from governments with deep pockets.
That’s why the big mistake in the new bill wasn’t designing EV subsidies no one can use, but trying to subsidize EVs in the first place. While that might look like the shortest way to the clean, green world we want, when you actually consider the whole world, it starts to look like the longest way around. | 2022-08-15T20:14:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | EV charging stations matter more than subsidies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/electric-vehicles-charging-station-costs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/electric-vehicles-charging-station-costs/ |
Author Salman Rushdie holds up a copy of his controversial book "The Satanic Verses" during a 1992 news conference in Arlington, Va. (Ron Edmonds/AP)
The vicious attack Friday on author Salman Rushdie was a horror foretold. He knew such a day could come. Yet he lived — and fortunately, still lives — in defiant affirmation of the fundamental human right to free expression.
At the time, I was The Post’s bureau chief in London. At some otherwise forgettable reception I met a man named Udi Eichler who made television documentaries. We fell into pleasant conversation and exchanged business cards. A few weeks later, he called to invite me and my wife Avis to dinner.
He expressed gratitude for the many officials, authors, journalists and others who had stood by him, and bitterness toward the few who had not. Support from literary circles was almost absolute, but not quite. Roald Dahl had attacked “The Satanic Verses” and called Rushdie “a dangerous opportunist.” John le Carré, in a salvo in what became a years-long feud between the two men, deplored the death sentence but said writers had no right to be “impertinent to great religions with impunity.” | 2022-08-15T20:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I dined with Salman Rushdie while he was in hiding. His courage stunned me. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/my-dinner-with-salman-rushdie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/my-dinner-with-salman-rushdie/ |
Two young mothers from Honduras and their children are detained by U.S. Border Patrol after rafting across the Rio Grande in June 2018. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Even now, four years after the Trump administration’s family separation policy ended, hundreds of migrant children remain on the list of those who have not been reunited with their parents. The policy, which began months after President Donald Trump took office, led to the forcible removal of more than 5,500 infants, toddlers, tweens and teenagers who attempted to cross the U.S. border. It had no system to track, connect or reunite them with their families — and, by the design of some the officials in charge, no intention of doing so.
A detailed investigation by Caitlin Dickerson in the Atlantic revealed the policy’s blatant immorality, along with the bullying, cowardice, lies and bureaucratic incompetence in its planning and implementation. Ms. Dickerson’s reporting underscored that Congress has passed nothing to ensure a future president does not reimpose the policy; in fact, even after it was terminated, Mr. Trump pushed to revive it, and he could do so again if he wins a second term. There has been no accounting for the officials who conceived, pushed and carried it out. Nor has the U.S. government offered the traumatized families legal residence in the United States, even as a means of reuniting deported parents with their children. It is past time for Congress to address these issues.
The policy’s architects wanted to inflict such trauma on families that prospective migrants would be deterred from entering the United States, even to pursue legal asylum claims. “We need to take away children” were the instructions federal prosecutors reported that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave them. Despite warnings of terrible consequences, a rogue’s gallery of arrogant, obsequious and unprincipled officials pressed ahead, driven by ideological zeal, careerism or fear of the Trump White House. Under Mr. Trump, the policy’s advocates included Stephen Miller, a top White House aide; Thomas Homan, who led Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Matt Albence, ICE’s enforcement chief; Kevin McAleenan, the top official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and, later, acting Homeland Security secretary; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and Gene Hamilton, a Justice Department official.
Lies, finger-pointing, self-delusion and misdirection were rife. Officials said, falsely, that the migrant families were “fake” or that the children were trafficking victims. Some insisted the children were treated no differently than those of arrested U.S. citizens, overlooking the fact that citizens are routinely reunited with their children at the end of the legal process. One pernicious lie was that a family separation policy did not exist — only Mr. Sessions’s “zero tolerance” prosecutions of all migrant border-crossers. In fact, documents show that deterrence-by-trauma was the policy’s explicit purpose.
It succeeded in that regard, if no other. Neris Gonzalez, a Salvadoran consular official stationed at a migrant processing center in Texas, “saw a sea of children and parents, screaming, reaching for each other, and fighting the Border Patrol agents who were pulling them apart,” Ms. Dickerson writes. “Children were clinging to whatever part of their parents they could hold on to — arms, shirts, pant legs.”
“Finally,” Ms. Gonzalez is quoted as saying, “the agent would pull hard and take away the child. It was horrible. These weren’t some little animals that they were wrestling over; they were human children.”
Congress must ensure future presidents never try this again.
More migrant bodies, and cynicism, discovered at the southwest border | 2022-08-15T20:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump's family separation policy could return without new legislation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-family-separation-policy-prevention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-family-separation-policy-prevention/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin at an event in Richmond on July 20. (Steve Helber/AP)
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) took office this year with a double message for his fellow Virginians, encouraging them to “love your neighbor” while also urging them to use a new tip line to complain about “divisive” school teaching.
In fact, announced just days after his inauguration, Mr. Youngkin’s email tip line itself turned out to be divisive. He asked “folks to send us reports and observations” on objectionable material being taught at schools, adding that the state would “catalogue it all.” The “divisive” material he had in mind, as he made clear in his first executive order, dealt with race, although he defined his terms so gauzily that they could mean almost anything.
The tip line triggered criticism, anger and mockery in Virginia and beyond. The association representing all 133 of Virginia’s local school superintendents wrote to Mr. Youngkin, pointing out that the tip line “impedes positive relationships,” and pleading with him to scrap it. He refused.
He has also shrouded the tip line in secrecy, refusing to make public the volume or content of the communiques it has received or the actions the state government has taken in response. If Mr. Youngkin’s tip line has sent any message to teachers, it is: Big Brother is watching, and he won’t tell you what he’s found out.
A dozen news organizations, including The Post, filed a lawsuit in April seeking access to the tip line’s submissions. Those submissions — rendered through a public channel, at the behest of a public official, with the ostensible purpose of modifying the material taught at public schools — should be public. American Oversight, an ethics watchdog organization, and the law firm Ballard Spahr filed a second lawsuit this month. It seeks similar information, including how the Youngkin administration has responded to tip line submissions.
“What is the tip line’s true purpose and how has the administration acted on these ‘tips’?” Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director, said in a statement. “What is it about this program that they don’t want the public to see?”
Those are the right questions. In response, the Youngkin administration so far has stonewalled, with officials saying, preposterously, that tip line submissions should be regarded as the governor’s “working papers and correspondence” and therefore somehow beyond the reach of the public domain.
The tip line could intimidate teachers, sending the message that they should tread carefully, particularly on instruction involving race, or avoid such topics altogether. That was the unmistakable gist of Mr. Youngkin’s first executive order, “on ending the use of inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory” — which is not taught in the state’s public schools.
Students should learn how to be engaged, thoughtful citizens. By setting out an ambiguous taboo and inviting Virginians to report secretly on those who might run afoul of it, Mr. Youngkin has risked making it harder for teachers to promote this sort of learning. He should be required to disclose the results. | 2022-08-15T20:15:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin's toxic Virginia school 'tip line' is shrouded in secrecy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/youngkin-school-tip-line-secret/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/youngkin-school-tip-line-secret/ |
Bryce Young and Alabama are ranked atop the AP preseason college football poll. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Alabama ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press preseason college football poll released Monday, presumably because the 63 voters could not come up with any method for ranking it higher. The Crimson Tide (0-0) settled for that spot for the seventh time in the storied tenure of Coach Nick Saban, who in 2007 began saving Tuscaloosa from the unthinkable hell of limited relevance.
The annual ritual of ranking teams in preseason, long since socially accepted even while bananas — it began in 1950 — saw perennial lead actor Ohio State (0-0) come in at No. 2, defending national champion Georgia (0-0) at No. 3 and, with mild curiosity, Clemson (0-0) hold down No. 4. That’s a guess about a return to the fore after Clemson underwent a horrifying 10-3 season in 2021, ending with a 20-13 win over Iowa State in the Cheez-It Bowl, not where its fans imagine it even if the food and the school color are similar.
With Notre Dame (0-0) at No. 5, that set up the rankings for a donnybrook in Columbus come Sept. 3, when the No. 5 Fighting Irish will visit the No. 2 Buckeyes for a rare meeting of Midwestern kingdoms. The two have met twice this century, both in Fiesta Bowls, both occasions for Notre Dame to wind up drubbed. Notre Dame, 2-4 vs. Ohio State lifetime, has not beaten the Buckeyes since a 7-2 win in 1936 built evidently on strong pitching.
In homage to a recruiting class ranked No. 1 in some circles, Texas A&M (0-0) claimed the No. 6 ranking, one spot higher than it had gotten in the coaches’ poll the week before. For further speculative merriment for the Aggies, loathed Texas (0-0) did not appear in the AP poll at all, getting stuck down in the “others receiving votes” category just behind Tennessee (0-0), which was the first team mentioned in that bunch. In the coaches’ poll, Texas had gotten a No. 18 ranking partly on the strength of a sole first-place vote by a sole football heretic.
Texas went 5-7 in 2021 and proved an obscure adage that money can’t buy happiness.
In one of the most curious rankings of the bunch, Utah (0-0) finished at No. 7, with the Utes a team to watch this season as they seek a second straight Pac-12 title and aim to spread bad vibes toward conference brethren Southern California and UCLA, which during summer announced plans either to move their universities to the Midwest and join the Big Ten, or to have their athletes fly an awful lot and join the Big Ten.
Respect went to Michigan (0-0) at No. 8, following the Wolverines’ 2021 season that saw them maul Ohio State, win the Big Ten and reach the College Football Playoff. Last season, they had no preseason ranking at all, unless you count burial in seventh among others receiving votes.
The Big 12 then turned up at Nos. 9 and 10, with four-time playoff qualifier Oklahoma (0-0) at No. 9 and defending conference champion Baylor (0-0) at No. 10, a reflection of the work of one of the best fresh coaches going, second-year head man Dave Aranda.
Oregon (0-0), set both to battle and join Utah — battling for the Pac-12 title, joining in resentment of USC and UCLA — ranked No. 11, with Oklahoma State (0-0) at No. 12, a hopeful North Carolina State (0-0) at No. 13, USC (0-0) at No. 14 and Michigan State (0-0) at No. 15 after its heady 10-2 season under first-year coach Mel Tucker ended with a major bowl game win at the Peach. From No. 16 on, it went Miami, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Wake Forest, Cincinnati, Houston and BYU.
All 10 of those teams stood at 0-0 at the time of voting. They didn’t include LSU, which famously fell from its 15-0 perch of 2019 and starts under new coach Brian Kelly, whom it lured from Notre Dame.
In that mix, Cincinnati’s No. 23 ranking showed a respect for a program that in 2021 became the first non-Power Five sort to reach the College Football Playoff.
The placement of Alabama at the top proved as inarguable as it gets in a sport of arguments, even if Ohio State did get six first-place votes and Georgia, whose previous team beat Alabama in the national title game, did get three. The Crimson Tide got 54, and it reflected that it returns its Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, the native Californian Bryce Young, and that it returns a player many college football intellectuals rate as superior to the excellent Young as well as to all other college players, linebacker Will Anderson Jr.
The Crimson Tide, whose non-title last year owed heavily to the late-season knee injuries of two frightening receivers, reached six of the first eight College Football Playoffs since the concept began in 2014-15, winning three times and finishing twice as runner-up, including in January. This time, it joins five other teams from the towering SEC in this speculative top 25.
From among those, it will play at No. 19 Arkansas on Oct. 1, at No. 21 Ole Miss on Nov. 12 and, in the most relished meeting, No. 6 Texas A&M on Oct. 8, months after Saban’s comments about A&M’s gaudy recruiting class led to a rift between him and A&M Coach Jimbo Fisher, who has never lost fewer than four games in a full A&M season, and whose blasting of Saban made his trip to Tuscaloosa look very much like potential comeuppance. | 2022-08-15T20:15:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alabama is No. 1 in the preseason AP college football poll - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/college-football-preseason-ap-poll/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/college-football-preseason-ap-poll/ |
Transcript: 117th Congress: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)
MS. CALDWELL: Hello. Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, an anchor here at Washington Post Live and also co-author of the Early 202 newsletter. Today we are speaking with Senator Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina. We’re going to talk about the future of American politics, the future of the Republican Party and of course, his new book, “America, a Redemption Story.” Senator Scott, thanks so much for joining us today.
SEN. SCOTT: Thank you, Leigh Ann. Good to be with you. Appreciate it.
MS. CALDWELL: First to our audience, I want to remind you that we would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, please tweet at us @PostLive, and we will try to get your questions asked.
Senator Scott, so of course your book comes out when there's a lot of news. So, I must start with the news of the day regarding this FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. You know, the search warrant that came out Friday, it shows that some documents are labeled TS/SCI, which is considered some of the most classified information. Does that warrant an FBI search?
SEN. SCOTT: You know, I still think this is an unprecedented, alarming occurrence without any question. I look back at the comments made by Paul Callan of the CNN analyst--legal analyst who said that this is daring and dangerous on behalf of the DOJ. I agree with that assessment. There's not much that--so far that's come out. And frankly, this is going to be a he said, she said whether or not the president declassified documents or not. So, there's a lot to be learned. But the truth of the matter is, I'm still of the position that ultimately, this breaks the precedence of the last 232 years, quite dangerous, and I have not heard enough information that changes my opinion whatsoever.
MS. CALDWELL: On the flip side, does a former president taking such highly classified documents also break precedent? And is there any sort of level of concern regarding these documents that would elevate for you that the government tries to get these documents back?
SEN. SCOTT: Well, Leigh Ann, my understanding is whether it was Bush, Obama, Clinton, the one thing--or President Trump--the one thing that seems to be consistent as there's always been a tug of war, so to speak over which documents the president--former president gets to keep and which ones they don't get to keep. So, this negotiation has been going on for a while, number one. Number two, I suggest that since at least February and June, it seems like the president--President Trump--was cooperating with the DOJ as it relates to our--with the Archives to which documents should be or should not be kept. He has come out with a very clear statement that says he declassified the things that he has in his possession. There's some questions about the rest of the material that was found. But so far, what I would say is that I am not alarmed whatsoever. I look forward to hearing more about it. But this is still a very disturbing situation and circumstance. So consistent with the negotiations that have gone on with previous presidents, we find ourselves in the midst of that negotiation that seemed to be going fine--fine, according to what we all saw according to the June letter emails. This is a strong, inconsistent departure from the way things seemed to be going at that time.
MS. CALDWELL: Well, just to clarify, the National Archives put out a statement regarding that allegation that Obama took some documents. They said that they are in possession of all of the Obama documents and the classified that are going to the Obama Library in Chicago and also, they are in possession in a D.C. facility of the classified Obama documents.
But over the weekend, a Republican, Marco Rubio, and a Democrat, Mark Warner, the chair and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, they sent a letter to the FBI and the ODNI asking for what declassified documents were and what sort of security concerns that they arise. Do you support that bipartisan letter and calling for more information and getting those documents in a classified setting?
SEN. SCOTT: I think the more the American people understand and appreciate about this raid, the better off we are as a country.
MS. CALDWELL: And one thing that has--one piece of fallout from this has been the escalation and the concerns of violence, especially against federal law enforcement. My colleague at The Washington Post reported this weekend--her name is Anna Philips--she reports that the DHS and the FBI put out a joint bulletin warning of violent threats against federal law enforcement, courts, government personnel, and facilities since the Mar-a-Lago seizure. Some of these threats have been online talking about a civil war and a call to arms. Is that concerning to you? And should Republicans who have made these incendiary statements coming to conclusions about why this happened, do they bear any responsibility?
SEN. SCOTT: Well, that's a good question, Leigh Ann. I'd say that the question that I ask as a guy who has someone incarcerated for threatening my life and another person who also threatened my life, I can tell you as a federal official who has felt hunted, that it is concerning, we should all be concerned.
We should also be concerned about the media's push in the direction of more volatile information that seems to push our country in the wrong direction. I will say that as a victim of that situation, I know firsthand how troubling and concerning that is. We should try to help our entire country lower the temperature by the way that we report the news and not draw conclusions. It seems like too often predetermined outcomes drive new cycles. And I will say that that is unfortunate. And I will say that as I look back at the history of the Washington Post--and frankly, having you all dig through my family's history just to figure out whether or not my grandfather's story was consistent with what I said it was--And of course, you all found out that it was--is harmful. The fact that the New York Times refused to publish an op-ed that I wrote about minority rights because Chuck Schumer didn’t sign off on that, that's harmful. It only exacerbates the situation that our country is under.
MS. CALDWELL: So, what you were referring to was a fact check by our fact checker, Glenn Kessler, who did look into your family's history and, you know, The Post’s position has been--
SEN. SCOTT: Three or four months' worth of that is at least troubling.
MS. CALDWELL: Yeah, and The Post’s position is, of course, we do look into family histories, and that there has been--it was rigorously researched and conducted. But I do want to move on, because there's so many other things that we want to talk about.
SEN. SCOTT: But I think--Leigh Ann, this really does lay the foundation of your concerns--and I think they're merited concerns--is when there is this feeling that there is a witch hunt, so to speak, that consistently drives people into a bit of a lather, it is hard to see that not having a negative impact on the American people. So, I would say that we should all be alarmed. But we should be very aware of the powerful tools that the media has and how you use it has consequences.
MS. CALDWELL: And what about just reporting what Republicans say, including someone like Congressman Ronny Jackson, who says, quote, "Tonight the FBI officially became the enemy of the people." Republicans have called the FBI "deep state," called--said that there has been a weaponization of the FBI. Defund the FBI. Do members of Congress, elected officials have a responsibility in their words as well and not coming to conclusions before the facts are borne out?
SEN. SCOTT: Yeah, I certainly think that we all should be--we should all take the responsibility on our own shoulders for the words that we use. And one of the reasons why I referred back to a CNN legal analyst as it relates to his words on daring and dangerous is because I think that is more consistent with many of the readers. I want to make sure that I'm not just using the right side of the aisle to make my determinations on what should or should not be done. I do think the country is healthier when we have an objective approach to really important issues. Once in 232 years--I think we should all hope that the truth is going to be--come out--will come out as quickly as possible. That will benefit all of us. But I do not think that those of us who are alarmed by the raid, that we are out of step with what's important to this country.
MS. CALDWELL: Does the increased violence--the violent rhetoric, the violent threats in our American rhetoric these days--does it make it more difficult to speak out against forces on your side? You know, and I'm saying your side because you're a Republican. So, regarding the former president, for example, he has a very, very intense following. Is it hard to speak out against him because his followers are so supportive and might turn against you?
SEN. SCOTT: Well, that's a good question. I would say that without any question that what’s really difficult is for us to look at the inconsistent application of the legal system and what that foretells for the future of this country. One of the things that I think that many on the right take into consideration is the consistent application of justice towards the president. And the way that it has happened for the last six years, frankly, that does enrage many of his supporters and me to be included in that conversation. When you think about the Muller investigation, you think about the Russia collusion, you think about the Steele dossier, and you think about the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent looking for something that has not yet been found, that is very disturbing. I do believe that every single person should be responsible for their actions.
I don't necessarily agree with you, Leigh Ann, with the framing of the conversation or the question. So far, the questions seemed to suggest that there are issues on the right that don't exist on the left, and that's not been my experience. And, frankly, many of the issues and challenges that many elected officials face, including me, come from the comments and the bigotry of the left. So there should be an equilibrium and enough information and enough time spent on both sides of that conversation for the American people to truly appreciate what's happening within the halls of justice, so to speak.
MS. CALDWELL: And that is fair. But you are a member of the right of the Republican Party, which is why I’m asking you about that.
SEN. SCOTT: That’s fair. I am, indeed.
MS. CALDWELL: So one thing, though, it’s been five years since Charlottesville.
SEN. SCOTT: Yes.
MS. CALDWELL: And you write about this in your book, and you say--you write that you recommend that only speak out against Donald Trump if it's absolutely necessary. And that was a moment that you thought was absolutely necessary. Can you explain that a little bit?
SEN. SCOTT: Sure. In my book, "America, a Redemption Story," I tell--I tell how I created opportunity zones in the aftermath of the Charlottesville situation where I spoke out against the president clearly, thought it was necessary, and still am thankful that I did. The country improved and got better because of the conversation that I had with President Trump as it relates to the creation of opportunity zones. At the end of that conversation that I had with the president in the Oval Office, the one thing he said to me was help me help those I've offended, and the answer I had was opportunity zones. So I am thankful that as I speak to the president about some of the challenges that he and I have had over certain situations and circumstances, that he's been quite receptive. And what I tried to do in my book, "America, a Redemption Story," is to tell both sides of the ledger. I don't sugarcoat some of the disagreements, but I also tell the end of those disagreements. And I would love for that to be the way that we hear stories all over the country, both sides of the ledger.
MS. CALDWELL: On opportunity zones, you are exploring legislation to improve them.
SEN. SCOTT: Yes, I am.
MS. CALDWELL: You are absolutely right that after Charlottesville, you know, this discussion that you had with the president lead to opportunity zones, which passed rather quickly through Congress. What needs to be fixed? Where have they fallen short? And let me actually tell our audience what they are. These are areas to provide--to help to provide economic incentive in lower-income communities, communities with few opportunities. But what needs to be improved, Senator?
SEN. SCOTT: Yeah, so one of the things that I think would be very helpful on both sides of that ledger I was just talking about is to make sure that those who are investing in opportunity zones, that they report to the IRS what it is that they did with the resources and where they invested it and what's the outcome? Because I've said it once and I'll say it a thousand times, I'm sure, that if the opportunity zones are not actually benefiting the underlying community, then we're missing the mark completely, and they should be recalibrated. It's one of the reasons why Cory Booker and I are working on that next iteration of opportunity zones to make sure that reporting requirements are part of that task. We also use a new market tax credit as the definition for low-income areas, be it rural America or the urban areas. And I would love to give the governors another opportunity to redesignate areas to expand those zones and to eliminate some that are now improving so much so that they're not--they're not necessary to stay in the opportunity zone program.
MS. CALDWELL: You know, you spoke out after Charlottesville, you know, the right to--the unite the right rally. You talk in your book a lot about race and about your family history and how race has really impacted and--but also helped for you to be who you are, for example. What sort of--and you spoke out and your words mattered after Charlottesville as the only Black Republican senator--what--do you feel frustrated in our discussions that we've had over the years there's--on the one hand, you feel like you are labeled the token Republican by Democrats? And then on the other hand, you have expressed some frustration that perhaps sometimes some Republicans, or some people, I should say, think that, you know, all the progress that has had is kind of the end of the road here? So, what sort of responsibility do you feel on this issue of race being a Black Republican, and is it a lot on your shoulders?
SEN. SCOTT: Thank you, Leigh Ann, for the question. There’s no doubt that there are three African Americans in the Senate. Two are Democrats, and I am the sole Republican. Hopefully, we'll have another one join us real soon here in November.
MS. CALDWELL: It’d still be three, though.
SEN. SCOTT: I would say that the pressure and the challenges that come with me being the sole Republican in the Senate, it comes with an additional burden. There's no doubt about that. I won’t pretend that it does not. I mean part of it is the level of just really animosity and animus that comes from certain corners of the country that just don't like folks who are out of step with what they believe should be the way that minorities are seen in this country. That's been quite unfortunate as I've watched people call me racially provocative words and names. It's been quite challenging for so many folks around the country to pay attention to the strong rebuke that I get from progressives.
You heard recently one of the MSNBC folks called Herschel Walker a negro and how Republicans like their negros. It's that kind of bigotry that goes unanswered by so many folks in the progressive media space that I think does damage to the country. And for those kids who would like to just grow up and think for themselves and be who they want to be, there's a weight on their shoulders that says don't step out of line.
For a guy like me, I'm going to be fine. One of the things I have learned to live with is that I don't take criticism from people I would not take advice from. And so that's a really important part of who I am and how I see the world.
MS. CALDWELL: You know, we've talked about this in the past, and you wrote a piece in The Washington Post, an opinion piece a couple years ago, saying sometimes people say it's--some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism, it is because of our silence. You know, this was in 2019 that you wrote that. Is that still--
SEN. SCOTT: No doubt--
MS. CALDWELL: Go ahead. Is that something that you--is that something that the Republican Party needs to be more [unclear]?
SEN. SCOTT: Absolutely [unclear] spend more time going where they’re not invited so that we are able to show our success and our progress. And if you are silent on some of the important issues, that your silence can--it can in part be taken in a negative light. And so I do think that we should do a better job of speaking out and speaking up, particularly when the facts are consistently on our side. Our policy positions have been very helpful within minority communities, but we have to share that message and show our affection by being present. So those are two things that I think we as Republicans could do a better job of.
MS. CALDWELL: In your book, you also write about January 6. You tell an anecdote which was really powerful and interesting and not something that I had heard when after the senators were evacuated to the safe room in the Hart Building, you described senators yelling at each other and blaming each other. And then you went up and you said, we need to calm down here. And you encouraged the Senate Reverend Barry Black--chaplain, excuse me--Barry Black to come and offer a prayer. You know, did that shift the mood in that room that night?
SEN. SCOTT: It did. You know, one of the things you'll read about in "America, a Redemption Story" is how the power of Chaplain Black really brought the temperature down. Typically, when temperatures are high, thinking is low. And so ultimately, good news, Chaplain Black went up and said a prayer. And there are many people in the--in the Senate of different faiths. But we all respect and appreciate Chaplain Black’s service. And so you saw Republicans and Democrats huddling together, talking, as opposed to people sometimes of the same party yelling at each other and trying to make their voices heard. The truth is, at that moment, the temperature dropped and people started communicating. The chaos always goes down when communication goes up. And it was a powerful moment that I was so thankful to see us start working together and creating a plan to go back out and finish the day's work.
MS. CALDWELL: You also write that whatever you thought about the 2020 elections, that January 6 was, quote, "wrong."
SEN. SCOTT: Absolutely.
MS. CALDWELL: But nowhere in the book did I--nowhere in the book did I see you say whether you thought the 2020 election was stolen or if it was legitimate. What do you think about that election? Was Joe Biden legitimately the winner of that election?
SEN. SCOTT: I know that you guys must have wished I wrote a book about President Trump, but I didn't. The truth is that "America, a Redemption Story," I write about a lot of stories, a lot of topics that I think are incredibly interesting, many of which we're not covering. We seem to be covering President Trump and what happened with President Trump, and I didn't write a book about President Trump. But I have said several times, and I will continue to say President Biden was elected to be the president of this country. That's not an issue for me whatsoever, one that we should all have moved on from. And frankly, one of the reasons why I continue to focus on the story of redemption in my book is because I do think it's better for us to focus our attention on the things that we have in common and build bridges to the future, as opposed to the division that's easy for us to basically stoke the embers into flames.
MS. CALDWELL: Speaking of redemption, you know, you talk a lot about people who don't agree with you, that you should look at those people and still love them. You have--page 84, actually, there's a whole page about that. Is this country going through a bit of an identity crisis? Does this country need some redemption at this point?
SEN. SCOTT: I do think that we are better together, and some of the reasons why we are better together I speak about in the book on how people have good conscience, Republicans and Democrats, Black folks and White folks worked together to help me, especially as a young kid, understand the power of thinking and thinking for myself. I was taught really how to think and not what to think. Today's culture we seem to be indoctrinating people as opposed to setting them free to pursue their best outcomes based on what they conclude for themselves.
So, I think the country is in a bit of a--I wouldn't call it an identity crisis, but I would say that we are pondering what the future looks like together. I think we'll come to the right decision without any question. I'm bullish about the future of America. And one of the reasons why in my book about the year 2070, I'm hoping that all Americans, we can play a part in building the next American century and that we can participate in that process by how we treat and respect each other in 2022 and beyond.
MS. CALDWELL: In your book, you also write about the role of police, there's--about backing the blue. There's a very high number of police officers who are killed in this country. There's also a very high number of people who are killed at the hands of police in this country. You worked with Senator Cory Booker for a very long time on police reform legislation. That fell apart. One thing, though, is in your statement when those things did fall apart, you said you couldn't support something that defunded the police. But was that actually accurate? Because that bill would have spent millions and millions of dollars on new mandates for police, on mental health support for police. And so why in that statement did you say that it would have defunded the police?
SEN. SCOTT: Well, mostly, Leigh Ann, because there were 11 sections that made local law enforcement ineligible for grants that they didn't have--they didn't meet a national standard. If you're looking at a department in Chicago or New York, that's one standard. You're looking at a department in rural South Carolina with 10 sworn officers, it's a totally different level of expectations. You can't have one size fits all. There's a reason why local law enforcement is local. So, you have to understand the actual terrain where they work. You have to understand the communities where they serve in order to develop the policies.
So, making a high percentage of the number of law enforcement agencies ineligible for grants is defunding the police. That's not a--that's not a pun. It’s not a pointing the fingers on the other side. It's just a fact.
The truth is that as we continue to look back at the police reform initiatives that I've had--going back to 2015, frankly, when I came up with my first piece of legislation to add $100 million for body worn cameras so that there would be more clarity on those interactions with law enforcement; or my next iteration, the Justice Act, where we provided resources for training and we gathered more material, more information on the stops--we did a really good job, frankly, in my opinion, to try to see that those sides of that ledger--again to make sure we understood what's happening within our communities but perhaps the most important point, Leigh Ann, is that there's no binary choice between the law enforcement officers and their communities of color. That’s a false binary.
In order to support the communities that desperately need and want more policing, African Americans, 80 percent want the same level of policing or more--we have to support more resources for law enforcement. And you've seen that turn happen in this administration because of the incredible levels of violent crime that is now sweeping this country. I said it back at the end of 2017 or 18 at the failure of the Justice Act that things were going to get worse. That was just my prediction. And I--unfortunately, I see why it's gotten worse. You cannot take funds away from communities in law enforcement and not expect crime to go up.
MS. CALDWELL: Have you restarted any of these negotiations with Senator Booker? Could this legislation get done in a future Congress? The Fraternal Order of Police were on board, and the police chiefs were on board. Could this happen in the future down the road?
SEN. SCOTT: Yeah, Leigh Ann, I think that it--I think it will happen in the future. We continue our conversations. I have a piece of legislation I've been working on for the last three or four months that we have been at least in some discussions with Senator Booker's office. We're not at a place where we've made it public yet, but we are certainly--the lines are still open, and we are thankfully still in conversation. I think that's one of the things that is very helpful. We both have credibility on this topic. We have good rapport. And we are trying to address some of the problems, though we do it differently. We are looking for that one opportunity to be in the same place at the same time.
MS. CALDWELL: This is not your first book that you have written, but it is a book that has been released about two years before a presidential election. You also have $25 million in the bank for your reelection in a state where you are very easily going to win in 2022, assuming everything goes as it has been going. But so are you planning, are you exploring or even thinking about perhaps a presidential run for '24?
SEN. SCOTT: Leigh Ann, the answer right now is I’m only thinking about my reelection. And I appreciate your confidence in my reelection. I'm not sure that every South Carolinian agrees with you. I'm going to do my very best to make sure that they come to the conclusion that I'm the right candidate for the right time in this year of 2022. But if you're thinking beyond that, I think it's a I think it’s a bad decision. I played a little football in my life. And one of the things I learned during my football seasons was only focus on the next game. Nothing else matters. If you don't win this one, it doesn't matter. And I want to make sure that this game is successful. And frankly, having grown up in a single parent household mired in poverty to find myself in the United States Senate, it is a blessing from the people of South Carolina and the good Lord. So, I'm excited about where I am, and I hope to continue to earn the support of my bosses to constituents here in South Carolina.
MS. CALDWELL: One person is thinking ahead beyond the midterm elections, and that's Donald Trump. Is he someone you could support should he run for president again?
SEN. SCOTT: Yeah, once again, as I said, you guys must have wanted me to write a book about President Donald Trump because you keep talking about Donald Trump more than you do the book. But I will just say that without any question that I think the four years of 2016 to 2020 when President Trump was in office were four of the most successful years that we had from a policy standpoint, and frankly, from bringing more resources into minority communities. So, would I like to see four more years of that? I certainly would.
I will say this. I'll go one step further. The success that can be measured in the African American community specifically is incredible. We brought funding to the highest level in the history of the country for historically Black colleges and universities. We made the funding permanent for the first time through my office. We led on policies for more research on sickle cell anemia. We saw unemployment rates hit the lowest ever recorded for African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, 70-year low for women, 50-year low for the overall population of the country. We also saw 7 million jobs created, with two-thirds going to Hispanics, African Americans, and women. So, we had the most inclusive economy. We had a focus on historically Black colleges and universities. And--oh, we just lost the feed.
MS. CALDWELL: Oh, no. Senator, we can still hear you if you can continue, because I have one question about your book that I really want to ask you. Senator?
Okay, so I guess that we lost the senator, unfortunately. But that was about 30 minutes. Please--it is really a delightful book, "America, a Redemption Story."
Oh, fantastic. I am going to--we’re getting the senator back because I do have--I want to hear what he has to say. But anyway, his book is "America, a Redemption Story." You will learn a lot about the senator.
Okay, hi, Senator.
SEN. SCOTT: Did you just cut me off because my answer was too long, Leigh Ann?
MS. CALDWELL: No, I promise. I promise I had nothing to do with that. I can’t vouch for our control room, but I’m good.
SEN. SCOTT: I knew I liked you for several reasons, but just next time say your answer’s too long, Tim, stop talking. I’d appreciate that next time.
MS. CALDWELL: I do have--I do have a question, though, about your book.
SEN. SCOTT: Yes, ma’am.
MS. CALDWELL: This is very--this book is very hopeful.
MS. CALDWELL: In a time in our country that doesn't feel very hopeful for a lot of people on the left and the right. So, what should people take away from this? And what do you recommend for getting past this point?
SEN. SCOTT: Yeah. Well, Leigh Ann, one of the reasons why I wrote the book "America, a Redemption Story" is because my life was filled with pain and misery and false starts to be honest with you. I’ve had to learn to fail forward--as I discussed in the book, failing four subjects in my freshman year in high school because I was disillusioned and angry about what was possible for me as a kid living in poverty, being able to graduate from high school on time and going to college on a very small football scholarship. I was not as good of an athlete as you were, Leigh Ann. But the truth is having that opportunity gave me a second chance. In business I had the same experience. In politics, I've lost a race, and in life, I've faced racism and challenges.
I want people in this country to know that despite our differences, despite our challenges, despite our failures, that the beauty of America is we get up one more time and we start all over again. And because of that, we’ve become the greatest nation on Earth. In my book, you'll learn how to overcome the challenges, how to take your obstacles and turn them into opportunities, and how to take your pain and turn it into your purpose. It is a story of America, and it's a story of so many I think millions of American families.
MS. CALDWELL: Senator, we also have one thing in common. As you mentioned, we were both athletes. We both were overtired athletes, and both fell asleep driving and crashed our cars.
SEN. SCOTT: Oh, no.
MS. CALDWELL: Yes, I did the exact same thing. 4:30 in the morning headed to swim practice, and it was--it was devastating. Yours, though, changed the trajectory of your life. You couldn't play football as much any longer. So, you can read about that. You could read about much more about Senator Tim Scott in his very personal memoir, including about his chief of staff, which was one of my favorite parts of the book. Read it, "America, a Redemption Story."
Senator Scott, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
SEN. SCOTT: Thank you, Leigh Ann. I look forward to signing that book to you. Thanks so much.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. And when we get back to the Capitol, I look forward to judging his and Eugene Goodman’s socks. They have a sock contest every single day on who has the best socks. So again, thank you to our viewers. Please go ahead and watch this or--watch this entire program or read the transcript or all of the other programs for Washington Post Live on our website WashingtonPostLive.com. Thanks for your time. | 2022-08-15T20:16:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: 117th Congress: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/15/transcript-117th-congress-sen-tim-scott-r-sc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/15/transcript-117th-congress-sen-tim-scott-r-sc/ |
Audit: Va. didn’t use lessons from earlier snowstorm to avoid I-95 meltdown
The review by the Virginia inspector general offers clues into what went wrong over 36 hours along the highway south of Washington
This image provided by the Virginia Department of Transportation shows a closed section of Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg, Va., on Jan. 3, 2022. Both northbound and southbound sections of the highway were closed because of snow and ice. (Virginia Department of Transportation via AP) (AP)
Virginia agencies didn’t apply lessons from a chaotic snowstorm that paralyzed a Southwest Virginia highway in 2018, then repeated similar missteps in response to a January storm that stranded hundreds of people overnight on Interstate 95, according to a new audit.
The independent review by the Virginia Office of the Inspector General offers new clues into what went wrong over 36 hours along the highway south of the nation’s capital. It also issues 18 corrective actions to the state’s transportation, emergency and police agencies, intended to put in place better response protocols that would help to avoid problems during future storms.
“We’re hoping for improvements so next time something like this comes about, it won’t result in a shutdown of [Interstate] 95,” said Benjamin Sutphin, who led the audit at the state IG’s office.
As heavy precipitation fell in the early hours of Jan. 3, snow-removal crews were quickly overwhelmed, tractor-trailers jackknifed on hilly stretches of the route and motorists were left trapped without supplies of food, water or gas. The corridor became impassable, but it wasn’t until the next morning that top leaders of Virginia government officially shut down the corridor. The incident raised questions about Virginia’s preparedness for disasters and prompted calls for changes to emergency protocols.
How the East Coast’s busiest highway unraveled: 36 hours of confusion and misery on I-95
The IG report echoes findings unveiled in April by Arlington-based consulting firm CNA in a state-commissioned review of how the Virginia Department of Transportation, State Police and Department of Emergency Management responded to the storm that paralyzed traffic for 48 miles. That review cited a list of factors that contributed to the breakdown, including power outages knocking out traffic cameras, road conditions that hindered monitoring and reporting, and a “geographic unalignment” in central Virginia, in which various bureaucratic boundaries drawn by agencies hindered in-person coordination.
The IG report, however, is more critical, pointing to state failings to effectively communicate internally and with the public about rapidly deteriorating conditions as the storm dropped more than 12 inches of snow. Plowing resources were lacking while the sate had no coordinated plan of action, the report found.
“The state was prepared for what was forecasted that day. They weren’t prepared for what actually came,” Sutphin said. “And because they didn’t learn some of the lessons from 2018, they were less prepared than they could have been.”
Officials with two of the state agencies said Monday they are reviewing the findings in the report and working to make changes in response.
The I-95 meltdown could have been minimized, if not prevented, had the state followed recommendations issued after a December 2018 storm that brought Interstate 81 to a standstill for nearly 24 hours, according to audit officials. An after-action report of that incident in the Bristol area urged changes that ranged from establishing a central coordinated command center to strengthening interagency communications and coming up with a backup plan when traffic cameras aren’t working, as well as conducting wellness checks on motorists. A Virginia Department of Transportation memo after that incident also highlighted the need for more clear message to drivers.
“They came up with a lot of ideas that if they carried them forward — for example, the incident command center — they would have worked together rather than working blindly with not one room with every party in it to help make decisions,” Sutphin said.
The state didn’t implement the numerous recommendations from that 2018 incident, the IG concluded. Its first two corrective actions call on VDOT, VDEM and State Police to apply lessons learned during earlier events — including the I-81 and I-95 incidents — and incorporate them into policies and procedures. The agencies agreed to review and update policies by the end of the year.
Virginia agencies failed to see depth of I-95 meltdown, report says
In snow events, VDOT is responsible for clearing roads to keep traffic flowing while State Police respond to traffic crashes, directs traffic and escort emergency services. VDEM helps to coordinate resources to aid agencies and jurisdictions during emergencies. The agency has general emergency plans for natural disasters, the audit found, but has no plan specific for hazardous snow events.
The IG recommended VDEM to establish criteria for a disaster-level snowfall, come up with best practices for snow removal and assist stranded motorists during crippling snowfalls, as well as coordinate response exercises and training.
Lauren Opett, a spokeswoman for the agency, said it is working with staff to review the findings and corrective actions.
“Our agency remains committed to serving the commonwealth across all mission areas of emergency management and will work to implement any changes needed to current polices and/or procedures,” she said in a statement.
VDOT spokeswoman Marshall Herman said the agency is also working to implement the IG’s recommendations and is “committed to making improvements with our practices in order to reach our mission during snowstorms — keeping travelers and workers safe.”
Herman said the agency has already carried out several changes, including boosting training for communications staff and drafting a plan for how to address long-term road closures. The state is in the process of contracting a service to send text messages to drivers during emergencies. When the agency began planning for the upcoming winter season earlier this summer, Herman said, state officials included a preparedness training while emphasizing situational awareness and messaging.
The IG found messaging with the public during the storm was not effective, noting that communications did not clearly state the need to avoid travel on I-95 or, in some cases, provided inaccurate information. Another recommendation was for agencies to define who is in charge of messaging during an event such as the January storm, which covered multiple jurisdictions and agencies.
“In crisis communications, the message to the public needs to be clear and authoritative about what actions to take,” the report said. “Some motorists received messages to avoid the area and ignored them, while others may not have been aware of the messages at all.”
6 reasons why conditions on I-95 deteriorated during the Jan. 3 snowstorm
The IG also urged VDOT to come up with a contingency plan for when power outages limit the availability of traffic cameras. Power outages shut down cameras in the Fredericksburg area, creating challenges and frustrations among officials who couldn’t see road conditions.
The report ordered VDOT to study the feasibility of acquiring traffic cameras that could use other power sources.
“The fact that they didn’t have backup on those cameras was just surprising to us because they’re such an integral part of traffic management,” Sutphin said. “The fact that they didn’t have backup power on something that important, and then they didn’t have the ability to communicate by other means effectively, that really affected the situational awareness.”
The IG’s office said it will keep track of progress of its recommendations, some of which have deadlines in December. | 2022-08-15T20:43:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I-95 meltdown: Audit cites failures in response to storm that paralyzed I-95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/15/i95-snow-response-audit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/15/i95-snow-response-audit/ |
PM Update: Occasional raindrops, but drier than not with some sun Tuesday
Plentiful clouds and some occasional rain helped keep temperatures from passing the mid-70s in many spots this afternoon. Most of the showers of consequence have focused south and west of the Potomac River. As one went deeper into northeast Maryland, there was a good deal of sunshine today. It’s the same kind of story through tomorrow.
Through tonight: Plan on lots of clouds, especially the first half of the night. Periodic showers are possible, although it seems they will tend to favor south and west versus a perhaps totally dry north and east. Increasingly clear conditions may eventually present themselves. Lows range across the 60s.
Tomorrow (Tuesday): Our weather is fairly similar tomorrow. Perhaps a bit more in the way of sunshine. A few showers remain possible, particularly over Northern Virginia and south. Highs are in the mid-70s to around 80. Humidity isn’t much to think about with dew points dipping into the 50s.
Pollen update: Mold spores are low/moderate. Tree, grass and weed pollens are all running low.
Sweater weather: This was the first day since July 9 where the District had a high temperature in the 70s. It rained over 4 inches that day, mainly early in the morning. Since average highs are still in the mid- and upper 80s, it’s an impressive cool snap at the moment. When it comes to days where it’s typical to end up with high temperatures like today’s, we’ve still got about a month to go. The average high falls to 79 on Sept. 20 in D.C. | 2022-08-15T20:56:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PM Update: Occasional raindrops, but drier than not with some sun Tuesday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/08/15/dc-area-forecast-occasional-showers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/08/15/dc-area-forecast-occasional-showers/ |
SEATTLE — Starbucks is asking the National Labor Relations Board to suspend all union elections at its U.S. stores. The request came Monday in response to a board employee’s allegations that regional NLRB officials improperly coordinated with union organizers. In a letter sent to the board, Starbucks said an unnamed career NLRB official told the company about the activity, which happened in the board’s St. Louis office in the spring while it was overseeing an election at a Starbucks store in Overland Park, Kansas. The labor board says it doesn’t comment on open cases. More than 220 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late last year. The company opposes unionization.
BEIJING — China’s central bank has trimmed a key interest rate to shore up sagging economic growth at a politically sensitive time when President Xi Jinping is believed to be trying to extend his hold on power. The ruling Communist Party has acknowledged it can’t hit this year’s official 5.5% growth target after anti-virus curbs disrupted trade, manufacturing and consumer spending. A crackdown on corporate debt has caused activity in the vast real estate industry to plunge. Government data showed July factory output and retail sales weakened. The rate cut suggested Beijing’s worries about rising debt are at least temporarily outweighed by the political dangers of an economic slump and job losses.
NEW YORK — Stocks recovered from early losses and ended higher on Wall Street. Investors remain focused on the economy and upcoming reports from retailers this week. The S&P 500 is up 0.4% Monday after stumbling in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq also extended last week’s gains. Oil prices dropped sharply on worries about the global economy. China’s central bank cut a key interest rate after acknowledging more needs to be done to shore up the world’s second largest economy. Treasury yields also fell, as manufacturing in New York state unexpectedly shrank.
LONDON — London’s Heathrow Airport says it will extend its cap on daily passenger numbers until the end of October to cope with soaring demand for air travel amid staffing shortages. The airport, one of Europe’s busiest, said a maximum of 100,000 travelers can depart each day until Oct. 29. The daily cap was expected to be lifted on Sept. 11. Heathrow imposed the temporary limit in July and told airlines to stop selling tickets during the peak summer travel season, saying the passenger traffic was more than airport ground staff could handle. The airport said Monday its temporary cap had resulted in “fewer last-minute cancellations” and “shorter waits for bags.” It added the capacity limits would be kept under review.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tracks used by the nation’s deadliest railroad will see added fencing to keep pedestrians away and safety improvements at crossings under a $25 million federal grant. Brightline and government officials announced the grant on Monday as the privately owned passenger line continues to be plagued by deaths along its tracks between Miami and West Palm Beach. Trains have killed three in the past two weeks, and 68 since the service began its first runs five years ago. It has the worst fatality rate among the nation’s more than 800 railroads, an ongoing Associated Press analysis of Federal Railroad Administration data shows.
TOKYO — Japan has reported its economy grew at an annual rate of 2.2% in the last quarter as consumer spending rebounded with an easing of pandemic precautions. The of a nation’s products and services, expanded 0.5% from January-March, during which the economy had stayed flat, according to preliminary government estimates released Monday. Economists had forecast 0.6% on-quarter growth. The annual numbers show how the economy would have grown if the quarterly rate were to continue for a year. Private consumption jumped at an annual rate of 4.6%.
NEW YORK — Kraft Heinz is recalling thousands of pouches of Capri Sun after some cleaning solution accidentally mixed with the juice on a production line. The company says it’s recalling about 5,760 cases of Capri Sun Wild Cherry flavored juice blend. The “Best When Used By” date on the packages is June 25, 2023. Kraft Heinz says the diluted cleaning solution is used on its food processing equipment. The company says it discovered the problem after getting consumer complaints about the juice’s taste. Consumers who bought the affected drinks should return them to the store where they were purchased to receive a refund. | 2022-08-15T21:44:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Starbucks and the NRLB, China rate cut - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-starbucks-and-the-nrlb-china-rate-cut/2022/08/15/de81266e-1ce1-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-starbucks-and-the-nrlb-china-rate-cut/2022/08/15/de81266e-1ce1-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Analysis by Ben Westcott | Bloomberg
A man arrives at the Honiara Central Markets by boat as performers from the ‘Solomon Islands Cultural Group’ prepare to leave the island nation to attend the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo on October 12, 2019 in Honiara, Solomon Islands. (Photographer: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
Competition between the US and China is escalating in the Pacific, with both rushing to cement their influence. They have reached out to Pacific nations, offering loans, security aid and development assistance. The stakes rose in April when the Solomon Islands signed a security accord with the Chinese government, Beijing’s first such deal in the region. Since then Australia and China have ramped up diplomacy. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a rare eight-day trip to the region in May while Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the Pacific four times in two months.
1. What countries make up the Pacific?
The Pacific is the world’s largest ocean and borders the US, Japan, Russia and Chile. But the term “Pacific nations” usually refers to islands mostly found around or below the equator. There are about 14 independent Pacific nations, all of which are relatively small. Only one, Papua New Guinea, has a population above one million while most are smaller than 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers). Larger ones include Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa and Kiribati. The combined gross domestic product of all Pacific independent nations is about the same as that of Vermont.
2. Who are their allies?
Some Pacific countries describe their foreign policy as “friend to all, enemy to none,” but the region also has long-running ties to the US and its allies in the region, Australia and New Zealand. Both have worked with Pacific leaders for decades and were among the seven founding members of the Pacific Islands Forum in 1971. Over the past half century, Australia and New Zealand have provided development aid, political support and even domestic security. When violence sparked by political tensions broke out in the Solomon Islands in 2003, Australia led a regional police force to help restore order.
3. What about economic aid?
According to a Pacific aid map published by the Lowy Institute think tank, Australia spent more than $10 billion in official development assistance in the Pacific region between 2009 and 2019, more than any other country. New Zealand spent over $2 billion during the same time period. However the Lowy Institute’s figures show a new player emerging in the Pacific. Since 2009, China has become the largest lender in the Pacific, totaling more than $7 billion.
4. Why is China reaching out to the Pacific?
To expand its influence in global institutions, such as the United Nations, China needs countries who will support its policy positions. While the US often can call on the support of European, East Asian and North American countries, Beijing is building a network of developing nations to take its side in international disputes. The Pacific also has many assets which are valuable to China’s burgeoning middle class. According to the Chinese government, trade with the Pacific has grown to $5.3 billion in 2021, mostly from seafood, wood and minerals.
5. Is there a Taiwan angle?
Yes. Out of 14 countries who still have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, four are in the Pacific -- Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province and has worked to isolate it diplomatically in an attempt to force it to join mainland China. In 2019, two Pacific nations switched their diplomatic recognition to China, including the Solomon Islands, in a major win for Beijing.
6. Why is the Pacific so important?
Australia and the US see it as vital for their security. For Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific nations are some of their closest neighbors. In a worst case scenario, the islands could be seen as stepping stones for an invasion force -- one of the most important battles of World War II was fought at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, part of a campaign by the US to slow Japan’s advance. Australia’s trade routes to Japan and South Korea run past Papua New Guinea, and any hostile military presence could leave Australia’s exports vulnerable. For the US, the Pacific is part of its “island chain” security concept, which sees islands as part of defense lines between Asia and the US. Guam and Hawaii could also be vulnerable.
7. What happened in the Solomon Islands?
The government had been moving closer to Beijing, including officially switching its diplomatic recognition to China. But when a draft security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands was leaked in March 2022, it shocked Australia and the US, neither of whom appeared to have been aware how far along a deal was. Most worrying for Canberra, if the draft deal went ahead the Chinese navy would gain a safe harbor just 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the Australian coast. The US, Australia and New Zealand all voiced concern but couldn’t stop the deal. In April, during the 2022 Australian election campaign, China said the agreement had been signed. No final wording has been released, leaving details unclear.
8. How have the US and Australia responded?
It led to a flurry of diplomacy, as Australia and the US attempted to rebuild ties in the Pacific and avoid more accords being struck. Since taking office in May, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government have worked to expand the country’s influence. In addition to Wong’s visits, the government pledged to reduce carbon emissions faster, a priority for vulnerable island nations. The US has announced new embassies in a number of nations, including the Solomon Islands. At the annual Pacific Islands Forum in July, US Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled plans to increase funding to the Pacific by $60 million every year. Albanese and Wong attended the event, while no Chinese leaders addressed the forum.
9. What do Pacific leaders think?
They don’t like being treated as diplomatic footballs. When Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare faced criticism over his deal with the Chinese government in May, he said the country was being treated like children with guns. Australia often refers to the Pacific as its backyard, but regional leaders have bridled at the term. “Fiji is not anyone’s backyard - we are a part of a Pacific family,” Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said in a tweet in May.
10. What happens next?
In May, China tried to strike a trade and security agreement with 10 Pacific nations but was rebuffed after they complained they weren’t given enough time to consider it. There are signs China will try again, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian saying the process was “ongoing.” In August, the US and Japan said they had conducted joint military drills with the Solomon Islands’ coast guard for the first time. Both Sogavare and China’s Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian denied there is any appetite for a military base in the Solomon Islands. However an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report in August alleged Chinese state-owned enterprises had been expressing interest in an old airstrip and deep water harbor in the Solomons. | 2022-08-15T21:45:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why US-China Competition Is Heating Up in the Pacific - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-us-china-competition-is-heating-up-in-the-pacific/2022/08/15/4f749ac2-1cdd-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-us-china-competition-is-heating-up-in-the-pacific/2022/08/15/4f749ac2-1cdd-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Media outlets have asked a judge to unseal the document, which probably includes key details about the FBI’s decision to search former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence
Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Justice Department on Aug. 11. (Susan Walsh/AP)
The Justice Department on Monday asked a judge to keep sealed the sworn affidavit underpinning last week’s extraordinary FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence, a document thought to hold key details about the government’s investigation into the potential mishandling of classified materials.
Monday’s court filing was made in response to requests from multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post, seeking the affidavit’s public release. Law enforcement officials submit such documents to a judge as part of their application for a search warrant. Affidavits typically contain information addressing why authorities think there is evidence at a certain property and other details about an investigation, including sometimes the identities of witnesses.
Trump and other Republicans have claimed that the search was politically motivated. The former president has lashed out at law enforcement in response and suggested that the FBI planted evidence, though he has not offered information to support those claims.
A judge on Friday agreed to unseal the court-approved search warrant and an inventory detailing the 11 sets of classified documents retrieved last week from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach. The documents also identify what federal laws officials suspect may have been violated.
The former president said before the judge’s decision to unseal the warrant and inventory list that he favored releasing those documents. He and his legal team have not publicly taken a stance on unsealing the affidavit specifically.
Media outlets seeking its release have argued in court filings that documents related to the FBI’s search should be made public due to the “historic importance of these events.”
The Post noted in its filing that the Justice Department requested last week that parts of the search warrant filings be released because of the public’s “clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred in these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing.”
“Before the events of this week, not since the Nixon Administration had the federal government wielded its power to seize records from a former President in such a public fashion,” The Post argued in court documents. The newspaper is joined in its motion by CNN, NBC News and Scripps.
The Justice Department’s filing on Monday arrives as federal law enforcement agents experience an uptick in threats following the Mar-a-Lago search. While the court released a redacted version of the warrant last week, at least one conservative news outlet published the names of the agents who executed the warrant. The risk of violence has prompted the FBI to erect barricades around its downtown D.C. headquarters.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a joint intelligence bulletin to its employees warning of “violent threats” against federal law enforcement, courts, government personnel and facilities in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Post.
The chatter observed on social media is said to include a threat to place a bomb outside FBI headquarters and general calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion,” the bulletin states.
Josh Dawsey contributed to this report. | 2022-08-15T21:45:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justice Dept. opposes release of Mar-a-Lago affidavit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/15/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/15/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ |
Boston officer beaten by peers takes over as commissioner
Boston officer beaten by peers takes over
Michael Cox, a Boston police veteran who was brutally beaten by fellow officers while chasing a suspect and fought against efforts to cover up his assault, was sworn in Monday as commissioner of the Boston Police Department.
The Boston native most recently served as police chief in Ann Arbor, Mich. Before taking that job in 2019, Cox served three decades in the Boston Police Department, where he took on the so-called “blue wall of silence” after he was attacked by colleagues who mistook him for a suspect.
In 1995, 29-year-old Cox was working undercover in plainclothes as part of the department’s gang unit when officers got a call about a shooting. The suspect started to scale a fence and Cox was struck from behind just as he was about to grab the man, Cox has said. He was kicked and punched by fellow officers, suffering head injuries and kidney damage. The city eventually paid Cox more than $1 million over his civil rights case.
He replaces Dennis White, who was fired last year after decades-old domestic violence accusations — which he denied — came to light.
Four still critical after car rammed crowd
Authorities say four people remain in critical condition after a car drove through a crowd at a weekend fundraiser for victims of a fatal northeastern Pennsylvania fire earlier this month, killing one woman.
Of the 17 people injured, three are listed as fair at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, a hospital spokesperson said Monday. Ten other people have been released following treatment at several hospitals, state police said.
Parent sues over cotton field at school
Rashunda Pitts said her 14-year-old daughter, who is referred to as “S.W.” in the lawsuit, experienced emotional distress as a result of the 2017 project at Laurel Cinematic Arts Creative Tech Magnet that her social justice teacher said was to help students “gain a real-life experience as to what the African American slaves had endured,” according to the lawsuit, which also named the school’s then-principal and social justice teacher as defendants.
Pitts’s daughter said that her social justice teacher required students to “pick cotton” and that she herself was not forced to do so but had to watch other students complete the project while she cared for other crops in the garden, according to the lawsuit.
The school didn’t obtain permission from parents, the suit alleges. The school district later released a statement to a reporter stating that it regrets “that an instructional activity in the garden at Laurel Cinematic Arts Creative Tech Magnet was construed as culturally insensitive,” according to the lawsuit.
Deadline looms for states to cut Colorado River use: Seven Western U.S. states face a deadline from the federal government to come up with a plan to use substantially less Colorado River water in 2023. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday that will trigger agreed-upon cuts for states relying on the river.
'Don't say gay' law brings cautious changes: Some Florida schools have moved library books and debated changing textbooks in response to the law that bans lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Educators are cautiously making changes as they wait to see how the new law governing lessons on gender and sexual orientation will be interpreted and enforced. | 2022-08-15T21:45:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boston officer beaten by peers takes over as commissioner - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/boston-officer-beaten-by-peers-takes-over-as-commissioner/2022/08/15/02d5c53e-146c-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/boston-officer-beaten-by-peers-takes-over-as-commissioner/2022/08/15/02d5c53e-146c-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html |
Suu Kyi sentenced to 6 more years in prison
A special court inside a prison compound in the capital of Naypyidaw found her guilty of four corruption charges related to a charity named after her late mother, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proceedings are not public. It is the fourth round of criminal verdicts against Suu Kyi since the military seized power in a 2021 coup and brings her total jail term to 17 years, extinguishing any chance of her staging a political comeback while the junta remain in power.
Mandalay Region High Court Judge Myint San ruled that Suu Kyi caused the state to lose more than $13 million by leasing land in Naypyidaw to build the headquarters and related projects of Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity which supported public health and education, at a cheaper price than the rate set by the Internal Revenue Department, according to people familiar with the matter and state media.
Regional force sends troops to fight rebels
Burundian troops entered the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday as the first deployment of an East African regional force aiming to quell rebel violence, the Congolese army said.
The seven countries of the East African Community, which Congo joined this year, agreed in April to set up a joint force to fight militia groups in eastern Congo.
The task force under the command of the Congolese army “has the mission to track down all foreign and local armed groups in order to restore peace,” the Congolese army in South Kivu province said.
Navalny placed in punishment cell
Navalny, the most vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin inside Russia, is serving an 11-year sentence after being found guilty of parole violations and fraud and contempt of court charges. He said all the charges were fabricated as a pretext to jail him to thwart his political ambitions.
The 46-year-old, who returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him in Siberia with a Soviet-era nerve agent, was moved in June to a high-security penal colony farther from Moscow. Russia denied trying to kill him.
Israel rejects Palestinian prisoner appeal: An Israeli military court on Monday rejected an appeal for release by a Palestinian prisoner whose health is deteriorating as he continues a lengthy hunger strike to protest being held without charge or trial, his lawyer said. Khalil Awawdeh is one of several Palestinian detainees who have gone on prolonged hunger strikes over the years in protest of what is known as administrative detention. Israel says the 40-year-old father of four is a militant, an allegation Awawdeh denies through his lawyer. | 2022-08-15T21:46:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Aug. 15, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-15-2022/2022/08/15/0d4a0348-1c89-11ed-b25f-fb4ac1c3f4c0_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-15-2022/2022/08/15/0d4a0348-1c89-11ed-b25f-fb4ac1c3f4c0_story.html |
These bosses need to step out of their air-conditioned environments
Maintenance workers such as Ever Gomez, pictured near his home in Homestead, Fla., have been impacted by the severe heat this summer. (Cindy Karp for The Washington Post)
The Aug. 10 front-page article “More danger in a day’s work,” showed just how little some employers care about the people who work for them.
California and three other states have heat-safety regulations that help workers and businesses. I was appalled at the remarks from the Virginia companies that said they would lose money if they looked after their workers. “It’s an unreasonable and unnecessary standard,” said Brandon Robinson, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of Virginia. “Employees in Virginia are acclimated to their environment and are less impacted by higher temperatures,” said Conner Miller, an employee with the Virginia Forest Products Association. Have they stepped out of their air-conditioned environments to do any manual work, especially this year, when temperatures have registered higher than before? Shame on them for not considering the health and safety of these workers, who don’t wield the power of these associations.
Linda Kostrzewa, Burke | 2022-08-15T21:46:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | These bosses need to step out of their air-conditioned environments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/air-conditioning-heat-isnt-so-bad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/air-conditioning-heat-isnt-so-bad/ |
: A plane takes off from Dulles International Airport on Aug. 4. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
As I read the Aug. 10 Metro article “A neighborhood fights to be heard as Dulles planes drown out daily life,” it occurred to me that again an airport is being made the bad guy when in fact it is not Dulles International Airport’s fault.
When Dulles Airport was built starting back in 1958, it was intentionally built “out in the boonies” so the noise from its planes would not disturb residential areas. It’s not the fault of the airport that people moved in close. The people of Birchwood at Brambleton do have a reason to be upset about the noise, but not at the airport. They first should be upset with themselves for not doing their due diligence when they bought their homes. When you buy a home near an airport, you have to expect noise. Secondly, they should be upset with the Loudoun County Department of Planning and Zoning for allowing residential development in an area it should have known would be a noise problem.
Jeff Brannock, Leesburg | 2022-08-15T21:46:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Dulles isn’t the problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/dulles-isnt-problem/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/dulles-isnt-problem/ |
"Fox & Friends" co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
Steve Doocy, one of the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” did a remarkable thing on Monday morning. He informed the country that the climate of political threats and violence that seems to be growing more fevered by the day is due in no small part to the conduct of former president Donald Trump.
Doocy didn’t quite put it that way, of course. But it is the unmistakable subtext of what Doocy did say.
Referring to the news of spiking threats to federal law enforcement in the wake of the execution of a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, Doocy urged Trump to call for calm, saying this: “It would be great if he called for an end to the violent rhetoric against federal law enforcement.”
Doocy is an outlier: What’s appalling about this situation is how tentative GOP leaders are being right now. Even those Republicans who are willing to admit that perhaps federal law enforcement is not solely out to persecute Trump are not yet urging him to use his influence to call for calm.
Ask yourself this: How many of those more reasonable Republicans are willing to even go as far as Doocy has? And of course, many other Republicans are openly and explicitly siding with Trump’s claims of persecution, actively feeding his supporters’ fury.
And here’s the thing: Experts in political violence say GOP leaders could make a big difference in calming the threats.
I recently interviewed Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, who is predicting growing political instability and violence, and Rachel Kleinfeld, who has tracked the deterioration and collapse of the rule of law in many countries. They both agreed that what GOP leaders say and do could help alter the trajectory away from instability and violence.
If that’s right, Trump himself could have a pronounced effect. I contacted Kleinfeld again to ask for her thoughts on this, and she emailed: “No person could make a greater difference to the rate of politically-charged violence and threats in America than Donald Trump.”
In other words, Doocy is right.
And if Trump were to make a straightforward call for calm, it might create space for other GOP leaders — or at least those who aren’t pushing the Trump-as-deep-state-martyr propaganda — to do the same.
It certainly doesn’t help matters that some in Trump circles have advanced the notion the Mar-a-Lago search has helped Trump lock up the 2024 GOP nomination if he wants it. As right-leaning blogger Allahpundit notes, there isn’t any real grounds for presuming this, and it may even push some GOP voters who aren’t hopelessly besotted with Trump to consider alternatives, particularly if someone gets killed.
But beyond this, if Trump believes he can draw political strength from the rage of his supporters — and there are few things Trump likes more than being seen as strong — he’s even less likely to do the right thing.
Far too many mainstream media figures have described the current situation in generic ways. They talk about the “tensions” in the political “atmosphere” that have accompanied the search of Mar-a-Lago, as if they were as natural and inevitable as the weather.
In reality, those tensions are the product of Republican agency. They are the result of nonstop Republican demagoguery about the search, and of the Trump team’s refusal to denounce the threats to law enforcement as unacceptable in a democracy. The real import of Doocy’s statement was to put that on the table for discussion. | 2022-08-15T21:46:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Fox’s Steve Doocy is right to call out Trump over political violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/fox-news-steve-doocy-trump-denounce-threats-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/fox-news-steve-doocy-trump-denounce-threats-fbi/ |
The Salman Rushdie attack should sharpen focus on Iran’s misdeeds
Salman Rushdie at the 68th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in November 2017. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Thankfully, novelist Salman Rushdie is expected to survive a shocking Aug. 12 knife attack, according to his literary agent. Mr. Rushdie, 75, was preparing to address Upstate New York’s Chautauqua Institution when, police said, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from Fairview, N.J., rushed the stage and repeatedly stabbed the author, an Indian-born U.S. citizen. This savage assault on a leading figure in the global struggle against illiberalism should inject new urgency into the defense of free expression — and sharpen focus on the Iranian government, which has long meant him harm.
Though Mr. Rushdie made his reputation in 1981 with “Midnight’s Children,” a novel of India’s transition from British rule to independence, it was his 1988 book, “The Satanic Verses,” that made him a target of censorship. Some Muslims regarded the novel’s references to the prophet Muhammad and the Quran as offensive — even blasphemous. It was burned or banned in several countries. On Feb. 14, 1989, the then-supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called upon all Muslims to kill Mr. Rushdie; for years thereafter, the writer lived in virtual hiding. Recently, however, he had felt safe pursuing a more public, relaxed existence — mistakenly, it now seems.
Law enforcement officers have charged Mr. Matar, the U.S.-born son of immigrants from Lebanon, with attempted murder but not suggested a motive. It is no great stretch to suppose that he was acting on the Iranian-inspired proscription against Mr. Rushdie, about which authorities in Tehran had given some conflicting signals over the years but never officially lifted. Less than a week before the attack, the official Iranian news website called the decree “an unforgettable verdict for Muslims around the world.” Afterward, a government spokesman said, “We do not consider that anyone deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken appropriately labeled Tehran’s attitude “despicable.”
John R. Bolton: Iran is stuck in Biden’s blind spot
If that hypothesis proves out, then this was an attack not only on Mr. Rushdie but also on freedom of speech, a fundamental human right that can be limited only according to law, and only so much — never by religious decree, much less assassination. Ayatollah Khomeini’s initial threat against Mr. Rushdie galvanized writers and artists in defense of that right; what happened at Chautauqua shows that movement was — and continues to be — necessary.
The attack might be part of a wider pattern of Iranian-organized or -inspired terrorism on U.S. soil. The FBI recently broke up an assassination-for-hire plot aimed at former national security adviser John Bolton. In 2021, U.S. officials foiled a kidnapping plot against Masih Alinejad, a dissident Iranian journalist living in New York. This month, police arrested a man with a loaded automatic weapon near her house. Mark T. Esper and Mike Pompeo — the Trump administration’s secretaries of defense and state, respectively — are under full-time protection because of Iranian threats against their lives. Mr. Bolton, Mr. Esper and Mr. Pompeo all advocated for the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran; the plots against them and others might be Iran’s revenge for the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Meanwhile, Iran is weighing a “final offer” from the European Union that would revive a deal with the United States to abandon its nuclear weapons development. It can’t work without building trust; instead, the Islamic republic seems intent on building tension. | 2022-08-15T21:46:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Salman Rushdie attack should sharpen focus on Iran’s misdeeds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/salman-rushdie-attack-iran-misdeeds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/salman-rushdie-attack-iran-misdeeds/ |
The gaps in Trump’s claims of a ‘deep state’ attack
A partial view of an itemized receipt for and list of property seized in the FBI's execution of a search warrant Aug. 8 at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
The story so far, on Mar-a-Lago and the Multiverse of Madness:
First, the FBI seizure of government records stored in Donald Trump’s South Florida estate was the culmination of a bureaucratic conflict, not the initiation of a political war. The good people who keep track of presidential records had asked repeatedly for the documents at issue but had been met with grudging and partial compliance. Turning to the Justice Department was the archivists’ last resort — an escalation to end a negotiation in which Team Trump was oozing bad faith. The FBI search of a former president’s home was the external evidence of a long-term, mainly under-the-radar struggle over the custody of government-owned documents.
Second, Attorney General Merrick Garland has demonstrated a supreme indifference to politics. He did not originate the FBI search, but he approved it. He was, in essence, backing his own people in a case where the law was being obviously violated. This was not evidence of an anti-Trump political vendetta. It was Garland enforcing the law, even when it could be easily misconstrued as the result of an anti-Trump political vendetta. Thus Garland demonstrated one of the rarer political virtues: The attorney general was willing to look as though he was engaged in wrong in order to do what he believed was right.
Third, Trump has, once again, shown a deep misunderstanding of the high office he held. We recently learned that Trump, in a conversation with his chief of staff John F. Kelly, wondered why American generals could not be as loyal as “German generals in World War II.” (In Trump’s mind, evidently, there is no loyalty like Nazi loyalty.) As president, Trump falsely believed that every executive branch employee was his servant, required to obey his every selfish, capricious, vindictive whim. Now, as an ex-president, Trump seems to believe that every document produced by his administration is his personal property. It isn’t. As an ex-president, he presumes that he can declassify documents that he could declassify only before leaving office. He can’t.
The FBI search yielded, among other things, 11 sets of documents — one at the highest level of classification, “sensitive compartmented information”; four at the level of “top secret”; and three at the “confidential” level. Mishandling such documents is a crime — with legal consequences karmically strengthened by Trump as president.
This is enough to satisfy those who insist that “no one is above the law.” But most people will judge an FBI search of a former president’s home by the severity of the security breach that might have resulted. And this we still don’t know. Reporting on the contents of the documents has ranged from the absurd (information on Roger Stone’s corrupt pardon) to the apocalyptic (information on “nuclear weapons”).
Although I once had a pretty high security clearance, I am not sure what “nuclear” means in this context. There is no document of any kind that could enable, say, a 17-year-old Russian hacker to re-target U.S. nuclear missiles to hit U.S. soil, then click on a red button and enjoy the boom. Procedures for using nuclear weapons don’t even remotely work that way (thank God). Could such a document include information on the nuclear capabilities of enemies (Russia or Iran) or friends (Israel or India)? Or perhaps information about Trump pushing for the Russia-endorsed policy of the United States removing all its nuclear weapons from Europe?
For those hoping that these confiscated, classified documents will somehow destroy Trump’s chances at reelection, a warning. Many in the federal government have a strong tendency to overclassify information, which means that at least some of this trove could seem underwhelming when revealed. If it looks as though Trump was just retaining some documents for use in writing his memoir, few minds will change.
As it stands, the FBI action has confirmed public impressions, not transformed them. Remember that Trump secured the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 by dominating the news cycle. It barely mattered if it was good news about him or bad. He had a remarkable ability to shove everyone else off center stage while crooning “My Way.”
In this case, anyone who imagines and fears a “deep state” attack on Trump will take the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago as confirmation. Most GOP officeholders are finding it expedient to rally to Trump’s cause. The realm of charge and countercharge — of bold lies, absurd accusations and conspiracy theories — is Trump’s natural habitat. Other presidents have handled documents in this way, he inaccurately insists. The FBI has planted evidence, Trump claims, displaying a mind-boggling hatred of law enforcement and exposing FBI agents to physical risk.
Now imagine Trump is reelected. Remember his tacky, gold-leafed rule: Do unto others a hundred times what they do unto you. Consider an FBI stocked with Trump sycophants and directed at his enemies. It is a shard of the multiverse few would want to inhabit. | 2022-08-15T21:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump's claims of a deep state attack are a distortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-claims-distortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-claims-distortion/ |
The curious timing of Trump naming two allies to access his records
The first page of a search warrant approved by a U.S. District Court magistrate judge allowing the FBI to search former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is released by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 12. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
On June 19, former president Donald Trump sent a letter to the National Archives. The subject was not his ongoing dispute with the agency over material he’d removed from the White House and brought to his Mar-a-Lago resort. Instead, he was naming two individuals — former Trump administration official Kash P. Patel and conservative writer John Solomon — as “representatives for access to Presidential records of my administration.”
In light of what we’ve learned in the week since FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago and removed dozens of boxes of material, the timing of that appointment is interesting.
A full timeline of what unfolded before the FBI search is below, but June was a significant month for the government’s effort to retrieve the material.
By then, the Archives had already referred the issue to the Justice Department and a grand jury had issued a subpoena for the recovery of material. On June 3, a senior official from the department visited Mar-a-Lago along with several FBI agents, reviewing the storage room where much of the material seized last week would be recovered. They would soon ask that the room “be secured” — suggesting that it may not have been secured previously — and the material within it not be moved. A few days later, the New York Times reported over the weekend, a lawyer for Trump signed a document indicating that no further classified material remained at Mar-a-Lago.
On June 22, the Justice Department subpoenaed security footage from Mar-a-Lago, including near the storage room. Trump’s team turned it over.
“According to a person briefed on the matter, the footage showed that, after one instance in which Justice Department officials were in contact with Mr. Trump’s team, boxes were moved in and out of the room,” the Times reported.
In the midst of all of this and three days before that subpoena, Patel and Solomon were tapped as authorized consumers of Trump’s records. In explaining the decision to Politico, Solomon indicated that the intent was that he write a history of the Russia investigation — one that a Trump spokesperson justifiably expected to be favorable in a statement to the outlet.
After it was reported that the material Trump turned over in January included classified material, Patel spoke with Breitbart to offer a defense that’s cropped up a lot in the interim: Trump had actually declassified all of it in advance.
This could have been self-serving. As an administration official, Patel probably had a high level of security clearance though, as journalist Marcy Wheeler noted in an assessment of the Solomon-Patel appointment, that may have been rescinded as a part of an investigation into whether he leaked classified information. If he’d seen what Trump had in that storage room, Wheeler points out, Trump could be further criminally implicated. The same goes for Solomon: as a news writer, he would not have had clearance to view those documents.
Perhaps this is a coincidence. Perhaps Trump just got around to naming Patel and Solomon as he’d intended to do all along.
Or, perhaps, he and his team understood that the government’s interest in what he had in that storage room near the Mar-a-Lago pool hadn’t waned, and that it would be useful to loop his two allies into the community of people with some credible authorization for viewing what he’d taken from the White House. Perhaps he understood that he wouldn’t be able to retain the documents indefinitely and so wanted his defenders to have the legal authority to take a look.
One wonders if maybe they already had.
The Washington Post has requested comment from Patel and Solomon, and will update this story with any responses.
Jan. 20, 2021. Watching Trump depart the White House, national archivist David S. Ferriero notices staff carrying boxes.
“I can remember watching the Trumps leaving the White House and getting off in the helicopter that day, and someone carrying a white banker box, and saying to myself, ‘What the hell’s in that box?’” he told The Post. This, he says, triggers a review of what the National Archives had received from the outgoing president.
May. The Archives realize high-profile documents from Trump’s presidency — like his communications with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — are in fact missing from its records.
At one point, The Post reported, “Archives officials threatened that if Trump’s team did not voluntarily produce the materials, they would send a letter to Congress or the Justice Department revealing the lack of cooperation.”
End of the year. Trump begins packing up material to be returned to Washington.
He was “noticeably secretive about the packing process,” The Post reported, “and top aides and longtime administrative staffers did not see the contents.”
Jan. 17. A contractor arrives at Mar-a-Lago to pick up 15 boxes of material removed by Trump at the end of his administration.
Feb. 9. The Post reports that the National Archives referred Trump’s handling of records to the Justice Department.
Feb. 18. The Archives informs the Justice Department that some of the material turned over by Trump was marked as classified.
May. A grand jury issues a subpoena for material the government believed to be in Trump’s possession even after he turned over the prior material. This was in conjunction with interviews being conducted by the Justice Department.
May 5. Patel speaks with Breitbart, claiming that Trump had already declassified material that had been turned back over to the government in January.
June 3. Jay I. Bratt, chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, visits Mar-a-Lago with three FBI agents. They are shown a storage area with boxes containing material taken from the White House, some of which they take with them upon departure.
A few days later. One of Trump’s attorneys signs a written statement claiming that all material marked as classified had been returned to the government.
June 8. Bratt sends Trump's team an email asking that a stronger lock be installed on the room.
“We ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice,” it read.
June 19. Trump names Patel and Solomon as his “representatives for access to Presidential records of my administration.”
A spokeswoman for the former president said that the two were selected so that they might “work to make available to the American people previously declassified documents that reveal a clear conspiracy to unlawfully spy on candidate and then President Donald J. Trump — by the FBI, DOJ, and others — the largest state-sponsored criminality in American history.” This framing, it should go without saying, is unfounded.
June 22. The government subpoenas surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago security cameras over a 60-day period, which is turned over. It includes footage from outside the storage room.
Aug. 5. Believing that Trump still had material in his possession that needed to be returned, the FBI obtains a search warrant from a federal magistrate judge in West Palm Beach.
Aug. 8. Mar-a-Lago is searched by the FBI. Among the material recovered are more than 20 boxes of material, two binders of photos, and a number of classified items identified as confidential, secret or top secret.
Aug. 11. Attorney General Merrick Garland announces that he will ask for the search warrant to be unsealed.
The warrant is released publicly. In an appearance on Fox News, Solomon claims that Trump had a blanket order to declassify material he took to the residence section of the White House. | 2022-08-15T21:47:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The curious timing of Trump naming two allies to access his records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-solomon-patel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/trump-fbi-search-solomon-patel/ |
WASHINGTON — Taiwan is high on the summer travel list for U.S. members of Congress on their August recess this year, as U.S. lawmakers make a point of asserting American support for the self-governed island despite objections from China. The payoff photos from this week's five-member congressional visit, like that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi less than two weeks earlier, are meant as a pointed message to China: newly arrived lawmakers disembarking on the tarmac of Taipei’s international airport, greeted by beaming Taiwanese officials glad for the American support.
The latest: Justice Department is opposing the release of Mar-a-Lago affidavit | 2022-08-15T21:47:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: Why US lawmakers' Taiwan trips keep riling China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/explainer-why-us-lawmakers-taiwan-trips-keep-riling-china/2022/08/15/85eec30e-1ce0-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/explainer-why-us-lawmakers-taiwan-trips-keep-riling-china/2022/08/15/85eec30e-1ce0-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
How Tortas Frontera became one of America’s best airport restaurants
Chef Rick Bayless’s made-to-order Mexican tortas have achieved legendary status at Chicago’s O’Hare airport
On Feb. 4, 2011, celebrity chef Rick Bayless was at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to pose with a pair of giant scissors. The award-winning restaurateur, cookbook author and PBS host was attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his newest Mexican restaurant, Tortas Frontera. A mariachi band played as travelers grabbed free samples. Looking back, Bayless never thought it was an accomplishment he’d want to celebrate. | 2022-08-15T21:49:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rick Bayless’s Tortas Frontera at O’Hare is among the best U.S. airport restaurants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/15/how-tortas-frontera-became-one-americas-best-airport-restaurants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/15/how-tortas-frontera-became-one-americas-best-airport-restaurants/ |
Driver did not intentionally crash car into Arlington pub, police say
Ireland’s Four Courts pub in Arlington, a day after a car crashed into the building, leaving more than a dozen people injured. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
An Uber driver whose car plowed into an Arlington pub Friday, injuring 15, did not intentionally crash his vehicle, and alcohol was not a contributing factor in the wreck, authorities announced Monday, citing the results of a preliminary investigation.
Arlington police said the driver, who has not been identified, is cooperating with the probe, but they are still investigating the cause of the crash. Three people remain hospitalized, one in critical condition and two in stable condition, police said.
The crash occurred around 6:45 p.m. Friday, when the driver’s sedan left North Courthouse Road and struck Ireland’s Four Courts in the 2000 block of Wilson Boulevard, police said. The vehicle ran through the front entrance and hit patrons and workers inside, before catching fire and setting the pub ablaze.
'Sheer carnage': Witnesses describe moments after car plows into bar
Dave Cahill, the managing partner of the pub, said uninjured patrons and workers helped pull the injured to safety outside. Cahill did not respond to a request for comment Monday, but he described the scene as “sheer carnage” Saturday.
Police said a total of nine people, including the driver and a passenger, were hospitalized following the crash, but six have now been released. Others were treated on-site.
Cahill said Saturday he plans to reopen the bar, but it sustained extensive damage that will require significant repairs. Photos of the interior showed it is charred. Metal and wood from the structure were heaped in piles on the floor, and a large hole gaped in the front of the building.
A fundraiser for the pub had raised nearly $70,000 as of Monday evening. Four Courts opened in 1996. The bar is popular with soccer fans and local workers. It has a restaurant that serves Irish food. | 2022-08-15T22:32:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Driver did not intentionally crash car into Arlington pub, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/four-courts-crash-not-intentional/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/four-courts-crash-not-intentional/ |
Giuliani’s legal jeopardy in Georgia
A video of Rudy Giuliani is shown on a screen as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a hearing in June. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Rudy Giuliani’s decision to wander into a series of dicey legal arenas in recent years appears to have brought him closer than ever to being prosecuted, with news that he has been informed he is a target of the criminal probe being run by Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis.
Such a step is often a precursor to an indictment, and it’s been known for a few weeks that Willis’s probe was advancing rapidly and that she has focused extensively on Giuliani. This also appears to be the first time — that we know of, at least — that a top Trump ally has been named as a target of an criminal investigation related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Giuliani has seen his law license suspended in New York state over the 2020 push and is being sued by voting-machine companies. But he has thus far avoided criminal charges for various controversies involving his lobbying, including vis-à-vis the Ukraine scandal. At one point last year, Giuliani was even served with a search warrant in that probe, but the New York Times reported recently that he’s unlikely to face indictment.
So why might Georgia be different?
In the dizzying array of Jan. 6-related investigations, it can be difficult to keep track of who did what and when. But what we know about Georgia is that Willis has taken a keen interest in the so-called “fake electors” plot, in which Giuliani was a key player. We also know Giuliani held hearings in Georgia in 2020 that included multiple false claims which could be the subject of criminal charges, depending upon how aggressive Willis wants to be.
Willis has suggested her investigation might result in charges that include racketeering and conspiracy — effectively a coordinated effort to fraudulently overturn the election — and Giuliani could also be vulnerable to charges of making false statements in those hearings.
Willis has gestured in the former direction, in particular. In a petition last month seeking testimony from Giuliani and other aides to Donald Trump, Willis cited Giuliani’s hearings as being “part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
A key part of that coordinated plan appears to be the fake-elector plot. Several states named slates of alternate electors for Trump, ostensibly for a scenario in which the state’s election results were ultimately overturned by a court or the state legislatures. But then, even without action from the courts or state legislatures, Trump and top allies tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election with the fake electors anyway. And there is some evidence that certain people involved in the fake-electors plot might have understood it to be more than just a contingency — and thought that the fake electors could be used on Jan. 6 regardless.
Willis last month informed the 16 fake electors that they were also targets of her investigation. Those fake electors have in turn stated in court that they were unaware of an effort to use them absent the results being overturned in the state — a reflection of the legal jeopardy involved in what became of the Jan. 6 plot.
As for Giuliani’s involvement in the fake electors, Willis has said in a petition that he worked with pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro to coordinate the fake electors.
Beyond that, there’s the possibility that Giuliani could be held liable for making false statements in those hearings. Across many hours, Giuliani offered a litany of bogus claims, including some which had already been debunked. He claimed, for instance, that lots of underage voters, dead people and felons had voted in Georgia (none of which are true), and he blamed voting machines for changing the results (which also isn’t true and has earned Giuliani problems in civil court).
Giuliani’s many false statements in Georgia were a particular focus of a report issued by an appeals court in New York last year in suspending his law license.
“Respondent repeated to lawmakers and the public at large numerous false and misleading statements regarding the Georgia presidential election results,” the appeals court said. “These statements … were all knowingly made with the object of casting doubt on the accuracy of the vote.”
Georgia has a law against making “a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation … in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government.” Violations can carry sentences of between one and five years in prison. | 2022-08-15T22:45:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giuliani’s legal jeopardy in Georgia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/giuliani-target-georgia-criminal-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/15/giuliani-target-georgia-criminal-investigation/ |
Md. officials certify primary results, seek legal action to avoid delays
Carlos Hang drops off a primary election ballot at the Silver Spring Civic Center on July 19. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
Wary after an unprecedented primary cycle plagued by delayed results, Maryland election officials on Monday decided to seek emergency legal action to prevent similar challenges in the fall.
After certifying the primary results in a meeting Monday afternoon, the State Board of Elections voted unanimously, saying absent action, vote counting in the November general election — which will, among other things, determine Maryland’s next governor — could stretch well into the holidays.
“It could be until Christmas and New Year’s that we get the results from the election,” board member Justin Williams said, noting that delays could be an even larger hurdle because of tighter certification deadlines.
Voters and candidates sometimes waited weeks for results after the July 19 election as officials tabulated a sweeping volume of mail-in ballots that Maryland law prohibits them from processing until two days after the polls close. State lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year that would have removed this provision — the only law of its kind in the country — but Gov. Larry Hogan (R) vetoed the bill, citing concerns with other aspects of the measure — cementing an election cycle riddled with delays and hurdles for election officials.
The board is seeking emergency relief from a circuit court that would allow mail-in ballots to be canvassed and tabulated before Election Day. No results would be released before the polls close on Election Day.
Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery), who carried the bill Hogan vetoed, said she was happy to see the board take action, and hoped the court would follow through.
“The veto of my bill, Senate Bill 163, caused a big problem in the delays, and it was unfortunate and avoidable,” Kagan said during the board meeting on Monday. “But really big kudos to the four of you for just voting unanimously to bring a legal initiative, and we will hope that it will be approved by the circuit court and we can make sure that votes are counted in a timely manner.”
Certification on Monday officially sealed Wes Moore (D), a best-selling author who garnered high-profile celebrity and political endorsements, and Republican Del. Dan Cox, a first-term delegate who embraced Donald Trump’s rhetoric and tried to impeach Hogan, as the gubernatorial candidates, along with any third-party contenders, to appear on the November ballot.
Voters waited days for Moore to be projected as the Democratic nominee in July, and Montgomery County election officials counted mail-in and provisional ballots for almost three weeks after the primary. The local board in Montgomery, Maryland’s most populous county, just certified results on Saturday, and the County Executive race is headed to a recount.
The logjam occurred as voting patterns that shifted during the coronavirus pandemic ran up against a rule rooted in election integrity concerns.
The law, enacted at a time few people voted absentee, sought to ensure that mail-in results could not be leaked early and sway the outcome of an election.
When vote-by-mail surged in popularity in Maryland and around the country in 2020, Hogan issued an emergency order allowing for mail-in ballots to be counted ahead of Election Day. But the order expired, and mail-in balloting remained popular.
The state received more than 345,000 mail-in ballots in the 2022 primary — up from nearly 30,000 in 2018.
Hogan, who in May vetoed the legislature’s effort to extend early counting over unrelated election security concerns in the same bill, welcomed the board’s decision on Monday.
“The governor strongly supports the board finally taking action to adopt early canvassing — as he did for the 2020 election — and address the General Assembly’s failure to pass a simple bill that would have allowed it to happen,” Hogan spokesman Michael Ricci said in a statement. “We hope that the court will act swiftly, and that the legislature will act in the future to codify the governor’s successful early canvassing measure.”
The state Board of Elections considered asking a court to waive the rule for the primary after Hogan’s veto, but decided against taking legal action as time ran short. After the board saw how the primary played out, members said they were prepared to seek relief.
“I think that this is a prudential step that we’re taking,” board member Severn E. S. Miller said in the meeting.
The board will file a petition in a circuit court “with sufficient time for the court to consider the request and for the local boards of elections to plan for pre-Election Day canvassing,” according to a release issued after the vote.
The board will have to prove to the court that this is an emergency circumstance affecting the electoral process, and the court’s help “is in the public interest and protects the integrity of the electoral process,” the release says. If the board makes its case, the court can take any action it considers necessary.
“I think most judges will be reasonable and sympathetic to the idea of moving forward with democracy,” Kagan said in an interview Monday. “But there is the risk of some outlier, some extremist, who says no, and then we’re really going to be in dire straits.” | 2022-08-15T22:58:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland election officials turn to court to count mail votes early - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/maryland-mail-ballot-legal-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/maryland-mail-ballot-legal-action/ |
Chris Woodward was in his fourth season as manager of the Rangers, following a 12-year major league playing career. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
The Texas Rangers fired manager Chris Woodward on Monday, the team announced.
Woodward, 46, was in his fourth season with the Rangers, who are third in the American League West at 51-63. At an overall record of 211-287, the former infielder was let go just shy of reaching 500 games in his first top-level managerial stint.
Taking over on an interim basis is Tony Beasley, a former minor league manager in the Washington Nationals organization who was serving as the Rangers’ third base coach. Beasley will run the team from the dugout starting Monday evening with a home game against the Oakland Athletics.
“We have had extensive discussions over the last several weeks and while the team’s current performance is certainly a big part of this decision, we are also looking at the future,” Rangers President of Baseball Operations Jon Daniels said in a statement. “As the Rangers continue to develop a winning culture and put the pieces together to compete for the postseason year in and year out, we felt a change in leadership was necessary at this time.”
Jon Daniels on what the convo was like with Woodward: “Emotional on some level… He was appreciative of the opportunity.” He didn’t think the team was as far off as the record would indicate.#Rangers | @wfaa
The Rangers haven’t had a winning record since 2016, which was the last time they made the postseason. That came under former manager Jeff Banister, who held the job from 2015 until he was fired with 10 games left in the 2018 season. Woodward oversaw an initial improvement in the team’s fortunes, but Texas tumbled to marks of 22-38 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 60-102 last year.
The team was understood to be in rebuilding mode, though, and despite the losses, Woodward inspired enough confidence among executives that they gave him a contract extension last winter that took him through 2023, with a club option for 2024.
Texas had higher expectations for this season after spending over $500 million in free agency, primarily on the middle infield pairing of shortstop Corey Seager and second baseman Marcus Semien. Seager was an all-star selection this year, but neither he nor Semien has been at their best. The Rangers’ pitching has been a bigger problem, with the team ranking 12th in the American League in ERA (4.09) and 13th in WHIP (1.31), but perhaps the most frustrating statistic for Rangers executives is their 6-24 record in one-run games. That is on pace to be the second-lowest single-season mark in such contests since 1900, per ESPN.
Rangers interim manager Tony Beasley echoes GM Chris Young and Pres. Jon Daniels that they’ve played sloppy at times and lacked clutch hitting when they’ve needed it.
Beasley welcomes the challenge and calls himself honest & direct with players.#TexasRangers | @wfaa
Before joining the Rangers, Woodward was a third base coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he managed New Zealand’s national team in 2016 as it made a bid to qualify for the 2017 World Baseball Classic. He started his coaching career with the Seattle Mariners, focusing on infield tutelage after mostly playing shortstop, second base and third base during a major league career that ran from 1999 to 2011. Woodward spent seven years with the Toronto Blue Jays and also played for the Mariners, New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox.
“In his tenure as Rangers’ manager, Chris worked tirelessly under what was at times some difficult circumstances,” Daniels said of Woodward. “He has been dedicated and passionate in his efforts to improve the on-field performance of the Texas Rangers, and it is greatly appreciated. He has represented the organization with class and dignity.” | 2022-08-15T23:07:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas Rangers fire manager Chris Woodward amid fourth losing season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/texas-rangers-fire-chris-woodward/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/texas-rangers-fire-chris-woodward/ |
The workers, who are demanding higher pay and improved safety, are organizing within the e-commerce behemoth’s essential air logistics arm
Sara Fee, left, Daniel Rivera and Melissa Ojeda are leaders of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United and participated in the walkout. (Sara Fee, Daniel Rivera, Melissa Ojeda)
Amazon calls cops, fires workers in attempts to stop unionization nationwide
Monday’s walkout is the latest sign that pro-union sentiment is spreading throughout Amazon’s ranks — this time at a uniquely vulnerable point in its logistics network. Amazon depends heavily on a few air hubs to keep millions of packages moving every day, which means the effect of a strike or work stoppage at any of those facilities would have a greater impact than a similar action at a regional warehouse.
Even as Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, pits its weight against organized labor — trying, for example, to get the results of the Amazon Labor Union’s historic election victory in Staten Island thrown out — the walkout in California demonstrates how workers are continuing to independently organize around the country.
“With the rising cost of everything in our lives, it’s getting tough to make ends meet,” said Ortega, who makes $17.30 an hour. “It doesn’t make any sense that people who work here should be on food stamps or struggling financially.”
Workers are also asking for better heat safety measures as the temperature has often reached above 100 degrees this summer, causing heat-related illness in particular for workers who are outdoors loading and unloading planes. Federal workplace health and safety officials have recently investigated the deaths of three Amazon workers in New Jersey and expanded a probe into safety issues at Amazon warehouses nationally.
“We appreciate and respect the direct relationship we have with our employees to discuss and address feedback,” said Paul Flaningan, an Amazon spokesperson, before the walkout. “Through this open-door policy we have many communication channels we use, including All Hands meetings, which help us address employee concerns.”
Flaningan added that full-time employees at the San Bernardino hub and throughout the region have a minimum wage floor of $17 an hour and can earn up to $19.25 and receive health care, retirement benefits and up to 20 weeks of parental leave. Asked about the walkout Monday afternoon, Flaningan said the company respects the workers’ right to walk out.
The San Bernardino work stoppage is part of a broader wave of labor organizing campaigns across the country at Amazon warehouses — marked so far by a union election victory in Staten Island. Results at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are too close to call, and they are being contested. A warehouse in Albany, N.Y., is also close to filing for a vote.
The coordinated work stoppage in San Bernardino is the culmination of months of organizing by an independent group of workers, which calls itself Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, that formed early this year. Workers said they have been meeting in air hub break rooms, workers’ homes, restaurants, and at a community center in San Bernardino in recent months to discuss working conditions.
In response, Amazon’s Flaningan said the company changed its global policy for temporary closures — limiting any impact to one unpaid shift per holiday period.
After months of organizing in and outside of the warehouse, the group delivered a petition to warehouse management in July with more than 800 signatures from workers at the facility. They demanded $5-an-hour pay increases and a series of smaller raises for workers with specific job titles and night shifts.
“We as Amazon Associates work hard to ensure that the building hits the numbers it strives for and work together in order to provide satisfaction to all of our customers,” the petition said. “[But] we can barely afford to live in today’s economy.”
According to the workers’ petition, the average rent in San Bernardino is $1,650 a month, which means full-time Amazon air hub workers earning a starting wage of $17 an hour must pay about 75 percent of their monthly income after taxes on rent. The legal minimum wage in California is $15 an hour; according to researchers at MIT, a living wage in the San Bernardino area would be closer to $18.10 for someone without children.
“We’re not making enough to save anything,” said Sara Fee, a lead organizer of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United who sorts packages at the air hub. “If something goes wrong with my car, I don’t have savings. I can’t afford to eat healthy food. I have to buy chicken nuggets or noodles.”
Amazon called all-hands meetings at the facility on Aug. 3 and 5 to address the petition. Managers suggested that workers save money by using public transit and enrolling in a carpooling benefits program. They also offered a $1.50-an-hour raise on the weekday night shifts and a $2-an-hour raise on weekend night shifts.
Four workers involved in organizing at the facility described grueling working conditions to The Washington Post. Two workers said they had experienced heat-induced nosebleeds this summer and another described hitting her head on a shipping container and getting a concussion.
“It’s been really hot every day this summer,” said Daniel Rivera, a leader of the union drive who unloads freight from aircraft. “They say there is air conditioning, but you can only feel it in some sections.”
Amazon’s Flaningan said the entire air hub campus has indoor AC, and that to date no heat-related illnesses have been reported from active loading areas.
Marc Wulfraat, an industry consultant who tracks Amazon’s facilities globally, said the air hub in San Bernardino is one of the most logistically significant in the nation for Amazon. The facility is a regional hub that funnels customers’ orders from across the country to outposts on the West Coast. Recent data shows that the facility oversees about seven flights a day to and from the East Coast, Midwest, Texas and the Pacific Northwest.
San Bernardino and neighboring Riverside County have more than 35 Amazon facilities. The company is the region’s largest private employer.
Workers who walked out of the Amazon facility on Monday don’t have immediate plans to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, but they said they would consider filing for a formal election in the future. | 2022-08-15T23:11:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon workers walk off job at major West Coast air hub - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/15/amazon-air-hub-walkout-labor-union/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/15/amazon-air-hub-walkout-labor-union/ |
Analysis by Rebecca Jones | Bloomberg
EAST ARNHEM, AUSTRALIA - JULY 29: Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese walks with Yolngu community during Garma Festival 2022 at Gulkula on July 29, 2022 in East Arnhem, Australia. The annual Garma festival is held at Gulkula, a significant ceremonial site for the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land about 40km from Nhulunbuy on the Gove peninsula in East Arnhem. The festival is a celebration of Yolngu culture aimed at sharing culture and knowledge which also brings politicians and Indigenous leaders together to discuss issues facing Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This year is the first time the festival has been held since 2019 following a two-year absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Tamati Smith/Getty Images) (Photographer: Tamati Smith/Getty Images AsiaPac)
In the pre-dawn darkness, I sit cross-legged in the red dirt and listen to the women sing and cry. Here in this escarpment overlooking the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia’s Northern Territory, the majestic stringybark trees sway gently in time. The voices of the Aboriginal elders, a melding of sorrow and comfort, send chills across my skin and make my heart race. I tilt my head back and see a shooting star travelling across the sky.
Song is a crucial transmission mode for our hosts, the Yolngu people of north eastern Arnhem Land. It is how knowledge is taught, described and shared. The women carry out this sacred ceremony as it has been done for thousands of years, with wailings of loss, of longing, memories and ancestral belonging.
I am part of a group of invited guests, who have travelled from across the nation to observe this ritual as part of Australia’s largest Indigenous culture exchange, the Garma Festival of Traditional Culture. Conceived in 1999 by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, this yearly event provides an authentic setting for the expression of sharing of traditional knowledge systems and customs. There are forums with Indigenous leaders, activists and thinkers; political, social and economic discussions, the sharing of traditions, music, art, cinema, dance and storytelling. Attendees sleep in tents, shower in communal facilities and eat together in an open-air dining room.
Yolngu people traditionally learn from observation, by looking and listening. It’s a contrast to the British colonizers who declared Australia “terra nullius” — Latin for “nobody’s land” two centuries ago, entrenching endemic discrimination against the land’s Indigenous owners.
Garma gives attendees a window in a slice of life not often seen outside of remote communities — it shows both the resilience of First Nations’ people and the impact of Australia’s history of injustice against them. From the violent dispossession of Indigenous people from their lands to the White Australia Policy, a racist doctrine that lasted generations before being phased out in the 1960s, and the broken promises of successive governments, our history is littered with cruelty and political inertia. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s promise of a treaty in 1988 — now considered “unfinished business” by the Indigenous community, sparked Yothu Yindi’s 1991 protest anthem, Treaty. There has been some progress made, with a landmark law passed in 1993 returning some ancestral land back to the traditional owners and an official apology in parliament in 2008 for misdeeds, including the forcible removal of thousands of Indigenous children from their homes in the name of assimilation.
Just two days prior, I’d stepped off the plane at nearby Gove Airport and onto the bus bound for the remote Gulkula ceremonial grounds where the festival is held. As much as four days felt like a infinitesimal amount of time to learn about a people and culture that’s spanned at least 65,000 years, for many attendees this was their first time engaging with Indigenous Australians. Riding with me was a senior official from a major bank. I spied some mining executives I recognized. A CEO here, a university boss there.
The plan was for them to listen. “Racism works 24/7 to reproduce racial inequalities, regardless of the deliberate intentions of those who are in the state apparatus,” Central Arrernte woman and director of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Justice Unit, Leanne Liddle, told the gathering. “It is not limited to poisonous attitudes and violent or abusive behaviors because it includes laws that impact overwhelmingly against some groups, rather than others.”
Walking back to my tent after the women’s crying ceremony, the deliberateness of the cohort of decision makers, business leaders, international politicians, academics and journalists made sense. One is already on board — Anthony Albanese, Australia’s newly elected leader. PM’s have been coming to Garma for a decade to lay out their plans for Indigenous affairs, but this year was different, with the Uluru Statement from the Heart in focus.
A petition with roots spanning back 85 years, the Uluru Statement seeks constitutional change to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to have a voice in parliament. To a capacity crowd gathered before the outdoor stage, the PM promised to hold a referendum by the end of his first term in office in 2025. He spoke of “over 200 years of broken promises and betrayals, failures and false starts,” and noted “a voice enshrined in the constitution cannot be silenced.” His words received a standing ovation. Now he has to deliver.
To get a referendum over the line, Albanese is facing historically low, but not impossible odds. Since federation, Australia has had 44 referendums, with only eight carried. In 1999, the first question on the ballot was whether or not the nation should become a republic. The second one was to include a preamble to the constitution that would include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Both failed.
Before that, you’d have to go back more than 30 years to 1967 to find the last time the Indigenous population was the focus of a referendum. On this occasion, it was successful. A vote was held to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the official population count, and to allow the Federal Government to make specific laws for Indigenous people. More than 90% of people voted yes. The Canberra Times wrote after the event, “If an advanced nation of 11 million people cannot lift up a tiny remnant of 100,000 grossly underprivileged people it cannot claim to be either decent or civilized.”
Fast-forward 55 years and Australia’s Indigenous people are still the nation’s poorest and most disadvantaged group. They account for about 3% of citizens, yet make up more than 30% of the prison population. Four of nine indicators in an annual government survey tracking social and economic well-being have worsened, including children’s schooling and care and the high rate of suicides.
Back in 1999, not one state or territory had a majority yes vote for the preamble referendum question. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, with a median age of 24, this has meant a literal lifetime of waiting for change for many. If Australia’s Indigenous people get a voice in parliament, it won’t mean that everyone inside or out of the community will always agree on the best path forward — but it will mean they’ll get a say.
Appreciating the values, customs and beliefs of all cultures should be a key tenet, in politics, and in life. Rather than having to bus in to experience it for ourselves, why can’t we just listen?
• Redressing Two Centuries of Indigenous Injustice: David Fickling
• Rebuild ‘Black Wall Street’ as a National Atonement: Noah Smith
• Djokovic Debacle Exposes Australian Xenophobia: Ruth Pollard | 2022-08-15T23:16:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An Indigenous Voice in Australia’s Parliament Is Long Overdue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/an-indigenous-voice-in-australiasparliamentis-long-overdue/2022/08/15/69e8f20a-1ce6-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/an-indigenous-voice-in-australiasparliamentis-long-overdue/2022/08/15/69e8f20a-1ce6-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
U.S. soldiers secure an evacuation flight at Kabul’s airport on Aug. 17, 2021. (Susannah George/The Washington Post)
A year after the fall of Kabul, the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan looks better as a pragmatic decision to end a costly war. But haunting images remain from an unnecessarily chaotic exit that reflected a chain of policy misjudgments.
“The last year has borne out the wisdom of getting out,” argues a senior White House official. Though I was skeptical at the time, his judgment seems correct. Imagine if we were still fighting the Taliban when Russia invaded Ukraine in February, or as China threatened Taiwan. As for the terrorism threat, last month’s drone killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri suggests it might be manageable from a distance, as the administration has argued.
What’s still agonizing, though, is the decision-making process, in which different parts of the administration pursued what amounted to contradictory policies. The Pentagon wanted to get out as fast as possible once President Biden decided in April 2021 to withdraw. But the State Department sought to maintain its embassy and diplomatic presence in Kabul, even as the country was crumbling.
The Pentagon and State timetables didn’t match, and nobody ever forced a reconciliation. As a result, State pressed ahead with a diplomatic mission for which it didn’t have adequate time or resources. The military, which had opposed Biden’s withdrawal decision, opted to protect its troops. “Speed is safety” was the Pentagon mantra, while at State it was something closer to “stay the course.”
“They wanted an elegant solution while we were withdrawing, and sometimes those things don’t go together,” says retired Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who as commander of the U.S. Central Command was in charge of U.S. forces during the withdrawal.
The war in Afghanistan from the beginning was a story of overly optimistic assumptions about our Afghan partners’ ability to contain the Taliban, and that continued to the end. Nobody predicted that a panicked President Ashraf Ghani would flee the country and that the Afghan army would suddenly collapse — and perhaps nobody could have. But the Biden administration could have hedged better against the possibility of such “black swan” disasters — and, indeed, some officials tried, unsuccessfully, to do just that.
U.S. officials began developing plans for an emergency evacuation in March 2021, knowing that Biden, long a critic of the war, might want a rapid departure. All the senior Pentagon leaders argued against complete withdrawal, proposing instead to keep 2,500 troops in Kabul as a “term insurance policy” against a terrorist resurgence, as retired Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. put it in a recent interview.
When Biden decided in April that he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of August, despite Pentagon objections, the generals grudgingly saluted. Commanders wouldn’t ask troops to die for a mission that the president had decided wasn’t worthwhile. But State resisted open discussion of U.S. evacuation. “That would have been a profound sign of lack of confidence in the Kabul government,” a senior State Department official told me.
The Pentagon completed its speedy removal of troops and equipment in July, leaving only a small force of 650 U.S. troops to protect the Kabul embassy and airport. By then, the Taliban was rapidly seizing provincial capitals. National security adviser Jake Sullivan called a meeting in early July to ask whether the United States should try to retain control of Bagram airbase, long the center of American power about 40 miles north of the capital, as an alternative escape route.
Pentagon officials argued that maintaining Bagram after withdrawal of the main 2,500 U.S. troops wasn’t realistic. The Afghan military was no longer capable of providing perimeter security there, the generals explained, and the United States would have to send 3,000 troops back to Afghanistan to keep the base open, McKenzie recalls. Kabul airport would be a better exit point, the administration decided.
Looking back, the failure to plan earlier and better for possible civilian evacuation was a critical mistake. As the situation deteriorated over the summer, administration officials should have tried to “extend the timetable for withdrawal” or called a temporary “timeout,” argued Carter Malkasian, a former State Department official, in a recent interview. Malkasian served extensively in Afghanistan and wrote a superb history of the war, published last year.
The Taliban surge accelerated in late July and early August. But still, officials resisted issuing a “NEO,” the term for a “noncombatant evacuation operation.” The National Security Council held deputies and principals meetings on Aug. 8 and 9 to urge consideration of the NEO, and the consensus at those meetings was against issuing the order — and that the Afghan army could hold Kabul, according to one participant. Days later, senior leadership of multiple agencies came around to believing the NEO was necessary.
The pyramid of illusions crumbled on Aug. 15. Ghani fled the presidential palace at midday, as Taliban fighters streamed into the capital unopposed. The unthinkable had happened. The State Department had quit the embassy two days before and regrouped at the airport. An emergency evacuation was finally inescapable.
McKenzie traveled to Doha, Qatar, that day to meet Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most senior Taliban official in contact with America. McKenzie carried a map that showed a 30-kilometer circle around Kabul. He planned to ask the Taliban to withdraw to that line until the evacuation was complete. But on his way to Baradar’s suite on the 23rd floor of the Ritz-Carlton in Doha, McKenzie was told that Ashraf Ghani was gone and the Taliban was in downtown Kabul.
McKenzie altered his pitch. If Taliban fighters let the evacuation proceed safely, then U.S. military forces gathered at the airport wouldn’t attack them. Baradar threw a wild card: “Why don’t you secure the city?” McKenzie, knowing that retaking Kabul might require tens of thousands of U.S. troops, demurred. His mission was to secure the evacuation.
The Taliban agreed, and the chaotic final airlift began, with U.S. forces eventually evacuating more than 80,000 civilians — at a cost of 13 American troops killed in a terrorist attack by an Islamic State bomber.
Writing an epitaph for a failed 20-year war — and its chaotic last months — is difficult. But McKenzie, the last commander of American troops in this too-long conflict, offers this: “We wanted out. We got out. We subordinated everything to the desire to leave.”
And a year later, for all the mistaken judgements that were part of leaving, it’s good that America’s longest war is over. | 2022-08-15T23:17:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A year’s hindsight on Afghanistan withdrawal: A good decision, horribly executed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/afghanistan-kabul-us-withdrawal-anniversary-lessons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/15/afghanistan-kabul-us-withdrawal-anniversary-lessons/ |
How Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless achieved legendary status in a Chicago airport
On Feb. 4, 2011, celebrity chef Rick Bayless was at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to pose with a pair of giant scissors. The award-winning restaurateur, cookbook author and PBS host was attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his newest Mexican restaurant, Tortas Frontera. A mariachi band played as travelers grabbed free samples.
Looking back, Bayless never thought it was an accomplishment he’d want to celebrate. | 2022-08-15T23:18:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Everyone’s favorite airport restaurant lives in Chicago O’Hare - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/15/best-restaurant-ohare-tortas-frontera/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/15/best-restaurant-ohare-tortas-frontera/ |
Coming off a strong season in 2021, Commanders defensive tackle Jonathan Allen looks sharper than ever in training camp. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
If he’s going to get away, he wants to enjoy it, and this year, his mind was elsewhere. After a good season in 2021, the last thing Allen wanted to do was relax and then have a bad year. So he spent his summer at home in northern Virginia, trained at the Washington Commanders’ headquarters and worked out alongside his teammates whenever they were in town.
His focus was singular, and so far, the results have been prolific.
The former first-round pick is one of the Commanders’ bona fide leaders and is coming off his finest season yet in the pros. Last year, he signed a four-year, $72 million contract, collected a career-best nine sacks and was selected to a Pro Bowl. Recently, his peers voted him the 88th-best player in the league.
Jonathan Allen just doesn’t stop
“I think as a player, the more cautious you are, the more you’re going to limit yourself,” he said. “I’m not trying to play cautious. I think the thing in life, not just football, is people are scared to give 100 percent. And I was like that [for] my first three years. You’re scared to give it your all because if you fail, it hurts that much more. So for me, it’s trying to break through that fear of being able to give everything you have 100 percent, day and night, and if you fail, being okay with the consequences.”
Allen’s mentality has been a reflection of his play. Take that third-and-five during the Carolina Panthers’ opening drive Saturday at FedEx Field. Allen used a bear rush on left guard Michael Jordan to put him on skates and pressure quarterback Baker Mayfield.
Allen bear rush vs. Jordan straight into the QB. Put him on ice till Week 1, he's ready pic.twitter.com/TkaJRNM9e2
There was also a third-and-three six plays earlier when Allen put a swim move on Panthers center Pat Elflein and rushed to Mayfield. The quarterback let the ball off, so Allen adjusted mid-sprint, stood up, lifted his arms and spared Mayfield what could’ve been a crushing blow.
Jonathan Allen’s work with Washington’s homeless youth is inspired by his own experience
The play of Washington’s interior defensive line in camp and preseason has created opportunities on the second level. When the two take on double-teams, they take away blockers for the second level.
Last year, though the line struggled to perform in sync and the defense fell off from its 2020 rankings in most major categories, Allen finished second among interior defensive linemen with 67 total pressures, behind only Aaron Donald, according to Pro Football Focus. He was also the only player in the league to notch at least nine sacks, 30 quarterback hits and 10 tackles for loss.
“Six and a half, seven sacks over the next 10 years,” Allen told Kerrigan. “[I'm going to] break your record.”
“Hell yeah,” said Kerrigan, who is Washington’s all-time sack king, with 95.5 quarterback takedowns.
“I think for him more than anything else, it’s reflecting on what he did last year,” Rivera said. “It kind of validated everything that he worked for. So now there’s a little bit more pep, a little bit more confidence in him. … The way he was leading the defensive guys out there [today] and just pushing everybody for more, that’s what you hope for. That’s what you want in one of your guys.” | 2022-08-16T00:34:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Commanders' Jonathan Allen playing with confidence to match his talent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/jonathan-allen-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/jonathan-allen-commanders/ |
Perspective by Steven Goff
Los Angeles FC, with forward Gareth Bale, is the favorite to win the Supporters’ Shield this season. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)
LOS ANGELES — On Saturday, with Banc of California Stadium filled to the brim as it often is to watch MLS’s best team, Los Angeles FC Coach Steve Cherundolo rested the league’s biggest midseason signing, Welsh superstar Gareth Bale.
With a busy week ahead, he also allowed Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini to catch his breath.
There was some minor risk to it. Though the opponent, Charlotte FC, is an expansion team, the visitor has earned notable victories and remains in the playoff chase.
Would Cherundolo’s decisions derail his club’s summer fun?
Final score: LAFC 5, Charlotte 0.
Compared to the famous European circuits, the gap between top and bottom in MLS’s 28-team jamboree is shallow. Financial guardrails prevent runaway spending and, in turn, narrow the chasm that exists in the Bundesliga, La Liga and elsewhere.
On Tuesday, MLS’s long-standing parity will be put to the test when LAFC will host D.C. United, whose victory total (six) is the same as LAFC’s winning streak. United’s goal tally over eight matches is the same as LAFC’s in the second half against Charlotte (five).
On its third coach of the year and with an influx of new players finding their way, United is pedaling down the sidewalk with training wheels. LAFC is a Maserati on the 405.
Vroom.
“Oh, yeah, this is a lot of fun,” midfielder Kellyn Acosta said. “When you’re winning, everything’s much more enjoyable, but it’s how we’re winning.”
They’re doing it by scoring a lot. With nine goals in the past two matches and 18 during this winning streak, LAFC (17-4-3) is the favorite to win the Supporters’ Shield (most regular season points) for the second time in four seasons and raise the MLS Cup trophy for the first time in its five-year existence.
With 10 games left, the club needs 20 points to break the league’s single-season record, set by New England last year (73).
Being in the L.A. sports market, especially being the new guy in the L.A. market, the organization was cognizant of entertaining the public.
John Thorrington, LAFC’s co-president and general manager, is from the area. “Growing up here with the ‘Showtime’ Lakers and everything,” he said, “that was absolutely the priority and winning with style.”
His first-year coach, Cherundolo, was a longtime defender with German club Hannover and the U.S. national team. And while defending remains his core principle — LAFC has conceded the second-fewest goals in the league — Cherundolo has sustained the club’s ambition of playing with speed, fluidity and ruthlessness.
“Play as fast as possible at all times but remaining in a controlled, safe state — that is how I would describe it best,” he said. “We want to play fast. We want to play goal oriented, so everything should be moving towards the end product. We’re not interested in meaningless possession.”
Even with an already strong roster, the team was not interested in standing still during the summer transfer window, either. With reserves stored up for the right moment, Thorrington pounced. He signed Chiellini, a Juventus and Italian national team legend, and Bale, from Real Madrid.
At 38, Chiellini perpetuates the stereotype that MLS is a place only for the older European players. But he has also brought value, leadership and, with a two-handed volleyball slap to stop a Real Salt Lake counterattack, a touch of that L.A. entertainment.
“He acts like he’s like 18, and not in a bad way,” Acosta said. “He radiates positivity, energy.”
Bale, who in June helped guide Wales to its first World Cup berth in 64 years, comes at age 33 — an immense talent who rotted on Madrid’s bench, if he was even invited to the bench. First linked with a move to D.C. United, then eyed by Inter Miami, Bale has brought pace and menace to a team already stuffed with it.
He has made four appearances as a sub and scored twice. Minor physical issues might prevent him from playing Tuesday.
Here again, though, the L.A. factor came into play.
“There’s a duality to L.A. where you have a Hollywood star, which Gareth is more that way, coupled with this grit and American Dream to come to L.A. and make it, which defines a lot of our other players,” said Thorrington, a former Manchester United prospect and MLS midfielder. “It’s the combination of those two and finding the right balance that is a key objective.”
Cristian Arango (Colombia), Carlos Vela (Mexico) and Jose Cifuentes (Ecuador) have combined for 27 goals and 19 assists. Acosta, who is almost assured of a place on the U.S. World Cup roster, and Ilie Sánchez (Spain) hold down the midfield. Maxime Crépeau (Canada) has recorded seven shutouts.
As fun as it’s been, there’s also the need to take this intoxicating run through the postseason. Soccer people value the Supporters’ Shield for excellence over the course of a long season. And in almost all leagues around the world, there are no playoffs. But in U.S. sports circles, it’s how the campaign ends. And in Los Angeles, it’s also about the thrill.
“It’s still mid-August, so we’re not celebrating or getting complacent, by any means,” Thorrington said. “We’ve put ourselves in a great position, and the way Steve and his coaches have managed the group and rotated a deep roster, I think it will continue to bear fruit as we get to the latter days of the season.” | 2022-08-16T00:34:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LAFC dominating MLS with fast, fun brand of soccer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/lafc-winning-style-mls/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/15/lafc-winning-style-mls/ |
British author Nicholas Evans at his home near Totnes, Devon, in 2010. He was best known for his best-selling first novel, “The Horse Whisperer,” a Western romance set in Montana. (Adrian Sherratt Photography Ltd./Shutterstock)
The story captivated Mr. Evans, who had grown up playing cowboys and Indians in the English countryside and reading novels by Jack London. Now he was 60,000 pounds in debt, looking for a new direction — and perhaps a second mortgage — after unsuccessfully trying to direct his own movie. Here, he decided, were the seeds of a story he could tell in his own voice.
So Mr. Evans began writing a novel, traveling to Montana, New Mexico and California to interview expert horsemen and research the American West. He returned home with the basic outline of a story about a young girl, Grace Maclean, and her high-spirited horse, Pearl, who are hit by a truck and recover with help from a Montana rancher who falls in love with Grace’s mother. Mr. Evans wrote half the book, some 200 pages, and shared the manuscript with his friend King, deciding that if the agent didn’t like it, “I was just going to throw it away.”
“I think there seems to be a kind of questing around at the moment, with people wanting to find out if there is more to life than material things,” he told the Times upon the novel’s release. “This book is about hope, about healing and the redemptive power of love, and how humans have an extraordinary ability to travel through the worst kinds of pain and still survive. It’s a life-affirming message at a time when there’s a lot of darkness around.”
Mr. Evans had firsthand experience of that darkness. As his novel was sold at auction, he was unsure if he would ever finish it, having recently been diagnosed with skin cancer. He kept his illness secret even as reporters deemed him the “the luckiest man in Britain.”
“The day after the operation, I was going round publishing houses trying to look suave and normal, and I was in a cold sweat,” he revealed in a 2011 interview with the Guardian. “I was just dying, I was in such pain.”
Then came publication day, and his book’s swift rise up the bestseller lists. There were more difficulties to come — a fractured marriage, a near-fatal mushroom poisoning — but “for three or four years,” he said, “my feet didn’t touch the ground.”
After graduating in 1969 with first-class honors, he was a newspaper reporter at the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle upon Tyne and later was a television reporter and producer, doing segments about U.S. politics and the Lebanese Civil War for a weekly current affairs show.
“He kept telling me, ‘Why are you making a film about me? You ought to be making a film yourself, not about somebody else who makes films,’ ” Mr. Evans recalled in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.
He later wrote and produced the 1992 comedy “Just Like a Woman” — about a cross-dressing financial executive (played by Adrian Pasdar) who strikes up an affair with his landlord (Julie Walters) — before writing novels. His second book, “The Loop” (1998), involved a pack of wolves tormenting cattle ranchers and sold 5 million copies. His later novels include “The Smoke Jumper” (2001), about a love triangle involving two friends who fight wildfires, and “The Divide” (2005), centered on a wealthy young woman who becomes an eco-terrorist.
Mr. Evans’s first marriage, to Oxford classmate Jenny Lyon in 1973, ended in divorce soon after his first novel vaulted him to stardom. He later married Charlotte Gordon Cumming, a Scottish singer-songwriter. In addition to his wife, survivors include two children from his first marriage, Max and Lauren; a son, Harry, from a relationship with TV producer Jane Hewland; and another son, Finlay, from his second marriage.
Mr. Evans had nearly completed his novel “The Brave” (2009) when the poisoning occurred, and said that the novel’s themes of family secrets and guilty were especially resonant with his own experience foraging in the woods. He and another family member had picked the mushrooms “assuming that the other one knew what they were doing,” he told the Guardian. | 2022-08-16T00:47:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Horse Whisperer' author Nicholas Evans dies at 72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/novelist-nicholas-evans-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/novelist-nicholas-evans-dead/ |
Weekend shootings brought the number of homicides Prince George’s police have investigated to 62 this year, still down compared with 84 the same time last year
Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D), Police Chief Malik Aziz and county council member Mel Franklin (D-At Large) during a crime walk in 2021. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Five people have been killed in Prince George’s County since Friday, including a 16-year-old boy, making this past weekend the deadliest of the summer — even as overall homicide rates in the county are down.
On Monday, police announced the names of those killed by gunfire in separate shootings across the county, including in Seat Pleasant, unincorporated Upper Marlboro and Temple Hills. It was an especially violent weekend for the county, where — unlike the District — homicide rates so far this year have been lower compared with recent years. Violent crime, including homicides, shootings and carjackings, spiked in 2020 and again in 2021 after a decade of decline.
Homicides soar in District, Maryland suburbs in 2021
This weekend’s violence brought the total homicides investigated by Prince George’s County police for 2022 to 62 — compared with 84 killings this time last year. Police Deputy Chief James McCreary said in an interview that the community is still “recovering” from the increased violence of 2020 and 2021.
“Our condolences and hearts go out to each of the five victims that were involved in the violence over the weekend,” McCreary said. “We are taking it seriously, and we are seriously concerned with these incidents.”
Summer crime initiatives in Pr. George’s aim to reduce violence
McCreary said police do not have any information to suggest the five shootings are connected. It’s unclear, he said, what may have prompted the weekend spike other than “unfortunate circumstances.”
“We’re still trying to figure it out ourselves,” McCreary said. “There’s no link in any of these investigations.”
The weekend’s first fatality was reported Friday evening, when county officers and the Seat Pleasant Police Department were called to the 6300 block of Seat Pleasant Drive at about 8:45 p.m. for the report of a shooting. Police said they found 16-year-old Antonio Parker Jr., in the parking lot of a convenience store with a gunshot wound. The teenager died at the hospital.
Prince George’s police said detectives are still investigating the cause of the shooting and who might have pulled the trigger.
At about 2:25 a.m. Saturday, Prince George’s County police were called for a shooting in the 12800 block of William Beanes Road in an unincorporated area of Upper Marlboro, officials said. They found 29-year-old Kavon Glover, of D.C., in the road with multiple gunshot wounds. He died at the scene, police said, and the investigation is ongoing.
About 24 hours later, Seat Pleasant and Prince George’s County police responded to a report of another shooting in the city, where at about 1 a.m. they found 20-year-old LaDainian McMillan in the parking lot of a carryout restaurant in the 5700 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Highway. McMillan, of Seat Pleasant, had been shot multiple times, police said, and was taken to a hospital where he died. Police spelled the victim’s name as LaDainain McMillian in a news release, but his family confirmed the spelling as LaDainian McMillan.
Prince George’s County detectives are investigating who fired the shots and whether the violence was related to a verbal dispute, police said.
By Sunday night, detectives were launching two more homicide investigations.
Tyren Spry, 21, of Cheltenham, died after he was shot multiple times in the 10200 block of Twayblade Court in unincorporated Upper Marlboro, police said. Officers were called to the area at about 8 p.m., and detectives are still investigating the circumstances of the shooting.
Terrence Koonce, 51, of Fort Washington, was killed at about 9:25 p.m. in what detectives say they believe was a “road rage” incident in the 4400 block of St. Barnabas Road in Temple Hills. Koonce was in a “minor fender bender” with another vehicle, McCreary said, and the other driver shot and killed him. Koonce was taken to the hospital, police said, where he died.
The weekend’s death toll, McCreary said, is an example of “the tragic trend of gun violence.”
“Far too many of these disputes are being settled with firearms,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to bring some closure to the victims with these investigations.”
Attempts to contact families of the victims were not immediately successful or some relatives declined to comment Monday afternoon.
Officials are offering rewards of up to $25,000 for information that leads to arrests and indictments in each of the five homicide cases.
Nonfatal shootings are down this year, 166 compared with 185 the same time last year, but the gun violence is still concerning, officials said.
McCreary said the police department is continuing to operate its summer violence prevention initiatives, which include increased patrolling, neighborhood walks and community events. Separately, the office of State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy has been promoting anti-violence efforts through its “Our Streets, Our Future” programming.
“We must unite. We must work together to stop the violence that threatens our future generation and our quality of life,” Braveboy said in a statement. "My office’s record is very clear, if you take someone’s life you will not get away with it. You will be prosecuted, you will be held accountable and you will face severe consequences.” | 2022-08-16T01:57:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Five killed in Prince George's over the weekend; homicides are still down - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/prince-georges-homicides-weekend/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/prince-georges-homicides-weekend/ |
NSS Annapolis towers are seen from Whitehall Bay in Maryland on July 11. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Dueling proposals for the Navy’s undeveloped property on Greenbury Point — either to build a new golf course for the U.S. Naval Academy or to manage the area as a county park — mean neither can be considered further as candidates to receive a noncompetitive lease, a Navy spokesman said late Monday.
The announcement appears to complicate two unsolicited proposals for the Greenbury Point conservation area, including an idea floated this year by Chet Gladchuk, the academy’s athletic director, to build a new 18-hole golf course there.
U.S. Naval Academy's proposal for a new golf course triggers uproar
Gladchuk, who also heads the Naval Academy Golf Association, urged the Navy to study the possibility of allowing the nonprofit organization to lease and build a second golf course, along with other recreational features, on the peninsula across the Severn River from the academy. He said the new course and other recreational features would benefit thousands of midshipmen, active and retired military personnel who golf at a discount, and the public.
The idea triggered immediate opposition by hikers, birders and environmentalists seeking to preserve the approximately 280-acre area. It also led to a counterproposal from Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman last week to lease and manage the area as a county park. Opponents argued that a new golf course would pollute the Chesapeake Bay, cut off public access to the water, and destroy a natural habitat for wildlife.
Anne Arundel County proposes managing Navy's Greenbury Point as a park
Each requested a sole-source lease for the Navy property, which is overseen by Naval Support Activity Annapolis, an installation that supports the academy and Navy properties on the peninsula. On Monday, the Navy announced that the emergence of unsolicited, competing interests in the property meant that a noncompetitive lease would no longer be possible.
“We received competing proposals from Anne Arundel County and the Naval Academy Golf Association for a sole source lease and management of Greenbury Point, which makes it no longer possible to consider either party’s request,” said Ed Zeigler, a spokesman for Naval District Washington, which oversees the Annapolis command. He said the local command “is currently evaluating the status and future of Greenbury Point in support of the mission of both the installation and the U.S. Naval Academy.”
Gladchuk said late Monday that it wasn’t immediately clear how the Navy’s announcement would affect the Naval Academy Golf Association’s proposal, but he said the organization would review the Navy’s position and “react accordingly.”
Opponents — who had posted the Navy’s statement to the Save Greenbury Point page on Facebook — sounded optimistic but cautious.
“I am hopeful that this reflects a positive change of course for the Navy, but I know with absolute certainty that the community will continue to advocate strongly for the permanent conservation of Greenbury Point Conservation Area and for continued equitable public access until that outcome is achieved,” Joel Dunn, executive director of the Chesapeake Conservancy, said in an email. | 2022-08-16T02:18:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy says competing proposals for Greenbury Point rule out immediate action - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/navy-lease-greenbury-point/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/15/navy-lease-greenbury-point/ |
Cecile Pineda, wide-ranging Latina author, dies at 89
Her debut novel, “Face,” about a Brazilian man who reconstructs his visage, was a finalist for a National Book Award
Cecile Pineda was the author of 10 books, including her noted debut novel, “Face” (1985).
Cecile Pineda, who burst onto the literary scene in 1985 with her debut novel, “Face,” about a Brazilian man who reconstructs his visage after a disfiguring accident, and who later grappled with the immigrant experience and dangers of the nuclear age in works that entered the canon of Latina literature, died Aug. 11 at her home in Berkeley, Calif. She was 89.
Her sons, David and Michael Leneman, confirmed her death but did not cite a cause.
Ms. Pineda grew up in New York, the daughter of a Swiss mother and a Mexican father. Her father, she recounted, had entered the United States in 1910 as an undocumented immigrant, studied at Harvard University and became a philologist and linguist. He cultivated his daughter’s interest in literature and art but revealed little of his life before he came to the United States, Ms. Pineda told the online Hippocampus Magazine, leaving her “an orphan in the sense that I never knew from whom or where I came.”
Ms. Pineda confronted the often fraught notion of identity, among other themes, in works of fiction, nonfiction and drama spanning more than half a century. She first established herself as a theatrical director in San Francisco, founding the city’s experimental Theatre of Man in 1969, and embarked on her literary career after the company closed in 1981.
She described herself as interested in everything — from insects to people to politics — and based her first book on a newspaper article about a man who reconstructed his own face after an accident. In her fictionalized rendering, the man was a poor, nearly illiterate Brazilian barber, Helio Cara, who, while racing on foot to the bedside of his dying mother, slips off a rain-slicked cliff and destroys his face. Unable to pay for plastic surgery, he wears a rubber mask before eventually using his manual skills as a barber to remake his face — and himself.
“I was so touched by his trials and amazed by the notion of actually making a face,” Ms. Pineda told the Associated Press in 1985, referring to the subject of the newspaper article who inspired her novel. “To find somebody who makes a face, not a mask, but a face, what does that mean and what does that mean in our time?”
She continued, “Aren’t we all disfigured in one way or the other? Try being a divorced woman and you’ll find out how you’ll lose your face. … Try being a someone who just doesn’t look right because he or she can’t afford the money to buy a coat or a dress. This book is a metaphor for that.”
“Face” was a finalist for the 1985 National Book Award for first work of fiction. In an introduction to a later edition of the book, the South African-born writer J.M. Coetzee described it as “an extraordinary achievement, all the more extraordinary for being a first novel.”
“With exemplary freshness it asks of us: What is this thing, this structure of skin and bone and gristle and muscle, that we are condemned to carry around with us wherever we go?” he wrote. “And why does everyone see it rather than seeing me? Or — turning the questions on their head: Who is this I that dares to think of itself as concealed behind its face …?
Ms. Pineda’s other most noted novels included “Frieze” (1986), the story of a stonecutter set in ancient India and Java, and “The Love Queen of the Amazon” (1992). The latter book, selected by the New York Times as a “new and noteworthy” volume of the year, centered on a onetime convent schoolgirl who becomes a madam in Peru. Novelist Richard Martins, writing for the Chicago Tribune described the protagonist as “one of the few great Latin heroines not created by the male imagination.”
“Ana Magdalena’s amorous history provides a unique vehicle for the U.S.-born Pineda to look with a satirically feminine eye at the manners, mores and literature of all the Americas,” he wrote, “to which ‘Love Queen’ is a noteworthy addition.”
Ms. Pineda wrote 10 books in all, many of them reflecting her engagement with the anti-nuclear movement, environmentalism and activism on behalf of immigrants and other marginalized groups.
Her nonfiction work “Devil’s Tango,” published in 2012, examined the nuclear accident the previous year at the power plant in Fukushima, Japan. “Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World” (2015) was a literary exploration of environmental degradation and its consequences for the natural world as well as for humankind. In “Entry Without Inspection: A Writer’s Life in El Norte” (2020), Ms. Pineda recounted her family’s immigrant experience in the context of a broader investigation of immigration in the United States.
“My novels attempt to ask questions such as the following: Must the world be virtually wiped out by nuclear accident before human nature can begin the long journey back to a healing society?” she once told an interviewer. “Does history inevitably repeat itself? Is the shortsighted story of mankind the result of poor memory, defective or limited genetic development?”
Marthe-Alice Cecilia Pineda was born in Harlem on Sept. 24, 1932. Her mother, a draftswoman and illustrator, came from Francophone Switzerland, and the family spoke French at home. Referring to her father’s odyssey, she wrote in “Entry Without Inspection” that hers was a family whose “ties were severed long ago and whose culture was cast aside at the U.S.-Mexican border” when he “entered the United States under an assumed name, an extralegal immigration referred to by ICE as ‘entry without inspection.’ ”
Ms. Pineda was raised in a highly intellectual environment and absorbed literature ranging from the Bible to the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She was particularly influenced, she once told the San Antonio Express-News, by a series of biographies about notable women in the arts.
Ms. Pineda received a bachelor’s degree in English from Barnard College in New York in 1954. In 1961, following her marriage to a French-born physician, Felix Leneman, she settled in San Francisco and received a degree in theater arts from San Francisco State University.
At Theatre of Man, Ms. Pineda directed productions based mainly on sound and movement. According to her publisher, Wings Press, the works often explored themes of “totalitarianism and gender role expectation.” She told the online publication Literary Hub that the theater company was her opportunity to “leave housewifery behind.”
Ms. Pineda’s marriage ended in divorce. Her sons, both of Los Angeles, are her only immediate survivors.
Ms. Pineda taught creative writing at institutions including the California College of the Arts, Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and the California State University System. Among her books were the fictional memoir “Fishlight: A Dream of Childhood” (2001), the novels “Bardo99” (2002) and “Redoubt” (2004), and a meditation on literature, “Three Tides: Writing at the Edge of Being” (2016). She lived for many years in Oakland Hills and then Berkeley, working in an office that teemed with works of art from her travels around the world.
“Latina letters will be with us for a very long time, as long as there remain folks who refuse cultural homogenization, who celebrate their diversity,” she told the Express-News.
“Hurrah for that! People will continue to write,” she continued. “The best of them may even offer new insights as to how best to conduct our lives in devastating times.” | 2022-08-16T03:41:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cecile Pineda, wide-ranging Latina author, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/cecile-pineda-latina-literature-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/15/cecile-pineda-latina-literature-dead/ |
Loss of 21,000 fish at UC-Davis may delay research for years
A group of koi fished rescued from Paradise, Calif., after the Camp Fire swim in a tank at the Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture of the University of California at Davis in 2020. (Hector Amezcua/UC-Davis)
About 21,000 fish died of chlorine exposure at a university facility in California last week, an unusual and “devastating” event that set back the conservation effort by research scientists at the center.
In a news release announcing the loss at its Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture (CABA), the University of California at Davis called the chlorine exposure a “catastrophic failure.” The campus is investigating how the chlorine got into the tanks and said it would initiate an independent external review.
“It’s very, very important for the future of conservation science that we learn from this event and that it never happens again,” said Nann Fangue, a physiological ecology professor at UC-Davis who uses the fish for her lab’s research.
The fish were found dead Tuesday morning, when researchers were doing their usual check of the tanks. About three-quarters of the fish that died were being used in Fangue’s lab, and many of the students and staffers who found them work with her, making the already shocking loss “really, really hard,” she said.
“We share the grief of the faculty, staff and students who worked to care for, study and conserve these animals,” UC-Davis said in the news release.
The chlorine exposure killed a variety of fish species at the center, including green and white sturgeon and endangered Chinook salmon.
From environmental stressors to fish diseases, the topics of study at CABA are dedicated to conservation, Fangue said. Some of the research at the center will be delayed by years after the loss.
“This event is a very, very sad thing for all of us who spend our careers in the service of the conservation of California’s native fishes or fishes more generally,” she said.
About 100 fish — mostly tilapia and two sturgeon — survived the exposure, UC-Davis spokesperson Andy Fell said.
The source may have been a chlorination system that is used to prevent pathogens from entering the environment outside CABA, Fell said.
The incident at CABA echoes a 2017 case at the University of Alberta’s aquatics facility, where a power failure caused dechlorination pumps to fail, killing about 9,000 fish. The incident occurred before the university could carry out its plans to replace the facility’s water supply system, according to Folio, a publication at the University of Alberta.
Since the fish were found dead at the UC-Davis research center, the university has focused on caring for the survivors and providing resources to support staffers’ mental health.
“It was a very traumatizing and devastating event for all of us,” Fangue said.
She added that UC-Davis has also committed to replumbing the aquatic center, to give the tanks a “fresh start.” The university is evaluating its other aquatic-research facilities.
For Fangue, the priority has been to support her team members, reminding them of why they began their research — and reminding herself.
At CABA, there were unhatched Chinook salmon eggs in the tanks exposed to chlorine. Some of those eggs hatched Monday, and they may survive.
“It may not have been a total loss,” she said. | 2022-08-16T03:50:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 21,000 fish die at UC-Davis research center after chlorine exposure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/15/dead-fish-uc-davis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/15/dead-fish-uc-davis/ |
Cruz, who hit a two-run double in the fifth, smacked a 1-1 pitch from Brandon Hughes (1-1) to center to snap a 4-all tie with one out in the eighth. It was Cruz’s ninth homer of the season and first since June 25.
“He’s been working really hard on getting the ball in the air,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said. “He’s hitting the ball but it hasn’t really been in the air, and to get that ball in the air and hit it the way he did was awesome.”
Trailing 3-0, the Nationals rallied during a four-run fifth inning started when Lane Thomas reached on Zach Ministry’s throwing error. Cruz greeted reliever Mark Leiter, Jr. with a two-run double down the left-field line to make it 4-3.
“I thought (Stroman) threw the ball well,” manager David Ross said. “Didn’t play good defense that last inning and I probably took him out one batter too soon.”
Happ’s first homer was his 11th of the season. He joined Mark Teixeira, Jose Cruz, Ruben Sierra, Eddie Murray and Mickey Mantle as the only switch hitters in MLB history to hit 11 or more homers in each of their first six seasons.
“Any time you can have little things like that where you’re on a list with some of the best to ever do it, those are really cool moments that I try to cherish,” Happ said.
Washington’s Joey Meneses went 1 for 4 and has hit safely in 10 of 11 games since his major league debut on Aug. 2. He is 15 for 39 (.385) with five homers, seven RBIs and eight runs scored in that stretch. | 2022-08-16T03:50:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cruz's eighth-inning homer lifts Nationals over Cubs 5-4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/cruzs-eighth-inning-homer-lifts-nationals-over-cubs-5-4/2022/08/15/66c3f142-1d09-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/cruzs-eighth-inning-homer-lifts-nationals-over-cubs-5-4/2022/08/15/66c3f142-1d09-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Miss Manners: My friend ‘does not believe in tipping’
Here is an instance when it is wrong to practice what you preach.
Dear Miss Manners: My brother and I went to a semiformal dinner where spaghetti was the main course. My brother and a couple of others cut it up with a knife and ate it. I twirled it on my fork, which, of course, takes longer.
The blatant rudeness here shocks Miss Manners. But it has nothing to do with the spaghetti.
That there is nothing to be gained by arguing with someone who is good enough to pay you compliments. | 2022-08-16T05:21:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: My friend ‘does not believe in tipping’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/16/miss-manners-friend-never-tips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/16/miss-manners-friend-never-tips/ |
As the world remembered the chaos and tragedy that surrounded the U.S. and allied withdrawal from Afghanistan a year ago, a quieter exit took place Monday. The last French troops left Mali for neighboring Niger, drawing to a formal close a near-decade-long mission in the sprawling West African nation of 21 million people. Their presence in Mali had begun in 2013 as part of an ambitious Paris-led effort to fight back an Islamist militant threat that was spreading across the vast region between desert and savanna known as the Sahel.
But the mission ended incomplete despite billions of euros spent and thousands of Malian lives lost (as well as 59 French soldiers), leaving in its wake no shortage of geopolitical rancor and a worryingly deteriorating security situation. Militants from factions linked to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have entrenched themselves on a widening battlefield across the African continent.
The French departure from Mali had been telegraphed months in advance amid a rupture in relations between the government of French President Emmanuel Macron and a Malian junta that seized power in August 2020 and carried out “a coup within a coup” — as Macron himself put it — against civilian officials nine months later. Those overthrows were part of what U.N. Secretary General António Guterres lamented was “an epidemic of coups d’etats” in the region including in neighboring Burkina Faso and Guinea.
In Mali — not unlike what happened once the United States announced its drawdown in Afghanistan — attacks by Islamist insurgents have spiked in recent weeks as the French completed their exit. “The situation is worse than in 2013,” said Alpha Alhadi Koina, a Bamako-based geopolitical analyst, to the New York Times. “The cancer has spread through Mali.”
Civilian killings soar as Russian mercenaries join fight in West Africa
The scale of the violence shows how the central zone of Islamist-related violence has shifted away from the Middle East and South Asia. “In Mali nearly 2,700 people were killed in conflict in the first six months of this year, almost 40 percent more than in all of 2021,” the Economist detailed last week. “Last month jihadists attacked a military checkpoint 60km from Bamako, the capital; a week later they hit the country’s main military camp on its doorstep. In Niger, deaths in conflict have fallen slightly but will probably exceed 1,000 in 2022. In Burkina Faso in the first half of the year about 2,100 people have been killed.”
An Islamic State offshoot has supplanted fundamentalist Islamist group Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. Further afield, Islamic State-affiliated militants are waging attacks across a swath of central and East Africa, from northern Mozambique to Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Somalia, al-Shabab, an insurgent faction originally linked to al-Qaeda that is arguably more capable than its much-diminished parent organization, remains a powerful force — and a threat with such menace that it prompted President Biden to redeploy U.S. forces to the country earlier this year.
Last week, Martin Ewi, a South Africa-based analyst, briefed the U.N. Security Council on the scale of the threat, pointing to how the Islamic State was active in more than 20 African countries already, and warned that the continent may represent “the future of the caliphate.”
The Islamic State’s first supposed “caliphate” took root in Iraq and Syria amid the chaos of the latter’s civil war. But a coalition of Western and local forces eventually smashed its forces, recaptured the cities it once controlled and forced its surviving fighters into captivity or hiding. Ewi told the assembled U.N. dignitaries that “no similar coalition was mounted to defeat [the Islamic State] in Africa … meaning that the continent was left to bear the consequences of those who are fleeing Syria and finding safe havens on the continent.”
The Islamic State in Mozambique raided yet another Christian village pic.twitter.com/gJXZOlgYBI
— Pieter Van Ostaeyen (@p_vanostaeyen) August 14, 2022
France’s exit from Mali, though, underscores both how fraught the prevailing security situation is and how difficult it may be to address. After being initially welcomed when huge stretches of Mali were under Islamist militant control, France’s presence turned unpopular over time, with incidents like a French airstrike last year in central Mali that killed 19 civilians souring attitudes against the old colonial ruler.
“French forces eliminated a significant number of jihadist fighters and leaders, operating under incredibly difficult circumstances and at high risk,” Andrew Lebovich, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the Sahel, told me. “At the same time, the French were ultimately not able to manage tensions with successive Malian governments.”
The current junta in Mali appears to be seeking to replace France’s help by enlisting mercenaries from notorious Russian firm Wagner Group — charges Mali’s government denies. Forces linked to that organization, along with Malian troops, are believed to have carried out mass extrajudicial executions in a central Malian town in March. The political environment in Mali with the junta is so troubling that it compelled Germany to suspend its comparatively smaller role in supporting a U.N. mission in the country.
“The disruption of much of the security cooperation with French and partner forces has almost certainly contributed to the deterioration of the security situation, while the arrival of Wagner forces has contributed to a number of significant human rights abuses, while doing little to visibly improve security in the areas in which they most frequently operate,” Lebovich said.
In recent years, he added, “the most active components” of both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State “have been in Africa, particularly in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin,” and remain deeply difficult to dislodge.
“Even where some regional interventions have been moderately more successful, these groups continue to operate and not only retain a strong presence, but in some cases expand their operations across quite vast spaces,” Lebovich said. | 2022-08-16T05:23:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Al Qaeda and Islamic State are on the rise in Africa - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/africa-mali-france-al-qaeda-isis-insurgents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/africa-mali-france-al-qaeda-isis-insurgents/ |
Police officers and workers remove the wreckage of a bus that collided with an oil tanker along a highway in Uch Sharif near Multan, Pakistan, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. A truck rammed into a minibus on a highway in eastern Pakistan overnight, causing a fire that killed and injured numerous passengers, a rescue official said Monday. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-08-16T06:53:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bus rams into fuel trick in eastern Pakistan, killing 20 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bus-rams-into-fuel-trick-in-eastern-pakistan-killing-20/2022/08/16/7762e574-1d2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bus-rams-into-fuel-trick-in-eastern-pakistan-killing-20/2022/08/16/7762e574-1d2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
The United Kingdom became the first country to authorize Moderna's boosters targeting the omicron variant and the original coronavirus. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
The new shots, which were developed by Moderna, will give British health officials a “sharpened tool” in the fight against the coronavirus as it continues to evolve, said June Raine, the head of the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. The agency approved the shots with backing from the Commission on Human Medicines, the government’s independent scientific advisory body.
About two-thirds of the United States’ approximately 330 million residents have been fully vaccinated, according to figures compiled by The Washington Post. In the past seven days, 226 new infections have occurred for every 100,000 people, a decline of 3 percent from the previous week, though lower testing rates, and reliance on at-home tests, have made it more difficult to track cases.
The CDC, though, still recommends a first booster dose to everyone age 5 and older. A second booster is recommended for those 50 or older and immunocompromised people 12 or older. | 2022-08-16T07:58:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. approves Moderna bivalent covid vaccine targeting omicron - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/16/moderna-bivalent-covid-vaccine-omicron-uk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/16/moderna-bivalent-covid-vaccine-omicron-uk/ |
Instant-noodle makers ask Thailand for price increase under 14-year cap
Packets of instant noodles on display at the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama, Japan. (John Leicester/AP)
Instant noodles are known around the world as a cheap and easy meal. But the makers of five instant-noodle brands sold in Thailand said this week that they can’t afford to keep their products as cheap as the Thai government wants them to.
With inflation looming, the Thai Commerce Ministry said in June that it would maintain a price cap on dozens of goods and services to reduce the impact of rising prices on residents of the Southeast Asian kingdom. Consumer prices in Thailand were up 7.6 percent year-on-year in July, according to Moody’s Analytics.
On Monday, however, the manufacturers of the Mama, Sue Sat, Wai Wai, Yam Yam and Nissin brands of instant noodles — the latter of which makes the Cup Noodles and Top Ramen products — said they would request permission from the Thai government to increase their prices by a third, from 6 baht to 8 baht (about 23 cents), according to state media. Prices have been set at 6 baht for about 14 years.
The noodle makers said they were losing money by selling their products for the low prices mandated by the cap amid rising costs for ingredients and fuel, in large part due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Wheat futures this month were $8 per bushel, down from a peak of about $12.50 in May, though still high by historical standards.
The manufacturers said they would submit their request on Tuesday. The Commerce Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would allow the 2 baht increase, which is less than 6 cents. A senior ministry official, Wattanasak Sur-iam, said in a statement to Reuters that the government would consider such requests on a case-by-case basis and that any change would need to benefit consumers and producers.
The manufacturers said that if their request was not approved, they would reduce their sales inside Thailand and instead export their products, free from the price cap, state media reported. Many Western economists consider price caps to be an inefficient method of controlling inflation, though the recent bout of global inflation has prompted some to reconsider its utility.
There are concerns about rising instant-noodle prices elsewhere in Asia, where the food is especially ubiquitous. Indonesia’s agriculture minister warned this month that instant-noodle prices could increase as much as three times under stresses on supply chains due to climate change and the Russian invasion, CNBC Indonesia reported.
The war in Ukraine has sent food and fuel prices skyrocketing, with grocery prices in the United States this month more than 12 percent higher than last summer. In some of the world’s poorest countries, the war has worsened ongoing hunger crises, experts say. The U.N. World Food Program said this year that a record 345 million people globally were food insecure or at high risk, driven by the invasion of Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic. | 2022-08-16T08:07:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Instant-noodle makers ask Thailand to allow price increase - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/thailand-instant-noodle-price-increase-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/thailand-instant-noodle-price-increase-inflation/ |
PHILADELPHIA — Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers settled the grievance he filed to recoup a portion of last season’s salary, a person with knowledge of the details said Monday.
LOS ANGELES — Liz Cambage announced on social media Monday that she decided to step away from the WNBA “for the time being,” addressing for the first time her contract divorce from the Los Angeles Sparks last month. | 2022-08-16T08:24:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/monday-sports-in-brief/2022/08/16/f2a752f8-1d31-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/monday-sports-in-brief/2022/08/16/f2a752f8-1d31-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Glennon Doyle chose honesty. Now fans are following her lead.
Doyle, the parenting writer turned feminist icon, bares even more of herself on her podcast — inspiring listeners to do the same
By Ellen McCarthy
Glennon Doyle dances onstage in 2019 in Houston. (Tim Warner/Getty Images for Together Live)
Monica Huckabay, who works at an emergency response company in Texas, stopped straightening her natural hair day after day. And she stopped letting bigoted comments slide at the office.
Abby Mercer, a nonprofit executive in Indiana, stopped hanging out with friends who weren’t supportive. She rethought everything she had learned growing up in a culture that prized “purity” in girls. And she started dating women.
Rachel Zentner, a therapist in Wisconsin, started being more honest with the people in her life — about her own eating disorder, her alcoholism, her relationship problems.
The women don’t know each other, but they share something in common: The changes they made in their lives were inspired, at least in part, by Glennon Doyle, the former Christian parenting blogger turned feminist icon. They are part of the latest chapter of the Doyle story, the one where women who watched with fascination as she hit the eject button on her old life start questioning the confines of their own.
You remember Doyle’s story, right? Her viral blog posts about parenting young children and finding her place within Christianity were turned into a best-selling essay collection. Which was followed up by another bestseller about how she learned that her husband had been cheating on her and how they struggled to save the marriage. Which was published just as Doyle was separating from the aforementioned husband after falling madly in love with soccer legend Abby Wambach, to whom she is now married.
Doyle regrets none of it. She opened her most recent book, “Untamed,” with an essay about a conversation she imagines having with a cheetah named Tabitha she encounters at a zoo. “Something’s off about my life,” Doyle imagines the cheetah saying, lamenting her cage and fantasizing about “fence-less, wide-open savannas” — then chiding herself for doing so, saying: “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.”
“Tabitha, you are not crazy,” Doyle imagines herself responding. “You are a goddamn cheetah.”
Doyle thought the book was doomed when it published in March 2020, as the pandemic was changing people’s lives in all the wrong ways. As it turned out, a period of interminable lockdowns — which proved uniquely disruptive and burdensome for women — had plenty of people in the mood to imagine themselves as cheetahs accelerating across a distant plain. Doyle’s book sold more than 2 million copies. (Actress Sarah Paulson is slated to play Doyle in a television adaptation, which is being developed by J.J. Abrams’s production company.)
Then, in May 2021, Doyle launched a podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things,” featuring conversations with her sister, Amanda Doyle — a quick-witted former lawyer with two little kids and a degree in gender studies. “Since everyone has their own podcast, I felt, like, embarrassed to even entertain the idea of starting a podcast,” Glennon Doyle told The Washington Post in a Zoom interview from the home she and Wambach share outside of Los Angeles.
Still, she was eager to continue the conversations “Untamed” had started and was increasingly convinced that social media is a toxic, polarizing environment in which to do that. So she went ahead with it.
“Our hypothesis here is that we can make life for ourselves and you just a teeny smidge easier by talking about hard things,” Doyle said on a recent episode. She has talked about her own depression and alcoholism, her control issues, her eating disorder and her trouble forming close friendships. About her fury at patriarchal norms. About how enraged she is at the industrial complex that keeps women laser-focused and ever insecure about their physical appearance — and how, despite that awareness, she is still terrified to appear on television without makeup.
Wambach sat in as a guest for an early episode and then kept coming back, offering optimism and stories of her own struggles with addiction and self-acceptance. Together they talked about orgasms (real and fake), fun (or their lack of it), how to know when it’s time to quit something and the pressure of modern parenthood. In one episode Amanda Doyle unpacked a simmering resentment familiar to most moms who find themselves in a position of carrying an outsize share of domestic and emotional labor. Women responded in droves, most of them saying “same here.”
By the end of the year, “We Can Do Hard Things,” which is produced by Audacy’s Cadence13, had been named Apple’s most popular new podcast. It routinely shows up among the top 20 podcasts on the Apple charts.
“Where we live we have a little walking path, and women will be walking past us and they’ll go, ‘We’re listening to you right now.’ It’s just so unbelievable,” says Wambach, who has joined the podcast as a third host, to The Post. “I don’t think people even remember I played soccer.”
Fans have gotten together on text message chains and in WhatsApp communities and Facebook groups, where they compare photos of their cheetah tattoos and tell each other hard things about their own lives.
After reading Glennon Doyle, country singer Brooke Eden decided to stop keeping her relationship with Hilary Hoover a secret
“I have so many life regrets,” one woman wrote to members of a Facebook group inspired by Doyle. “I did what ‘the Good girl’ should do, and didn’t think for myself. … I find myself almost 50, incredibly sorrowful for the life I never lived, yet terrified to make decisions for a future because I don’t even know who I am to myself.”
“Babies are a gift,” wrote another. “I am mad at myself for getting pregnant [and] I am mad for not wanting to be pregnant.”
“My skin crawls when he touches me, date night was SO awkward, and romantically/emotionally/physically, it’s just not there for me anymore,” wrote a third. “How do you know when to leave?!?”
Alyson Weaver, a 37-year-old who works in college administration, formed a “pod squad” of fellow Austin residents as devoted to Doyle’s podcast as she was. The goal was to replicate what the three podcast hosts seem to have with each other: “fellow human women discussing things you don’t feel comfortable talking to your own friends about, or even your own family.” Weaver’s pod squad, which meets twice a month, is now 14 members strong, including a handful of men.
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” poet Muriel Rukeyser once asked in a poem. In the next line, she answered: “The world would split open.”
We know what happened when Glennon Doyle told the truth about her life. What happens as the women who follow her do the same?
“I struggle with people-pleasing and perfectionism and wanting to fit in,” says Monica Huckabay, the wavy-haired Texas woman.
She started listening to “We Can Do Hard Things” and was impressed by the bravery of the hosts. The 54-year-old started to feel a little braver herself. When a colleague said something hurtful or racist, she spoke up — something she never would have done in the past “because it makes them uncomfortable,” says Huckabay, who is Hispanic. “And women always try to make people feel comfortable, even at their own expense.”
Those colleagues don’t ask Huckabay to join them for lunch anymore, she says, but “it’s so worth it. I feel more myself than I ever have in my life.”
Abby Mercer, the 39-year-old Indiana nonprofit executive, came to Doyle’s work by way of “Untamed,” which she read on a plane when she was newly divorced.
“I was a different Abby before getting on the plane than I was getting off it,” she says. “It gave me permission to do what I want to do.”
She let go of friendships that “had substantially more withdrawals then deposits.” She stopped trying to fit into a conservative brand of Christianity that didn’t seem to want her. She decorated her house with rainbows and sometimes jokingly refers to herself as a “baby gay” or a “late bloomer.”
These days, Mercer listens to Doyle’s twice-weekly podcast religiously. “I can recall so many times on my commute home bawling my eyes out and screaming, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what’s happening,’ ” she says. “It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to talk about and no one ever talks about.”
This is, of course, the whole idea. “Sometimes the most idiosyncratic, personal and individual things turned out to be the thing that makes people take a deep breath and be like, ‘Oh, my God, yes. Why aren’t we talking about that?’ ” Amanda Doyle told The Post from a coffee shop near her home in Falls Church. “What is the thing that you’re actually thinking about as you’re going about your day? We’re saying all the things out loud that you feel like you’re not allowed to say.”
Rachel Zentner, the Wisconsin therapist, struggled with that, at first. The podcast cut too close to home. The hosts are always inviting listeners to call and email them, so Zentner left a few voice mails expressing her discomfort hearing them talk openly about subjects she had long kept hidden. “I felt a weird betrayal,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, you weren’t supposed to talk about the eating disorder stuff because that was going to be a secret for us forever.’ ”
Attempts to speak her own truth would often make Zentner’s body physically shake. But she’s trying, in conversations with her friends and clients and, especially, her daughters. She doesn’t want them to internalize the same message she did. “That I was supposed to make my body small,” she says. “I was supposed to make my opinions small.”
Because Doyle started out writing largely about parenting, she was pigeonholed for years as a “mommy blogger.” But Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, a sociology professor at Valencia College who studies gender and media, says Doyle has long since ascended to more rarefied heights.
“If we’re going to put her in the lineup of books that have changed women’s lives — Betty Friedan, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem — she fits there,” Trier-Bieniek says. “But she’s learned from where their misses were. She’s figured out that you can’t tell your story without also talking about your flaws, or where you don’t know something, or where you’ve made your epic failures.” Doyle is conscious of her privilege as a cisgender White woman, for example, and “does a great job at saying ‘I have a seat at the table, and I’m going to bring up as many diverse voices as I can, and I’m going to let them speak, and I’m going to listen.’ ”
Trier-Bieniek thinks of Doyle’s podcast as akin to the sewing circles women held at the turn of the 20th century, where women who had gathered ostensibly to do their stitching would trade stories and scheme about getting the right to vote. Doyle’s gift is her ability to articulate women’s internal experiences. She and her co-hosts talk about menopause and self-care and knowing when it’s time to quit a job or a relationship, but Trier-Bieniek sees something deeper happening: “What she’s doing,” says the professor, “is saying, ‘Guess what? You don’t have to sit in that seat just because that’s where someone says you should go. You can step outside.’ ”
So, if an acutely personal conversation on the podcast about female sexual function leaves listeners fired up about science’s lack of attention to the matter, that’s very much by design.
“Truth-telling, for me, is always tied to making women feel less alone, making women understand there’s not anything wrong with them,” Doyle says.
“If 98 percent of the women just realize there’s nothing wrong with them and take a deep breath, that’s enough for me. But if a few of them are also like, ‘Wait a minute’ — and start to go to the polls and start to march, start to organize — that’s one of the end goals.”
Zentner, the therapist, is down for revolution. But for her the impact of Doyle’s work is more immediate, more intimate.
“These days,” she says, “I shake a little bit less. I get a little bit less sick when I tell the truth.” | 2022-08-16T09:21:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Glennon Doyle's podcast with her wife, Abby Wambach, and sister, Amanda Doyle, has affected some fans deeply - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/15/glennon-doyle-podcast-fans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/15/glennon-doyle-podcast-fans/ |
In an unusual arrangement, Wagner will take over Maddow’s old 9 p.m. slot four nights each week, starting Tuesday, while the star sticks to Mondays only.
Alex Wagner on the set at MSNBC. (Patrick Randak/MSNBC)
For nearly 14 years, MSNBC viewers counted on seeing Rachel Maddow every weekday night at 9 p.m. to interpret the day’s top stories in her professorial style, marked by lengthy monologues and provocative dot-connecting.
Since May, though, the liberal TV personality has been a merely once-a-week presence, thanks to a lucrative deal that kept Maddow within the MSNBC stable while allowing her to work on other projects.
On Tuesday night, Alex Wagner begins hosting the other four nights a week of Maddow’s old shift, ushering in a highly experimental new era for one of the most pivotal time slots in cable news.
For the four years of the Trump administration, the 9 p.m. hour was a slugfest between Maddow, Sean Hannity on Fox News, and Chris Cuomo on CNN. But Hannity is now overshadowed in the ratings by Fox’s 8 p.m. host, Tucker Carlson, and CNN still has not named a permanent 9 p.m. host since firing Cuomo in December.
Theoretically, that makes this an opportune moment for MSNBC to seize attention with Wagner, 44, who, after stints with CBS News and Showtime’s political series “The Circus,” is returning to the network where she spent 2011 to 2015 hosting a show in the lower-profile afternoon hours.
Yet to break through in this competitive climate, she will essentially have to become “a brand,” argues industry analyst Brad Adgate, whom viewers will want to watch regardless of what is happening in the news cycle.
“Is she going to get people to say, ‘I have to watch Alex Wagner tonight’ in the same way that viewers said, ‘I have to watch Rachel Maddow tonight?’ ” Adgate said. “It’s going to take time, if it happens at all.”
In an interview, Wagner said she has been grateful for her new bosses’ patience. “MSNBC has given me a lot of support to craft an hour of television that is reflective of my experience as a journalist, my values as a journalist and my personality,” she said, “and that’s all you can ask for.”
MSNBC President Rashida Jones, who picked Wagner for the show after a stint as a contributor and fill-in anchor, said she’s not expecting her to replicate the audience of Maddow, who drew 3.4 million viewers on an average night in 2020 — at least not at the beginning.
“We’re giving her the time and space to grow,” Jones said. “This is a long investment because I think Alex is incredibly talented.”
In particular, she praised Wagner’s interview skills and intellectual curiosity. “She’s not necessarily a predictable voice,” Jones said.
Though Wagner leans left on many issues, she told The Post that viewers should not expect to “get preprogrammed Democratic talking points at the 9 p.m. hour.”
Political consultant Mark McKinnon, who co-created and co-stars in “The Circus,” called Wagner “a monster talent” that he fully expected would leave his show for “bigger and better things” — and possibly bring something new to an increasingly “stale” cable news format.
“The sort of constant echo chamber of breaking news is now everywhere,” he said. “In order to kind of break out and break through, I think people will be looking to bend the format, and Alex is well-suited for that.” Wagner cited their work on “The Circus” as a possible inspiration, saying she hopes to have fewer panels and more segments shot out in the field — though she acknowledged “there’s only so much reinvention you can do of this particular wheel.” She will, after all, be sitting at a desk.
When asked about her desired guests, Wagner mentioned Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and former House speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “I feel confident that you are not going to feel that this is a horse-race politics show at 9 p.m.,” she said.
Despite a long-running decline in the number of people who pay for a cable news package, with many viewers pivoting to streaming video, Wagner insisted she’s “not at all downcast” about the future of cable news. “The urgency of the moment demands an institution like cable news to respond,” she added.
Yet she is hoping some Maddow loyalists will give her a chance when they find her in their heroine’s chair on Tuesdays through Fridays. “I really hope Rachel’s admirers come and stay through the rest of the week,” she said. “We’re going to work really hard to get a lot of people to watch the show.” | 2022-08-16T09:21:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Wagner’s challenge at MSNBC: Keeping the Rachel Maddow superfans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/16/alex-wagner-msnbc-rachel-maddow/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/16/alex-wagner-msnbc-rachel-maddow/ |
How to ensure you have adequate internet service when buying a home
Internet access increasingly a must-have in the pandemic era
NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association recommends asking about the internet service providers (ISPs) in a community and their offerings before choosing a home. (iStock)
If you live in a city or suburban area, chances are you don’t even question the availability of internet access.
But when the pandemic opened more possibilities for remote work and buyers began looking at homes in far flung rural areas and vacation resorts, some of them found that internet access is not a given. While nearly 86 percent of U.S. households today have some type of internet subscription, an average of 12.2 percent of households across the U.S. don’t have internet access, according to a recent report from LendingTree.
The report found that Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico are the three states with the largest share of homes without internet access, with an average of 19.17 percent without an internet connection.
For more context and advice about internet access, we turned to Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association; and Robert Gilbert, CEO of Fiber Homes, which has a platform to help consumers find communities with broadband service. Both responded via email and their responses were edited.
How many locations in the U.S. lack high-speed internet access?
Gilbert: While great progress is being made bridging America’s digital divide, it’s estimated that more than 20 million homes still lack access to what would be considered high-speed internet. The majority of these homes are in the more rural areas of the country.
Even with so much focus on expanding high-speed internet access, if someone is looking to buy or rent a home outside of a major metropolitan market, it is far from guaranteed that they will be able to get the level of high-speed internet they need.
Bloomfield: That is a tougher question to answer than it should be because of complications with definitions and shortcomings in the mapping of broadband coverage. The answer depends first on how you define high-speed access. The FCC previously indicated that just over four percent of Americans lack access to broadband speeds of 25 megabits per seconds (Mbps), with eight percent lacking access to 100 Mbps. But even as work is underway to improve them, the FCC’s current maps measure broadband based only upon advertised speeds and they admittedly overstate coverage. So, we all have to work with estimates — but it’s clear that millions of Americans lack access to robust broadband, and it’s also clear that many of the unserved and underserved parts of the country are in rural America. But there are also hundreds of community-based broadband providers in the U.S. who serve some of the hardest-to-reach parts of rural America. In these areas, connectivity is great. For example, 75 percent of our members provide fiber-to-the-home connectivity, which doesn’t always happen even in urban locations.
How can home buyers find out about internet access ahead of a purchase? Is this info typically in an MLS listing?
Gilbert: Unlike utilities, internet access is rarely included in Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listings even though access to reliable broadband is increasingly crucial, especially for remote workers. As a result, some MLSs are working to make this data available to their members and consumers. For example,
Triangle MLS, located near Raleigh, N.C., is working with Fiber Homes to incorporate the information directly into their data service so that consumers can search for homes with broadband as easily as they search for three bedrooms and three baths. The hope is that more MLSs around the country will follow their lead.
Is there a way to test how well the internet works before making an offer to buy a place?
Gilbert: Short of physically conducting a speed test on your device at the property, asking the seller or the seller’s agent is the best option, but not always the most reliable. For instance, the current resident may not know the options available at the address or even what service or speed they currently get.
The most reliable way to know would be to identify and contact the local internet provider directly and find out what types of internet service are available specifically at that address. If it has fiber-optic access, the buyer can be confident they will get the fastest and most consistent internet available. If it has cable internet access, the quality of service may still be good, but not guaranteed. If the home only has access to DSL or satellite, the quality of internet may very well be below the standard the buyer expects or needs.
Bloomfield: Testing a connection before buying a place can be tricky. At NTCA we recommend asking about the internet service providers (ISPs) in a community and their offerings before choosing a home. Particularly if the ISP is a community-based company or cooperative, they have a vested interest in providing the best possible services and speeds because they also live and raise families in the areas they serve.
What’s the basic level of internet service someone needs if they plan to work at home or if they stream movies or play video games?
Bloomfield: Years ago, a 4 Mbps download speed was considered good enough for the average consumer and the FCC has defined 25 Mbps as effectively a “baseline” for broadband more recently. But the pandemic has highlighted how we need more robust and reliable connectivity everywhere. When life moved almost exclusively online, we saw parents working from home and kids on Zoom for school — all at the same time. You need bandwidth to be able to do all that. While every household is a little different, NTCA has recommended the FCC set the standard at 100/100 Mbps so we can better keep pace with the ever-evolving level of services that consumers need.
Gilbert: If your household likes to use multiple devices at once — for example, you want your kids to stream a show while you do a video call for work — you’ll probably want at least 250 Mbps of download speed and 100 Mbps of upload speed. Just remember that the more speed you have, the easier it will be to use multiple devices in your home without buffering, lagging or dropped connections.
If a home doesn’t have high speed internet, is there anything a buyer or homeowner can do about it?
Gilbert: There are not many options in that case. They can contact their local internet provider about bringing service to the home, but often the homeowner will have to pay some or all of the construction costs associated with building service to their home, which can be very expensive. Satellite internet is available in most locations, but the download and upload speeds are going to be much lower than fiber internet and other options.
Bloomfield: If looking for a home that is well-connected is not an option, I would recommend contacting the local ISP to see if broadband-level service can be provided in the future. Fiber is the gold standard (and the technology most suited for future bandwidth demands) but other options like satellite and fixed wireless connections might provide at least some basic level of connectivity when fiber is not available. | 2022-08-16T09:55:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to ensure you have adequate internet service when buying a home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/how-ensure-you-have-adequate-internet-service-when-buying-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/how-ensure-you-have-adequate-internet-service-when-buying-home/ |
FILE - In this photo released by the Taiwan Legislative Yuan, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, left, speaks during a meeting with Legislative Yuan Deputy Speaker Tsai Chi-chang in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. China announced Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, is imposing visa bans and other sanctions on a number of Taiwanese political figures including Tsai over their promotion of the self-governing island democracy’s independence from Beijing. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP, File) (Uncredited/Taiwan Legislative Yuan) | 2022-08-16T09:56:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China sets sanctions on Taiwan figures to punish US, island - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/china-sets-sanctions-on-taiwan-figures-to-punish-us-island/2022/08/16/17add6e0-1d45-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/china-sets-sanctions-on-taiwan-figures-to-punish-us-island/2022/08/16/17add6e0-1d45-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
“I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for what had happened,” USA Gymnastics CEO Li Li Leung said. “ … And I think that a lot of people felt that they wanted to do some good work in the sport, and that’s what drove them to be here.” (Darron Cummings/AP)
INDIANAPOLIS — When Li Li Leung stepped into her role at the top of USA Gymnastics in 2019, many offered congratulations. Some then followed with condolences, alluding to the enormous rebuilding job Leung had undertaken. Three years later, the organization is, in many ways, still trying to emerge from under the cloud of a sexual abuse scandal that rocked the sport.
Leung believes the national governing body has made positive strides, evolving from the version of itself that failed to protect athletes from decades of abuse by former national team doctor Larry Nassar. Leung admits to past missteps and acknowledges the need to rebuild trust but believes she and others at USA Gymnastics have the right intentions, prioritizing athlete health and safety.
The organization settled its lawsuit with survivors of Nassar’s abuse last year and is now heading into this week’s U.S. national championships in Tampa, a marquee event for elite gymnasts, for the first time since that key legal resolution. The national team recently began working under a restructured leadership model that diffuses power from a single coach. And amid hopes of far-reaching cultural change — trading of domineering, fear-based coaching styles of the past for healthy and positive techniques — Leung believes the United States can maintain its competitive success in women’s gymnastics. That’s why she’s here, leading the sport from an eighth-floor corner office in downtown Indianapolis.
A former elite gymnast, Leung watched, disappointed, as her sport began to unravel in 2016 when Nassar’s abuse became public. While working in an executive role at the NBA, she waited for progress. “And then it never really got better,” Leung said.
She felt compelled to volunteer, perhaps as a board member or consultant. When she reached out, she was pointed toward the vacant CEO position. What started as an agreement to talk with the recruiter — “I might be able to point them in the right direction to find someone,” she thought — turned into her applying for the role.
Since taking over, Leung ushered USA Gymnastics to a long-awaited resolution in the legal fight with the survivors of Nassar’s abuse. The settlement reached in December requires the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and their insurers to pay the survivors $380 million.
The Indianapolis Star showed Simone Biles the ‘magnitude’ of gymnastics abuse. How it got the story.
At the sport’s headquarters, the settlement and ensuing ability to exit bankruptcy — which USA Gymnastics entered because, Leung has said, “that was the most efficient process that was provided to [the board of directors] in order to resolve the litigation” — allows the governing body to take a step out from under that lingering cloud.
It also opens the door for more direct dialogue with survivors, no longer bound by legal hurdles. Conversations with gymnasts past and present can happen formally through the Athletes’ Council and other committees or informally with athletes reaching out to Leung. Tasha Schwikert Moser, a 2000 Olympian, now fills a seat on the board dedicated to a survivor of Nassar’s abuse — a commitment mandated by the settlement.
“The past is really critical to who we will become and who we are becoming as an organization going forward,” Leung said in an interview last month. “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for what had happened. … And I think that a lot of people felt that they wanted to do some good work in the sport, and that’s what drove them to be here.”
No organizations are immune to criticism, Leung said, so she expects there will always be some, but “we know that our intent is the right intent, and we know we’re doing the right things to effectuate positive change in the sport.” With that as the focus, she said: “Ultimately, we’ll get to the point where the masses or the majority will come around. And we’re getting there. We’re rounding the corner, and people are starting to really believe in the change that we’re making.”
USA Gymnastics had continued leadership crises in the years preceding Leung’s arrival. Steve Penny, the USA Gymnastics president from 2005 to 2017 who was in charge during the organization’s bungled response to gymnasts’ reports of Nassar’s abuse, resigned and later faced charges of evidence tampering, which were dismissed this year. His two successors had brief tenures: Kerry Perry, hired in 2017, lasted just nine months in the role, and Mary Bono, a former member of Congress, resigned after less than a week as the interim CEO. Both departed amid missteps and controversy.
Leung’s hiring did not end the skepticism: Some survivors, according to the Indianapolis Star, felt ignored in the process, and Leung’s marketing background matched the past experiences of Penny and Perry. But Leung believes her time as an elite gymnast provides helpful perspective. She can relate to athletes with vivid memories from her competitive career. An Olympian told Leung, “You’re like one of us,” which she considered a meaningful compliment.
The organization has a handful of other former gymnasts in key positions, and Leung adjusted the national team leadership model to a three-person committee rather than one omnipotent person.
USA Gymnastics initially posted the position as a solo job, but, Leung said, the organization’s leadership decided “it was too much pressure on the shoulders of one individual and there also wasn’t one individual who could serve in every capacity that that role needed to fulfill.” When the role changed from one job to three, interest in the positions grew.
In announcing those new hires — 2008 Olympians Alicia Sacramone Quinn (strategic lead) and Chellsie Memmel (technical lead), along with Dan Baker, who remained in his post with a slightly different title as the developmental lead — USA Gymnastics, again, faced some backlash.
Olympian McKayla Maroney has said that, when she mentioned details of Nassar’s abuse to other gymnasts during the 2011 world championships, “an older teammate I looked up to” chastised her for mentioning it. In the book “Start By Believing,” an account of Nassar’s crimes and institutional failures, Jordyn Wieber, a gymnast reportedly present during this exchange, identifies that teammate as Sacramone Quinn, who was 23 years old at the time. Sacramone Quinn, a 10-time world medalist and captain of the 2008 silver-winning Olympic team, says she does not remember that incident.
Simone Biles says on ‘Today’ show that she is ‘still scared to do gymnastics’
When asked about the allegation in a news conference, Sacramone Quinn said: “[If] a situation like that happens again, obviously first thing we’re doing is reporting it to authorities. We’re going to talk to the parties involved — the athlete, the coach, the parent — and get everybody on the same page, and we’re going to be making steps in the right direction to get that taken care of immediately. It’s not something we sit on. It’s not something we take lightly. … I would never want anything like that to even remotely even be possible to happen again.”
Leung said candidates are carefully vetted and the organization “would never bring someone on board that we’re not comfortable with in terms of their actions of the past.”
Sacramone Quinn, a longtime member of the national team under Martha Karolyi, said she remembers a “fear-driven” environment. Now as a leader of the program, she wants athletes to respect the staff but feel inspired to excel rather than intimidated.
“My goal, yes, is to get them to the best level of gymnastics they can be, but I want to help them shape who they are as people,” she said. “And so when they walk away from elite gymnastics, they’re like, ‘Man, that was a great experience. People actually cared about me, not just my gymnastics but me as a person.’”
The national team members are the most prominent athletes, but the governing body is responsible for all members of USA Gymnastics — starting with young gymnasts in grass-roots programs. Policies are designed and developed, Leung said, for the entire community, including educational resources and requirements, as well as the introduction of a designated “Safety Champion” at all member clubs. Leung views those inside the organization as “stewards of the sport.”
The Nassar scandal also cast a spotlight on the power imbalances and the emotional abuse of coaches within the sport that helped enable a predator. Cultural change can stem from education and requirements coming from the top of the governing body, but it also requires the buy-in of coaches at clubs around the country.
“It’s up to us to be the role model and to lead that change as well,” Leung said. “It starts with the organization, and it also starts with our national team staff. The reason why we put together the new high performance team that we did is because they also believe in that philosophy.”
Olympic women’s gymnastics once was mostly for teens. That’s changing.
As USA Gymnastics is in the early stages of planning a new training and wellness center, Leung envisions a facility that is the “hub and the heart of gymnastics in America,” she said — not a gym where top athletes will train in secrecy, which is how the Karolyi Ranch and former women’s national team training center operated.
“We want this place to be a really, really welcoming environment for gymnasts for all levels,” Leung said, “and for gymnasts to be able to come and see their role models train and some place that will be a central point of education as well.”
National team camps, Sacramone Quinn and Baker said, have a bit of a more relaxed feel. But athletes still want to win and understand that requires work. And Leung believes competitive excellence and positive experiences can coexist.
How much has changed might not be fully known until athletes from this generation have retired from the sport and feel comfortable speaking openly about any issues. With the competitive objectives largely unchanged, the organization hopes to transform the path toward them. | 2022-08-16T09:56:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Li Li Leung seeks to transform USA Gymnastics amid lingering skepticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/08/16/usa-gymnastics-li-li-leung/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/08/16/usa-gymnastics-li-li-leung/ |
The Federal Transit Administration announced $1.6 billion in grants, much of which will be spent on 1,100 emission-free buses
An electric bus in Silver Spring. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The infrastructure law is set to almost double the number of zero-emission buses on U.S. roads with a single year’s funding, the Federal Transit Administration announced Tuesday.
The funding is one of the most direct ways the $1 trillion infrastructure package promises to cut carbon emissions from transportation, the nation’s biggest source of greenhouse gases. Federal officials will have another four rounds of funds to distribute in the coming years after Tuesday’s initial awards. The money is expected to help transit agencies accelerate plans to transition from diesel buses to battery- or hydrogen-powered buses.
Nuria Fernandez, the head of the FTA, said the money is a sorely needed infusion for transit agencies on tight budgets, allowing them to upgrade services while switching to sustainable fuels.
“We know the bus is an equalizer,” she said in a Monday briefing. “It allows everyone in our country to advance their lives and go wherever they need to go. With this funding, more of them than ever will have that opportunity.”
The money will be spread across 150 projects in 48 states, officials said. The infrastructure law provided federal authorities with six times the funding for the low- and no-emissions bus fund, compared with the previous transportation funding law. The FTA received more than 500 applications valued at $7.7 billion — an indication of how eager transit agencies are to modernize their fleets and facilities.
The District Department of Transportation will receive $9.6 million for 17 vehicles to replace diesel Circulator buses and expand its fleet. Montgomery County won a $15 million award for 13 hydrogen fuel cell buses. The county is also pursuing electric buses charged on a microgrid. Prince George’s County was awarded $25 million to purchase up to 20 battery-electric buses and upgrade charging infrastructure, which will also include a microgrid.
Electric buses to tap solar power using new method for D.C. region
Since electric buses have different maintenance requirements, 5 percent of the funding was set aside for worker training. Fernandez said 74 proposals that were awarded funding include a training component.
Despite the new federal funding, the transition of all of the nation’s 60,000 buses to clean fuel sources will probably take decades. For example, the Washington area’s Metro, which did not receive new federal infrastructure money, plans to complete the shift by 2045.
Not all the money will go to zero-emission buses. Republicans inserted a provision into the infrastructure law to ensure that some funds would be available for buses powered by fuels such as natural gas. Fernandez said there was less interest in that part of the program and it will have money left over.
While some early models of battery-powered buses had limited range or took a long time to recharge, federal officials said conversations with manufacturers gave confidence the industry is ready to meet the demand spurred by the new funding. Major diesel bus manufacturers and new firms have been stepping up efforts to produce electric models in the United States.
Mitch Landrieu, President Biden’s infrastructure adviser, said the transition to electric transit will be completed by provisions in the new Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to spur battery manufacturing and the adoption of clean heavy-duty vehicles.
“These grants are going to be used in every corner of this country and they’re going to drive sweeping change, cleaner air and good-paying jobs,” Landrieu said. | 2022-08-16T09:56:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Infrastructure grants to almost double zero-emission buses on the road - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/16/bus-transit-infrastructure-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/16/bus-transit-infrastructure-money/ |
Johns Hopkins wants to change policing. Many fear it won’t work.
After protests, two-year ‘pause,’ the Baltimore university moves ahead with a campus police force
David Thomas, program director for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, leads a “Trauma to Trust” training at Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 22. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
A swarm of protesters snaked through Johns Hopkins University’s campus in Baltimore and delivered a petition to the president’s doorstep, demanding — yet again — he put an end to a controversial, years-long plan to create a police force for the private institution.
They thought they had the wind at their backs. It had been about a month since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis in 2020, and Johns Hopkins officials had said they would put the police plan on hold for at least two years. Officials promised to use the time to invest in policing alternatives, improve its existing security team and work with city leadership on police reform.
“We felt a sense of righteous anger that we thought would translate into the administration taking another path,” said Lester Spence, a political science and Africana studies professor who spoke at a rally before the march. He said a community already aghast at police abuses hoped to halt the creation of another one.
Since then, Johns Hopkins has hired a team of mental health counselors to handle nonviolent, behavioral emergencies and created a $6 million fund for community crime prevention projects — measures intended to blunt some of the criticism and fears about the police force. It has also implemented new trainings for public safety officers, including expanded sessions on topics such as trauma and gender identity.
Now, the university is preparing again to launch the force. Branville G. Bard, Jr., who was named vice president for public safety in July 2021, said he hopes to see officers on duty during the 2023-24 academic year. There is a new sense of urgency for a safer campus, he added.
Johns Hopkins University signals plans to move forward with controversial private police force
“It’s something that I’m hearing with the volume turned way up,” Bard said. Crime in and around campus had been falling before the pandemic, an analysis shows. But recent mass killings across the country, as well as nearby shootings, have some on edge, Bard said. “I’m being bombarded with concerns about not just active shooters but violence on and around our campuses.”
But it is still unclear whether the university can mollify lingering concerns about the police force. Activists in Baltimore cite the city’s own troubled police department, fearing Johns Hopkins’ squad will fall to the same corruption, racial profiling and excessive use of force. Many students at the university — and on campuses throughout the country — continue to criticize traditional policing and push their schools to embrace changes.
Critics have pledged to protest until the university backs down. The university, meanwhile, recently hired consultants to help implement the long-awaited department.
A years-long effort
Public universities in Baltimore have long had their own police departments, but Johns Hopkins, a private school, needed the state’s approval. In 2018, it asked Maryland lawmakers for the green light.
Yet rather than move forward, lawmakers asked the university to do more research. The school collected additional feedback from the community and published its findings. It worked with state Sen. Antonio L. Hayes (D-Baltimore City), who sponsored a measure that would increase oversight of the planned force.
The legislation — requiring measures including a 15-member accountability board, a complaint process and a hearing board for police misconduct — passed in 2019. Officers would also wear body cameras, and the department would be subject to the Maryland Public Information Act.
The university said it needs police on the main grounds in Baltimore’s Homewood neighborhood, the medical school and conservatory to defend the community from a sustained surge of violent crime. A 2018 survey of university staff revealed concerns about robberies, drug use and harassment near school property. Some also requested a larger a security presence.
School leaders still point to the same reasoning, even as crime has fallen to levels not seen since the mid-2010s.
In 2018, the Homewood campus logged a little less than three violent crimes per thousand full-time equivalent students when weighted by fall enrollment numbers, a Washington Post analysis of the federal Clery Act crime data showed. That number fell to 1.62 in 2019, the last year for which data is available before classes were disrupted by the pandemic.
It’s a crime rate higher than other large, private and urban campuses. George Washington University, in the nation’s capital, and Philadelphia’s Drexel University reported about 1.3 violent crimes on the schools’ largest campuses per thousand students in 2019, the analysis found. Both of those institutions have their own police departments.
But Johns Hopkins is motivated by the belief that it can change policing. “At the end of the day, sworn policing remains a critical, indeed indispensable, component of an effective public safety regime,” university President Ronald J. Daniels said. The school employs more than 1,200 unarmed security officers and special police, about two-thirds of whom cannot intervene in serious crimes.
About 60 off-duty Baltimore City police and deputy sheriffs — who are armed and have full arrest powers — also work on the campus, but their presence is spotty and they are often pulled away to respond to crime elsewhere in the city, officials said.
The school plans to replace those off-duty officers with its own force of up to 100 supervisors, command staff, detectives, community relations officers and patrol officers. “We should be able to provide more consistent turnout rates with people trained for the campus environment, and in particular to be effective first responders when there’s an incident on campus,” Daniels said.
The president pointed to carjackings, assaults and shootings near campus that “have fueled those demands for more effective policing,” he said. “But the key is that that function should be provided, must be provided, in a way that meets contemporary standards of performance and public accountability — and particularly is responsive to the concerns that have been raised about racialized policing.”
As part of a strategy developed in the past two years, the department will work with the Behavioral Health Crisis Support Team, therapists who will respond with officers to mental health emergencies. About 30 percent of calls made to public safety are related to mental health, campus officials said.
“It’ll raise the standard of care for individuals who are in the throes of a mental health crisis,” Bard said, adding the team has responded to more than 50 calls since last fall.
Kim Sutter, a crisis intervention counselor on the team who has worked with police departments for two decades said she’s seen “a lot of interest and hunger” on the part of police to understand trauma and mental illnesses. Last November, she and another clinician attended a training session with public safety officers, during which a staff member pretended to be a student going through a traumatic breakup. She laid near a bottle of pills and half-empty handles of liquor.
The exercise ended with Sutter referring the “student” to mental health resources.
“This is an example of the evolution of public safety,” said Jarron Jackson, senior director of public safety on the Homewood campus.
The push against police
Jordan Britton was sitting in a lounge area inside Charles Commons, something he did often when he wasn’t working in the residence hall’s mailroom. It was just months before his graduation in 2018, and Britton said he was approached twice — first by one school security guard, then by a pair of guards who asked whether he was a student.
“The fact that I was questioned about my status, so quickly back-to-back, for doing something I had done every day, it was just a very clear example of how I and other Black students are made to feel like we don’t really fit in at the school, or we don’t really belong at the school,” said Britton, who majored in math and is now an illustrator. About 8 percent of the university’s more than 32,000 students are Black or African American, campus data show.
Britton said he believes he was racially profiled, something he said “constantly” happened to Black students. Many currently on campus fear it will only get worse when the university empowers officers who can make arrests. They also worry the presence of armed police will lead to brutality.
Cionne Gates, a rising senior and member of the school’s Black Student Union, said she has had positive experiences with campus security, turning to officers when she needed an escort home late at night. Still, she is wary about having armed officers on campus.
“I don’t want it,” Gates said, “knowing that with police it’s never, generally, really a positive experience for communities of color.”
Thousands of students, faculty, staff and Baltimore residents have signed petitions condemning the state legislation that authorized Johns Hopkins to build a police department and demanding the university change course. Meanwhile, multiple neighborhood associations, prominent community groups and local politicians have raised concerns about the privatization of a public good.
Arrests at Hopkins in protest over creation of campus police force
The Coalition Against Policing by Hopkins, a group of community organizations and campus clubs, is among the proposal’s most vocal critics. The group maintains a log of offenses allegedly committed by Johns Hopkins public safety officers — from violating the school’s mask-wearing policy to posting racist and transphobic memes to Facebook.
Some coalition organizers were part of a 35-day protest in 2019, during which students and some Baltimore residents occupied an administrative building on campus. They argued a police force would not make Johns Hopkins any safer, particularly for Black people. Seven people were arrested, but charges were later dropped.
The case for funneling more resources to police can be a difficult one to make in Baltimore, a city that gained national attention in 2015 when 25-year-old Freddie Gray died of a spinal-cord injury he sustained in police custody. His death led to extended protests and a federal consent decree that prescribes, among other things, that city leaders build community trust, prevent discriminatory policing and curtail excessive force. Other high-profile missteps since have further deteriorated people’s trust in police.
The city’s contentious relationship with Johns Hopkins, a majority White institution in a mostly Black city, is yet another complicating factor in the school’s attempts to win over critics. Residents refer to a litany of abuses perpetrated by the nearly 150-year-old school, including urban renewal efforts in the early 2000s that displaced hundreds of Black families.
“Anything that happens with the community and Hopkins, it doesn’t end well,” said Donald Gresham, president of the nonprofit Baltimore Redevelopment Action Coalition for Empowerment. “People of color have not been able to address the issues and concerns that we have with Hopkins.”
Johns Hopkins enslaved people. Or did he? Some scholars question the university’s recent claims.
Daniels, the Johns Hopkins president, is aware of his school’s fraught relationship with the community. The university has spent the past several months publicizing its Innovation Fund for Community Safety — a $6 million investment over four years in community-led programs designed to prevent violence and stabilize neighborhoods. The grant recipients include organizations that provide job training, legal services to Baltimoreans at risk of losing their homes, and support to people using drugs and doing sex work.
“The truth is here that all of the measures that we’re taking here do not demand trust up front,” he said. “The expectation is that trust will be earned.”
Colleges beyond Baltimore have also faced scrutiny over policing. Students at the University of Louisville demanded the school cut ties with the Louisville Metro police after officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician, during a botched home raid in 2020. Officials resisted those calls, but now limits the campus’s use of local law enforcement and requires de-escalation and cultural sensitivity training for officers, among other changes, leaders said.
After students at American University complained that the school’s use of an unmarked patrol car made them feel surveilled, not safe, leaders said it would be reserved only for emergencies. A proposal to form a police oversight board — an idea a former student body president proposed after D.C. and campus police forced a Black student out of her dorm room during a wellness check in 2019 — has also been discussed by top officials.
Some on campus say there is a lingering distrust of campus police, however. The student who was removed from her dorm room sued the university in 2020, alleging discrimination.
Will Johns Hopkins be different?
More than a year into the pause on Johns Hopkins’ police department, the university began signaling it would move ahead. Last summer, it hired Bard, a career law enforcement official, to lead the public safety team — and oversee the creation of a police force.
A native Philadelphian, Bard rose through the ranks of his hometown’s police force before he was tapped to lead the department in Cambridge, Mass. There, he built a reputation as an advocate for police reform, establishing the department’s division for family and social justice.
But the force drew accusations of police brutality in 2018 when an officer was filmed repeatedly punching a Harvard University student who was found naked off campus and experiencing a mental health crisis. An independent review of the department’s investigation later found officers “acted appropriately” and did not use excessive force.
Bard said the investigation , “typically an in-house thing,” was made public, and the Johns Hopkins community can expect the same level of transparency.
Video shows police punching a Harvard student after he was found naked in the street
The vice president was present on a balmy June evening, where Innovation Fund grantees dined on crab cakes and traded philosophies about public safety. That same day, a group of students was planning a virtual event to talk about resisting the Johns Hopkins police department.
They shared tweets about “West Wednesdays,” a weekly demonstration hosted by Tawanda Jones to demand justice for her brother Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man who died in the custody of Baltimore and Morgan State University police after a traffic stop in 2013. Organizers still recite the name of Lavar Montray Douglas, who was 18 when he was fatally shot by a Coppin State University officer in 2016.
The incidents make Rachel Strodel, a medical student at Johns Hopkins, question how her campus police force will be any different.
“Policing is already such a harmful force in our city,” Strodel said. “Why would we have the hubris to think that we could make policing so much better?”
Sahana Jayaraman contributed to this report. | 2022-08-16T10:05:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Johns Hopkins pushes ahead with campus police force - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/16/johns-hopkins-police-force/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/16/johns-hopkins-police-force/ |
Seaplanes are coming to Washington. But they’ll land on ... land.
Tailwind Air will fly from New York to College Park Airport to comply with restrictions on airspace around Washington
A Tailwind Air flight from New York lands at the College Park Airport on Aug. 6. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
A planned seaplane service from New York to the Washington area won’t splash down on the Potomac or Anacostia rivers when it launches next month. Instead, flights will be bound for College Park Airport in the Maryland suburbs.
Tailwind Air teased a route map featuring service from New York to Washington in April, but while seaplane service has been proposed in the past by others, the tightly controlled airspace around the nation’s capital became an obstacle. Tailwind chief executive Alan Ram said the New York-based company’s existing Boston route came with its own headaches over logistics.
When entering the Washington market, Ram said, it made sense to use an airport rather than set up a landing zone in the water. The seaplane is the latest mode of transportation to debut in a traffic-clogged region constantly searching for faster methods of travel.
“What we decided was the best approach was to leverage the existing off-the-shelf infrastructure,” Ram said.
Tailwind expects to compete with airlines and Amtrak’s Acela service for business travelers. The company’s fares start at $395 one way, rising to $795 for last-minute bookings, while pitching shorter door-to-door travel times than jets or trains.
The new travel option comes as major airlines and start-ups are exploring the potential for what they have dubbed “flying taxis,” typically small electric aircraft that promise short traffic-busting flights. While those operations would use recent technology, Tailwind says it’s offering a similar service using a model that dates to the earliest days of flying.
N.Y. to D.C. via seaplane? Company eyes region’s tightly controlled airspace.
Tailwind operates between New York and Boston, as well as other parts of New England. In New York, it flies out of Manhattan’s Skyport Marina at the end of East 23rd Street, avoiding a trip to New Jersey or Queens to catch a plane while flying over the city’s skyline.
The tiny airport in College Park, wedged between a lake and an industrial area more than eight miles outside downtown Washington, doesn’t have the same glamour but does have a history of its own. The airport claims to be the world’s oldest still in operation, and was set up in 1909 when Wilbur Wright came to Washington to train the first military pilots. An adjacent museum showcases the airport’s place in aviation history.
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which operates the airport, did not respond to a request for comment on the new flights. A Transportation Security Administration spokesman said he had no information to share about the planned service. The Federal Aviation Administration did not respond to questions about the service.
Tailwind carried out a test flight into and out of College Park earlier this month, but the kind of scheduled service it will offer when the service launches Sept. 13 is new for the facility. The carrier says it plans to start limited operations of roughly two flights per day using eight-passenger Cessna Caravans. The approach, Ram said, is “crawl, walk, run.”
Passengers can park free outside the airport building and aren’t subject to X-ray screening, with check-in allowed 10 minutes before departure.
In the Washington region, National Harbor on the Prince George’s County waterfront seemed to some aviation enthusiasts like a possible landing spot in the water, but it falls within restricted airspace. Restrictions on airspace over the region extend about 15 nautical miles from Reagan National Airport.
Pilots operating to and from the airport are required to go through a vetting procedure with the TSA, and each flight must follow special procedures when in the air. FAA rules include methods for accessing three small airports in Maryland, in addition to mainline flights into National, and it was those existing procedures that made College Park appealing to Tailwind.
Ram, who lives in Falls Church, said it didn’t make sense that a trip between Washington and New York could take as long as a flight to Florida. Tailwind says it can complete the flight in about 90 minutes.
“We had an idea to try to shortcut the major airports and sources of friction in the travel between downtowns in these big cities,” he said.
An incident earlier this year underscored how tight security is in the skies over Washington. A miscommunication between the FAA and security officials at the U.S. Capitol prompted an evacuation when an Army plane conducting a parachute flight at a Nationals game was mistakenly perceived as a threat. | 2022-08-16T10:05:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tailwind Air seaplanes coming to Washington. But they’ll land on ... land. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/16/tailwind-air-seaplane-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/16/tailwind-air-seaplane-washington/ |
The ‘People Over Prime’ campaign is a public setback for the company, which has courted influencers
Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls, cited as an inspiration by a young leader with the group Gen Z For Change, speaks at a New York City rally. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
A coalition of top TikTok stars is pledging to cease all work with Amazon — including shutting down storefronts and halting new partnerships with the e-commerce platform — until the company meets the demands of the Amazon Labor Union.
Boasting a combined following of over 51 million, the group of 70 TikTok creators says that the campaign, called the “People Over Prime Pledge,” is designed to pressure Amazon to meet the requests of its workers, which include a $30 minimum wage, increased paid time off and halting activities the group considers “union busting.”
“Amazon’s widespread mistreatment of their workers and blatant use of union busting tactics will no longer be tolerated by the TikTok Community,” reads a statement from Gen Z For Change, an advocacy group that coordinated the pledge and works frequently with creators.
Amazon Labor Union, which did not help organize the People Over Prime Pledge, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Instagram knows you don't like its changes. It doesn't care.
“I think their method of offering influencers life-changing payouts to make them feel as if they need to work with them while also refusing to pay their workers behind the scenes is extremely wrong,” said Emily Rayna Shaw, 24, a TikTok creator with 5.4 million followers who has partnered with Amazon in the past. “I want to feel comfortable recommending Amazon products to my community because it is so reliable, but I can’t do so until I know that they are treating their workers fairly.”
Many of the creators behind the People over Prime Pledge have done promotional deals with the company but plan to shut down their storefronts and decline future partnerships because of concerns over worker treatment. Creators who have worked with Amazon say that the company requires them to sign nondisparagement agreements, so that they can’t speak negatively about the platform even when the deals are over.
Amazon — which is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., where it has a higher rate of worker injuries than its competitors — has increasingly become a target for organized labor. In April, the independent Amazon Labor Union won an election at a large fulfillment center in Staten Island, marking a major union victory. Amazon workers are also organizing facilities in Bessemer, Ala.; Garner, N.C.; Albany, N.Y.; Campbellsville, Ky., and San Bernardino, Calif.
But the company has cracked down on these efforts, disciplining, firing, and even calling the police on some workers who show support for unions. The National Labor Relations Board has said some of the company’s conduct violates labor law, but the agency has limited resources to police a company of Amazon’s size. Even at the warehouse where Amazon Labor Union won the election, the company has successfully delayed the start of the contract-bargaining process, which itself could take months or years to complete.
Amazon could stymie unions for years by going to the courts
Jackie James, 19, a TikTok creator with 3.4 million followers said that she will not be doing deals with Amazon until they change their ways. “As an influencer, it’s important to choose the right companies to work with,” she said. “I don’t think that workers should be treated the way they are under Amazon.”
Yet as labor organizing efforts within Amazon have hit speed bumps — Amazon Labor Union lost a second election in Staten Island in May — the movement has remained high profile, attracting support from Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Biden. Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls appeared on a prominent Twitch stream last week, and the hashtag #hotlaborsummer has popped up on Twitter.
Amazon has previously denied discontent among its workers, arguing turnover is a function of the company’s flexibility. “A large percentage of people we hire are re-hires, showing that they will choose to work for us when they want to,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, told The Post in June. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
“We’re demanding that Amazon listen to their workers and make changes to provide a healthy workplace environment,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen Z For Change, who also posts on TikTok. “Until Amazon institutes these changes, we as creators will block Amazon from monetizing one of the largest social media platforms in the world.”
The influencers participating in the pledge reflect growing support for organized labor movements among young people. A recent Gallup poll found that approval of labor unions is at its highest point since 1965, with nearly four in five (77 percent) of adults ages 18 through 34 supporting them. In the past year, more young people on TikTok have expressed pro-labor sentiment, speaking out about fair pay and worker’s rights.
Duncan Joseph, a 19-year-old TikTok creator with 4.3 million followers, said he signed the pledge because, growing up in Seattle, he lived under the shadow of Amazon. He said his Gen Z peers rely on it heavily for online orders. He hopes that using his platform to speak out against the company’s behavior will help sway his followers to listen to Amazon workers. “One of our best tools is awareness and influence,” he said. “Making this public decision as an influencer will help the people who watch our videos understand what’s going on and how unfair Amazon’s practices are.”
Chris Smalls's Amazon uprising and the fight for a second warehouse
Elise Joshi, 20, a TikTok creator and deputy executive director of Gen Z For Change, who is spearheading the People Over Prime Pledge, said that Smalls, who led the efforts to unionize an Amazon packing facility in Staten Island, inspired her to take action. “Ever since Chris Smalls went on the news popping that champagne bottle, we’ve been at the drawing board figuring out how we can support the unionization efforts by Amazon workers,” she said.
The influencers say TikTok is a particularly potent threat to the e-commerce giant because it is both where Gen Z users go for news and where narratives that eventually appear in legacy media are set. “TikTok is very powerful,” Joshi said. “It controls the narrative on issues, and Amazon knows that.”
She hopes that as the campaign grows it will pressure influencers to opt out of deals with Amazon, unless they address labor concerns. “If you’re making content for Amazon,” she said, “the hope is that there will be thousands of comments calling you out.” | 2022-08-16T10:13:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gen Z TikTok creators are boycotting Amazon, despite lucrative deals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/tiktok-creators-amazon-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/tiktok-creators-amazon-protest/ |
Aqib Talib, whose NFL career was marked by successful and tumultuous moments, is set to be a member of Prime Video's studio team for “Thursday Night Football” this season. (AP Photo/Kelvin Kuo, File)
The brother of ex-NFL player Aqib Talib turned himself in to authorities Monday in connection with the fatal shooting of a youth football coach during a game Saturday in a Dallas suburb.
A first-degree felony warrant for murder had been issued for 39-year-old Yaqub Talib, police in Lancaster, Tex., said. He was listed Monday afternoon in a database of inmates at the Dallas County Jail, on charges of murder and probation violation.
The man killed in the shooting, identified as 43-year-old Michael Hickmon, was reportedly coaching a nine-and-under squad that was playing a team associated with the Talib brothers.
Aqib Talib “was present when this unfortunate incident occurred and is very distraught and devastated over this terrible loss of life,” his attorney, Frank Perez, said by phone Monday evening. “He would like to convey his condolences to the family of the victim and to everyone who witnessed this unfortunate tragedy.”
Perez asserted that Talib, 36, was not involved in the shooting and is not wanted by police for questioning.
Lancaster police said that after they responded to a shooting in progress Saturday evening at a community park where the game was being played, Hickmon was taken to a hospital and later pronounced dead.
Witnesses told investigators “there was a disagreement between the opposing coaching staff[s] of two youth football teams over calls made by the officiating crew,” police stated. That was said to have led to a physical altercation, at which point the suspect in the shooting allegedly produced a firearm and shot Hickmon multiple times. The suspect then fled the scene, taking the firearm with him.
An attorney for Yaqub Talib, Clark Birdsall, said in a statement to Dallas news station WFAA that his client “regrets the tragic loss of life but went ahead and turned himself into the law this morning so his side of the story could be told.”
“We saw one of our coaches laying down on the ground right there. It was tough,” Mike Freeman, the head of the youth football program for which Hickmon coached, told WFAA. “More than just a coach. Great father, great man, great role model, great mentor.”
Hickmon’s nine-year-old son was on the field at the time of the shooting, per Freeman, who said that in the wake of the fatal incident it was “very, very, very hard to hold him and console him.”
“I’m lost at words. I don’t know how to explain it to the kids,” Freeman told WFAA. “That’s the part that I’m stuck on right now. How do I explain it [to] them. Why? This is something that these kids will remember for the rest of their life.”
The @MeanGreenFB family lost a great one yesterday when Mike Hickmon was killed at his son’s youth football game. Have talked with many of his former teammates today and everyone is just gutted. We are all a little bit better for having Hick in our lives. pic.twitter.com/uN5HGlDN6n
— Eric Capper (@Eric_Capper) August 14, 2022
A video that surfaced online, purportedly from the incident, shows a man wearing a “North Dallas United” shirt arguing with an official. The camera then pans over to a fight breaking out; when shots are heard, the camera is quickly pointed to the ground for several moments before focusing on a group of people who appear to be surrounding a prone body, with a goal post visible in the background.
According to reports, the North Dallas United Bobcats were playing an exhibition game against the Hickmon-coached D.E.A. Dragons. WFAA reported that both Talib brothers were coaches for the Bobcats, and Perez said it was his understanding, too, that Aqib Talib served in that role. The team did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.
After starring in high school in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Talib played at Kansas before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made him a first-round pick in the 2008 draft. He signed with the New England Patriots in 2013 and began a run of five straight Pro Bowl selections that spanned a move to the Denver Broncos, with whom Talib won a Super Bowl in 2016. He reached another Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams after the 2018 season and finished his playing career with that team in 2019.
Talib went on to work as a football analyst for Fox Sports, and earlier this summer Amazon announced he would join its studio team for the upcoming season of “Thursday Night Football.”
In addition to individual and team success, Talib’s NFL career was marked by some tumultuous moments. A Tampa Bay teammate needed stitches in 2009 after he was accidentally hit in the face with a helmet swung by Talib, who was reportedly aiming at another teammate. After being involved in a 2016 brawl between his Broncos and the Titans, Talib threatened to beat up a Tennessee wide receiver if their crossed paths at the office of their shared agent. In 2017, Talib was suspended two games by the NFL after a fight with the Raiders’ Michael Crabtree in which, for the second time in as many seasons, he snatched a gold chain off the wide receiver’s neck.
Talib was arrested in 2009 on charges of simple battery and resisting arrest after allegedly assaulting a cab driver in St. Petersburg, Fla. The cornerback was accused by Dallas County authorities in 2011 of pistol-whipping and shooting at his sister’s boyfriend during a domestic dispute; the case was dropped the following year.
In 2014, Dallas police issued a correction stating they had arrested Yaqub Talib, rather than the then-cornerback, as initially reported, for public intoxication after an alleged disturbance at a Dallas nightclub. In 2015, the brothers were investigated by Dallas police for possible aggravated assault after an early morning incident at a different nightclub. | 2022-08-16T10:13:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yaqub Talib, brother of ex-NFL star Aqib Talib, turns himself in after Dallas-area shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/aqib-talib-brother-yaqub-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/aqib-talib-brother-yaqub-shooting/ |
Former environmental activist Steven Guilbeault now oversees Canada’s climate policy as its environment minister. (David Kawai/Bloomberg News)
OTTAWA — In 2002, Steven Guilbeault scaled the roof of the Alberta premier’s home — uninvited — and installed two solar panels. It was part of a Greenpeace campaign to push the leader of the oil-rich province to reconsider his opposition to an international climate agreement.
Striking as that climb was, it was less dramatic than the one Guilbeault made the previous year, when he ascended more than 1,000 feet up Toronto’s CN Tower to unfurl a banner labeling Canada and then-U.S. President George W. Bush as “climate killers.”
Two decades later, the environmental activist has joined the government he once protested, as Canada’s environment minister. And Équiterre, the environmental group he co-founded, is suing the government over one of his decisions.
Hecklers, meanwhile, are using one of his best-known acts of civil disobedience against him.
“You’re a climate criminal!” a protester yelled at a Montreal event in July. “That’s how history will judge you.”
Guilbeault, now 52, is under fire for his decision in April to greenlight the Bay du Nord deep-sea oil drilling project off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, finding that it is “not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.” He says that — to his knowledge — it will be the lowest-emitting project of its kind in the world.
But activists in the environmental circles Guilbeault once frequented disagree. They say the approval ignores the warnings of scientists, and is inconsistent with the lofty rhetoric from the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the need to take more aggressive action against climate change.
It’s certainly a striking decision by a man who has never owned a car and was once dubbed “Green Jesus.”
“It was the most difficult professional decision that I’ve ever made in my life,” Guilbeault told The Washington Post. “I sincerely hope that I don’t have to make another one like that. It was heartbreaking.”
A megafire in Canada raged for 3 months. No one’s on the hook for its emissions.
Such is his dilemma — and Canada’s.
For Guilbeault, meeting the Paris climate accord goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels is critical. Deadly heat waves, calamitous floods and catastrophic wildfires fueled by climate change have taken their toll here.
He has read decades of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — including one released by the U.N. body shortly before Bay du Nord’s approval warning that the window to prevent a more perilous future is “brief and rapidly closing.”
But in the country with the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, his job is complicated. There are complicated regional tensions to navigate, particularly in the oil-rich prairie provinces, where many think Ottawa is threatening the sector that powers their economies.
And as European allies work to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas after the invasion of Ukraine, some of those countries are looking to Canada as an alternative source. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to visit the country next week to discuss the possibilities.
Still, Trudeau swept to power in 2015 on a promise to put climate action high on his agenda. His record has been mixed. Many here viewed Guilbeault’s appointment to the environment portfolio in October as a signal that the government — fresh off an election victory — intended to move much more swiftly to address the climate crisis.
“Expectations were high,” said Marc-André Viau, director of government relations for Équiterre. “That’s why when the minister approves a project like Bay du Nord … a lot of people were disappointed and frustrated. This is the kind of project that the minister in his previous life would have fought.”
Guilbeault doesn’t necessarily disagree.
“I obviously didn’t come into politics to approve oil projects,” he said. “If I was alone, making the decision for myself, it’s not the decision I would have made. … But I’m now the environment and climate minister for 38 million people.”
Trudeau is greenish. Canada’s oil-producing prairie provinces see red.
Guilbeault grew up in La Tuque, Quebec, a city of 11,000 where forestry has long helped drive the economy. Virtually everyone he knew had a relative who worked at the local pulp-and-paper mill, giving him a front-row seat to the human stakes of the boom-bust cycles of resource towns.
“I think it helps to be mindful of the fact that we want to be ambitious on a great many things when it comes to protecting the environment,” Guilbeault said. “But we also have to be mindful that we do this in a way that is respectful to people that are affected in these sectors.”
In his first environmental protest, at the age of 5, he climbed a tree in the woods behind his house to prevent developers from felling it.
He co-founded Équiterre in 1993 and spent years with Greenpeace, known for its confrontational tactics.
At a meeting of Group of Seven environment ministers this year, he was asked whether it was his first such gathering.
“Well, it depends how you look at it,” Guilbeault replied. “I’ve protested a number of them before.”
In 2010, a Globe and Mail column — titled “Steven who? Steven Guilbeault. Remember the name” — praised his “impressive record of activism” and predicted he would “likely” go into politics “some day.”
He entered the fray in 2019 as a candidate for Trudeau’s Liberals, despite his public opposition to the government’s controversial decision in 2018 to buy the Trans Mountain oil pipeline. He served as heritage minister before he was moved to his current role.
Crushing heat wave in Pacific Northwest and Canada cooked shellfish alive by the millions
In Canada’s oil patch, the appointment of a former environmental activist was greeted gingerly at best — and seen by some as a deliberate slight. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said it sent a “very problematic” message. Harold Kvisle, chair of the Calgary-based energy firm ARC Resources, said it was a “direct shot in the eye.”
Neither responded to requests for comment for this article.
Trudeau, seeking to balance Canada’s climate goals with its economic reliance on the energy sector, has frustrated groups on both sides.
His government imposed a price on carbon and passed legislation that requires it to report its progress on meeting its climate targets to Parliament. Days before Bay du Nord’s approval, it released its most detailed blueprint for getting there, which requires the oil-and-gas sector to cut emissions 42 percent below 2019 levels by 2030.
But the environment commissioner, a government watchdog, has identified several problems: Canada is the worst performer of the G-7 since the Paris accord was signed. It overestimated how much using hydrogen could slash emissions. And it is “not prepared” to support those affected by a transition away from fossil fuels.
Guilbeault said environmentalists used to call him a “radical pragmatist” — someone pursuing “radical” policies while also recognizing that meeting his goals can’t “happen overnight.” Still, he said, when he was an activist, he did not fully appreciate “the intricacies” of government and “how difficult it can be to move quickly.”
“I think that’s my greatest challenge,” he said. “That being said, I think we have to learn to do things faster.”
‘Lytton is gone’: Accounts of death, destruction in Canadian village that caught fire in record heat
When he approved Bay du Nord, Guilbeault imposed 137 legally binding conditions that Norwegian energy giant Equinor must meet if it decides to move ahead with the $12 billion project. Those included, for the first time, a requirement that the project reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Critics object that the condition applies only to the drilling operation, and not to the emissions from burning hundreds of millions of barrels of oil over the project’s decades-long life span.
Tim Gray, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Defense, said having an environment minister with an activist background has made a difference, particularly in the way climate change is discussed. He lauded what he called “really progressive action” to ban some disposable plastics and promote electric vehicles.
But he and others say the government’s plans to meet its Paris targets rely too much on carbon capture and storage — technology that seeks to prevent carbon emissions from escaping into the atmosphere and instead stores them underground. Its “fundamental error,” Gray said, is believing it can address climate change while also expanding fossil fuel extraction.
Gray said he recognizes that Guilbeault is in a tricky position.
“Steven, in particular, given his history … deeply believes in the need for climate action,” he said. “At a personal level, I totally understand the constraints that he’s under. But he’s part of a government that has a responsibility to act. And so, you know, I think he has to wear that as well.” | 2022-08-16T10:30:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault’s evolution from ‘Green Jesus’ to pragmatist - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/steven-guilbeault-canada-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/steven-guilbeault-canada-climate/ |
Moguls are lavishing ever-larger fortunes on the rustic life, prompted in part by the pandemic
By Karen Heller
The Diamond G in Dubois, Wyo. Ranch properties out West are catching the eye of the rich and famous. (Louise Johns for The Washington Post)
DUBOIS, Wyo. — On a quiet stretch of handsome Western highway, ranch broker Jim Taylor drives his dust-caked SUV while highlighting the attractions in this region of few people, abundant cattle and some of the nation’s priciest parcels of coveted land. “Sold that ranch,” he says, pointing north. A few miles later, Taylor gestures south toward a weathered jackleg fence that stretches endlessly into the distance. “That ranch, too. Actually, sold it twice.”
And so it goes for three days, crisscrossing the Continental Divide through Wyoming, Idaho and Taylor’s native Montana, where the fabulously wealthy spend millions on the rustic life. On this particular cloudless afternoon last month, he’s on his way to a new listing, the Diamond G Ranch, one of the few properties of its caliber available in a fevered market. It’s 10 miles down a private road to reach the main lodge situated on 5,000 gasp-inducing acres with a barn, guesthouses and manager’s residence. The property is John Ford-worthy, the territory of myth and dreams, a verdant valley teeming with wildlife under a trio of spectacular 11,000-foot peaks. List price: $71 million.
America remains one of the last countries where so many individuals own colossal swaths of land, some controlling acreage larger than Delaware. The West, a lodestar in the nation’s story, holds an enduring allure for modern land barons. It’s where the notion of American exceptionalism and pioneer masculinity are burnished in myth, movies, television, land acquisition, country music laments and so much truck advertising. A dazzling ranch has become a weekend oasis for rich men — and they’re mostly men — to realize their cowboy dreams.
Americans have long looked West to enrich their holdings, panning for mineral rights. The Rockefellers accumulated massive fiefdoms of land, eventually donating much of their holdings to the National Park Service. But the pandemic prompted a Western land grab, with moguls fleeing the cities for homes on the range. Demand remains high. The challenge is inventory. In this region of big spreads, there’s little.
The nation is home to 735 billionaires (according to Forbes) and plenty of quasi-billionaires, and many of them are buying. (Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has amassed 420,000 acres in Far West Texas around his Blue Origin suborbital spaceflight company, making him the nation’s 24th largest landowner.) The private plane market is booming, making it easier for the wealthy to travel from one of their places to the others. Many of them like to tour prospective properties by helicopter, rented for $4,600 an hour, billed to the client. In this Gilded Age, titans want to get dirty and dusty and wade hip-deep into a stream. They’re acquiring properties that require two days to traverse by horse.
In 2007, the 100 largest private landowners owned a combined 27 million acres of property. Fourteen years later, they control 42.2 million acres, according to the Land Report, the publication of private land ownership — an increase of 56 percent.
“When people strike it rich, they want a big parcel of land,” says report editor Eric O’Keefe. These hefty parcels help diversify portfolios when the stock market sinks, and are especially attractive in Wyoming, where there’s no inheritance, gift, personal or corporate income tax. They allow owners to indulge in boyhood cosplay fantasies while providing winning long-term investments.
Ranches are yachts that actually appreciate. Also, they’re bigger. There are plenty of brokers who will happily sell you an island, though it rarely carries that intense dudeness. Taylor’s firm happens to have a Montana island for sale. The asking price: $72 million.
Taylor is a legendary ranch broker, with 50 years in the business he helped overhaul, as director of the firm Hall and Hall. Land values were long rooted in animal units, the business of ranching. Now, cattle may be an afterthought. A Western spread is about reveling in an outdoorsman paradise with spectacular views unspoiled by development.
Tall, with a tumbleweed of tousled white hair, in worn jeans and a crisp plaid button-down, the 76-year-old broker sports a singular résumé ideal for catering to his clientele. He was raised on a 30,000-acre working ranch and first educated in a one-room schoolhouse. Then, he was sent East to school, St. Paul’s prep in New Hampshire, and later attended Yale. Taylor did stints as a polo player, and apprenticed briefly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; he liked the former far more than the latter. His Kenyan-raised wife, Anne, specializes in boutique international travel, as do their two grown daughters.
Taylor’s first major deal, which helped transform the market, was in 1979 with Malcolm Forbes, a Jersey blue blood with a Western hankering, who sold 11,000 acres adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, back when $7.2 million was serious coin for a ranch. Taylor and his firm completed a dozen deals with Ted Turner, who ultimately amassed 2 million acres in five states (as well as Argentina). Besides founding CNN and impressively wooing Jane Fonda, buying ranches and breeding bison became Turner’s legacy in the American mind-set.
Turner proved a dream client. “Ted certainly never let price stand in the way of anything,” Taylor says.
Other famous people followed his lead, buying ranches all over the West: Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, David Letterman, Tom Brokaw, Michael Keaton, Kanye West, John Mayer, the late Peter Fonda, plus a heavy salting of the Forbes 400.
Competition proved to be a valuable accelerant. “John Malone blames Ted Turner for getting him into the ranch business,” O’Keefe says. The former cable king is the nation’s second-largest private landowner, with 2.2 million acres held in a family preservation foundation. “We tell buyers, ‘Your buddy has 8,000 acres so we know you can’t buy less than that,’ ” says Greg Fay of the Fay Ranches brokerage. “It’s a funny joke but it does seem to work.” (Representatives for Malone and Turner did not respond to requests for comment.)
Some owners accumulate a collection of ranches to satisfy seasonal needs the way other people acquire jackets: a quail hunting ranch in Georgia for the winter; a Montana ranch for the spring and summer. Says Fay of his clients, “They’re not subdividers. They’re aggregators.”
In 2016, Hall and Hall represented Stan Kroenke, owner of the L.A. Rams and Arsenal F.C., in his $725 million purchase of the historic Waggoner ranch in north Texas. The Land Report crowned it “The Deal of the Century.” Says Taylor, “I never thought I’d have another year like that.”
And, yet, he did.
The coronavirus pandemic prompted the rich to shop for premium open spaces and head for the hills — specifically the Rockies.
In 2020, Taylor’s firm completed $1 billion in sales, despite a few dead months during the initial eruption of the pandemic. Last year? Better. Revenue more than doubled, and included handling both sides of the $200 million Beaverhead Ranch sale from Koch Industries to Rupert Murdoch, 340,000 acres cascading over three mountain ranges in Southwest Montana. “The latter half of 2020 and all of 2021 have been the strongest real estate market that any of us have experienced,” the firm’s website notes.
“It was too much going on all the time,” says Taylor’s partner Tim Murphy, who represented Murdoch. “A ranch is a living thing. It takes years to understand it. It could take years to see it all.”
Hall and Hall maintains 19 offices, 25 partners, all of them men. Commissions are split among partners. Its brokers estimate that a buyer will invest up to 10 percent of his net worth on a ranch. When the firm lands a $200 million listing, the potential pool winnows to the apex of the Forbes 400, possibly 75 potential buyers tops. At all times, brokers know who’s looking and what they can realistically afford. The majority of candidates are American, but brokers do get the occasional foreign buyer. In many other countries, there is often a paucity of private land for sale because of geography, density or government control. Try picking up a vast parcel for a weekend retreat in Belgium.
To buyers who spend their lives making deals and fielding calls, being on vacation means getting away from everything. Out here, hell is glimpsing other people, even fellow tycoons. Many homes are designed for family, not guests. It’s their “Yellowstone” without the dysfunction; their “Westworld” without the dystopia. Then again, they like superior cell service — to keep making those deals — and property within 90 minutes of the Jackson Hole, Wyo., or Bozeman, Mont., airports, now choked with private planes. Dreams of rustic isolation extend only so far.
In recent years, Yellowstone has become as synonymous with privilege and exclusivity as the national park open to all. There’s Taylor Sheridan’s eponymous hit television sagebrush soap about a ruthless ranching titan. In January, Sheridan joined the ranching class, purchasing with a group of investors the legendary Four Sixes Ranch in Texas, which listed for $192,202,200. Sheridan, who enlarged his television oater empire with “1883,” plans a series based on the history of his new spread.
There’s the luxurious Yellowstone Club, promoted as “the world’s only private ski, golf and adventure community,” which counts Bill Gates, Tom Brady and Ben Affleck among its fewer than 1,000 members. Even with the purchase of multimillion-dollar property on the grounds as a requirement for membership, about 20 members also own ranches.
Land adjacent to a national park or forest is coveted. Its owners can score a conservation easement, which limits development on the land and provides generous tax benefits.
“There’s this popular assumption that environmental conservation is an altruistic public good — [conservation easements] are a really useful mechanism and critical — but the easements are also a vehicle for protecting wealth,” says Yale professor Justin Farrell, author of “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.” Expensive land purchases “represent an enormous social, economic and environmental transformation of the region. Not a lot of people are invested in the community.”
The ‘Cowboy Cocktail’: How Wyoming became one of the world’s top tax havens
Large ranch owners contribute relatively little in taxes in Farrell’s native Wyoming, and decrease the availability of land for affordable housing. Wyoming’s Teton County, home to Jackson Hole, boasts the nation’s highest per capita household income, an adjusted gross of $312,442 in 2019, $100,000 higher than that of second-place Manhattan.
Should private individuals be allowed to own so much acreage while benefiting so few? Large working ranches may employ fewer than a dozen workers.
“Extreme rural gentrification does not help communities to flourish. It makes it impossible to live there,” Farrell says. Bozeman, dubbed “Boz Angeles” for its coastal transplants, has become too pricey for many. Evening rush hour descending from Big Sky Resort can slow to a megalopolis crawl as hourly workers begin their long trek home to more affordable locales, sometimes in next-door Idaho. It’s the opposite of how we envision the West. Instead of having wide open spaces, these towns have become racked with urban headaches. An hour and half away from Jackson Hole, all these challenges evaporate with the dust and tumbleweeds.
After passing four metal gates on a dirt road, Taylor arrives at his latest property. Thirty-five years ago, the Disney family sold the Diamond G to Stephen Gordon, a former manufacturing executive. Taylor handled the purchase. Gordon spent more than two years looking at three dozen ranches before discovering his rawhide Eden.
The Diamond G, near Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, abuts the Shoshone National Forest. It encompasses an estimated five miles of the Dunoir River, flush with brown and rainbow trout, and mountain whitefish.
“It has everything,” says Taylor. “It’s one of the greatest places in Wyoming.” He likens its beauty, and rarity, to a Van Gogh. The ranch is where the deer and the antelope — along with the bighorn sheep and the elk — all play. Elk are a staple of property videos shot by drone and accompanied by a chest-swelling Western soundtrack. “We have more animal activity than Yellowstone,” says Jon Robinett, the Diamond G’s ranch manager of 33 years.
But the ranch holds more allure than wildlife. The Diamond G sales brochure devotes almost as much ink to Wyoming tax laws as it does to the “cozy” main lodge, which is dark and dated.
Frankly, the lodge is most likely a teardown — on a $71 million listing.
“A big house can be a liability,” Taylor says. He advises clients to banish their opulent tendencies. Fancy and ranch tend to be mutually exclusive concepts. Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, maintains a (relatively) modest home on his Paradise Valley ranch, for someone worth $7 billion. The Montana property, thick with cottonwood trees, is host to the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, where guests pay up to $6,750 a week, per person, for pastoral charm and buckaroo romance. Then again, it isn’t Blank’s only spread. He owns three others on U.S. Highway 89 through Paradise Valley, which is the travel poster of Western rural living.
Architectural statements are best reserved for higher-density Jackson Hole. A modern $13 million folderol with massive plate-glass windows and little business being situated on a ranch didn’t net a nickel at sale. On the road, Taylor gestures toward a Wyoming property that he sold where the owner squandered $1 million on miles of paved road. Gravel’s what you want out here. The road potholed during the punishing winters and required considerable repairs. That’s another challenge of these pricey ranches; few owners, given their assemblage of homes in multiple climes, opt to endure winter here.
“This is a lifestyle, not a business,” says Gordon, over a lunch of cold cuts and slaw overlooking his gobsmacking view at the Diamond G. Now 79, he was born to money and minted more of it. He worked on Wall Street, dwelled on Park Avenue. A son of the city, Gordon yearned for a different life.
“I felt like I was born in the wrong place, in the wrong century,” he says, in a stained felt hat and worn plaid flannel. “I wanted spectacular views. I wanted a river running through it,” a reference to Norman Maclean’s 1976 autobiographical story collection, and Robert Redford’s 1992 film, starring a Redford-ish Brad Pitt, which launched several thousand fevered anglers’ fantasies of a river of their own. Last year, the 80,000-acre Climbing Arrow Ranch, where the movie was partially filmed, listed for $136.25 million. It sold, after a bidding war, in under a week.
Gordon didn’t buy his ranch to create more wealth; he used wealth to indulge his dream. “If you buy a ranch in Montana or Wyoming, the motivation is not economic,” he says. “It’s lifestyle. Everyone wants this.”
But if you hold a prime ranch for 35 years, the sale can prove an economic bonanza. “Land is an investment in itself, a passive investment,” Taylor says. “Ranching is an active investment. You’re buying people, buying cows.”
Gordon listed the property, which he loves dearly, because he feels it’s time to downsize his life.
“Owning a ranch is driven by life stages as much as lifestyle,” says Dave Johnson, one of Taylor’s partners. “They tend to sell when the ranch doesn’t fit the family anymore.”
The day after visiting the Diamond G, Taylor travels to his other big listing, the Bar Cross in Cora, Wyo. With 12,000 deeded acres and 2,500 head of cattle, it’s a $35 million working ranch with spectacular fishing on the New Fork River. The circa-1910 house, once owned by internet pioneer and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow (“Cassidy,” “Mexicali Blues”) and grandson of the original settler, is modest in scale (“tight,” according to the sales brochure) and exquisite in detail, kicked out with a La Cornue kitchen range (list price around $13,000) and decorated with museum-quality Indigenous and Western art and furniture, all catalogued in a gallery binder and valued at an additional $3 million.
Owner Jason Spaeth, 52, a Minneapolis investor specializing in distressed credit, bought the original property in 2016 for around $10.5 million. The following year, he spent an additional $8 million to nearly double the acreage. “Everything he could do to improve the property, he did,” Taylor says.
Only a few years later, Spaeth is selling to satisfy his family’s wishes. His wife operates two restaurants and their three sons are engaged in sports in the Twin Cities. Early in the pandemic, the family lived at the Bar Cross for more than five months. “That will always be a special time,” Spaeth says. This summer, he spent only a couple of weeks here; his family a matter of days, though they plan to return a final week this month.
“It has a special allure. It’s such an important part of America’s story, too. I was romantic about the West and ranches,” Spaeth says. “I wanted to see if we could create an economically viable and ecologically vibrant ranch.”
So, Spaeth is asked, is ranching an easy way to lose money or a hard way to make it? “It’s very difficult to make money in ranching, very difficult. I’ll leave it at that,” he says.
Ranching eats investment. Winters are a beast. August ignites fire season. Eight people work at the Bar Cross during cattle season, including ranch manager Katie Scarbrough, one of the rare women in the business, who has a master’s degree in ranch management and a 1-year-old son. A large working ranch is nothing without a top manager, particularly if the owner has other properties and businesses to attend to.
“My heart is still there. This whole thing is bittersweet,” Spaeth says by phone, driving to one of his children’s lacrosse tournaments in Minneapolis. “My sons never fully embraced the lifestyle and the culture. I got tired of feeling guilty when I’m here, and guilty when I’m there.”
This was not his plan. “I thought I’d own it forever,” he says.
In a matter of 10 days, the Bar Cross receives multiple offers.
Taylor celebrated a half century as a ranch broker in April. At the firm’s spring retreat in Arizona, there were roasts and a tribute. A fuss was made. Taylor considers retiring. Then again, why stop in the most vibrant market of his career? He lives in a spacious home with spectacular views. It’s not a ranch. A ranch is too much work.
The Diamond G went on the market the first week of August. During Taylor’s visit, Gordon gazes at the trio of mountains that have delighted him for more than three decades.
He says, “If it doesn’t sell at this price, I’ll try again next year. I’m in no rush.”
Jim Taylor knows better. Let the buyers descend.
Photo editing and design by Annaliese Nurnberg. Editing by Zachary Pincus-Roth. Copy editing by Annabeth Carlson. | 2022-08-16T11:10:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ranches out West have become a booming market for the wealthy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/16/ranch-land-west-billionaires/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/16/ranch-land-west-billionaires/ |
Prices at the Amalyn development start at $1.2 million for townhouses, $1.7 million for the single-family houses.
By Harriet Edleson
The living area in a Tri Pointe model single-family house at the Amalyn residential development in Bethesda, Md. (Benjamin C Tankersley for The Washington Post)
Ananta Islam and Carolina Rahman, who have been living in a townhouse in Gaithersburg, Md., for six years, needed more space and began searching for a single-family house in Bethesda.
It had to be a new house and large enough for the couple and their two children, ages 6 and 3. “We were looking to move closer to Bethesda,” said Islam, 40, a businessman. “We need some space.” And home renovation was not for him.
Islam and Rahman found what they were looking for in a new community, called Amalyn, where 304 residences are planned: 154 single-family houses, 110 market-rate townhouses and 40 townhouses that Montgomery County is making available as moderately priced dwelling units (MPDUs).
“It’s a planned community with state-of-the-art amenities,” said Julie Dillon, director of marketing for Tri Pointe Homes’ D.C. Metro Division, one of Amalyn’s two builders.
The focal point of the community will be a 4,000-square-foot clubhouse with an outdoor pool, a children’s play pool, an indoor and outdoor fitness center, a sun deck, private cabanas and an outdoor bar area. Amalyn’s green space will include a Zen garden and walking trails throughout the community.
The Amalyn site plan appears heart-shaped, viewed from above, and the name is derived from the Latin word “amare,” or “to love.” The community is situated on 75 acres about 4.5 miles from downtown Bethesda. Purchased by Toll Brothers, Amalyn’s other builder, from Cumulus Media for $74.1 million, the land is the former site of four WMAL radio towers demolished in November 2020.
Finding new construction in the Bethesda area isn’t easy, and most new houses are built in existing neighborhoods, typically on a lot where a house from the 1950s or 1960s has been torn down.
At Amalyn, Tri Pointe Homes and Toll Brothers are building a completely new community, to be finished within two or three years. “It feels like a little oasis in the middle of Bethesda,” Dillon said.
So far, Tri Pointe has a finished model single-family house, and Toll Brothers is selling 125 single-family houses from an on-site sales office. Tri Pointe is building 29 single-family houses, with prices starting at $1.7 million, as well as the 110 market-rate townhouses, starting at $1.2 million, and the 40 MPDU townhouses. The focus of this report is the Tri Pointe single-family houses and market-rate townhouses.
Some Tri Pointe single-family houses are expected to be move-in ready as soon as October. They come in two models: the Sequoia and the Oakley. Both are offered with a choice of three exterior styles — Prairie, Farmhouse and Tudor — if purchased before construction is underway. The aim is to build a community with different exterior styles for varied visual impact.
The basic three-level (including lower level) Sequoia has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms and a powder room (half-bath). It can be enlarged to accommodate up to six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and a powder room. The Sequoia’s square-footage ranges from 5,300 to 5,900.
The basic three-level (including lower level) Oakley has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms and a powder room. It can be expanded as well, and the square-footage ranges from 4,690 to 5,700.
Both models come standard with a two-vehicle garage and a finished rec room in the lower level, and a number of optional upgrades are offered for the lower level.
Islam and Rahman chose the Oakley model with the Farmhouse exterior. “Every single detail was an option,” Islam said. The couple had three or four appointments to make their selections. Ultimately, they went with four bedrooms. “It’s not massive,” he said. “We didn’t want a house that engulfed us.”
Tri Pointe Homes has a design studio in Potomac, Md., where owners can schedule an appointment and make a wide range of choices. “You can personalize [your home] by adding on different outdoor-living choices — screened porch, covered porch, uncovered porch,” Dillon said. Options for a finished lower level include a wine room, a wet bar, a full bedroom and bathroom. Owners also make choices about such details as countertops, lighting, doors, flooring, bathroom tile, shower heads and color scheme throughout the home.
Schools: Ashburton Elementary, North Bethesda Middle, Walter Johnson High.
Transit: Access to Metrorail’s Red Line is provided by Montgomery County Ride On bus route 47 to the Bethesda Metro station. Amalyn’s location allows for easy access to I-495 and I-270.
Nearby: Amalyn is close to Cabin John Regional Park, which has athletic fields, indoor and lighted outdoor tennis courts, the Adventure Playground, the Cabin John Ice Rink and the Cabin John Miniature Train. Shopping and dining are available at Wildwood Shopping Center, Westfield Montgomery Mall and Bethesda Row. The Strathmore arts complex, in North Bethesda, has a 1,976-seat concert hall and other performance and exhibition spaces.
Amalyn
6941 Greyswood Rd., Bethesda, Md. 20817.
Tri Pointe Homes and Toll Brothers plan a total of 304 residences, including 154 single-family houses, 110 market-rate townhouses and 40 townhouses that Montgomery County will make available as moderately priced dwelling units. Tri Pointe’s 29 single-family houses and 110 market-rate townhouses are the focus of this report. Prices start at $1.2 million for the townhouses, half with elevators, and $1.7 million for the single-family houses.
Builder: Tri Pointe Homes
Amenities: The development has a 4,000-square-foot clubhouse with an outdoor pool, a children’s play pool, a fitness center with indoor and outdoor zones, a sun deck, private cabanas and an outdoor bar area. Amalyn’s green space includes a Zen garden and walking trails throughout the community.
Features: Tri Pointe Homes has a design studio in Potomac, Md., where owners can choose from a wide range of interior and exterior fixtures and features. For example, options for the lower level include a wine room, a wet bar, and a full bedroom and bathroom. Owners can also make decisions about such details as countertops, lighting, doors, flooring, bathroom tile, shower heads and the color scheme throughout the home.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: Single-family: 4 to 7 / 3.5 to 7.5; townhouse: 3 or 4 / 2.5 to 3.5
Square-footage: Single-family: 5,300 to 5,960; townhouse: 2,663 to 3,520
Homeowners association fee: $367 a month for single-family houses and $338 for townhouses covers lawn maintenance, snow removal, trash and recycling removal, common-area maintenance and access to all amenities.
View model: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
Sales: Contact DCMetro@TriPointeHomes.com or 240-847-0370 | 2022-08-16T11:27:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Single-family houses and townhouses in Bethesda development - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/16/single-family-houses-townhouses-bethesda-development/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/16/single-family-houses-townhouses-bethesda-development/ |
Reviving a landmark agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program could pave the way for the U.S. to lift sanctions and allow Iranian energy exports back onto world markets. The talks have been hampered by a lack of trust as well as Iranian demands that Washington guarantee economic returns from a new accord, and that international monitors curtail an investigation into Tehran’s past nuclear activities.
In 2018, former President Donald Trump’s administration unilaterally left the deal agreed in 2015 and reimposed sanctions that severely reduced Iran’s oil exports. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told diplomats and defense officials at this year’s Munich Security Conference that the world powers at the negotiating table must provide assurances that Iranians won’t be tricked into limiting their nuclear activities only to be trapped again under sanctions. Of the previous deal, he said, “It was the Americans who ruined it. It is now up to the Americans to resuscitate it.”
US officials have scoffed at the idea that they can guarantee a future president won’t again leave the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. More than 100 Republican members of Congress have pledged to oppose any sanctions relief for Iran by the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat. A bipartisan bill introduced in July would compel the US government to assess the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran every quarter. Domestic division over the accord has forced negotiators to try to come up with creative solutions that satisfy Iran’s requirements within the US system of checks and balances. Most recently, officials said that the parties have made progress on specific indemnities that would guarantee Iran economic returns, even if a new US administration or act of Congress overturned the deal again.
In the absence of full guarantees, Iran wants to leave its centrifuge advancements intact so that it can swiftly reverse course should the US again leave the accord. On this point, the U.S. opened the door to compromise in February by waiving sanctions on civil nuclear cooperation with Iran. That paves the way for the Persian Gulf country to potentially ship the nuclear fuel and centrifuges to a friendly third country, with guarantees that the property would be returned should the agreement again be violated. Russia and Kazakhstan have emerged as potential facilitators, with the latter designated in the original agreement as a potential way station for Iranian nuclear fuel. However, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested that Iran’s best course might be to keep the centrifuges sealed but intact, rather than dismantling them altogether. | 2022-08-16T11:27:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Sticky Issues Holding Up a New Iran Nuclear Deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-sticky-issues-holding-up-a-new-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/16/5d30f7a4-1d4c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-sticky-issues-holding-up-a-new-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/16/5d30f7a4-1d4c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Without a Nuclear Deal, How Close Is Iran to a Bomb?
Iranian national flag bunting hangs in front of the Azadi Tower during the celebrations marking 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Tehran, Iran, on Monday, Feb. 11, 2019. As Iran’s Islamic Republic enters a fifth decade, its energy industry has little to celebrate. Photographer: Ali Mohammadi/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
The 2015 accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief was designed to slow Iran’s nuclear program to the extent that, if it were to ditch the agreement, it would have needed a year to produce enough fissile material to fuel a nuclear weapon. That so-called breakout time had been estimated at a few months before the deal went into effect. Following the US withdrawal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, Iran has gradually accelerated its own violations of the agreement. Now, it’s thought to need only weeks to produce a bomb’s worth of the necessary enriched uranium. Iran would still have to master the process of weaponizing the fuel before it would have an operable nuclear device that could hit a remote target.
1. How has Iran gotten closer to having the makings of a bomb?
In exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed because of suspicions around its nuclear program, Iran agreed that for 15 years it would not enrich uranium beyond 3.7% - the concentration of the fissile isotope uranium-235 needed for nuclear power plants. Iran also pledged to limit its enriched-uranium stockpile to 300 kilograms (661 pounds), or about 3% of the amount it held before the deal was struck. But starting a year after the US left the accord and reimposed sanctions, which denied Iran the economic benefits the deal promised, Tehran began to ramp its program back up. Iran has accumulated enough enriched uranium to construct several bombs should its leaders choose to purify the heavy metal to the 90% level typically used in weapons. Moreover, it has not only returned to enriching to 20% but has for the first time gone to 60%, a level of purity the International Atomic Energy Agency says is technically indistinguishable from weapons-grade fuel. Inspectors reported in May that Iran had accumulated 43 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, a rise of 30% over the previous three months.
2. Why is enrichment so important?
Obtaining the material necessary to induce atomic fission is the most difficult step in the process of making nuclear power or bombs. Countries need to develop an industrial infrastructure to produce uranium-235 isotopes, which comprise less than 1% of matter in uranium ore but are key to sustaining a fission chain reaction. Thousands of centrifuges spinning at supersonic speeds are used to separate the material. The IAEA keeps track of gram-level changes in uranium inventories worldwide to ensure the material isn’t being diverted for weapons. Iran has always maintained it was pursuing nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, but world powers have doubted that claim.
3. What else is needed for a nuclear bomb capacity?
In addition to the fissile material, there’s the bomb and the means of delivering it. Iran likely already has the technical knowhow to produce a simple gun-assembly implosion device such as the one the US dropped over Hiroshima in 1945. An Iranian pilot would have to survive an incursion into enemy territory to dispatch it, or conceivably such a device could be delivered inside a container packed aboard a ship. To strike a remote target, Iran would still need to design and build a device that was miniaturized sufficiently to ride atop a missile and could survive re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. Estimates for how long it might need for this task range from four months to two years. Iran already has ballistic missiles to deliver such a device. It’s most powerful missile has an estimated range of as much as 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), putting all of Europe within reach.
4. What if there’s no deal?
After entering the original deal in 2015, then-President Barack Obama said the alternative might have been a military conflict with major disruptions to the global economy. Israeli officials have repeatedly implied that their military will strike Iran’s nuclear infrastructure if it reaches the brink of weapons capability. An alignment taking shape between China, Russia and Iran could raise the stakes on armed intervention by potentially opening new fronts for conflict. | 2022-08-16T11:27:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Without a Nuclear Deal, How Close Is Iran to a Bomb? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/without-a-nuclear-deal-how-close-is-iran-to-a-bomb/2022/08/16/8fe060e8-1d49-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/without-a-nuclear-deal-how-close-is-iran-to-a-bomb/2022/08/16/8fe060e8-1d49-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
A Capitol rioter tried to bond with a Reagan judge, then got a lecture
A Seattle man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for his role in the Capitol riot. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
“Can you guess who my favorite president is?” asked the man about to be sentenced for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Senior Judge Thomas F. Hogan did not respond. So John Cameron, a real estate agent from the Seattle area, answered his own question. “Ronald Reagan,” he said during the hearing Monday, suggesting the judge might agree. Hogan was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by Reagan 40 years ago.
Cameron, 55, went on to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which Reagan made part of Flag Day ceremonies that same year.
The judge was not impressed. He had questions of his own. How, he asked, could Cameron claim to have seen no violence or clear sign he could not enter the Capitol during the riot? Did he not hear murderous chants and blaring alarms, smell tear gas, see people climbing up scaffolding and through windows? Did he think, as he said on Facebook, that it was all “fun”? And if so, was he withdrawing his plea to a misdemeanor charge?
“No,” Cameron replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “I picketed within the Capitol, and that was illegal. ... I would never do it again.”
But his depiction of himself in court and on social media as a peaceful observer targeted for political reasons prompted an angry lecture from the judge.
He compared the Jan. 6 rioters to “a lynching mob” in which the support of encouragement of more passive members like Cameron was crucial: “A mob doesn’t act alone.”
Numerous federal judges in D.C., including Hogan, have lamented before that many Jan. 6 defendants appear not to have truly accepted responsibility for their actions that day even when pleading guilty. Earlier this month, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, a Trump appointee, warned one conservative activist she had sentenced to probation that he might be exposing himself to new charges by suggesting his plea was a lie.
“Exercise some discretion,” she told Brandon Straka. Two days later, Straka set up a fake jail cell at the Conservative Political Action Conference and demanded a congressman do more for Jan. 6 defendants.
Hogan suggested that sentences meted out thus far that “have not impressed.” Like most of his colleagues, he has given lighter punishments than prosecutors requested in the majority of the Jan. 6 cases he has handled. All have been misdemeanors, and Hogan has ruled that active jail time cannot be combined with probation in those cases.
Hogan told Cameron that he was lucky prosecutors had not moved to charge him with a felony after his recent social media statements.
“If you had pleaded to a felony, I would just put you in jail for a long time,” he said. Instead he gave him 30 days in jail and three years of probation, as requested by the government, with the incarceration made intermittent to conform with his understanding of the law.
“The court at least hopes that in this three-year period, you don’t engage in any such conduct again,” Hogan concluded.
Tom Jackman contributed to this report. | 2022-08-16T11:28:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Capitol rioter tried to bond with a Reagan judge, then got a lecture - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/cameron-jan6-judge-lecture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/cameron-jan6-judge-lecture/ |
In the 19th century, Americans dumped poor migrants overseas. Now some governors are shipping them off to other states.
Perspective by Hidetaka Hirota
Migrants who boarded a bus in Texas listen to volunteers offering assistance after being dropped off within view of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Aug. 11. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona are sending thousands of migrants by bus to cities on the East Coast, especially New York City and D.C. Many of them are Venezuelan asylum seekers. Upon arriving at their destinations, they are discharged without money, food, shelter or work. Abandoned on the streets, homeless and without money, they have to seek relief from local religious and voluntary groups. The governors claim this policy is necessary because of the Biden administration’s inability to prevent the admission of undesirable foreigners at the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is also an effort to embarrass pro-immigration politicians and create the appearance of chaos to justify cruel policies.
While the bus ride is one of the latest policies adopted in the southwestern states in response to the increased arrival of asylum seekers from Latin America, “migrant dumping” — expelling foreigners and subsequently abandoning them without consideration for their welfare and humanity — has long been a feature of American nativism. One precedent for the practice can be found in 19th-century Massachusetts.
Throughout the implementation of the deportation policy, Massachusetts officials maintained that removals were conducted humanely. A legislative report on the enforcement of state immigration law in 1855 concluded that “there is no room for the operation of any improper motives or unreasonable severity.” The Massachusetts alien commissioners, who carried out the deportation law, declared that removed migrants were “properly provided with all the comforts that were necessary.”
In reality, however, Massachusetts’ deportation policy was far from humane. Driven by nativist sentiment, state officials aggressively removed Irish immigrants accommodated at charitable institutions to Britain and Ireland, sometimes by kidnapping them. Any semblance of due process was absent in these removals. The state even deported migrants with mental illness who were unable to communicate, by insisting that they consented to go home.
Massachusetts officials contended that a public officer would “attend personally to the removal of all feeble persons and the dangerous insane,” but little evidence supports this claim. Upon reaching the destination of deportation — normally Liverpool or an Irish port city such as Dublin or Cork — officials abandoned the deportees on the streets without money, food or clothes. As Francis Lousada, British Consul in Boston, observed: “It does not appear that any provision however slight — either of subsistence for a few days, or pecuniary aid to help them to return to their friends, is afforded.”
As one critic of the removal policy put it, a deportee, “unable to provide for himself, was let loose on the public streets, to take his chance of what Providence may do for him.” British observers who witnessed deportees’ arrival in Liverpool described the scene as “a woeful sight,” noticing “hunger stamped upon them.” The returned Irish shocked Liverpudlians for being “in a condition of extreme wretchedness.”
Without provisions for self-support, men and women expelled from Massachusetts wandered the streets of Britain and Ireland, entering local workhouses which provided shelter and food to people unable to support themselves financially. In 1859, when 16 Irish migrants returned from Boston and entered the workhouse in Liverpool, one of the charity officials noted that he “never saw a more miserable lot of people.” In 1869, a police officer in Cork found three Irish women with mental illness deported from the United States “wandering about the roads” and brought them to the city’s workhouse. The officer stated that the women were “half furnished” and “scarcely able to give any account of themselves” when he met them. “When landed here,” a charity official in Cork noted of deportees, “there was nothing for them but the workhouse.”
There are some fundamental differences between the deportation policy of 19th-century Massachusetts and the busing policy of Texas and Arizona today. Massachusetts deported the Irish back to their places of origin, but Texas and Arizona are sending migrants to other parts of the United States. Since the 19th century, administration of immigration has decisively transitioned to the federal level. Individual states have no power to conduct overseas deportation and can only relocate migrants domestically. Also, today’s categories of refugee and asylum seeker — and the United States’ legal obligation to them — did not exist in the 19th century.
The history of the Massachusetts deportation policy shows that post-removal abandonment imposes profound physical and psychological hardships on migrants. The present policy of Texas and Arizona is creating situations similar to those that surrounded the Irish poor in the 19th century by meeting Venezuelans’ requests for help through asylum with the cruel practice of dumping. As the pace of arrivals in cities such as New York and Washington exceeds local charitable organizations’ financial and administrative capacity, the busing policy may undermine public support for asylum seekers, even in places inclined to be welcoming. The governors of Texas and Arizona may claim that they are addressing a migration crisis, but they are actually creating a humanitarian crisis. | 2022-08-16T11:28:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The disturbing precedent for busing migrants to other states - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/16/disturbing-precedent-busing-migrants-other-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/16/disturbing-precedent-busing-migrants-other-states/ |
Ireland changed its antiabortion laws. Can it offer a blueprint for the U.S.?
The issues that drove the battle over abortion in Ireland and what they tell us about the future in the United States
Perspective by JoAnne Sweeny
JoAnne Sweeny is a professor of law at the University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. Her scholarship focuses on feminist jurisprudence, technology and freedom of expression.
Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside the House chambers in the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis on Aug. 2 during a special session to debate banning abortion in the state. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Ireland’s 2018 referendum vote that legalized abortion has been hailed as a victory by abortion rights activists and seen as a ray of hope in the United States after the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The result was a remarkable turnaround for Ireland, a deeply Catholic country that enshrined the criminalization of abortion in 1861 and then added that law to its Constitution in 1983.
Much of the impetus for the 2018 referendum is attributed to Savita Halappanavar, who died of sepsis in a Galway hospital while miscarrying her fetus. Despite knowing the increasing threat to her life and that the fetus would not survive, doctors refused to perform an abortion as long as the fetus had a heartbeat. By the time the heartbeat stopped days later, Halappanavar’s organs had begun to shut down and she died shortly afterward.
Halappanavar’s tragic, unnecessary death was certainly a catalyst for the referendum, but it was by no means the only one. Ireland has had a long and complicated history with abortion access, ranging from complete prohibition to (poorly) balancing the fetus’s life against the woman’s to — as the 2018 referendum allowed — a full acceptance of abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy.
That history is instructive for the United States as it grapples with the legal implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In Ireland, three issues caused the most confusion and strife in the years leading up to the 2018 vote: traveling to receive abortions, providing information about abortion options and determining at what point a woman’s life is jeopardized enough to permit an abortion. Ireland’s history also shows how individual cases, some of them shocking, cast stark light on the law’s inadequacies and paved the way for the law to change.
Historically, Ireland’s stance on abortion has been extremely severe. Abortion was criminalized in Ireland in 1861 with the Offenses Against the Person Act and reconfirmed when Ireland gained independence and adopted its 1937 Constitution. When the U.K. decriminalized abortion in 1967, large numbers of Irish women began to travel to the U.K. for the procedure.
In 1983, in response to pressure from religious organizations and the fear that an Irish court could issue a decision similar to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Ireland passed a referendum that enshrined the “right to life of the unborn … with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother.” This law appeared to place the lives of an unborn fetus and woman on equal footing, meaning that a fetus should be protected unless the woman’s life is in danger. But in reality, the fetus’s life took precedence, leading to the deaths of women who were refused medical treatment that could harm the fetus.
A 1988 case against a group of clinics that provided abortion counseling made it illegal for anyone to counsel or assist a woman who wished to travel abroad for an abortion. Some women circumvented these restrictions by going to the U.K. for “shopping trips,” while others without the means or ability to travel died as a result of being forced to carry a fetus.
With Irish courts’ antiabortion stance seemingly set in stone, Irish women began to go to the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice to try to convince them to require Irish courts to change their stance. As a member of the Council of Europe and the European Union, Ireland is bound by treaty to follow the rulings of those European courts. So, in the early 1990s, when European courts issued decisions requiring Ireland to allow people to provide information about abortion or how to go abroad to get one, the law changed accordingly.
Still, many women were not able to use this information due to age or finances. Two Irish court decisions in the 1990s created an exception to the law prohibiting travel for an abortion in cases where the pregnant woman threatened suicide. In these cases, they were teenage girls who were either a ward of the state or did not have parental consent to travel, and the court in both cases granted them the ability to travel. These cases were highly publicized, which led the public to pressure the government to reconsider the issue.
As a result, the public voted on three referendums, which changed the law to allow women to travel for an abortion and receive information about such travel. The third referendum, which attempted to remove suicide risk as a reason to allow an abortion in Ireland, failed. In 2002, the government again let the public vote to remove the suicide exception, effectively taking the issue out of the hands of the judiciary, and that referendum failed to pass a second time.
Irish public opinion on abortion was obviously changing, and by 2003, a survey showed that just over half of Irish people believed that a women should be able to get an abortion under any circumstance. In 2007, an Irish court allowed a minor to travel for an abortion not because she was suicidal, but because the fetus would not survive due to severe brain damage.
Despite court rulings and public opinion, there were still plenty of cases where women were denied medical treatment because they were pregnant. Savita Halappanavar’s case was simply the one that got the most media attention. As a result of her case and a 2010 European Court of Human Rights judgment, in 2013, Ireland passed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act (PLDPA), which listed 25 public hospitals where women could seek an abortion if their life was at risk, including through suicide. However, the Guidance Document for that act created several restrictions, such as requiring two specialist doctors to attest that the woman’s life was at risk.
The PLDPA also failed to address cases where the fetus would not survive. At this point, the U.N. Human Rights Committee got involved and found in 2016, and again in 2018, that Ireland had violated a woman’s right to privacy by not giving her information on how to obtain an abortion after she learned that her fetus had a fatal birth defect.
Finally, after so many lost court cases, public disapproval, reports of more than 170,000 women going to the U.K. for an abortion, sustained activism and the declining influence of the Catholic Church after the child abuse scandals in the 1990s, the Irish government finally decided to take action in 2016. It created a Citizens’ Assembly composed of 99 people who were randomly chosen and reflected the Irish population in terms of demographics such as age, gender, geography and diversity of beliefs about abortion.
After meeting repeatedly over five months and hearing from medical, legal and ethical specialists, the assembly issued a report that recommended that abortion should be legal in Ireland up to 12 weeks, or at any point in the pregnancy if certain conditions are met, such as a threat to the life of the woman or fetus. As a result of this report, the Irish government debated the issue and ultimately put forth the referendum that passed in 2018.
Ireland’s story provides some hope that the United States might find its way to legalizing abortion, yet it also shows how a government can impede changes that have strong public support by passing unpopular legislation and blocking any attempts at judicial reform. Ireland’s history points to how many setbacks abortion rights activists probably will face in the post-Dobbs United States, and how the lives of women will be burdened and even sacrificed along the way. There are no quick fixes, only painful lessons to be learned. But only learning these lessons will overrule the Dobbs decision and provide American women the right to choose an abortion. | 2022-08-16T11:28:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ireland changed its antiabortion laws. Can it offer a blueprint for the U.S.? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/16/ireland-changed-its-antiabortion-laws-can-it-offer-blueprint-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/16/ireland-changed-its-antiabortion-laws-can-it-offer-blueprint-us/ |
With fast-food bill, California could help all essential workers
Fast-food workers protest for a $15 hourly minimum wage outside a McDonald's restaurant in East Los Angeles on March 12, 2021. (Damian Dovarganes/AP, File)
Amid what looks like the largest labor organizing movement since the Great Depression, California lawmakers are considering legislation that would bolster protections for hundreds of thousands of the state’s front-line workers — and set a national standard for how our government advocates for the working class.
The Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, or the Fast Recovery Act, would create a state-appointed council of workers, employers and state agencies that would collaborate to improve working conditions, benefits and wages for California’s 550,000 fast-food workers. The measure passed the state Assembly earlier this year (by one vote!), and appears likely to clear the Senate and reach Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) desk.
Led by the Service Employees International Union and Fight for $15 and a Union, more than 100 organizations and unions have endorsed the legislation. So have five cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Earlier this month, Rep. Ro Khanna (D) and seven of his colleagues in the California delegation in the U.S. House urged Newsom to support the act.
A coalition this far-reaching, with demands this urgent, cannot be ignored for long without consequences — because, in the end, this legislation is about more than one sector in one state. Two-and-a-half years into a pandemic, throughout which many leaders nationwide have doled out hollow praise to “essential workers,” California now has an opportunity to step up for them.
Why focus on fast-food workers? For one thing, low-income Americans have been hit hardest financially by covid-19 and faced the greatest workplace exposure risk — and for California’s fast-food workers, this risk was especially pronounced. A UCLA study earlier this year showed that fewer than half those workers were provided paid sick leave after a positive test result or exposure. Numerous safety violations reported at a McDonald’s in Oakland included telling a cashier with severe covid symptoms to lower her mask so she could breathe easier and finish her shift — and, when they ran out of masks, suggesting employees wear dog diapers left behind by a customer. (The franchisee settled a lawsuit over the complaints without admitting wrongdoing, and the owner has denied the allegations.) One study found that California line cooks faced a 60 percent increase in pandemic-related mortality in 2020 — the highest of any occupation.
California’s fast-food workers also face what Fight for $15 has called a “crisis of violence.” Night shift employees are vulnerable to crime when other customers aren’t present to deter it. Between 2017 and 2020, at least 77,000 violent or threatening incidents took place at California fast-food restaurants.
In return for putting their health and safety at risk, these workers don’t even receive a living wage: Their average hourly pay is nearly $6 less than the estimated living wage of $21.82. And a staggering 85 percent of them report experiencing wage theft, such as meal break or sick leave violations.
The people subjected to these abuses come primarily from already-vulnerable groups: Two-thirds of California’s fast-food cooks and cashiers are women, and four out of five are people of color. To allow the status quo to remain unchallenged is to entrench inequities faced by many marginalized people.
The Fast Recovery Act would grant California’s fast-food workers a long overdue seat at the table. The biannual public hearings required by the measure would provide space for workers’ concerns to be addressed. Corporate franchisers would be accountable for violations that occur under their brands. And larger cities and counties would be allowed to establish their own fast-food sector councils, which could engage when a given challenge might not rise to the state level.
If enacted by California, as Khanna remarked, the measure could promote sectoral councils in other states, able to advance worker protections and establish and enforce industry-wide wage standards — which could help to close racial and gender pay gaps and reduce economic inequality. In fact, a comparable board appointed in New York state helped pass the state’s $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers in 2015.
Opponents of the California bill, including the International Franchise Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have attempted to pit workers against small businesses to derail the bill. In truth, however, small businesses could also benefit from being at the table. The process would allow both franchisees and workers to help set policy that works for them — not just their corporate franchisors.
Through this legislation, Newsom — who has made his political ambitions abundantly clear — has an opportunity to demonstrate an as-yet-unproven commitment to protect the working class. But he has not taken a public position on the bill. When I reached out to his press office, a spokesperson said: “We don’t typically comment on pending legislation. The governor will evaluate the bill on its own merits if it reaches his desk.” Will the governor take this chance to advance vital protections for working people?
For more than two years, our government has praised working-class Americans as “essential workers” yet treated them as anything but. Across the country, these workers are demanding rights and protections they should have been granted on the day they were hired. California lawmakers have a responsibility: pass the Fast Recovery Act and show the nation what it means to show up for the working class. | 2022-08-16T11:28:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | California fast-food bill could support all low-income workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/california-fast-food-bill-essential-workers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/california-fast-food-bill-essential-workers/ |
The attack on Salman Rushdie is a warning about where we’re headed
British author Salman Rushdie speaks as he presents his book "Quichotte" at the Volkstheater in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 16, 2019. (Herbert Neubauer, APA/AFP/Getty Images) (HERBERT NEUBAUER/APA/AFP/Getty Images)
If you’re too young to remember the late 80s, you might not understand what a pervasive symbol of Western freedom Rushdie became. This was after he published his novel “The Satanic Verses,” with its portrayal of the prophet Muhammad that so infuriated Iran’s radical clerics.
Rushdie stayed mostly out of sight for many years, though he reemerged one night in 1991 at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he spoke on the sanctity of the First Amendment. Every public appearance he made in the decade or so after the fatwa, with private security lurking nearby, constituted an act of remarkable courage.
If there was debate in this country over the rightness of Rushdie’s cause, I don’t recall it; even Jimmy Carter, who condemned the book in a pusillanimous New York Times op-ed, defended Rushdie’s right to be heard. Back then, pretty much everyone agreed that democracy demanded basic tolerance and free expression, even if we sometimes argued vehemently over what kind of speech was appropriate in the public square.
Now the movement conservatives who once proclaimed themselves a bulwark against mob rule can’t even find the spine to distance themselves from an armed attack on the Capitol. They grovel, instead, before a leader who would have joined the uprising himself if anyone had been willing to drive him.
Meanwhile, as my Post colleague Margaret Sullivan notes, cultural conservatives around the country are doubling as school librarians, rooting out books by such authors as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Maurice Sendak. Mainstream Republicans cheer them on.
Matt Bai: I reject both parties’ ideas of Americanism. And I’m not the only one. | 2022-08-16T11:29:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The attack on Salman Rushdie is a warning about where we’re headed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/salman-rushdie-attack-harbinger-political-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/salman-rushdie-attack-harbinger-political-violence/ |
Trump’s display of unheard-of recklessness is no laughing matter
An itemized receipt for and list of property seized in the execution of a search warrant by the FBI at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate shows items reading "Info re: President of France" and "Various classified/TS/SCI documents." (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Former president Donald Trump now claims that before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2021, he declassified all the classified documents recovered by the National Archives several months ago, as well as those materials seized by the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate. Since Trump’s statement appeared in writing,, there’s no telling if it was made with a straight face or with fingers crossed behind his back.
Either way, it’s no laughing matter. Trump’s disclosure that he has been treating marked classified documents kept in his private home as unclassified materials is, from the standpoint of national security, a display of unheard-of recklessness by a president of the United States.
The U.S. intelligence community produces and protects, at great human and financial costs, the kind of classified information found in Trump’s private possession. The intelligence community, by the way, is no backwater government bureaucracy. It includes the director of national intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Departments of State, Energy and Homeland Security, and the military branches of the armed forces. For those U.S. officials to hear Trump cavalierly assert that the materials spirited out of the White House to Mar-a-Lago were “all declassified” by himself must have come as a horrendous shock.
Trump’s lawyers and his political sycophants contend that the former president was not constitutionally bound to follow established procedures for declassifying information while in office.
As commander in chief charged with keeping the nation safe, Trump was, however, duty-bound to inform the intelligence community of his unilateral action, if for no other reason than to allow for a clear-eyed assessment of the risks his actions might pose to national security.
Among the risks of unauthorized disclosure of national security information? Disruption of U.S. foreign relations, compromised identities of confidential and human intelligence sources and methods, revealing military plans, weapons systems, and defense options, etc.
The protection of classified materials is not within a bureaucratic no man’s land. There is a legally sanctioned system in place for classifying, safeguarding and declassifying information critical to our nation’s security.
The policy is explained in excruciating detail in Executive Order 13526 — Classified National Security Information, issued Dec. 29, 2009, by President Barack Obama. Updated from a classification system initiated by President Harry S. Truman, the order covers the A-Z of handling and protection of classified materials, including procedures for their downgrading and declassification.
The order covers the same kind of classified documents bearing top secret, secret and confidential classifications found in Trump’s Florida home.
According to the receipt for property seized by the FBI pursuant to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, there were “Various classified/TS/SCI documents.” That finding raises a special concern. SCI — sensitive compartmented information — materials require separate handling, including a formal determination of who may have access to them and where those materials can be even discussed — let alone conditions of the buildings or facilities where they must be stored.
Trump’s national security advisers may wish to explain his grounds for declassifying information without, at a minimum, rescinding the existing E.O. 13526, which is not merely a proclamation or commemoration. It is a signed, written and published directive from the president of the United States. Only a sitting president can overturn an existing executive order.
Where is the evidence of Trump, from inauguration up to and including his last day in office, having rescinded or replaced Obama’s executive order? Absent that action, E.O. 13526 remains a permanent rule.
Until Trump landed on the scene.
The only beneficiaries of Trump’s reckless self-indulgence are America’s enemies, who are drawn to mishandled national security information as flies are to honey. Goodness knows, in another professional life and another time, I was well aware of the need for fly repellent.
The Justice Department is correctly pursuing the legality of Trump’s actions.
A damage assessment of the classified materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago — belatedly demanded by some congressional leaders — should expose the depth of Trump’s negligence of national security.
Either way, the case that Donald Trump is unfit to handle the powers of the presidency has again been convincingly made by none other than Trump himself.
It now remains for justice to be served. | 2022-08-16T11:29:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump's display of recklessness is no laughing matter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/trump-reckless-national-security-serious/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/trump-reckless-national-security-serious/ |
Most Republicans ignored constituents’ opinions on marriage equality
In roughly 90 percent of U.S. congressional districts, a majority support marriage rights for same-sex couples, my research finds. So why didn’t more Republicans vote in favor?
Analysis by Andrew R. Flores
A person waves a rainbow flag during a rally in support of the LGBTQ community at Freedom Plaza on June 12, 2021, in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Last month, the U.S. House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, supported by all 250 House Democrats and 47 Republicans. The bill hasn’t yet been taken up by the Senate. Here at The Washington Post, a recent analysis suggests that the Republicans who voted for the bill come from Democratic-leaning or politically moderate districts.
On LGB rights (transgender rights have yet to be examined), recent research finds that members of Congress typically vote in keeping with their constituents’ opinions. But elected officials — especially Republicans — tend to overestimate how conservative their constituents are. So did Republican members of Congress misunderstand what their constituents think should be law on the Respect for Marriage Act?
Estimating public support for marriage equality by congressional districts
To investigate this, I used the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey data, a sample of opinions of about 500,000 interviews with Americans that includes detailed geographic data. In two waves of data collection in the spring of 2020 and 2021, 19,024 respondents were asked, “We’d like to know whether you agree or disagree with each of the following policies: make gay marriage illegal.” Nationwide, 58 percent disagreed, 26 percent agreed and 16 percent had no opinion. This overall pattern is consistent with a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll that showed 58 percent of U.S. adults supported passage of the Respect for Marriage Act.
Political scientists have developed reliable methods of analyzing national survey data to assess attitudes by congressional districts through a technique called multilevel regression and post-stratification. I used this to estimate the percent of people within a congressional district who did not agree with making marriages for same-sex couples illegal — who said, in other words, that same-sex couples should continue to be able to marry.
Trans advocates work locally. Conservatives fight back nationally.
Legal marriage for same-sex couples is broadly popular in almost every congressional district
Out of 435 congressional districts, I found only 45 congressional districts in which less than a majority of adult residents opposed making same-sex marriage illegal. That doesn’t mean a majority supported making marriage equality illegal, since some had no opinion; it just means there wasn’t a majority in favor of keeping it legal.
In other words, in roughly 90 percent of U.S. congressional districts, a majority of voters support marriage rights for same-sex couples.
The districts without a majority in favor of legal marriage equality tended to be in the South; but given the numbers, in many congressional districts in the South, a majority support marriage equality. If members of Congress vote in line with their district’s beliefs, even more House Republicans should have voted in favor of the bill, leaving only 45 holdouts, as you can see in the figure below.
Political scientists have developed the concept of policy congruence, which evaluates how much elected officials’ decisions match their constituents’ desires. With that, we can create what we call a “policy characteristic curve” — a line that relates constituent opinions to the probability that a member of Congress will vote according to those opinions. If a lawmaker is much likelier to favor a policy if a majority of their constituents support it, then there is a high degree of congruence. But if more than a simple majority is necessary on liberal policies before the lawmaker is likely to support it, then some scholars call this a conservative bias.
When evaluating all House members’ votes on the bill against their district’s opinions, I actually found a strong degree of congruence. Districts in which a majority favored marriage equality were represented by House members who voted for the bill. But I did find some conservative bias. House members were far more likely to vote for the bill when about 54 percent of their constituents supported marriage equality.
However, House Republicans on average had to come from a district with over 60 percent support before they voted in favor of the bill. Since all Democrats supported the bill, we can’t do a similar analysis for them. Though, the lowest level of support in Democratic district was 42 percent, and there were 14 districts where estimates were less than a majority support. The 47 Republicans who voted yes did so when a majority of at least 50 percent of their constituents supported marriage equality. Among House Republicans who voted no, 130 did even when a majority of their constituents supported marriage equality.
Why Republicans are attacking Disney for ‘grooming’ on LGBTQ rights
What will happen in the Senate?
In only six states, a majority does not approve of legal marriage recognition: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia, with Mississippi having the lowest level of support at 43 percent. If all senators were going to represent their constituents’ opinions, the marriage equality bill would get 88 votes in favor.
Some Senate Republicans have signaled that they may support the bill, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). If senators were voting in line with their constituents’ opinions, the additional six votes for passage would come from remaining states with the largest pro-marriage equality majorities, which would be Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven (N.D.), Joni Ernst and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), and Mike Lee or Mitt Romney (Utah). Of these, only Johnson has said he sees “no reason to oppose the bill.” (He subsequently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had some concerns.)
Changing lawmakers’ information flows may offer limited help to update their perceptions
Of course, lawmakers don’t necessarily vote to represent their whole constituents’ opinions and may respond to attentive subgroups. But if they were to want to represent their constituents at large, what might help correct this bias?
A simple fix might be to have more constituents call or write their representatives. Recent research finds that elected officials mostly hear from conservative constituents.
The massive opinion change on legal marriage recognition for same-sex couples remains one of the most notable shifts in opinion in recent history. Some elected officials may not have fully absorbed the breadth of that change.
Check out our expanded, newly indexed TMC Topic Guides
Andrew R. Flores (@DrAndrewFlores) is an assistant professor of government at American University and visiting scholar at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. | 2022-08-16T11:29:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why did so many House Republicans oppose marriage equality? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/congress-republicans-respect-marriage-act/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/congress-republicans-respect-marriage-act/ |
In recent speeches, the former president has begun specifying new policies he’d pursue if he returns to the White House, with an emphasis on crime, voting and shrinking the government
Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Aug. 6. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Execute drug dealers
Move homeless people to outlying ‘tent cities’
Deploy federal force against crime, unrest and protests
Strip job protections for federal workers
Eliminate the Education Department
Restrict voting to one day using paper ballots
For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump has started getting specific about what he would do if he wins a second term in the White House.
The pitches he’s made onstage over the past month in speeches from D.C. to Dallas to Las Vegas are a stark contrast from ordinary stump speeches. He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.
There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.
As his 2016 campaign and administration showed time and again, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, he and his aides worked furiously to translate rally slogans into official policy — whether or not there were legal or political barriers to overcome. And if Trump does return to the White House in 2025, this time he will be surrounded by fewer advisers interested in moderating or restraining his impulses.
Instead, his administration would probably be staffed by dedicated loyalists, and would have the advantage of an emboldened conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He and his advisers would also have more experience in how to exert power inside the federal bureaucracy and exploit vulnerabilities in institutions and laws.
Trump has strongly hinted that he wants to run for president again and has been considering an early announcement ahead of the November midterms. Last week’s search of his Mar-a-Lago residence and club added urgency for those of his advisers who favor an early launch, a person with direct knowledge told The Washington Post, but Trump hasn’t committed to a timeline.
Here are six specific proposals that have recently surfaced in Trump’s speeches — and what each plan might look like if he pursued it from the White House.
On July 8, former president Donald Trump said countries that "don't have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers.” (Video: C-SPAN)
Trump has a long record of supporting the death penalty and has advocated executing people for drug crimes since at least 2018. His recent speeches have repeatedly returned to the idea as part of his public-safety messaging.
“If you look at countries all throughout the world, no matter where you go, the only ones that don’t have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers,” Trump said at a law-and-order-themed speech in Las Vegas in July. In the Washington speech, he elaborated by calling for a joint task force of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to dismantle gangs and organized street crime.
Existing federal law makes it a capital offense to run a criminal enterprise that takes in more than $20 million a year or traffics major quantities of heroin, methamphetamines or similar drugs. However, the death penalty has never been imposed for drug trafficking (without a related murder), according to the Congressional Research Service, and courts have not ruled on its constitutionality.
The Trump administration prioritized resuming federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. The administration ultimately put to death 13 people, including six after Trump lost reelection in 2020. The Justice Department’s hurry to finish the executions before the inauguration of Joe Biden, who opposes the death penalty, included extraordinary measures such as conducting executions in the middle of the night, moving forward despite pending appeals, buying drugs from a secret pharmacy, and paying cash to private executioners.
Forty-four people remain on federal death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department continues reviewing the Trump administration’s changes to its rules and procedures for capital offenses.
A slight majority of U.S. adults support the death penalty for convicted murderers, a level that has held steady since 2017 and is lower than at any other time since 1972, according to Gallup polls. Capital punishment is more popular with Republicans, 77 percent of whom support it.
On Aug. 6, former president Donald Trump advocated for “tent cities” as a means of addressing homelessness. (Video: The Washington Post)
As Trump has honed a law-and-order message, packing his speeches with graphic accounts of violent offenses and bleak appraisals of America’s cities, he has particularly focused on images of people living on the streets. Trump’s solution is to move homeless people to “tent cities” on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, staffed with medical professionals and built to house hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
“The only way you’re going to remove the homeless encampments and reclaim our downtowns is to open up large parcels, large tracts, of relatively inexpensive land on the outer skirts of the various cities and bring in medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists and drug rehab specialists and create tent cities,” Trump said on Aug. 6 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “You don’t have time to build buildings, you can do that later, but you have to get the people off the street. We have to bring back, we have to reclaim our cities.”
In a July speech in Washington, Trump acknowledged that the idea would be controversial but argued it would be an improvement. “Now, some people say, ‘Oh, that’s so horrible’ — no, what’s horrible is what’s happening now,” he said.
There isn’t up-to-date national data on unhoused people, but shelter officials in 15 states have told The Post they’re seeing an increase in people seeking services, in part because of rising costs of living. Trump’s claim in July that the tent cities could be needed for “probably millions of people” is dubious, however; as of January 2020, an estimated 580,000 people were experiencing homelessness nationwide, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Trump’s Washington speech happened to coincide with the alliance’s conference, setting off a ripple of concern among the 1,300 attendees and leading the group’s chief executive, Ann Oliva, to address it from the stage.
“The picture that he was trying to paint is that homeless people are dangerous and therefore need to be removed so the rest of us can go about our lives, and that is just not true,” Oliva said in an interview. “Spending a ton of money on newly built encampments that don’t have a plan to get people back into safe and affordable housing does not add up to me.”
Oliva, who used to run homelessness programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said it wasn’t clear which federal agencies could have the authorities or resources to implement Trump’s plan. Without a connection to federal property or federal crimes, U.S. authorities wouldn’t have jurisdiction to act without cooperation from local officials.
Any plan to relocate homeless people would have to comply with a 2019 federal appeals court decision called Martin v. City of Boise, which held that an ordinance could not ban sleeping in public without providing alternatives. “As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors,” the court wrote. The ruling stands after the Supreme Court denied a high-profile bid to review the case. Judges would have to consider whether Trump’s tent cities could meet this standard.
During his speech, Trump suggested that as president he’d ordered the Secret Service to clear homeless encampments in Washington. (A Secret Service spokesman said that never happened. “The Secret Service does not enforce state and local laws, and we have not and would not take part in the clearing of any homeless encampments within the District of Columbia,” communications chief Anthony Guglielmi said in an email.)
Trump’s proposal recalls a 2019 venture by officials from HUD, along with the departments of Veterans Affairs and Justice, to use Federal Aviation Administration facilities as sites for relocated homeless people. That initiative never materialized.
The “tent city” plan also resembles some state efforts. A recently passed state law in Missouri directs money to temporary camps instead of permanent housing. The city of Miami this month abandoned a controversial plan to move homeless people to tiny homes on a barrier island.
Former president Donald Trump called for legislation allowing the National Guard to “immediately go in” and address protests on July 26. (Video: The Washington Post)
During the social justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Trump pressured governors to respond more forcefully to demonstrations that were largely peaceful but at times erupted into clashes with police or resulted in property damage. Trump threatened to deploy the military unless state and local officials cracked down harder on the protests.
In recent speeches, Trump has said he showed too much deference to local leaders and wished he’d ordered more federal intervention. Trump indicated he wouldn’t hesitate in the future.
“I was mandated, ‘Wait for the governors,’ but sometimes I couldn’t do that,” he said in the Washington speech. “The federal government can and should send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it’s politically incorrect to call them in.”
National Guard troops are under state control, but the president has the authority to federalize them in an emergency. Trump did deploy heavily armed federal law enforcement agents in D.C., where he could exercise more direct authority than in states.
Trump has had support for this idea from allies in the past. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) urged Trump in a controversial op-ed in June 2020 to deploy the active-duty military. But Trump’s defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, publicly objected to deploying the military against domestic civil unrest.
Trump has not let go of the idea. His recent speeches showed a greater determination to use the National Guard or the military in the future.
“The next president should use every power at his disposal to restore order, and if necessary, that includes sending in the National Guard or the troops,” Trump said at CPAC on Aug. 6. “I think the next time, either we’re going for a very quick change or we’re sending them in.”
Future efforts to deploy the military domestically or impose martial law could prompt resistance or even resignations from military brass.
On Aug. 6, former president Donald Trump called for the president to have the authority to fire federal employees deemed “corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary." (Video: The Washington Post)
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of federal workers to remove their employment protections and make them easier to fire. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the change, and before a court could rule on the challenge, Biden took office and revoked the order.
Lately, Trump has declared his intent to restore the change and put it to greater use. He’s gone further by calling on Congress to overhaul the civil service through a statute, which could be more sweeping and harder to reverse than an executive order.
“Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told — did you ever hear this? — ‘You’re fired,’” Trump said at the July speech in Washington. “Get out. You’re fired. Have to do it.”
Though overhauling the civil service by reclassifying employees under a new category called “Schedule F” may sound geeky, it’s become a consistent applause line in Trump’s speeches and even the basis for fundraising appeals.
“I told you I would DRAIN THE SWAMP and purge Washington of woke bureaucrats, and that’s exactly what Schedule F accomplishes,” an Aug. 9 email to supporters said.
Shrinking the federal bureaucracy and thereby weakening the civil service has been a long-standing conservative goal. Good-government groups say undermining the merit-based workforce would hurt professionalism and lead to politicization, reviving the “spoils system” of the 19th century, when government jobs were doled out to reward partisan supporters.
“The idea that an applause line would be to return to a corrupt form of 19th-century government is pretty surprising,” said Max Stier, chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports federal workforce development. “The basic concept is that federal employees could be fired without appeal for any reason. This is in effect converting career civil service positions into additional political appointees. The risk is the choices of leaders might be made not on behalf of the public interest but in an individual’s interest.”
Stier said legitimate concerns about removing federal workers for poor performance can be addressed without dismantling the entire merit-based civil service system. A future attempt to reimpose and implement Schedule F by executive action would face a new legal challenge, he said, which raises questions that courts have yet to resolve.
Trump’s allies and administration alumni working at the America First Policy Institute and other organizations are preparing political appointees who can slot into agencies and begin overhauling them immediately. Trump’s appointees often blamed career civil servants from the Census Bureau to VA for slow-walking or undermining the administration’s priorities.
“This is why we’ve got all these great think tanks coming up,” Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who was convicted in July of contempt of Congress, said in an Aug. 5 speech at CPAC. “We’re gonna have a well-trained cadre of people that will hit the beach Day 1, and their No. 1 thing is to start taking apart the federal bureaucracy brick by brick.”
Former president Donald Trump said on Aug. 6 that the Department of Education should be shut down if politicians advocate for teaching “radicalism” in schools. (Video: The Washington Post)
Since last year, Republican candidates have tried to capitalize on some parents’ objections to instruction about racism, sexual orientation and gender identity. Much of the activism has focused on local school boards, where many policy decisions affecting public schools are made. But Trump recently floated an additional leverage point at the federal level.
“Across the country, we need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate racial, sexual and political material to America’s schoolchildren in any form whatsoever,” Trump said at CPAC, “and if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.”
The Education Department, created in 1980, has about 4,400 employees and a discretionary budget of more than $78 billion. Most of the money goes to grants for local agencies to serve disadvantaged or disabled students and to financial aid or loan subsidies for college students. Trump did not specify whether some or all of those functions would be reassigned to other agencies or eliminated.
“Repealing the department doesn’t actually mean much if you don’t repeal the laws it’s responsible for implementing or enforcing,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which conducts research on education, and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “If you wanted to actually get rid of not just the name but everything it does, you’re talking about taking away tens of billions of dollars from K-12 schools and higher education, which would be incredibly unpopular.”
While federal law prohibits the department from setting curriculums, its Office for Civil Rights has become a culture war target for its role in enforcing protections for women and LGBTQ students. And Republicans criticized the department last year for proposing a grant program on history and civics that referenced the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” and the anti-racism author Ibram X. Kendi.
Still, Trump’s specific complaint about material on race, sex or politics involves decisions made on the local level, Petrilli said.
“To the extent stuff is happening out in schools that’s offensive to many parents and folks on the right, that is happening from the ground up or from national advocacy organizations,” Petrilli said. “It’s not coming from the Department of Education.”
Trump’s railing against some educational materials positions him alongside potential 2024 rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has championed a state law restricting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. DeSantis’s Education Department also told administrators to ignore guidance from the Biden administration on civil rights protections for LGBTQ students.
Republicans since Reagan have aspired to abolish an entire federal agency but never achieved it. Other Republicans who have called for scrapping the Education Department include Betsy DeVos, who led the agency under Trump, and former Texas governor Rick Perry. A Trump administration proposal to cut the department’s budget hit a wall of resistance from constituencies of the affected programs.
“This is an oldie but a goody. There have been calls to abolish the department literally since its formation,” said Andy Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit serving marginalized communities. “The fact is it administers hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money, and you cannot just get rid of that.”
“Our goal should be same-day voting with only paper ballots,” former president Donald Trump said on July 26. (Video: The Washington Post)
Trump’s grievances over losing the 2020 election and baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud have inspired Republican state lawmakers across the country to propose and adopt new voting restrictions. Trump has called for measures such as universal voter ID since disbanding in 2018 the commission he established to back up his false claim of millions of fraudulent votes costing him the 2016 popular vote.
Trump has recently added a demand for same-day voting using paper ballots. “That should be our goal,” he said at CPAC. The proposal echoes his false claims blaming mail ballots and electronic voting machines for his loss in 2020.
As president, Trump could not change the rules on his own. He could pressure Republican-led state legislatures to pass more restrictions, or he could push for action in Congress. Congress has the power to regulate elections under the Constitution, with past examples including the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
“The American voter has become accustomed to having options and choices. If all that is stripped away for no real purpose and no good reason, that would dramatically change voters’ experience,” Patrick said. “If there truly was evidence of rampant voter fraud because voters had too many options in when and where to vote, then you could see a need to think about these things. But we have to be really clear, we don’t have any evidence.”
As for paper ballots, elections experts agree that machines should have paper records that can be recounted and audited, and almost all states already use machines that do, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In 2020, only 32 jurisdictions nationwide depended solely on voting machines with no paper records, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Trump has not gone as far as some allies who also want the paper ballots to be counted by hand. Machines have been used to count ballots in the United States since the 1960s, and Patrick said hand counting would make tabulation slower, less accurate and more expensive.
“A large jurisdiction with millions of ballots, multiplied by dozens of races and questions — that’s going to take months,” she said. “Not only would it take far longer, it would not be as accurate and you would need to enlist literally tens of thousands of people.”
What hand counting paper ballots could accomplish, though, is creating more delays, errors and confusion for Trump and his allies to further undermine confidence in elections and reject losses as illegitimate. | 2022-08-16T11:30:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump speeches hint at extreme agenda in potential 2024 bid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-speeches-extreme-agenda-2024-bid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-speeches-extreme-agenda-2024-bid/ |
On Tuesday, some of the biggest anti-Trump names in Republican politics will be on the ballot. Here’s what we’re watching in primaries in Alaska and Wyoming.
Support for her has imploded since she first voted to impeach Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 attack, and then took a leading role in the ensuing congressional investigation. Wyoming voted for Trump in 2020 by 70 percent in the presidential election, and Cheney’s passionate invocations of Trump’s threats to democracy haven’t changed many minds there. In fact, Trump’s election lies have completely remade the entire Republican Party, a recent Pew Survey finds, to the point where most voters who identify strongly as Republican want to hear their elected officials parrot it.
Alaska’s one House seat is open for the first time in nearly 50 years, and on Tuesday former governor Sarah Palin — with Trump’s endorsement — is trying to make a political comeback and win it. But her path is complicated by two things:
Her unpopularity in some corners of the state, amid a perception she left Alaska (and the governorship midterm) to grow her celebrity.
How Alaskans vote. In 2020, they adopted two new ways to vote, a major change celebrated by democracy-reform advocates for potentially boosting the chances of more moderate candidates. All candidates, regardless of party, compete on the same ballot. And Alaska voters rank their choices, and the votes are redistributed until someone wins the majority. This method, called “ranked-choice voting,” tends to reward politicians with a wide appeal, rather than a narrow one, like (arguably) Palin.
Also in Alaska, we’re watching the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, and is on the ballot in 2022. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has a Trump challenger in her primary, former state official Kelly Tshibaka. But unlike Cheney in Wyoming, who was cast out of House Republican leadership, Murkowski has the backing of her Senate Republicans.
In a traditional voting system, voters select just one candidate. With ranked-choice voting, they rank candidates in order of preference. Here's how it works. (Video: Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) | 2022-08-16T11:30:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cheney’s future and what to watch in Wyoming and Alaska primaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/wyoming-alaska-primaries-preview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/wyoming-alaska-primaries-preview/ |
By Hafeel Farisz
Gerry Shih
China's Yuan Wang 5 research and survey vessel arrives at Sri Lanka's Hambantota port on Aug. 16. (Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Chinese navy ship at the center of a diplomatic spat docked in a southern port in Sri Lanka on Tuesday, marking a small triumph for Beijing over India and the United States.
The Yuan Wang 5 arrived before 8 a.m. on Tuesday and will stay for three days, according to the Hambantota International Port Group. The ship, which reportedly carried 2,000 sailors, was welcomed in a traditional Sri Lankan ceremony attended by Chinese Ambassador Qi Zhenhong and Sri Lankan lawmakers. Footage from the event showed the dignitaries sitting on a red carpet in front of the docked Chinese vessel while its crew held a massive red banner along a deck that read: “Hello Sri Lanka, Long Live Sri Lanka — China Friendship.”
Indian and U.S. officials had raised concerns about the political optics of a Chinese navy vessel docking at Hambantota port, which the Sri Lankan government leased to the state-owned China Merchant Port Holdings Co. in 2017 after Sri Lanka failed to repay debts to China. The port’s transfer was condemned by the United States as a prime example of China’s harmful lending practices and its growing influence over the island nation — allegations that China has vehemently denied.
The port is also seen as a potential strategic foothold for the Chinese navy to project power into the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. India has warned in recent weeks that the Yuan Wang 5, a space-tracking ship that is reportedly unarmed but outfitted with advanced sensors, could spy on Indian defense installations. India said it would take necessary countermeasures to safeguard national security.
Indian officials have also argued that New Delhi this year extended substantial financial assistance to Sri Lanka — about $4 billion — as the Sri Lankan economy entered free-fall. They said Sri Lanka should refuse the Chinese vessel entry to a politically sensitive port so close to India. The bankrupt island nation, which is seeking to restructure its debts, counts China and India among its creditors.
“When a small, bankrupt nation like Sri Lanka delivers a diplomatic slap to New Delhi by hosting a Chinese surveillance ship at its commercial port of Hambantota, it is a stunning reminder of both India’s feckless foreign policy and receding influence in its strategic backyard,” Brahma Chellaney, a former member of India’s national security advisory board, said Tuesday on Twitter.
On Monday, less than a day before the Chinese ship pulled into Hambantota, the Indian military gave two surveillance planes to Sri Lanka as a gesture of friendship.
Under pressure from India, Sri Lanka last week asked China to defer the vessel’s arrival. Beijing responded angrily and accused other countries of meddling in its dealings with Sri Lanka.
Senior Sri Lankan officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks between governments, said Tuesday that the Chinese were “unrelenting in their insistence” that the ship dock. The Yuan Wang 5 was originally scheduled to arrive on Aug. 11 but was delayed while Sri Lankan officials negotiated with the various governments.
The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sri Lanka had “engaged in extensive consultations at a high level through diplomatic channels with all parties concerned” before granting final clearance.
Dayan Jayatilleka, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to Russia, said Sri Lanka could expect an angry reaction from the Indian government, which has long suspected that the Hambantota port could eventually be used by China for civilian and military purposes.
The arrival of a Chinese military vessel “cannot escape a response from the other superpower in the region,” he said. “There will be a response from India, which can be going back on the economic assistance given to Sri Lanka, or something more assertive.”
Shih reported from New Delhi. | 2022-08-16T11:31:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese navy ship docks in Sri Lanka despite Indian, U.S. pressure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/india-china-navy-ship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/india-china-navy-ship/ |
Scott Morrison was replaced as Australia's prime minister during an election in May. (Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg News)
Being the political leader of any country is a big job.
But it has emerged that the former prime minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, took up five other ministerial positions while he was in power, unbeknown to the Australian public and many of his colleagues — prompting outrage in the country and online.
“This has been government by deception,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Tuesday. He accused his predecessor of “trashing democracy” by taking on multiple government jobs and not informing the public.
Morrison, who is still a lawmaker but was replaced as prime minister during an election in May, was appointed as minister of health, finance, home affairs, treasury and industry between March 2020 and May 2021, Albanese said. These were all significant cabinet roles, which already had ministers in place — and Morrison gained extensive additional powers by being sworn in as a minister for those departments.
Some of Morrison’s colleagues have expressed outrage and surprise stating they had no idea they were sharing their jobs with their boss.
Albanese said Morrison’s secret appointments had been revealed following an investigation, and that it was not clear whether Morrison retained his positions until he was voted out earlier this year.
“It is completely extraordinary that these appointments were kept secret by the Morrison government from the Australian people,” Albanese said in Canberra. “It has undermined our democracy.”
In a lengthy post on Facebook on Tuesday, Morrison defended his actions, citing the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession in Australia in 2020 and stating that he acted in good faith in a crisis.
“These were extraordinary times and they required extraordinary measures to respond,” he said, adding that the risk of his ministers becoming “incapacitated, sick” or unable to carry out their work was “very real” during the pandemic.
“As Prime Minister I considered it necessary to put in place safeguards,” he said. “... I took the precaution of being given authority to administer various departments of state should the need arise due to incapacity of a Minister or in the national interest.” He added that he considered such actions to be “prudent” and “responsible.”
“In hindsight these arrangements were unnecessary,” Morrison said, adding that “there was a lot going on at the time.”
He underscored that he did not seek to ever act “in a co-Minister capacity” and used the additional powers linked to the jobs only on one occasion in April 2021 to overturn the approval of a controversial gas project off the coast of New South Wales. He said that particular decision was made “in the national interest” and was “the only matter I involved myself directly with in this or any other Department.”
Former minister Keith Pitt, who had responsibility for the gas project and led the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources at the time, told Australian media he was unaware Morrison had joint oversight over his ministerial portfolio.
Another minister in Morrison’s government, Karen Andrews, who served as home affairs or interior minister, told Australian radio that she also did not know that she was sharing her job.
“The Australian people have been let down, they have been betrayed,” she said, calling for Morrison to resign as a lawmaker. “For a former prime minister to have behaved in that manner, to secretly be sworn into other portfolios … it’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Australian newspapers highlighted the outrage, while on social media the incident spawned memes and jokes about Morrison’s multiple jobs.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/LJsqflZygQ
— Michael (@Michael17668283) August 16, 2022
“Scott Morrison couldn’t do his own job properly, and it turns out he didn’t trust his other Ministers to do theirs either,” Melbourne lawmaker and Australian Green Party leader Adam Bandt wrote on Twitter. Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull also lambasted the “sinister secret state appointments” and said any officials who were aware “showed a grave lack of respect for and understanding of democratic governance.”
Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, wrote that the lack of transparency could impact the institutions of government.
The exercise of additional government powers “should be notified to parliament and formally published so members of the public can know who is entitled to exercise particular powers,” she wrote in an opinion piece. “It is inappropriate for such matters to be kept secret — especially if it is kept secret from the Cabinet and from the minister who was formally allocated responsibility for a portfolio by the governor-general,” she added.
Albanese told the nation that he would be seeking legal advice from the country’s solicitor general about Morrison’s actions to determine next steps. | 2022-08-16T11:57:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Australian prime minister criticized for secretly taking 5 cabinet jobs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/australia-prime-minister-scott-morrison-jobs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/australia-prime-minister-scott-morrison-jobs/ |
Bomb blast was ‘declaration of war’ by gangs, Ecuador’s government says
President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency after the explosion left 5 dead and 17 injured
Damage caused by a bombing in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Aug. 15. (Mauricio Torres/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
It was the dead of night when homemade explosives detonated Sunday in a populous neighborhood in Guayaquil, one of Ecuador’s largest cities and the country’s commercial hub. The explosion left five people dead and 17 injured — the latest casualties in a gang-fueled wave of bloodshed.
Ecuador’s interior minister, Patricio Carrillo, called the blast “a declaration of war against the state” by criminal gangs whose feuds to control drug turf have left a growing trail of collateral damage.
In Cristo del Consuelo — a neighborhood known for its street parties and clandestine dance clubs — residents were left reeling after the eruption at 3 a.m. Authorities said men arrived on motorcycles and threw a bag filled with explosives onto the street. The blast set off a shock wave that was felt up to 230 feet away, Carrillo said. The street was left covered in rubble, bodies and blood.
Among the victims was a woman who was standing by her balcony before the explosion hit. The owner of a canteen and a taxi driver were also killed at the scene, El Universo reported. Eight homes and two cars were destroyed in the blast, the country’s National Risk and Emergency Management Service said on Twitter.
Longtime residents say there has been an escalation of organized-crime activity, the drug trade, homicides and robberies over the past decade.
“We would give anything not to live here anymore. We are living a nightmare,” one of the victims’ family members told local outlet GK.
The motive for the attack remains unclear. However, in a Sunday news conference, Carrillo said preliminary information points to its being a targeted assault on a man known as “Cucaracha” — or cockroach — who is believed to have ties with Los Tiguerones, one of Ecuador’s most feared gangs. Officials are also investigating whether the explosion is connected to three other violent events that same weekend or to a drug bust from earlier this month, he added.
Yet the probe has been challenged by a seeming lack of cooperation from witnesses, Carrillo said. None of the injured residents wanted to talk to authorities, he said. Although there’s a $10,000 reward for helpful information, tips have yet to come through.
In an attempt to contain the mushrooming violence, Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency in Guayaquil, which will enable the immediate mobilization of multiple law enforcement agencies, including those dealing with criminal investigations, organized-crime fighting, weapons and explosives, and transnational crimes. The order also empowers the agencies to disrupt meetings in public spaces and to carry out inspections and searches at citizens’ homes.
On Monday, Ecuadoran police carried out 11 home searches in Guayaquil, where they arrested five people and seized explosives and weapons. Law enforcement officers also arrested two people after finding that they possessed homemade explosives similar to the ones used in the Cristo del Consuelo attack, the country’s Interior Ministry said on Twitter. As of early Tuesday, no one had been formally accused of setting off the explosives on Sunday.
Of 145 explosive-related attacks in Ecuador this year, 72 have taken place in Guayaquil, which has become the epicenter of the rise in violence, according to government figures.
That’s probably because of the city’s strategic location. Home to the country’s main port, Guayaquil is a major transportation point for drugs flowing in from neighboring Colombia and Peru, the world’s top cocaine producers. The rivalry to control what nonprofit investigative outlet InSight Crime deemed “a cocaine superhighway to the U.S. and Europe” has unleashed devastating effects on Ecuador as gangs use brutal tactics to squash the competition.
The violence has played out mostly within the country’s overcrowded and under-resourced prisons, where gang clashes have killed hundreds in recent years. Yet the bloodshed is increasingly spilling into the streets. On Feb. 14, two corpses were seen hanging from a bridge. A day later, a decapitated head was found inside a bag. Gangs are now deploying makeshift explosives and car bombs.
Although the recent incidents seem especially gruesome, officials say the violence has been brewing for over a decade.
“This is not a problem that arose yesterday, nor six months ago, nor a year ago,” Ecuador’s minister of government, Francisco Jiménez Sánchez, said Sunday. “These are conditions that have been dragging on for the last 15 years in particular.” | 2022-08-16T12:11:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bomb attack in Guayaquil, Ecuador, kills 5, injures 17 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/ecuador-guayaquil-explosion-bombing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/ecuador-guayaquil-explosion-bombing/ |
Laurence Tribe is a Harvard Law School professor emeritus and has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. (Rick Friedman)
Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, 80, is a professor emeritus at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1968, counting among his former students Barack Obama, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Merrick Garland, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Ted Cruz. Tribe has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and served on President Biden’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Do you consider the Supreme Court to be in crisis now?
How did we get to that point?
Well, I think a combination of a long game on the part of the far right — ever since 1980, they’ve been very concerned with building toward the kind of court that Robert Bork really would have represented — along with lots of lucky breaks. When, for example, Thurgood Marshall left a little earlier than he might have, Clarence Thomas gets that seat. At the other end, when Ruth Ginsburg stays longer, perhaps, than she should have, Amy Coney Barrett gets that seat. When there is an opportunity to put Merrick Garland on the court on [Antonin] Scalia’s death, they sort of played a hard game, and we end up with [Neil] Gorsuch.
And when you look back, the consequence of Clarence Thomas is Bush v. Gore. And the consequence of Bush v. Gore is the appointment, by George W. Bush, of [John] Roberts and [Samuel] Alito. So that led to a court in which there are now five members who clearly have an agenda and whose agenda is very prominent and activist. And when they’ve got the votes, they don’t even care if they have the reasoning.
You testified against [failed 1987 conservative Supreme Court nominee] Robert Bork a long time ago and alluded to the kind of vision that he would have brought had he been on the Supreme Court. Where do you see the justices now on that spectrum — do you consider them to be similar to Bork?
Do you really?
And they are, in fact, probably to his right — that is, Robert Bork at least seemed to believe in preserving those aspects of free speech that conduced to meaningful democratic self-governance. That is, I didn’t see in Robert Bork the disregard for democracy, writ large, that I see in the current Supreme Court majority led by Clarence Thomas. And it is now surely more the Thomas court than it is the Roberts court.
Bork and the current justices, I think, were pretty much in the same place with respect to privacy. They all thought that Griswold v. Connecticut was wrong. And I think Thomas is much more candid than Alito in saying that he would certainly get rid of the right as a people to decide to use birth control, to use contraceptives, to have sex for purposes other than procreation. I think that it’s clear that they are going in that direction.
Take a case like Loving v. Virginia, which should matter to Clarence Thomas, given that he is himself, obviously, in an interracial marriage. There’s no basis for it in the Bork universe because, in the Bork universe, the original meaning of the Constitution is to be derived by what it looked like in 1868 or so. Racial intermarriage was unthinkable at that time. And neither the due process nor the equal protection bases of Loving or of Obergefell [v. Hodges] fit into the universe that Robert Bork envisioned.
What happened to Robert Bork is that he was more candid than people like Barrett,[Brett] Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas about their views. Remember when Thomas testified, he said he hadn’t even discussed Roe v. Wade. He barely knew the name of the case. And that, when he was a justice, he would basically be like a runner who would be stripped down bare and would start afresh and have no preconceptions and no agendas. What utter BS. I mean, I don’t expect anyone to come to a court with a blank slate — an empty mind, an empty heart. People bring experiences and ideas. But at least something of an open mind. These people don’t appear to have an open mind. It’s clear, on the things that are agenda items for them, they know exactly where they’re going to come out. And although they don’t literally lie under oath when being asked by Susan Collins, “Do you think this is precedent?” “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it’s precedent,” they certainly were misleading. So it does feel like Robert Bork redux. It feels like “Back to the Future.” Except it’s back to a terrible past.
Do you think justices can be or ever were impartial? Is that an ideal that can be attained?
Everything you need to know about the Supreme Court Voting Rights Act decision
So I don’t have any illusion that the court was ever really neutral, nor do I think one can really define a point of neutrality. The idea that judges could be apolitical doesn’t make sense. But they can at least be fair. They can listen. They can give reasons for what they do and not have points of view that are so closed and preset that you might as well have an algorithm as a group of human beings. And what the current court is doing more than any court in our history that I can think of is simply saying, “It’s so because we say it’s so.” And then pull out things that are so transparently not arguments.
For example, when Justice Alito says in the majority opinion in Dobbs: Don’t worry, this will have no implications for contraception; it’s special because it involves potential life. Well, of course, so does contraception involve potential life. And besides, he’s equating a definition with an argument. The underpinnings of his theory are that if you don’t find it written down in the Constitution — or in a history that goes back far enough that he’s citing judges who favored burning women as witches — if you don’t find those roots, it doesn’t exist. Well, if you apply that logic, it wipes out whole swaths of rights. So that’s not what I call a fair argument. That’s simply basically saying, you know, “I’ve got the votes, and so shut up.”
What do you say to somebody who says maybe you’re as partisan as anybody else, that this is your vision, but maybe the will of the people is to have these more conservative judges?
And it is true that this reflects a point of view, but it’s a point of view I’m ready to defend. I used to be a mathematician, and I’m not suggesting that there’s some kind of Euclidean geometric proof that this is the right way to go. It does reflect a vision, but it’s a vision that I think is sort of built into the better angels of our constitutional nature, and I’m prepared to defend it.
I wanted to ask you about adherence to precedent and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, where 50 years of precedent was set aside. In this increasingly partisan era, has precedent and adherence to it changed completely?
But this is the first time in American history when the court has taken an individual right that has been deemed fundamental to the way people lead their lives and then taken it back. Especially after five decades. The entire society has been built — the equality not yet realized of women is predicated on — the idea that women cannot be used as, you know, breeders — forced labor as a form of involuntary servitude. And to suddenly rip that out suggests that if that can be overruled just on the ground that, well, we’ve got the votes now, then anything can be overruled. And, when anything can be overruled, precedent means nothing. And, when precedent means nothing, there is no longer a meaningful difference between the judiciary and the political branches. It’s just who has the votes.
If that’s the case, the independence of the judiciary is an illusion. And when it’s an illusion, we no longer have a third branch that can serve as a guardrail. And when we no longer have that guardrail, we descend to fascism or anarchy. And that is the trajectory that I think we desperately need to avoid.
Confidence in the Supreme Court is at a historic low and you, yourself, have said you no longer have confidence in its legitimacy. What does that mean for its role in society?
It’s very scary. If we get very far down that line, what happens is chaos. I do think it’s vital that we preserve order. The rule of law. That we do have, for the time being, a final answer to certain questions. An answer that doesn’t necessarily bind all the branches — it could be ongoing dispute — but at least people have to feel an obligation to obey a court decree. I would hate to see us go back to a world like that in which the Supreme Court orders desegregation and Orval Faubus stands in the [schoolhouse] door, and we don’t have a president who sends the 21st Airborne in to defend the court.
And yet the danger, when the court becomes so headstrong and so out of touch with modern reality and so unwilling to listen effectively to counterargument and so agenda-driven and so committed to its, really, alternative facts, is that at some point, people will start defying what it says. I think we’re getting closer to the point where there is no outside independent force to call us to a halt. And that’s quite scary.
As a professor you have taught so many leading jurists and political leaders. If you could speak to the nine justices now, what lesson, what advice would you want them to hear?
Well, when I was arguing before a court with people like Scalia and [William] Rehnquist on it — people who were to my right — I was having a dialogue. And I sometimes won 9 to nothing with those justices and, not always, but that was a dialogue. I don’t know what kind of dialogue I would have with Clarence Thomas or Alito these days. I think we just start from very different worlds.
I would, however, if I were just talking to them, say, “Let’s talk about why you believe so strongly that only the things that are named in the Constitution are protected. Do you really believe that? I mean, after all, you do believe, don’t you, that the court was right in the 1920s when it said that parents had a right to send their kid to a private school or a parochial school? Would you really overturn that?” Clarence Thomas would. But I’m not sure that Amy Coney Barrett would. So I would try to have that kind of dialogue. I mean, I’m never ready to give up. And maybe they would persuade me that I’m wrong about something. That’s quite possible.
You served on the president’s bipartisan commission to look at reform on the Supreme Court, which was, as I understand it, a mix of conservatives and progressives.
Especially these days. I read that you had gone in thinking that expanding the court was not a good idea but came out thinking that’s the way we need to go. What changed your mind?
By the end, I concluded that both of those things were oversimplifications. And it seemed to me — and this is the key argument — that the idea that the pendulum might someday swing back in the foreseeable future was gone. The court has been stacked in a new direction, deliberately, and this would be not so much court-packing as court unpacking. You can’t unpack by subtraction because they have life tenure. You can unpack only by addition. Expanding the court seems to be about the only thing one could do.
Some people say, “Look, if you really believe the independent judiciary is important and that we’ll have chaos if we don’t have it, you have to not add justices because that will just accelerate the de-legitimation of the court.” I don’t believe that anymore. I think the court, in fact, has so delegitimated itself that an orderly process of expanding it, for example, to 13 justices, either all at once or in two steps, that kind of orderly process would not reduce the respect for the court. It would rather show that our system can respond when one of its parts runs wild and goes rogue.
Whether you call it packing or unpacking, won’t we still have tit for tat?
It’s like saying, “We better not get rid of the filibuster, because if we do, when it would help the Republicans to get rid of it, they’ll get rid of it.” Well, I have news: If it would help them to get rid of it, they’ll get rid of it whether we have or not. If, for example, in some strange universe, the current court is not far enough right for these guys, and they have a Republican Senate and a Republican president, you think they won’t add justices if Amy Coney Barrett or Brett Kavanaugh — they won’t — but if they turned out to be a little more like [David] Souter? They wouldn’t hesitate to add justices. So, to refrain from expanding the court on the theory that, if we do, they will, is rather silly.
And do you think expanding the court is possible now?
I don’t have any illusion that we have the votes to do it. I think it should happen, but I think it’s very, very unlikely. With not even the president on our side — Elizabeth Warren is now for it and Adam Schiff — the momentum will build, but not quickly enough to have it happen in the foreseeable future.
If “unpacking the court” or adding justices is the best way forward at the moment but you don’t see that as possible now, are we on a crash course?
You know, I struggle to be optimistic, but sometimes the struggle doesn’t quite make it. I mean, we’re clearly heading to a cliff. I’m not prepared to say that we’re going to go over that cliff — it’s not like that scene in “Thelma & Louise.” But I don’t see any immediate way to avert it. And the more people raise the alarm and do so with some sober reasoning, explaining why we’re in danger, the more possible it becomes to say, “Well, it’s not too late.” This November everybody has the vote. Lots of positions are up for grabs. If enough people say that democracy is too precious to just give up on, then maybe the most hopeful scenarios can come to pass. At least, I have to think that way in order to keep going.
Mark Esper on Trump: ‘There were a lot of bad ideas being proposed’ | 2022-08-16T12:54:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Constitutional law scholar reflects on why the Supreme Court feels dangerous - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/16/supreme-court-roe-vs-wade-clarence-thomas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/16/supreme-court-roe-vs-wade-clarence-thomas/ |
Five skills parents can learn so they can help their children cope
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
The coronavirus pandemic has affected the mental health of children and teens, and therapists are tapped out and booked up. But that doesn’t mean care is impossible. In fact, caregivers can learn therapeutic strategies to support, reinforce and teach our children healthy coping skills.
Experts point to five key skills you can develop that will support your child during a crisis, supplement therapy once it’s underway and continue to improve your family’s mental health for years to come.
“Our job is being a proactive parent and taking initiative,” said Mary Alvord, a Rockville, Md.-based psychologist and co-author of “Conquer Negative Thinking.” “Even with suicidal kids, a little bit of intervention can go a long way. Avoidance and ignoring is not going to get you anywhere.”
Alvord and others suggested learning these mainstays of therapeutic practice.
Skill 1: Attuning
In our busy lives, it’s easy to listen absently to our children or to bark orders. Attuning helps us notice when children need a deeper level of attention. It strengthens our relationship with our kids and helps them better understand themselves and their feelings.
Paying attention. When children’s routines shift or they come into the room in a huff, that’s a signal for you to dig deeper. Describe what you see, and invite them to share. You might say: “I noticed you’re spending more time in your room. I’m wondering if you’re upset about something.” Offering a guess can help them get started, both in processing their emotions and in sharing them, said Meag-gan O’Reilly, a psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University.
Reflective listening. One of the most powerful tools, reflective listening, can also be the most challenging to deploy. It involves three steps: listening closely, paraphrasing what you hear and inviting your child to correct your understanding. It’s important to be sincere, use eye contact, get at their level and put away distractions. Don’t offer opinions or advice; just seek to understand. Phrases such as, “I’m hearing you say,” and, “Let me see if I have this right,” can help. For example, when a child is upset over bad grades, parents can listen reflectively instead of telling the child to study more. That leaves space for children to process their emotions, consider how their choices led to the outcome and decide how to move forward.
Validation. Know that you may hear answers that alarm or upset you. This is when it’s crucial to validate your child’s perspective. If you dismiss their feelings or try to talk them out of it, they’ll shut down or argue. “Parents are driven to fix things and give kids the answer,” Alvord said. “That’s not how we learn.”
That doesn’t mean you need to agree. Maybe your daughter says she looks ugly in her yearbook photo, said Pat Harvey, an author and clinical social worker based in Rockville. If you insist that she looks beautiful, she may feel invalidated. Instead, you could say: “I get that you’re disappointed in how your pictures look. I happen to like them; I can understand that you don’t.”
“You have to touch your kid’s pain and disappointment, and none of us want to do that,” Harvey said. When you acknowledge your child’s pain, it actually lessens their struggle and opens a path to behavior change. “We only listen when we feel heard,” she noted.
Skill 2: Emotional literacy
When parents build emotional literacy, they help their children understand their own feelings. Part of that is connecting body sensations with emotions, Alvord said. Your fourth-grader’s stomach ache could be related to swimming tryouts. Teens’ headaches might be from holding school stress on their shoulders. “We know the mind and body are connected,” Alvord said, explaining that cognitive behavioral therapy connects feelings, physiology and thoughts to change behavior.
Know that all emotions are okay, even the unpleasant ones. Naming the emotion helps tame it, a strategy coined by authors Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. As children tune in to their emotions, they get better at managing them — and at predicting how they will feel.
One study by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence involved high-schoolers tracking their emotions and behavior, with a surprising result about posting Photoshopped pictures to social media. “The anticipation was, ‘I’m going to feel more beautiful and more attractive,’ but in the end, they actually felt worse,” said Marc Brackett, author of “Permission to Feel” and director of the center, which helped create a free emotion-tracking app called How We Feel. “We all have to become emotion scientists, and that includes being self-aware and giving ourselves the permission to feel all emotions.”
Skill 3: Self-regulation
One of the hardest parenting skills to develop is self-regulation, especially in the face of your child being angry or upset. A key is to breathe intentionally. “Take a deep breath and hold your breath for the count of 10,” Alvord said. “It’s amazing how effective that can be.”
Harvey encourages her parent clients to text her when they feel overwhelmed with emotions in a difficult moment with their children. Sometimes she coaches them by text about what to say, but even when she’s not available, pausing to text helps them respond more skillfully. “In texting me, they’ve taken themselves out of the emotionality,” she said. “They’ve thought about it differently.”
You should model self-regulation to your children. Maybe you had a difficult day and head out for a walk. Explain what you’re doing, O’Reilly said. “They’ll hear walking is a way we can attend to stress,” she said. “Telegraphing your internal process externally really gives them cues.”
Skill 4: Self-compassion
Self-compassion involves more than just cutting yourself a break. There are three defined steps: Acknowledge that you are experiencing pain and be kind to yourself; recognize that you’re not alone; and put your experiences in perspective to moderate your own negative reactivity.
Studies have shown that self-compassion increases well-being, lowers anxiety and depression, and can buffer against many health issues, including substance abuse, eating disorders and suicidal ideation.
Self-compassion “is like portable therapy. Any moment that’s a moment of difficulty can be transformed,” said Kristin Neff, author of “Fierce Self-Compassion” and a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s a way of being with negative emotions or negative experiences. Are we with it with mindfulness, connectedness, kindness, warmth and support? Or are we just blaming ourselves, blaming others or railing against reality?”
Emotions are contagious. People are such social creatures that if someone’s vibrating with anxiety, we’ll probably feel on edge. Parents and children pick up on each other’s emotions — and spread them — more easily because of our close relationships.
That’s why self-compassion can be so powerful. Parents can deploy self-compassion at any high-intensity moment with children. Model self-compassion by speaking out loud, or use it silently to calm yourself. Either way, your child benefits.
If children are being hard on themselves, telling them to lighten up will probably spark resistance. Instead, talk them through the steps of self-compassion.
“It’s not just being soft, complacent or indulgent,” Neff said. “Sometimes it’s getting your stuff together and saying: ‘What I need to care for myself is something uncomfortable that’s going to be good for me in the long run.’ ”
Skill 5: Reframing
When you’re frustrated, it’s easy to start labeling your child, even silently. Therapists recommend reframing to open yourself to other ways of viewing the situation, which in turn helps you see positive paths forward. Avoid assumptions or judgments, and instead observe and become open to possibilities.
For example, if your child abruptly gets up to leave the table, you may interpret that as rude. Instead, consider whether your child needs quiet time, Harvey said. “We can do a lot about behaviors. We can’t do anything when we put labels on,” she said. “When you make assumptions, we act as if those assumptions are true, so we do all kinds of contracts and negotiations around what we think is the problem.”
Similarly, you can help children reframe by questioning assumptions. If they worry about you getting into an accident and dying, talk them through more realistic possibilities, Alvord said. Help them find their way to optimistic thinking, which sees bad things as temporary and specific. When you’re depressed, you tend to generalize and see bad situations as unchangeable.
Ask questions such as: “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Is it always? Is it everybody? Is it going to go on forever, or is this temporary?” Alvord suggested.
Practicing these five skills will build your child’s resilience. “As parents learn the skills of more effective parenting and really listening to their children, they can nurture their children emotionally, so they can be happy, motivated, empowered teens,” Alvord said. | 2022-08-16T12:54:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Five skills parents can learn so they can help their children cope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/15/help-child-cope/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/15/help-child-cope/ |
The Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ tax, climate and health-care bill that Congress passed last week and is now awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature, calls for a 15% minimum tax on big corporations. Critics say the minimum tax will ultimately be a tax on everyone because companies will raise prices and squeeze wages to compensate for higher tax bills. Don’t count it.
The minimum tax will apply to companies with at least $1 billion in profits, which essentially means big, publicly traded corporations. It also means anyone can look at companies’ publicly available financial statements to determine which will be affected and to what extent. So that’s what I did. Specifically, to approximate the way the bill works, I looked for companies with an average adjusted income before tax of $1 billion or more during their previous three fiscal years (the adjustment is intended to exclude unusual, nonrecurring items that aren’t likely to affect future profits).
Not surprisingly, I found that the minimum tax will impact a relatively small number of companies. I counted 368 companies with incomes that high, and of those, 127 paid taxes at a rate less than 15% last year. All but a handful are among the biggest 500 US companies by market value, and most are household names, notably technology titans Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., electric-car maker Tesla Inc., pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc., and private equity powerhouse Blackstone Inc.
They can also all afford to pay more in taxes. Even after accounting for the shortfall — that is, the difference between the taxes they paid last year and what they would have owed applying a 15% minimum tax — the vast majority would still have made well more than $1 billion in profits last year, and the rest are not far behind. In fact, the median shortfall as a percentage of adjusted pretax income was just 6.6% across all companies last year. So the minimum tax doesn’t appear to be much of a burden.
Still, just because companies can absorb higher taxes doesn’t mean they will. And with many Americans struggling to afford basic necessities amid the highest inflation in four decades, now would be a particularly bad time for companies to raise prices or pinch wages. But history doesn’t support the notion that higher corporate taxes necessarily lead to higher prices or lower wages.
There has been no correlation between inflation and the rate at which companies pay taxes, based on available data back to 1947. Federal tax receipts from companies as a percentage of pretax income has persistently declined during the past seven decades to 9% from a high of 48% in the early 1950s despite varying inflation environments along the way, as measured by year-over-year changes in the consumer price index. (For stats aficionados, the correlation is a negative 0.07.) In fact, during most of the brief periods when the tax rate rose, inflation either remained low or declined.
Nor has there been any relationship between the tax rate and annual wage growth back to 1979 (correlation here is a negative 0.08). Real wages have risen just 0.2% a year during the past four decades, even as the tax rate declined to 9% from 23% over the same time. And here again, during the brief periods when the tax rate rose, wage growth was either flat or higher than usual. In one such period from 1982 to 1987, real wages grew by 1.1% a year, more than five times the long-term growth rate during the full period.
Even if companies were to raise prices to offset higher taxes, it’s not likely to have much impact on everyday goods and services people need most. Companies in the energy, real estate and consumer staples sectors, which includes food, clothing and personal products, account for only 14% of all companies with a shortfall last year — just 18 in total. The two notable exceptions are utilities and health care, which collectively account for a third of companies with a shortfall, but that’s still just a fraction of all US companies.
Consider that the aggregate shortfall last year would have been roughly $50 billion. When added to the $280 billion companies paid the federal government last year, tax receipts as a percentage of income across all companies would have risen 1 percentage point to 10% from 9%. Not only is that unlikely to have a meaningful impact on prices or wages, it’s also a very modest increase, particularly when weighed against the energy and health-care benefits the minimum tax will help pay for.
The public must often rely on sharp-penciled policy wonks to measure the impact of government initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act. But when it comes to the corporate minimum tax, the impact on companies is there for all to see, even if it’s barely noticeable. | 2022-08-16T12:58:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A 15% Minimum Corporate Tax Is No Economic Villain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-15percent-minimum-corporate-tax-is-no-economic-villain/2022/08/16/96e15c86-1d57-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-15percent-minimum-corporate-tax-is-no-economic-villain/2022/08/16/96e15c86-1d57-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Internal Revenue Service 1040 Individual income tax forms for 2021 arranged in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Refund sizes in some cases have been up by nearly 25% compared with last year due to pandemic relief programs and rising wages. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Take two popular tax breaks, the child tax credit and the credit that taxpayers get to help with childcare expenses. Both are flat amounts that don’t take inflation into account. Similarly, the amount someone can write off for an investment loss has been stuck at $3,000 per year since 1978. And the deduction for business gifts has been set at $25 since 1962.
Unfortunately, whether a tax provision is inflation-adjusted is dependent on whether lawmakers believe there is enough money to allow for it when they are drafting legislation. More often than not, inflation accommodations are the first to go during negotiations in Congress — and then are easily forgotten. And so, we’re left with a US tax code that’s a total hodgepodge.
Remember, the child tax credit was increased as part of the 2017 tax overhaul to compensate for ending the personal exemption for dependents, which was the amount of money taxpayers used to be able to exclude from their income for having children. The personal exemption was inflation-adjusted, whereas the maximum amount of the child tax credit isn’t.
It’s a similar story for deductions for interest paid on student loans. While the income limits to qualify for deducting the interest on student loans are adjusted annually for inflation, the maximum deduction — $2,500 — is not, and has been in place since the early 2000s. (Student loan repayments have been frozen since March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.)
There are some tax issues where the argument for automatically indexing to inflation is more complicated. Under the current system, capital gains aren’t indexed, so when someone sells a stock or home for a profit, the original purchase price isn’t adjusted for inflation. Such a wholesale change would result in a significant budget deficit and disproportionately benefit the wealthiest taxpayers.
The Senate’s IRA Tax Plan Has a Few Drawbacks: Editorial
Curb Your Enthusiasm on the Good Inflation News: John Authers
CPI Surprises Are Bad Even When They’re Good: Jonathan Levin | 2022-08-16T12:59:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Are Only Some Tax Breaks Adjusted for Inflation? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-are-only-some-tax-breaks-adjusted-for-inflation/2022/08/16/c897812a-1d5b-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-are-only-some-tax-breaks-adjusted-for-inflation/2022/08/16/c897812a-1d5b-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
That raises the question of how teenagers who plan on careers in business, finance, technology and media should prepare for their own futures in the workplace, when they’ll never get the pre-2020 experience when most people came into the office most of the time. And while a tight job market might make it easier than ever to land a job without going to college , for industries where who you know and the strength of your network is a key asset, we’re going to find that going to college has even more value than it did before the pandemic.
That’s the takeaway from new research published in Nature showing where people in different income brackets make friends . Lower-income people tend to make most of their friends in their neighborhoods, while those who are upper-income tend to make most of their friends in college.
Future doctors and lawyers don’t need to be convinced about the merits of going to college -- they do several years of graduate school on top of undergrad, But for other high-paying professions there’s the hope that by skipping college and going straight into the workplace, one can move up the ranks over time via networking in the office and demonstrating one’s ability to bosses and managers.
That path was already difficult but has become even more uncertain as white-collar industries adjust to a new normal of hybrid and remote work. Maybe 20-somethings will be eager to show up at offices every day to network and gain skills, but if older and higher-up employees work from home some or most of the time those younger people won’t have access to the same amount of relationship-building that workers who came of age before 2020 got.
If building a network and making friends at work are going to become more difficult in the future, then it raises the relative value of places that have demonstrated an effectiveness at doing just that -- such as college.
What I didn’t think much about at the time was how the flip side of a small student body is it means a very small alumni network. And whereas MIT and Caltech are well-known nationally, Harvey Mudd isn’t well known outside of technology fields or beyond California. As my career migrated from California and the tech industry to, over time, Atlanta and the financial and media industries, I haven’t been able to leverage my time at Mudd the way I might have at a different school with a bigger student body and alumni network.
And, as someone who went to public schools through high school, I cringe when I write this, but it also argues that, if they can afford it, people should give more consideration to private school than they otherwise might have. The same rationale applies here as well: If it’s going to be harder to build a network from scratch in the workplace, then forming bonds with elite students and families in high school is a way of ensuring you’ll have the network even if the future of work is hopping from remote job to remote job via employment sites like LinkedIn and Indeed.
As an optimist, I’m hopeful that we’ll work out the kinks in remote work over time, and that people will still be able to build networks and make friends at work. But I also think back on my own career and doubt that I’d have some of the connections I do if the workplace were significantly remote or even hybrid when I was in my 20’s. So it makes sense for young people thinking about their futures to invest more time in their networks in high school and college, because it’s just not clear what the workplace will look like when they’re building careers of their own.
• Working From Home Isn’t a Free Company Benefit: Jonathan Levin
• Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X All Basically Agree on WFH: Chris Hughes | 2022-08-16T12:59:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Future Remote Workers Need to Network More — in College - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/future-remote-workers-need-to-network-more-in-college/2022/08/16/fda7e7ac-1d5f-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/future-remote-workers-need-to-network-more-in-college/2022/08/16/fda7e7ac-1d5f-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Academy apologizes to Native American woman who declined Brando’s Oscar
Sacheen Littlefeather declined the best actor award on Marlon Brando’s behalf in 1973 and gave a speech about the mistreatment of Native people
Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Academy Awards. ( Globe Photos/ZUMA Press)
The year was 1973. The venue: the Oscars. Marlon Brando had just been named best actor for his portrayal of Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” But he did not walk onstage to accept the award.
“And the reasons for this being, are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry,” she said to a mixture of applause and boos from the audience, adding that the poor treatment extended to television, as well as a tense standoff at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
She distinctly recalled seeing mouths agape while looking out at the mostly White audience. John Wayne was ready to rush the stage but was held back by security staffers, she said in a recent interview, published in A.Frame. And at Brando’s home after the ceremony, Littlefeather claimed she was shot at.
Now, the academy is publicly apologizing to Littlefeather. In June, it sent her a “statement of reconciliation.”
“The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable,” the June 18 letter, signed by then-academy president David Rubin, read. “For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”
The statement will be read on Sept. 17 during a “program of conversation, reflection, healing, and celebration” with Littlefeather, the academy announced in a news release on Monday.
Despite the efforts, Hollywood continues to struggle with representation of women and ethnic minorities. Stereotyping in film persists, and White actors continue to be criticized for playing members of ethnic groups that are underrepresented on the screen. While people of color are increasingly included in film casts, certain groups — including Asians, Latinos and Native Americans — remain underrepresented, according to a 2022 UCLA “Hollywood Diversity Report.”
Littlefeather showed up to the ceremony at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles 0nly minutes before the best actor category would be introduced, she recalled. She said she was there as Brando’s representative. She was let in, but the show’s producer said she could not read the speech. He threatened to have her arrested if she spoke more than a minute, Littlefeather recalled.
Then, after Littlefeather sat down to wait out a commercial break, the category was announced. “Of course, my heart was rushing. And then, they called out his name,” Littlefeather recalled. “So, I took a couple of deep breaths, and I said a prayer.”
She introduced herself and explained why she was there. She said she’d make a brief statement in lieu of the speech Brando provided, and she started talking about the mistreatment of Native Americans in Hollywood. She paused as the crowd applauded and booed, and then continued, mentioning a standoff that had been ongoing between Native American activists and federal agents in Wounded Knee.
“It was interesting because some people were giving me the tomahawk chop,” Littlefeather recalled. “I thought, ‘This is very racist. Very racist indeed.’ ”
In the aftermath of the ceremony, she said she was barred from talk shows even as people “talked about me.”
“I could not and was not allowed to speak for myself,” she said. “It was as though I was silenced.”
In an interview on “The Dick Cavett Show” several months later, Brando said he was embarrassed by how Littlefeather was treated. “They should have at least had the courtesy to listen to her,” he said.
But he said he did not regret his decision to send her up there, adding that the stereotyping of ethnic minorities continued to be a problem in Hollywood. (Brando himself earned an Oscar nomination for playing a Mexican revolutionary in the 1952 western “Viva Zapata!” despite having no Mexican or Latino heritage.)
“All we were asking, and I was asking, was, ‘Let us be employed. Let us be ourselves. Let us play ourselves in films. Let us be a part of your industry, producing, directing, writing. Don’t write our stories for us. Let us write our own stories. Let us be who we are,’ ” she said. “This is all I was saying.” | 2022-08-16T12:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Academy apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for 1973 Oscars incident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/littlefeather-academy-awards-apology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/littlefeather-academy-awards-apology/ |
Al Gore on the Inflation Reduction Act: 'It took so long'
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today is a big day for climate policy: President Biden will sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law at the White House. We caught up with a former vice president to understand the significance of this moment:
Al Gore never thought it would take this long to pass a big climate bill
In 1981, as a young lawmaker, former vice president Al Gore held what some experts think was the first congressional hearing on climate change.
In the mid-2000s, Gore continued to sound the alarm about the dangers of rising global temperatures. He appeared in the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate scientists for their efforts to spread awareness about the issue.
Despite Gore's tireless crusade, the United States — which has emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country — has historically lacked a comprehensive climate law. But now, more than four decades after he first warned Congress about the climate crisis, that is finally about to change.
President Biden on Tuesday will sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorizes the biggest burst of spending in U.S. history to tackle global warming. The Senate passed the landmark legislation Aug. 7, and the House followed suit on Friday.
The Climate 202 spoke with Gore by phone about his views on the climate package and his work to train a new generation of activists. The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity:
Climate 202: What were you doing last Sunday when the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, and what was your initial reaction?
Gore: Well, I was glued to C-SPAN, and I was calling and texting with different senators. And I was elated when the result came in. This legislation is a game changer. It will create jobs, lower costs, increase U.S. competitiveness, reduce air pollution and, of course, tackle the climate crisis. We have crossed a major threshold, and it's going to have significant impacts on international climate action, especially going into COP27 this November.
Climate 202: You held the first congressional hearings on climate change in the 1980s. Did you ever think it would take this long to pass major climate legislation?
Gore: I thought it would come much sooner than it has. I never expected to devote my life to this. And I never expected the struggle to pass this kind of legislation. It took so long.
Climate 202: Historically, why has it been so difficult to get climate legislation through the Senate? Would you point to specific factors such as the filibuster, opposition from Republicans, or lobbying by fossil fuel industry groups?
Gore: Well, the quality of our democracy has been redeemed by the passage of this legislation, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that our democracy has not been seriously degraded. So yes, I would advocate for eliminating the filibuster, changing the practice of gerrymandering districts to make our country more divided and more partisan, and reducing the influence of big money in our politics.
But the ability of the fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists to stop climate action has been overcome, at least in this instance. And I think this will unleash so much momentum that we will never go back.
Climate 202: The climate package reflects some compromises with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on provisions that will benefit the fossil fuel industry. Given the nature of our political system, is this bill the best we can hope for?
Gore: The compromises in this legislation are actually pretty minor. If you look at the legislation through the lens of carbon reductions, the few provisions that I would have certainly opposed are extremely minor in terms of carbon compared to the massive advances in the bulk of the legislation. This was a tremendous accomplishment.
Climate 202: You lead the Climate Reality Project, which trains people to become climate activists and leaders. What's next for you and the group?
Gore: This week, I'm training 6,700 new climate activists in Brazil. We're just weeks out from the election in Brazil, when we have the chance to flip to a pro-climate government. And of course, Australia just passed its first significant climate legislation in the wake of their recent climate election.
So we have a lot of momentum. But the hard part lies ahead. We have much more work to do.
Infrastructure money to almost double zero-emission buses on the road
The infrastructure law is poised to almost double the number of zero-emission buses on the nation's roads with a single year's funding, the Federal Transit Administration announced Tuesday, Ian Duncan reports for The Washington Post.
The agency said it has awarded $1.6 billion to transit operators across the country to purchase about 1,800 new buses — 1,100 of which will be zero-emission — and to construct maintenance and charging facilities and train workers.
The money will be spread among 150 projects in 48 states, officials said. The agency will distribute another four rounds of funds in the coming years as the nation transitions away from diesel-powered buses to more sustainable battery- or hydrogen-powered ones.
Mitch Landrieu, President Biden’s infrastructure adviser, said the funding will be complemented by the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at spurring battery manufacturing and the adoption of clean heavy-duty vehicles.
Western states face deadline for steep water cuts with Colorado River at tipping point
Tuesday marks the deadline for seven states in the Colorado River basin to propose unprecedented restrictions to their water usage or have the federal government impose the cuts unilaterally, as the West remains locked in the worst drought in 1,200 years.
But so far, water-sharing negotiations among the states have failed to yield any progress, a Nevada official wrote in a letter obtained by the Hill's Zack Budryk.
The past three months of talks have “produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis,” John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, wrote in the letter to Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation officials.
Meanwhile in Utah, officials are scrambling to find new water sources to support the droves of people who are moving to the region for its stunning landscapes, Karin Brulliard reports for The Post.
In St. George, Utah, a fast-growing metropolitan area where visitors can easily enter Zion National Park, the population of 180,000 is expected to more than double by 2050 — even though its only water source, the Virgin River basin, is shrinking rapidly because of human-caused climate change.
More dangerous heat waves are on the way – see the impact by Zip code
Millions of people across the United States are expected to experience extreme temperatures more frequently and for longer periods of time over the next 30 years as climate change tightens its grip on the planet, according to data released Monday by the nonprofit First Street Foundation, The Post’s John Muyskens, Andrew Ba Tran, Anna Phillips, Simon Ducroquet and Naema Ahmed report.
The analysis relied on measurements of surface temperature data, tree cover, impervious surfaces, and proximity to water using a moderate scenario in which global greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and then slowly decline. A Post breakdown of the group’s data concluded that global warming has already caused about 46 percent of Americans to experience at least three days straight of triple-digit heat per year. In the next three decades, that figure is likely to jump to 63 percent.
Nowhere is the danger more widespread than in the South, where climate change is projected to deliver an average of 20 extra days of triple-digit heat each year. In some states, such as Texas and Florida, residents could see more than 70 consecutive days with the heat index topping 100 degrees. The findings come as high temperatures are shattering records this summer, threatening power grids and increasing the risk of heat-related illnesses in vulnerable populations.
Inflation Reduction Act promotes nature as a climate solution
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate- and energy-related spending, with much of it going toward high-tech climate solutions. But the legislation also sets aside money for nature-based climate solutions — a less-heralded but essential part of the fight against climate change, The Post's Brady Dennis reports.
The measure includes about $20 billion for agricultural conservation and $5 billion to safeguard forests across the country, according to the Congressional Research Service. While that might not sound like much, experts note that healthy forests, wetlands and other landscapes can pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually, making them a powerful carbon-sequestration device.
Simon Stiell, Grenada’s environment minister, to be next U.N. climate chief
Simon Stiell, the environment minister of Grenada, on Monday was appointed to be the next executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian.
The announcement comes as nations prepare to meet in Egypt for what will probably be a fractious U.N. climate summit, known as COP27, in less than three months. Stiell, who is tasked with getting nations to ramp up their climate ambition, was a surprise choice to replace Patricia Espinosa, the outgoing executive secretary.
Stiell is also the third U.N. climate chief in a row to come from the Latin American and Caribbean region. The decision underscores the vulnerability of low-lying island nations, which are some of the most susceptible to the effects of climate change despite not being the source of the majority of emissions.
Canada’s onetime ‘Green Jesus’ okays oil megaproject — Amanda Coletta and Maxine Joselow for The Post
Freya the walrus, who charmed crowds in Norway, is killed by authorities — Rachel Pannett for The Post
AP-NORC poll: Many in US doubt their own impact on climate — Hannah Fingerhut and Nuha Dolby for the Associated Press
Shout out to all the climate bros with eco-anxiety. We see you.
We have crossed the Rubicon… pic.twitter.com/9W7wUD85GA
— James Hewett (@JamesHewett12) August 14, 2022
On our radar: Six drastic plans Trump is promising for a second term | 2022-08-16T12:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Al Gore on the Inflation Reduction Act: 'It took so long' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/al-gore-inflation-reduction-act-it-took-so-long/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/al-gore-inflation-reduction-act-it-took-so-long/ |
The House on Aug. 12 passed the a bill that aims to lower health-care costs, combat climate change, raise taxes on some large companies and reduce the deficit. (Video: The Washington Post)
President Biden on Tuesday will sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act, an ambitious measure that aims to tamp down on inflation, lower prescription drug prices, tackle climate change, reduce the deficit and impose a minimum tax on profits of the largest corporations.
“President Biden and Congressional Democrats have worked together to deliver a historic legislative achievement that defeats special interests, delivers for American families, and grows the economy from the bottom up and middle out,” the White House said in a statement Monday.
The House passed the bill Friday in a 220-to-207 vote, days after the Senate narrowly passed it on a party-line vote, with Vice President Harris serving as the tiebreaker. The bill’s passage marked one of the most successful legislative efforts by congressional Democrats this session, ahead of a contentious midterm election — and also one that seemed increasingly unlikely for about a year and a half.
Last year, a larger $2 trillion spending package known as the Build Back Better Act stalled in Congress after hitting opposition from moderate Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), who after weeks of negotiations with the White House said in December that he could not move forward with the bill.
But last month, Manchin announced that he had reached a surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on what would become known as the Inflation Reduction Act. Though smaller than the Build Back Better plan, the new legislation still aimed to achieve many of the same goals, including spending about $433 billion on climate change and clean energy production.
According to the White House, Biden will in coming weeks host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as travel across the country to promote the different ways the new law is expected to help Americans. The White House is also planning to host an event to celebrate the enactment of the bill on Sept. 6.
The Inflation Reduction Act secures the largest-ever investment to tackle climate change, with roughly $370 billion dedicated to curbing harmful emissions and promoting green technology. The bill also moves to cap and lower seniors’ drug costs while sparing about 13 million low- and middle-income Americans from increases in their insurance premiums that otherwise would occur next year.
To pay for the spending, Democrats rely on revisions to tax laws, including a new minimum tax on some billion-dollar corporations that now pay nothing to the U.S. government. That change — along with another new tax on stock buybacks and fresh funding for the Internal Revenue Service to pursue tax cheats — is expected to cover the costs of the bill. Democrats say it also can reduce the federal deficit by about $300 billion, but they have yet to provide a final fiscal analysis.
House Republicans, meanwhile, have attacked the measure as a tax increase on families, even though it does not raise individuals’ rates. And in speeches, they insisted it would allow the government to hire tens of thousands of new IRS agents to “snoop around in your bank account, your Venmo, your small business, and then the government will shake you down for every last cent,” as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said.
At a bill enrollment ceremony for the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called it “a glorious day” and noted the bill’s passage was coming on the heels of Biden signing several other key pieces of legislation into law, including one aimed at expanding aid to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits during their military service. She also criticized Republicans for uniting in opposition to the bill — and said Democrats would continue to fight for provisions that had been dropped as a compromise, such as Medicare expansion and free universal prekindergarten.
“This bill honors the Democrats’ promise to American families,” Pelosi said then, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act. “After we pass it and the president signs it into law, we will continue to fight for more of the family features of the bill that are not included in this legislation. This legislation is historic, it’s transformative and it is really a cause for celebration.” | 2022-08-16T12:59:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to sign Democrats' sweeping bill to tackle climate change, lower health-care costs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/biden-inflation-reduction-act-signing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/biden-inflation-reduction-act-signing/ |
Defeated Kenyan candidate declares presidential election results ‘null and void’
By Rael Ombuor
Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga delivers an address to the nation at his campaign headquarters in downtown Nairobi on Aug. 16. (Ben Curtis/AP)
NAIROBI — Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga declared the results of the election “null and void” and promised to challenge them in court, ignoring calls for him to concede to declared winner William Ruto.
Ruto was named the winner of last week’s election by Wafula Chebukati, chair of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), on Monday — an announcement marred with allegations of vote-rigging and dissent among commission members over the close-fought race.
“The figures announced by Mr. Chebukati are null and void and must be crushed by a court of law,” Odinga said at a news conference. “I want to commend our supporters for remaining calm and keeping the peace and urge them to continue to do so, let no one take the law into their own hands.”
His statement raises the specter of violence between his supporters and the winner’s, which has marred past elections. So far, aside from scattered protests, Kenya has been quiet in the wake of the results.
Odinga’s announcement could bring a repeat of Kenya’s 2017 election outcome when his campaign challenged incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win in the Supreme Court, which went on to declare the vote invalid.
Kenyatta still won the election rerun, however, after Odinga told his supporters not to vote, citing distrust in the electoral body. That period was marred by violent street protests and human rights violations.
On Monday afternoon, as the country waited for the election results, one of Odinga’s top election officials, Saitabao Ole Kanchory, said that they had reports the electoral system was “penetrated and hacked” and that “some of the IEBC officials committed electoral offenses.”
Minutes before the results were announced, four out of seven of Kenya’s electoral commissioners said they would not stand by them. In a news conference Tuesday, they said the results were declared by the chair before the commissioners all had a chance to consult on the tabulations and objections brought up by the parties.
“The issue that we have is with the process,” commissioner Justus Nyang’aya said shortly before Odinga’s news conference. “If that is not determined by the commissioners, then it remains the duty, role and responsibility of only one person in the boardroom.”
Monday’s announcement of a win for Ruto prompted celebrations around the country from his supporters. In Ngong Town, on the outskirts of Nairobi, drivers honked their horns and formed processions on the road as they celebrated. Meanwhile, in Ruto’s hometown of Sugoi, people celebrated till late.
In western Kenya’s Kisumu City, an Odinga support base, protesters briefly lit tires on the street, blocking the roads with rocks before police dispersed them.
This is expected to be Odinga’s last attempt at the presidency. It was the 77-year-old’s fifth try for the top job.
The country’s most serious spate of election violence came with Odinga’s 2007 loss to Mwai Kibaki by a narrow margin — also amid allegations of vote rigging. Post-election violence left more than 1,000 dead and over 5,000 displaced.
In Kibera, a slum in Nairobi that is considered a stronghold for Odinga, crowds that had in previous days gathered to watch live broadcasts ahead of the results had dispersed. “The announcement was disappointing; whatever Odinga says is what we will do, he is our leader. We trust his judgment for the way forward,” said Job Owino, a supporter.
Mercy Wanjiru, 30, a resident of Mathare who was displaced during the 2007 post-election violence, said she was happy about Ruto’s win and was hoping Odinga would concede to avoid a repeat of the violence.
“We have a country to build,” she said. “It is now time to heal and move on.” | 2022-08-16T13:46:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Raila Odinga calls Kenya election results null and void, calls for calm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/kenya-election-odinga-ruto/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/kenya-election-odinga-ruto/ |
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